Rutherglen is one of the seemingly best stations in Australia, apart from a break from 1955-1965. Bill Johnston looks closely at the raw data, finding that there is probably no trend — flat temperatures — rather than either cooling or warming. And that it’s difficult to fill in data from surrounding stations. He speculates that something fishy goes on in 1924. He also finds that rainfall probably drives a fifth of the temperature swings. He discusses his disappointment at the intellectual level of debate on The Conversation.
Because he knows the area, he also talks about the effect of wet years and dry years, and how that affects winter and summer temperatures. He has a dry wit, and lovely casual style.
I think that if we have to rely on statistical analysis to “know” whether data was shifted or moved when there is no documentation suggesting it was, all certainty is shot, and any definitive statement about temperature trends in Australia is a joke. — Jo
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The Rutherglen stoush
Guest post by Bill Johnston
The raw trend is very different from the HQ adjustments which are very different from the ACORN homogenised set.
Main points:
Before the big, fat, green, wrecking-ball totally trashes our economy and reduces our children and us to green-serfs, we need different national conversation.
- Are we really headed for the cooker; or is it just homogenised data that point that way?
- Has homogenisation produced a more believable ‘product’ or just a more-marketable brand?
- Is it really possible that temperature records are broken, seemingly every second day; when daily data have such obvious historical failings; and when modern data are not observed using thermometers and are possibly homogenised on-the-fly?
- Do we really need to irrigate the Southern Ocean with precious Murray-Darling Basin water; build expensively subsidised windmills and other green-trinkets; and even if you think so, will it really change our climate?
As shown in this essay, the biggest problem of all is that data were first collected in Australia to describe and understand our weather; not track the climate over time. People were no-doubt as vigilant as they could be. However, the odd missing-day was of little concern. Having measured weather for years, not far from Rutherglen, I understand the difficulties and how problems happen.
Observers also did not know that a generation or-so later; bunches of professors would pore over their data trying to polish-out some trend that could mean anything; or, like for these data, nothing at all. A close look at most of our long-term series unearths shiploads of problems. Starting with an arms-length independent audit of the Bureau’s data, let’s strike-up a new national conversation about climate science!
The stoush
After contributing an analysis of Rutherglen Research’s raw annual minimum temperatures commentary erupted at The Conversation. I naïvely thought The Conversation was about having a conversation; in this case about data.
But it wasn’t. It’s more like a $6M opinion-mosh-pit run by universities that we constantly hear are too broke to teach our kids. It involved some who knew nothing about data; some who knew lots and wanted to share; and some defending their positions, come hell or high-water.
The data’s background.
To understand data, it helps to think about what causes it to behave the way it does.
The Rutherglen region straddles the temperate zones along the Great Dividing Range to the south of Wagga Wagga NSW; and the Mediterranean climates of Central Victoria and South Australia. It is one of Australia’s most productive mixed-grain, grazing, viticulture and orchard-growing regions. The institute located there has been a key facilitator of agricultural innovation for nearly 100-years.
Rutherglen is also down-river from the headwaters of the Murray River; its region is an integral part of the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB).
And don’t you know, the new Murray-Darling Basin Plan will eventually see huge amounts of precious fresh water go right past Rutherglen, on its way to irrigate the Southern Ocean. Climate-science said it should. That’s the new Australian green-way!
Rutherglen’s data are interesting because its climate is usually summer-dry, and therefore, summer-hot, which is why irrigation’s important. Winters are moist, cold and often frosty.
The climate changes from its summer to winter pattern when the high-pressure ridge abruptly migrates north in autumn; it migrates back again in spring. Anzac Day is a handy autumn benchmark for sowing crops. Frosts after the long-weekend in October can be devastating.
The region is sheltered from the east by Australia’s highest peaks. Coastal on-shore easterly-weather leaves it’s moisture on the eastern escarpment of the Great Divide, casting a summer rain-shadow across and beyond the Murray Valley.
In winter, polar lows of the roaring 40’s intrude, bringing rain to the western and south-western slopes; and a rain-shadow to the coast.
There are exceptional years of course, including occasional cyclonic intrusions from the Timor or Coral Seas; years also when the bi-annual climate progressions are early or late, and some when they don’t seem to happen at all. That was the case during the recent long-drought.
Data for Rutherglen Research (station 082010) has been collected, apparently carefully, since 1913.
Because it seems largely unbroken, its one of Australia’s important datasets – one of 116 designated ACORN-SAT sites.
The Rutherglen site is in the open, well away from urban heat-plumes. More importantly, according to the ACORN catalogue, it has always been in the same place. Its raw data should therefore be a useful and untainted record for calculating trends.
Background to the stoush
ACORN-SAT has been heavily marketed as a premier product by our Bureau of Meteorology. It is ‘world-class’, ‘best-practice’; it’s been peer-reviewed; turned upside-down, compared and polished; it glistens with assured, homogenised purity.
ACORN is also important because it forms the backbone of calculating Australia’s warming. Rutherglen’s data contributes to that, and as everyone knows, we’re headed for the cooker.
In Oz right now, global warming’s already a billion-dollar industry. For instance, millions of dollars of work have ‘greened’ their way off-shore because of soaring energy prices. Stressed communities, like Geelong (Vic.) and Elizabeth (S.A.), are on the block. As the Basin-plan bites over coming-years white-anting the food-bowl of its productive capacity, businesses will fail and MDB communities will suffer as well.
Our government’s broke and seemingly riddled by corruption. Debits for wind-farms, the MDB-plan, pipelines and desal-plants; and even our kid’s education, are piling-up to be paid-for generations into the future. We’re probably on some happy-race to the bottom.
Our kids may drown in global-warming-green-wash. So, it’s extremely important their parents and grandparents check what the data behind it all says.
The data story
Previously I checked Rutherglen’s raw annual average minimum temperatures and found irregularities, which is what caused the stoush. The stoush in-turn resulted in a public-berating, prompting me to review the data. That is what I want to talk about.
Rutherglen’s annual raw minimum temperatures are uncorrelated with time. Due to random excursions, they show a trend of 0.03oC/decade, which is no different to zero-trend. They are described fairly, as random numbers dancing along a time-line.
It was fair to believe the initial segment of the data (to 1924) was stitched from somewhere else. They were stepped-high by 0.77oC, suggesting a discontinuity; but no historical account was available.
A closer look, found the ‘hump’ in the middle of the record (1958-1964) contained two values (1963 and 1964) that I’d filled using near-by Wodonga’s data. Those values, which were high, made the detected step of +1.1oC spurious. Removing them removed the step but made no difference to the zero-trend.
Ignoring the missing years and using another two homogeneity tests (four in total), found only the 1924 discontinuity as influential. There was no real trend anyway, and with the 1924 inhomogeneity accounted for, trend was even smaller.
The stoush was about data; and I repeatedly asked the conversing-inquisitors to grab the data and do an analysis for themselves. They could have found out what I’ve now exposed; and we could usefully have conversed about that.
Going further
There are two other temperature datasets for Rutherglen’s annual minimum temperature; the HQ data, which I downloaded before the Bureau locked it away; and its replacement, the already-mentioned ACORN data.
Both were claimed to correct for inhomogeneties in the raw series.
If data are faulty, they should either not be used; or they should be transparently adjusted. However, the Bureau’s process of adjusting is a bit murky. There is also no indication from the raw data that they shouldn’t stand-alone.
Summarised as annual data, the ACORN series reveal problems in the numbers of observations in the 1920’s; the 1940’s; a break from 1955 to 1965; and the 1970’s. The 1924 shift may not have been a stitch at all; it could just reflect missing observations.
For the first half of ACORN, trend was zero. For the second half, it was steep (0.12oC/decade); possibly also because of missing data. A step-change in the ACORN series in 1965 is clear.
…
It’s revealing to graph the three series together. Presuming all of them are missing the same daily data as ACORN; their spurious overall trends are remarkably different.
The raw data trends at -0.03oC/decade; HQ, 0.09oC/decade; and ACORN twice that at 0.19oC/decade. Looks sus; sounds sus; probably is sus.
…
The main question is whether these data are fit-for-purpose.
Despite homogenisation; up to 1924, and after the break between 1955 and 1965, missing values greatly compromised all three series. Using Wodonga’s data, I illustrated that they can’t just be “filled-in” from somewhere else without creating considerable uncertainty.
For ACORN there was a remarkable up-shift from 1965, which is unexplainable. It’s also a curiosity that after 1974, which was a well-known and well-studied climate-shift year, datasets were in lock-step. It begs the question whether they are engineered on-the-fly to do that.
Finally, if we look at ACORN data from 1978 to 2013 (34 years), which had few missing values, we again find random numbers dancing along a time-line; having an accidental trend of 0.1oC/decade.
So which particular cooker do conversationalists think we’re headed for?
Data needs to be viewed in context.
There is one further aspect of Rutherglen’s data that’s worth a thought, which is that wet years are warmer than dry ones. It’s a conundrum, because we’d generally expect wet years to experience higher landscape-scale evaporation, which is cooling.
With rain falling mainly between April and October, cloudy, wet years, with their temperature inversions; fogs and misty rain, blanket the lowlands around Rutherglen; making it warmer in winter than it would be if skies were clear and frosts more frequent.
…
It’s the reverse of that case in the summer-rainfall north.
Rainfall explains around 17% of temperature variation. However, because it is random and non-trending, and the temperature data faulty, there is no easy way of obtaining a rainfall-adjusted series.
So we’re stuck with what we’ve got. Anyway, no matter way the data are adjusted, or which dataset is investigated; trends will likely be the same: a big fat zero!
In this case, the data don’t seem up to the job.
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Dr. Bill Johnston, a former senior natural resources research scientist from Wagga Wagga NSW is familiar with Rutherglen. He has an enduring interest in the climate faux-debate. He passionately believes the scales need to rebalanced so our nation’s children and its rural industries can look forward to a bright future. “We can’t afford to fail at this”, he said, “No big F; our kids depend on it”. – Jo
Most of my comments were removed from that Conversation rag for being the inconvenient truth. You need to toe the party line there, or whammo!
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Yes there is a lot of intolerance for dissenting views going around.
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I don’t understand why data is in-filled anyway. Surely the average of 180 numbers is as good as 200 numbers. How can inventing 20 numbers make the result more accurate?
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Good point.
Creating a missing point by, taking the mean of the surrounding points, may not impact the overall data. But it does suggest a precision that cannot be justified.
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Missing data is very inconvenient in time-series calculations, where comparisons are made from last year to this year, and from this year to next year.
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maybe, but given that climate by definition deals with long term trends and patterns over periods of a minimum of 30 years’ length, and any discussion of “climate change” needs to compare multiple 30-year periods, I don’t see how a few missing data points will significantly impact those trends, unless the missing points are statistical outliers.
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Also, climate is a regional thing. Each region will have its own climate. A world climate doesn’t really made sense, unless you’re comparing earth with another planet. A methane planet perhaps.
I think at the end of the day, we can say that each of the world temperature organisations have their own specific interpretations of the many temperature records.
Anybody can do a study of a region, or country, or world, and do their own interpretation using whatever infilling method they want to (assuming infilling is required for a math function).
I strongly agree with cemetafriend. Data infilling has to be done with thought and has to be justifiable.
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Sometimes in filing can make sense. I looked at rainfall recorded at a particular station in the region where I live. I found that the rainfall in 1898 was missing in annual figures, then I found it was one months rainfall that was missing, then I went to the daily figures and found it was only part of one of the drier months that was missing. I checked the daily records for some 5 close by stations (within 20 km) and looked at the average differences between each of the 5 stations to the one I was studying and then made and estimates for each missing day. The result was that year had the highest rainfall (in excess of 4m) for the 120 year record (just exceeding 1893). Even if my estimates for the missing days was out by a few mm it does not significantly change the total for the year.
Raw figures should always remain as raw figures. Let every investigator do their own infilling and adjustment but if they then make a public comment then they need to explain how the adjustment was done and why it was done. They also need to explain what adjustments do to the totality of results in comparison to raw data.
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The raw data is amazingly boring and uninteresting. Getting a pattern other than zero change over a century would be like reading tea leaves. However the Acorn adjusted numbers point dramatically up. Why?
There is also an amazing belief that in adding things up, lots of random things, meaningful information will appear. In fact what may appear is entirely the result of what is being done. It is quite possible that over the longest time span available from excellent records kept diligently for more than a century, nothing has happened at all of any long term significance.
However like reading tea leaves, you see what you want to see. ACORN and the dumping of the very hot period from 1900 to 1909 has helped push the idea that Australia is warming. It is heartening to see that the raw data seems to indicate this is most unlikely.
I read again today in the Australian that the ‘missing’ energy is in the ocean. So what? Like ocean acidification, which is not true, the weight and heat capacity of the oceans at 400x the mass of the atmosphere means that energy to produce a temperature rise of 2C in the air would produce 2/400th C of the rise in ocean temperatures. Again, there is no problem.
In fact, it is effectively a statement that, thanks to completely unforeseen, non computer modelled effect that the oceans are trapping the extra energy, there is no problem at all. We should be dancing in the streets. Nothing is happening.
Rapid, urgent, life threatening Global Warming is disappearing into the noise. All we have to deal with now are ‘extreme’ bushfires, and similar ‘extreme’ events from the extremist and self justifying Climate Council. We’ll all be rooned, said Tim ‘Hanrahan’ Flannery.
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It was the Federation Drought period 1895 – 1903 that brought the extreme conditions as described in contemporaneous newspaper reports referenced here.
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The Federation Drought is Australia’s equivalent of the Medieval Warm Period, something that had to be ‘got rid of’.
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An interesting account of the history of Rutherglen and its temperature records by someone who knows well the district, rather than a person in far off Melbourne playing with their models and computers.
The relevant point seems to be that in view of the fact that the global temperature anomaly is less than a degree celsius since the mini ice age and Australia forms a large part of this calculation, its records should be impeccable, even if some others are not, since there is just so much money, prestige, politics, etc. riding on the AGW hypothesis.
What irks me about the AGW hypothesis is that there is no significant mathematical correlation between global temperatures and levels of carbon dioxide – thus a carbon tax is of no consequence fundamentally – and, there appears to be very little understanding of the photo-chemical reaction of photosynthesis which provides the basic carbohydrate for all animal life and as well gives us oxygen upon which life is pretty well totally dependent. If you smother yourself with a pillow it doesn’t take long to expire, but aren’t we doing this with carbon restriction?
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I remember a time in the 1970s when the world was running out of oil, even the 1990s. Now seam gas is helping out as Bass Strait runs dry and we go from producing 100% of our own petrol in Australia to only 60%. Around the world, energy is running out. Some places like Dubai have run out already. So if the alleged heat from the alleged greenhouse gases are in the ocean and have stayed there for at least 16 years, disappearing suddenly and mysteriously from the atmosphere and in contradiction to the ‘science’and its infallible computer models, carbon based fuels will be all gone in 100 years.
Then short of nuclear, we have nothing. As our Climate Commissioner Will Steffen boasted, Victoria receives twice as much solar energy on the state as it needs. Great, if you want to cover Victoria entirely in solar cells and live in complete darkness without plants or animals or a life. Effectively he has admitted solar is utterly inadequate to power Victoria today. In fact after 20 years worldwide of building windmills and waterfalls, we have no hope of supplying enough power to maintain 20% of our lifestyle without even bringing Africa and India and many other countries like China up to our living standards.
So Global Warming is not the problem. Energy is. You would have to wonder what good have been done in an unprecedented period of world peace with the $1,000,000,000 a day being spent trying to keep the world cool when it is not warming anyway. Fusion anyone? Thorium reactors? The Greens will be remembered as anarchists and wreckers wasting trillions uselessly, latter day Luddites and basically frustrated old world Soviet communists who have taken over what was once a meaningful caring group.
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Real problem #1 = Energy Resource Security.
Fake Problem #1 = Man Made Global Warming.
Fake Problem #2 = Nuclear power is fundamentally dangerous.
Fake Solution #1 = solar, wind, tidal & geothermal energy systems
Now for the odd bit.
Wrap the Real Problem up in Fake Problem #1, and use Fake Problem #1 to scare the the plebs into coughing up tax dollars to create subsidies (read income streams) for the application of immature and ineffective technologies (read solar panels, windmills, tidal & geothermal stations), with Nuclear Power excluded from the mix by Fake Problem #2, to solve the Real Problem #1.
Results.
[1] Real Problem #1 is unresolved, resulting in endless pressure for the ongoing application of Fake Solution #1 = Ongoing Market for immature and ineffective technologies.
[2] Tax paying plebs get fleeced by higher taxes.
[3] Energy consuming plebs get fleeced by higher prices.
[4] Plebs working in exposed industries lose their jobs as their industries are shipped overseas.
[5] Corporations that make, & deliver Fake Solution #1 make handsome and reliable profits.
[6] Compliant politicians retire on fat superannuation paid for by the remaining tax plebs, or take high paying consultancy jobs with the corporations delivering fake solution #1, or both.
[7] Senior corporate officers of the corporations delivering fake solution #1 make big bucks.
[8] Owners of corporations delivering fake solution #1 make even bigger bucks, and retire onto $200M yachts with massive carbon footprints.
[9] Scam continues until the money runs out.
Corporations are motivated by profit to co-opt the machinery of government and the parliament, failure to do so results in reduced competitiveness.
We in the developed West live in a time of Neofascist Corporate Statism.
(China/Russia has Neofascist State Corporatism – the distinction lies in where the locus of executive decision making occurs, Corporate (the West), or State (China,Russia)).
BTW: I class myself as a pleb, debt serf & tax donkey. (One of those net value producers actually creating real goods and services for voluntary consumption by others), so please don’t assume I’m putting people down with the use of the term pleb.
To the people running the scam – we are worth only the revenue that we can produce.
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One wonders why they don’t use Real Problem#1, and make money out of that?
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There are already players in that market.
This is also about capturing market share from incumbents, and finding “new” and “innovative” ways to monetise peoples use of energy.
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Agree with most of what you say but one mistake, in my opinion. You say that windmills and solar panels are immature technologies. In fact they are very mature technologies. Despite this, they still require massive subsidies and still cannot produce a decent amount of reliable energy (except for niche applications). This alone proves that the answer is not in these technologies (whatever the question is).
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Hi Stan,
Mature in the sense of being cost effective – not in simply being around for a while (like me…:-)).
This is why I call them immature.
You make a good point – certainly OK for niche applications.
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Ex warmist;
See here for the other matter I said I would get back to you about:
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/10/the-rutherglen-stoush-on-homogenisation-bill-johnstone-bravely-ventured-onto-the-conversation/#comment-1579302
00
If this
is this
then even from an outsider’s point of view, someone is screwing Australia. I don’t need to live there to know the word purity means it’s pure BS.
I cannot think of any reason for any sane person to dump needed water into the ocean in the name of anything. World-class and best-practice are now a practical joke. Only the joke’s on the wrong people.
Wake up Australia.
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Oh I dunno. I live in Adelaide and quite like the idea of a bit more water coming down our way, so that we dilute the stinking cess-pit that leads to us in drought years.
During the 5+ years of drought, its bloody hard sitting in Adelaide, with heavy water restrictions, watching the eastern states gobble water and argue till they are blue in the face about their right to ensure nothing flows over the border into SA. And so all we get to drink in the end is the sewage outflow from the upstream towns.
It’s easy to tell those who don’t live at the tail end of the river system and who have not had to endure the daily heartbreak of the farmers at the Coorong and the mouth of the Murray. Those are the ones who say its all BS, we’re all being conned etc etc.
A little more thought would be rather nice. But no, these are the same people who slag off Adelaide for being a poxy little dump where the water is so crap that cruise ships refuse to take it on. Guess why its so crap….
Give me a break.
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Say What?
Melbourne University researchers Linden Ashcroft, Joelle Gergis and David Karoly used historical records, from First Fleet logbooks, farm records, newspapers and government gazettes to paint a picture of the weather faced by settlers from 1788 to 1859.
Documenting the temperature, rainfall and atmospheric pressure experienced by the young colony was a job taken seriously by scientists and farmers.
Extreme weather was also noted in great detail in newspapers.
The information, recorded before the start of official record-keeping in 1910, reveals that although the colony had a wet start in its first two years, the summers of 1790 and 1791 were hot and dry.
Said climatologist Joelle Gergis, “It allows us to have more of an understanding of the behaviour of the Australian climate in that pre-industrial period where we don’t have interference from greenhouse gases.”
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/australias-early-settlers-weathered-drought-and-flooding-rains-20141001-10okhr.html
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Karoly was on 3AW yesterday [1/10/] pushing his “cut carbon emissions or we’ll all die” message. Unfortunately I did not hear it all or get the chance to “call back”. He got an easy ride from the presenter, Neil Mitchell, and went on his merry way chanting his usual mantra.
Apparently he has authored two new apocalyptic papers telling us we are all going to fry. I’ll leave it to souls braver and wiser than I on such issues to read and comment on them.
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Here is the interview.
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Thanks Handjive. I’ll endeavour to resist throwing hard things at the ‘puter while listening.
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How embarrassment. 🙁 I should have looked at the link first. Mind you it is much more entertaining than listening to Karoly.
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David, Neil Mitchell is a CAGW believer and will try and weave the anti carbon line into his show where possible and why wouldn’t he? it’s 3AW Fairfax radio after all. 🙂
Here’s a man who will express extreme outrage over how a child’s feelings are hurt because another kid called him fat at school but then knowingly aid and abet a green cult cause that will effectively destroy any economic future for the same child by destroying the economic opportunities that previous generations of Australians have enjoyed.
Just another brain dead hypocrite who should stick to calling bingo…second thoughts that involves numbers and if someone can’t factor the relevance of 17, 400 and 0 then they’ll F#$k that up also.
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In the middle of the drought, a TV crew went along the Murray to film the devastation of a river run dry. To their total surprise,the river was full of water. It was a joke. Unknown to most people, the country has built 26 weirs along the river to prevent it running dry.
This in a time before the caring Greenies stopped anyone from building dams to conserve water. Greenies believe precious fresh water should be flushed to the world’s oceans, as said. Only about 2.5% of the world’s water is fresh and 21% is in the US, Great Lakes, 20% in Baikal, another 27% in African lakes. A lot of the rest is in Antarctica and very little is in rivers, but the Greenies want to throw it away. Madness. We have not built a big dam in 50 years in a country where droughts and flooding rains are the known weather cycle. Sheer madness and not a scientist, farmer or engineer among them. Screaming Lord Sutch and his Official Monster Raving Loony Party made more sense.
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They would rather burn diesel to run desal plants, dumping fish-killing excess salt into the bays.
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The greens are opposed to building dams, mining, using and exporting coal, as well as nuclear power. However, they have yet to satisfactorily explain how they will provide electricity for our cities and industry when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. Their power base is the city where folk enjoy their air conditioning and lattes and think by supporting the greens they are doing their bit for nature too.
I digress, the greens are all for the expansion of reserves and national parks. However, I point out in the case of the Wollemi pine the smartest decision made for sometime was to make it a commercial venture so now there are thousands of them planted around the country. By using an asset wisely you protect it and water is no exception
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Bill Johnstone writes the truth, in Victoria everyone in manufacturing and construction are scratching their heads wondering how they’re going to operate a business with a dwindling to no existing market.
The makers have fallen for a ‘green rope a dope’ by the takers and now need to get off the canvas and start using UFC rules, at some point pseudo government powers need to be ignored and called out for what they are, Subversive Green Paper Tigers.
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Dbstealey from WUWT has a column graph of the entire GISS temp record 1880 to 2013 or 134 years. Certainly doesn’t look very scary at all and after all their constant ongoing adjustments. Here’s his comment at the 18 years of no warming from RSS. In fahrenheit not celsius.
dbstealey
October 1, 2014 at 11:04 am
If we use a normal temperature scale, we get a chart that isn’t very scary:
http://suyts.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/image_thumb265.png?w=636&h=294
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DB Stealey, formerly known as D Boehm until he was exposed for this kind of thing in “The Y axis of evil” and shortly thereafter changed his screen name, is infamous for using inappropriately large temperature scales on graphs so that no trends can be discerned.
He fell out of his tree when I presented a graph showing that temperatures were better fitted by an accelerating curve than a linear fit over the last century and a half.
So he presented this doctored graph which he claimed showed “unequivocally” that the data was fitted by a straight line. He inserts the totally meaningless line at 9 on the y axis for no other purpose than to compress the temperature data into a narrow range.
http://tinyurl.com/bkoy8or
Removing the camouflaging data from Boehm/Stealey’s own WFT link gives this graph:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1880/to:2010/trend/offset
Even Boehm/Stealey does not want to try telling anyone that the temperature data is fit “unequivocally” by the straight line which is why he resorts to doctoring the graph.
And indeed it is better fit by a curve:
http://static.skepticalscience.com/pics/AMTI.png
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Philip you seem to know a lot about these graphs.
So tell us how much warming has there been since 1880? And do you trust the GISS record and why?
BTW Richard Lindzen has also used similar graphs in the past to illustrate warming.
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Neville. I find Giss graphs acceptably reliable for the reasons given in the latter part of this post:
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/09/the-mysterious-sudden-jump-in-melbourne-temperatures-in-1996-with-an-instrument-change/#comment-1577611
And whatever the problems may or may not be with the Rutherglen station, I don’t think it has much effect on the BEST record based on data from over 39,000 stations.
Yes I know Lindzen has used such graphs in the past, and they are just as useless in telling what is really going on as Boehm/Stealey’s.
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I do not find the GISTEMP data set reliable, as they are often changing their story. HADCRUT is relatively more robust. Comparing the 2011 with 2014 data, I noted that GISTEMP seems to have corrected some of its more extreme biases.
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Looks like Giss have now bought the past temperatures down to match the Hadcrut series.
And of course the peak around 1940 is now all but gone. Squashed into non-existence, as per Wigley’s memo.
How the past has changed !!!!!
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The future isn’t what it used to be either.
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Kevin, Very interesting analysis but Philip will say something like:
A little massaging here, a little adjustment there, pretty soon it’s not LITTLE!
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I course Philip will come back with a counter. It will stand up at long as somebody checks on the data. Then he will move on.
For instance, a few months ago he did some 15 year temperature trends – probably from SkS trend calculator. By shifting back the periods by just one year I got a different story. Like other trolls the purpose of his posts is not to develop understanding through better counter-arguments, but to distract. A new paper in Psychology Today explains this behavior.
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Kevin. You misunderstood the point of my post. I was showing that short trends lack statistical significance and are not reliable indicators of what is going on over longer statistically significant periods.
I chose 15 year steps because that is the period so often under discussion. I went back in sequential steps to show how variable the slopes are for successive steps, and also how large the error margins are. In fact only one of the periods showed statistically significant warming.
On other occasions I did precisely what you did, – moved the date by 1 year to show that you could get a dramatically different trend, but that still had large error margins. And because they did so, they had large overlap, so the two time periods, like the sequential 15 year periods, although having very different slopes, are in statistical agreement. Which again does not say much because they have such large error margins.
I even noted that when you change the length by one or two years and get a dramatically different slope, that is a sure sign that you are dealing with periods that are too short to be telling you anything reliable, even if your slopes do not have error margins attached (as is the case with WFT plots).
So the take home message to everyone is this:
DO NOT TRUST SHORT TERM TRENDS WITH LARGE ERROR MARGINS. THEY TELL YOU VERY LITTLE ABOUT WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING.
That is exactly my purpose in my posts – to educate people, skeptics and warmists alike, so that they are able to critically analyse claims made by either side when they are presented. Of course people may challenge my interpretation, but I try to put as good a case as possible of my understanding, which is why they are often a bit long. Like this one.
I am all for a debate on climate. I want the participants to be able to argue their case as knowledgably as possibe.
25
Kevin, as another example of this I note elsewhere here that it was odd that Dr Christy was commenting on the no warming for 17 years 11 months according to RSS data while ignoring his own UAH data.
But the fact is the error margins are such that the two data sets are in statistical agreement, and cannot be said to indicate a statistically significant pause (or warming, or cooling)
I have also said on other occasions, the strict requirements of statistical significance for a pause is unfair.
Statistically significant warming or cooling using ordinary least squares (OLS) means the error margins do not cross the zero line. A pause by definition means a trend close to the zero line, so any data set with even small error margins will cross the line, so what is the criterion for statistically significant pause?
I had initially thought that McKitrick’s paper may have found such a method, but on examination I don’t think he has.
I think that there probably has been a pause for the last decade or so but it can’t be shown statistically by OLS.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1996.75/to/mean:1/plot/uah/from:1996.75/to/trend/plot/rss/from:1996.75/to/plot/rss/from:1996.75/trend
The trend for the UAH data since August 1996 according to the trend calculator is
Trend: 0.100 ±0.199 °C/decade
which is not significant for warming cooling or a pause, nor is the RSS data
Trend: -0.002 ±0.195 °C/decade
15
>”Statistically significant warming or cooling using ordinary least squares (OLS) means the error margins do not cross the zero line.”
Right. McKitrick estimates by OLS. CI Lower Bound crosses zero from the paper:
HadCRUT4 1994/5
UAH 1997/8
RSS 1987.8
So there is no statistically significant warming after those crossovers. You agree with McKitrick on this.
>”A pause by definition means a trend close to the zero line, so any data set with even small error margins will cross the line”
No, not in HadCRUT4, UAH, or RSS for the length of each respective pause. See the crossovers above and the paper Conclusion below.
>”so what is the criterion for statistically significant pause?”
Read the paper. McKitrick:
3. Conclusion
I propose a robust definition for the length of the pause in the warming trend over the closing subsample of surface and lower tropospheric data sets. The length term MAX J is defined as the maximum duration J for which a
valid (HAC-robust) trend confidence interval contains zero for every subsample beginning at J and ending at T −m where m is the shortest duration of interest. This definition was applied to surface and lower tropospheric
temperature series, adding in the requirement that the southern and northern hemispheric data must yield an identical or larger value of MAX J . In the surface data we compute a hiatus length of 19 years, and in the lower tropospheric data we compute a hiatus length of 16 years in the UAH series and 26 years in the RSS series.
MAX J estimates based on an AR1 estimator are lower but likely incorrect since higher-order autocorrelation exists
in the data. Overall this analysis confirms the point raised in the IPCC report [1] regarding the existence of the hiatus and adds more precision to the understanding of its length.
Zero is eliminated from the CI when the upper or lower bound crosses the zero line – that’s a no-brainer.
The lengths of the pause in each dataset (includes zero) corresponds with each respective CI bound crossover date above. Criterion you agree with Philip.
>”I had initially thought that McKitrick’s paper may have found such a method, but on examination I don’t think he has.”
But you agree with McKitrick as shown Philip. How can you now disagree?
>”I think that there probably has been a pause for the last decade or so but it can’t be shown statistically by OLS.”
Yes it can and McKitrick has done so according to your own criteria quoted top of comment.
More on this at #10.1.6.5 and #10.1.6.6 here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/10/the-rutherglen-stoush-on-homogenisation-bill-johnstone-bravely-ventured-onto-the-conversation/#comment-1579764
50
Kevin
>Comparing the 2011 with 2014 data” (GISTEMP)
Thanks for this. I’d always thought their earlier 2010 El Nino vs 1998 El Nino years looked ridiculously awry but never thought I’d see a correction.
There was a flurry of analyses around 2010 trying to justify a CO2-based “long-term trend” e.g. Foster and Rahmstorf, and the SkS curve Philip linked to above. Even now you will see series truncated to 2010.
The meme was that the trajectory was up and it would continue from 2010 – it didn’t.
When outlier GISS concedes like this with Gavin “the long-term trend” Schmidt as boss, it’s obvious some realities are being confronted. Possibly some crow on the cafeteria menu too.
90
The 2010 El Nino didn’t actually cause a step up like the previous three El Ninos had done.
The previous three were during a period of higher solar activity.
The 2010 El Nino happened at the start of a very week solar cycle.
If there is another El Nino soon, I doubt it will cause a step upward, just the peak/trough then level, or continued slight downward slope…
(or the other way around like 2010…. That atmospheric temp trough before the 2010 El Nino is quite odd?)
…… I suspect that currently there just isn’t the solar energy to drive even a minor step up by an El Nino.
70
>”If there is another El Nino soon, I doubt it will cause a step upward,”
2014 has had all the warmies on the edge of their seats – “the most watched El Nino ever”.
So far I’ve watched a lot of modeling and probabilities of an El Nino but no actual El Nino.
I chuckle at the SkS sceptic elevator because according to Trenberth warming goes up in steps. 2014 was supposed to do what 2010 didn’t for “The Cause”.
And yes, I’m also inclined to think that the regime has changed, solar charged El Nino’s will not dominate for maybe a couple of decades.
That’s the real climate change.
100
Richard,
A forceful example of “realities being confronted is from James Annan last week.
00
Kevin
>”the longer the relatively slow warming continues, the lower the estimates will go” – Annan
ECS is a dynamic value in a warming scenario then.
Except Annan dodges with “relatively slow warming”. The warming phase is over for now, the zenith has been reached, and a weak cooling phase has begun.
From McKitrick, the zenith was:
HadCRUT4
13 2001 −0.0037
14 2000 0.0448
UAH didn’t quite go negative 2002 but it’s on the way now.
12 2002 0.0306
RSS
17 1997 −0.0109
18 1996 0.0225
HadCRUT4 been positive since but not for long, RSS has not been positive since, and an inflexion calls into question the assumption of linearity but ‘nuther story.
So updating Annan by paraphrase:
“Clearly, the longer the [weak cooling] continues, the [less validity] the estimates will [have as a concept].
Climate sensitivity was never a concept to be applied to any cooling. What if the cooling becomes statistically significant?
It will be interesting to read the dodging then.
00
>”And whatever the problems may or may not be with the Rutherglen station, I don’t think it has much effect on the BEST record based on data from over 39,000 stations.”
Have you not looked at BEST Rutherglen vs BOM Rutherglen?
Or any other AU station for that matter?
Or vs sites within the other national compilations e.g. NIWA, NOAA?
Either BEST is junk and everyone else is better quality, or BEST is top quality and everyone else, including BOM, is junk.
Which is it?
71
Yes I have looked at the BEST data for Rutherglen.
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/stations/151882
From the data table:
The data for this station is presented below in several columns and in
% several forms. The temperature values are reported as “raw”,
% “adjusted”, and “regional expectation”.
%
% The “raw” values reflect the observations as originally ingested by
% the Berkeley Earth system from one or more originating archive(s).
% These “raw” values may reflect the merger of more than one temperature
% time series if multiple archives reported values for this location…
24
>”Yes I have looked at the BEST data for Rutherglen.”
Not much of a look Philip. Here’s BEST’s breakpiont analysis results:
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Stations/TAVG/Figures/151882-TAVG-Alignment.png
What is the first thing you notice wrt 1980 and BOM’s breakpoint analysis?
Clue: BOM doesn’t adjust for the Record Gap, BEST does.
Why the discrepancy apart from BOM’s Max/Min and BEST’s Mean series?
What is the second thing that jumps out at you wrt the series length, BOM vs BEST?
No clues for that one.
30
I should point out too, in case it escapes your notice, that BEST’s 1980 adjustment turns a raw negative trend into an adjusted positive trend.
BOM do that too but earlier in the series. At least they have that in common.
40
Richard, I did actually have a close look.
I beg to differ with your analysis.
The graph here is the raw, unadjusted data.
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Stations/TAVG/Figures/151882-TAVG-Raw.pdf
The green line is the trend. It is a positive, warming trend.
This graph shows the breakpoint analysis, showing that there has been a reduction in the temperature at the breakpoint relative to nearby stations.
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Stations/TAVG/Figures/151882-TAVG-Alignment.pdf
This graph shows how the station compares with with the regional average after the adjustment, and the world land average.
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Stations/TAVG/Figures/151882-TAVG-Comparison.pdf
And here is the table showing the results of the adjustment.
Mean Rate of Change ( °C / Century )
Raw monthly anomalies 0.75
After quality control 0.94
After breakpoint alignment 1.98
Regional expectation during same months 2.14 ± 0.28
National average during same months 1.51 ± 0.22
Global land average during same months 2.39 ± 0.12
So even if the graph differs with the BOM on where the breakpoint is,
The data does not turn a raw negative trend into a positive trend.
12
>”The green line is the trend. It is a positive, warming trend.”
Yes, quite right. My mistake (thinking of another station).
They did however, effectively adjust the trend by a factor of 2.64 from 0.75 to 1.98.
>”This graph shows the breakpoint analysis, showing that there has been a reduction in the temperature at the breakpoint relative to nearby stations.”
But not relative to the local data either side of 1980. There is no need for recourse to other sites. “Regional expectation” is simply circular reasoning and self-fulfilling.
BOM don’t make an adjustment but BEST adjusts by about 0.4 C. Hence the radical change in trend by a short space of time, only 15 yrs of data did it.
>”So even if the graph differs with the BOM on where the breakpoint is”
It certainly does. The competing methods are BOMs PM-95 vs BEST’s “scalpel”. One or the other is obviously churning out garbage.
>”The [adjustment] does not turn a raw negative trend into a positive trend.”
No it doesn’t, you are correct as above. But it does more than double the trend. The trend is expressed in °C / Century but there is only 48 years of data so decadal is more instructive I think.
0.075 °C / Decade
Becomes,
0.198 °C / Decade
For no local reason.
30
Philip re #10.1.1.1.4
From the post above, Bill Johnston:
“For the first half of ACORN, trend was zero. For the second half, it was steep (0.12oC/decade); possibly also because of missing data. A step-change in the ACORN series in 1965 is clear.” See graph here:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/guest/bill-johnston/rutherglen-acorn.gif
“the second half” corresponds to BEST’s series. Trends:
0.12 °C / Decade – ACORN
0.198 °C / Decade – BEST
Identical. One would be led to believe that the respective methods corroborate each other. One would be wrong. Here’s BEST’s adjusted series:
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Stations/TAVG/Figures/151882-TAVG-Comparison.png
BOM has 1973ish, 1980 and 1983ish higher then 2009ish. BEST has those about 0.1 °C and 0.5 °C lower respectively.
If it were not for the pre-1970 adjustment, BOM’s series would be more or less flat. That adjustment to a very short section of data pulls down the entire trend And they don’t adjust at 1980 as BEST does.
And why is BEST’s 1980s and 1990s data so much different (lower) to BOM’s when there is no adjustment to BEST over that time (i.e. both should = raw)?
I don’t know about Max but there’s no change from raw Min in ACORN 1980 – 2013, see graph from the post:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/guest/bill-johnston/rutherglen-ann-min-web.gif
Why are these two Mean series so different in both raw (e.g. where ACORN = raw and BEST = raw) and respective adjusted timeframes?
One or the other (or both) is very wrong irrespective of the apparently corroborating trends.
30
Phil, what does your post have to do with Rutherglen?
What do you have to say about RUTHERGLEN!
Not holding my breath…….
142
Mark, Ask Neville, he brought it up.
225
Still not holding my breath.
You are happy to pull out every little statistical nuance that supports your biased view. Here’s your chance to admit that BOM has something to explain.
Discuss Rutherglen or or otherwise please [SNIP – “stop talking”]
152
As I note above to Neville, although I have commented on this topic in earlier threads on this, I simply cannot be bothered going into the he said she said arguments over one little weather station, when it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever to what is happening globally.
232
This is no longer about AGW due to CO2. That is provably a physical impossibility. This is now about the search for the guilty. We know about hapless Harry’s “fudge factor” in the UK. We know about Tom Karl’s pet rat TOBy in the US. Now we just need to find Scrat, and he is going to be somewhere around ACORN.
142
The point about Rutherglen; is that it looks to be wrong.
It’s one station yes, and if Rutherglen was the only wrong one in the world, it would make no difference.
But Rutherglen is simply the one we are discussing today, we have discussed others in the past like Alice Springs that also look suspect.
The question for us is “Is this one wrong, and if it is, how did it get so wrong?”
The follow up quesion is then “Are there other wrong ones out there, how many and how wrong?”
Which brings us to your point, “How many are wrong, and does it make a differance?”.
Thus we discuss Rutherglen as a stand-alone question. We’ll get to the rest of the world in due time.
241
That smells like a cop-out to me, … jus’ sayin’.
91
That wasn’t the posture you adopted on the last thread, where you absolutely just had to have the last word on everything …
And you still didn’t see the trap – how delightful.
181
Trap Rereke? Really?
As I said there:
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/09/the-mysterious-sudden-jump-in-melbourne-temperatures-in-1996-with-an-instrument-change/#comment-1578350
And you have not yet sprung your trap on your understanding of the difference between a peer reviewed paper and a letter to the editor.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/09/the-mysterious-sudden-jump-in-melbourne-temperatures-in-1996-with-an-instrument-change/#comment-1577957
And I will answer Greg’s comment here with my earlier reply to you.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/09/the-mysterious-sudden-jump-in-melbourne-temperatures-in-1996-with-an-instrument-change/#comment-1578570
228
Nah,
Not even close Philip …
222
If you say so Rereke, but then you got so much else wrong didn’t you?
225
For a while there, I thought you had worked out what the trap was, but you still have no idea, do you?
“If you say so Rereke …”? What sort of loser statement is that?
222
The kind of statement made by a guy who repeatedly posts a contrarian perspective on this blog even though nobody really listens to what he has to say. What was Einstein’s quote about insanity again?? Something about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?
201
Yes Heywood,
There is an old saying about empty vessels …
121
All the data is from one little weather station, and if one little weather station doesn’t show warming, then you have a problem.
Or do you think that if all the little weather stations that don’t show warming are added together you can somehow credibly claim warming?
101
and does it make a differance
Hillary Clinton said something similar about another shameful episode recently. Not a real answer to a question.
60
Here are my earlier comments on BOM adjustments.
Read down from the first.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/09/bom-homogenisation-in-deniliquin-creates-discontinuities-and-changes-trends/#comment-1560464
113
Rereke I don’t know who you think you are bluffing. Presumably all your mindless green thumbers who did not read the links to find out how you got things wrong.
You TOLD me what your alleged ‘trap’ was.
16
And Mark, I notice that you have not told Neville who brought the subject up to Discuss Rutherglen or or otherwise please STFU.
[Neville is not the person dominating threads on this blog, in the way that you are attempting to do.] Fly
330
Fly, normally I find your interventions very reasonable but with regard to this one:
I made ONE reply to a comment by Neville.
For this I get a typically grumpy complaint ignoring the person who made the initial comment criticising me for answering it.
My SECOND very short reply brought an even grumpier response.
STFU does not stand for Sunny Tulip Festival Underway.
My “domination” of threads on this blog consists of me replying to all the heroes hiding behind screen names who post comments in response to mine.
Some make worthwhile points. In other cases I simply refuse to let misrepresentations and abuse go unanswered.
Because there are so very very few of us who Heywood describes here I get to deal with almost all the objections to “intruders” and “trolls”:
“The kind of statement made by a guy who repeatedly posts a contrarian perspective on this blog even though nobody really listens to what he has to say.”
Yes exactly. Although judging by the number of responses I get and the red thumbs,plenty of listen to what I say.
And thus far according to the thumb count 14 people don’t like the fact that I have pointed out blatant data manipulation by one of Watts moderators. (He made the mistake of attacking me over the content of a post of mine he failed to put up.) They apparently approve of this conduct, ironically in a section where alleged data manipulation is what they are all condemning here on this thread.
They hate contrarians here.
As I wrote in reply to Kinky Keith the other day:
“Intruder.” Gosh. Yes I know it must be distressing to many “skeptics” to come on a site where they hope they can give their views and indulge in rounds of mutual back slapping and congratulations on their insights with like minded souls without fear of contradiction to actually find someone putting a view they don’t like.
So OK you go check with your boss Ms Nova. If she really does want this blog to be where “skeptics” can give their views and indulge in rounds of mutual back slapping and congratulations on their insights with like minded souls without fear of contradiction, Tell her to let me know and you will never hear from me again.
The reason for my banning will, however, be widely distributed.
Please do me the courtesy of posting this comment.
424
Fly, apologies for the last sentence. I have repeatedly acknowledged the good job done by moderators here who are very fair.
I was thinking of the experiences I had with moderators over at Watts, including Boehm/Sealey, and Watts himself.
My banning there was because I finally responded to Watts telling me to pull my head out of my rear end, and other taunts, to which I responded with interest.
In fact I had assumed that such forthright criticism of Watts would not be put up by the moderators there, but astonishingly, it gave Watts the chance to attempt to adopt the moral high ground, claiming that ME abusing HIM showed I was unworthy of appearing on his blog.
The guy is a real… Well, never mind. You get my drift.
[What has transpired at other blogs is no concern of mine. What is of concern to me, is your rate of commenting, and your attempts to direct proceedings. We have been more than fair, we have been very lenient. Jo expects commentators to be polite and to show respect to each other. Look back over your comments, and ask yourself if you would behave the same way if you were at a party in somebody else’s home, and if you did, would they ever invite you back? You can expect to receive an email from Jo] Fly
319
OK. Here is my reply to Ex-warmist which I had prepared. I will direct him here when I next see a post of his.
Those distressed by “contrarian” argument should skip it:
Pardon me if this is off topic but I promised Ex warmist on on 29/9 on an “old” thread 25/9 a detailed reply when I had gone through the paper thoroughly and I have been waiting for him to post on a more recent thread where he would find it:
Apologies for not getting back to you sooner on this one but the paper is long and technical and I had to go through it carefully more than once to be sure of my understanding.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/09/manns-trick-to-hide-the-decline-still-shocking/#comment-1576502
My initial impressions of the paper were correct.
It is an examination of the reliability of methods of obtaining proxy data from tree ring widths and densities. It focuses on RCS (Regional Curve Standardization)
The passage you quote is in the context of examining series to see whether they can be used to obtain reliable results in terms of proxy temperatures.
For example, your quoted para mentions biological growth populations.
The method relies on data from populations being attributable to changes in climate while weeding out anomalies that would cloud the analysis. This is covered in the first para on page 85 (Can’t seem to copy and paste the pdf here.)
As an example (not given in the paper) If a wolf decided to regularly pee on a particular tree during its lifetime, and this affected the tree ring growth, this would reduce the reliability of the resulting temperature analysis if this series (the ring width or density series for this particular tree) were included.
The method uses statistical analysis to weed out such anomalous series that do not fit the Regional Curve (RC) for such trees.
It does not as you claim “cherry pick” series to leave out because they alter the result to higher or lower temperatures It removes any series which do not pass the test. Including such series would not be to lower or raise the proxy temperature, just blur the result and raise the uncertainties.
This is similar to using statistical criteria to remove anomalous “outlier” data points from scientific data.
And the “desired outcome” is not to get a particular result in terms of arriving at a warming or cooling trend but to obtain a reliable set of data. It is to reduce the uncertainties in the resulting proxy temperatures.
Thus, and not for the first time on skeptic blogs, the para you highlight has been taken out of context in an attempt to discredit data the “skeptics” don’t like:
“…we state from the beginning, “more is always better”. However, as mentioned earlier on the subject of biological-growth populations, this does not mean that one could not improve a chronology by reducing the number of series used if the purpose of removing samples is to enhance a desired signal. The ability to pick and choose which samples to use is an advantage unique to dendroclimatology.“
214
You mean like “Dr Brian” ?
91
Says it all. How many were we left with?
110
Backslider I have mentioned recently in reply to Heywood that the Bolt site is the only one where I do not use my real name and was forced to do so for reasons which do no credit to someone over there.
Since everyone here and there seems to be aware of my pseudonym, and the problem seems to have gone away I said to Heywood that I was considering reverting to my real name over there, but I think I saw that they no longer accept real names.
115
Backslider, I left this out of the post above which was originally at the end.
“And would those who wish to respond to this comment actually read the paper and tell me where my analysis is wrong (or right) based on the content of the paper.”
Kindly read my post properly if not the paper.
http://www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb09climatology/files/2012/03/Esper_2003_TRR.pdf
113
Can you answer a simple question?
100
Fly: Are you SERIOUS?? What planet, let alone blog have you been moderating on?
“Jo expects commentators to be polite and to show respect to each other. Look back over your comments, and ask yourself if you would behave the same way if you were at a party in somebody else’s home, and if you did, would they ever invite you back? You can expect to receive an email from Jo.”
Have you read the stuff directed at Me?
I marvel at my restraint. Polite and even snippy posts get a very polite response from me. I ignore the snark and reply politely if a worthwhile point has been made. Occasionally, with serial offenders, I get fed up and give the perpetrators a serve in return.
I have just noticed a comment from James below. Now I am not sure but I think I am correct in saying James has often said things to me which would be considered impolite at parties. (Sorry if I have this wrong James)
“Phil,
I quite enjoy your replies. I red thumb you when I disagree with your opinion.
The red thumb this time is for playing the victim.”
Yes well, I am feeling a tad victimised here. Totally without reason of course.
I have just two words to point out the staggering double standards here. “the Griss.” A serial abuser at a level I have not encountered anywhere else.
But its different for those on Team Skeptic isn’t it.
Ironically, this discussion is occuring in a thread where you praise a contrarian’s courage.
Bill Johnston bravely ventured onto “the Conversation”
Bill says:
“After contributing an analysis of Rutherglen Research’s raw annual minimum temperatures commentary erupted at The Conversation. I naïvely thought The Conversation was about having a conversation; in this case about data.
But it wasn’t. It’s more like a $6M opinion-mosh-pit run by universities that we constantly hear are too broke to teach our kids. It involved some who knew nothing about data; some who knew lots and wanted to share; and some defending their positions, come hell or high-water.”
Gee Bill. Tell me all about it.
My rate of commenting?
As I said, being the almost lone contrarian on this blog, any post of mine attracts a large number of responses. Some thoughtful, some nothing more than abuse. I try to respond to the most worthy, which attracts more responses… It’s called a geometric progression. I sometimes get complaints from people I have not responded to and accusations I am running scared.
Directing proceedings?
Toatl rubbish. I respond to others comments.
The fact is I only comment on a few selected threads. I answer the comment back until I get tired of it, or the other participants in the converation do.
This is the thing. The number of my comments depends on how many others wish to engage.
And again ironically, I was not really interested in this one. I had been looking for a post by Ex-warmist, who had in fact raised an important issue which required a lot of time and effort on my part to answer adequately. My initial response was:
“I will read the paper later and get back to you but I would not approve of removing data just because it does not fit.
If this is what they are doing I would not trust their conclusions.
Before I read the paper I cannot say whether this is standard procedure by all dendrochronologists, let alone all groups who use other proxy data.”
This, apparently, is “boorish”. A comment which prompted me to post the reply here.
The fact is that however many comments I have put up, the contrarian point which I seem to be the sole representative of currently, is a small amount of the total comments here.
So again, does Ms Nova want this to be a blog where like minded souls can come and agree with each other without fear of contradiction, or one where points are actually debated (skeptics keep demanding that). I don’t think James is the only one who likes a bit of real discussion.
26
Backslider. You are really being a tad lazy here. On a day where I have a lot of people who have put considerable effort into their posts to reply to, and am copping grief for attempting to do so,the answers can be found in the paper.
I know its a tough read if you try to follow the technical argument, but just skim the text for where they talk about the numbers they conclude are necessary for the analysis to be valid.
15
OK Backslider, because I printed out a hard copy to look at thoroughly and glanced through it while having a cup of tea away from the computer, I can give you the result.
It starts with Influence of Sample Depth at the bottom of page 90. But read at least around this section for the full story before you make any reply.
Some of the terms:
Series: the set of tree rings or densities taken from a single tree.
Segment length: How old the series is in terms of years for the tree.
Sample depth: The number of series (trees)in the sample.
Fig 5 A on page 89 shows how these work. You overlap the individual trees to go back in time to around 1100 AD
The total number of series (trees) was 86.
As the text beginning from bottom of page 90 says, more is better, but they randomly removed trees to see the effect and came up with this. Bottom of p 92;
“At 100% and 75% the two resulting Chronologies are almost indistinguishable, indicating the RCS can, in principle, tolerate relatively small sample depths, as few as 5-6 during some periods, and still produce a relatively robust estimate of low frequency signal.”
Low frequency signals are those which can be attributed to climate changes.
15
Its all in your own mind.
Reality is not.
Dr Brian. !
163
And its sooooo good to see you still fitting meaningless curves to meaningless data.
[SNIP]
152
All I can do G is refer you and other readers to this comment:
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/09/the-mysterious-sudden-jump-in-melbourne-temperatures-in-1996-with-an-instrument-change/#comment-1578532
326
I think I will refer to you as “BA5” from now on. 🙂
182
Takes one to know one…
81
Phillip. Why should we trust anything from Skeptical Science,as they are well known to change posts that are inconvenient to them,that’s if the thing makes it through moderation,or isn’t removed. It’s impossible to trust anyone that thinks that kind of behaviour is appropriate. When Dr Roger Pielke attempted to inform them that ad-homiem comments were not helpful,someone crossed out his entire post,and a fair few of the comments ,and the following remark was attached to his post “Dr. Pielke, this thread is about your selective and one-sided skepticism and misplaced accusations of ad hominems towards SkS. Now please begin to address those. Sir.”
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/my-interactions-with-skeptical-science-a-failed-attempt-so-far-for-constructive-dialog/
202
I strated reading the links here and noted that the first on Pielke’s blog concerns supposed attacks on Christy’s UAH data. SkS denies that, but I would just like to point out now that on this very day, I have written on another blog how Christy has preferred RSS satellite data that claims no warming for 17 years ll months when his own UAH satellite data shows nothing of the sort.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/18_years_of_no_warming/
Here is my comment:
So Dr Christy prefers to rely on a cherry picked date for the RSS satellite data rather than his own data UAH satellite data?
The trend for the UAH data since August 1996 is
Trend: 0.100 ±0.199 °C/decade
which is not significant for warming or a pause, nor is the RSS data
Trend: -0.002 ±0.195 °C/decade
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1979/to/mean:1/plot/uah/from:1979/to/trend/plot/uah/from:1996.75/trend/plot/uah/from:1999/trend
I will return on the main subject of your post later.
327
A zero trend cannot be ruled out at the 2sd level in RSS going back approximately 26 years.
The McKitrick paper proved this. You would know this if you understood.
Incidentally, the point in HadCrut4 where a zero trend can no longer be supported by the data is 1994.7.. 20 years, not 19 years.
170
Sigh. The McKitrick paper proved nothing of the sort.
And while Heywood is here perhaps he would like to give it a shot as he also ducked it last time:
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/09/the-mysterious-sudden-jump-in-melbourne-temperatures-in-1996-with-an-instrument-change/#comment-1577913
327
>”Sigh. The McKitrick paper proved nothing of the sort.”
In reply to GRIS,
>”A zero trend cannot be ruled out at the 2sd level in RSS going back approximately 26 years.”
In linear terms, zero is within the confidence interval (CI) i.e. proven in those terms.
The paper is now in the statistical literature Philip. If his method is wrong it will be addressed. Doug Keenan has questioned the assumptions here:
http://www.informath.org/apprise/a7300.htm
Linearity and stationarity being the main two. I agree with Keenan in part. These are questionable assumptions. However, If you cannot accept McKitrick’s linear analysis and confidence intervals, you cannot accept any other application of linear trends to climatic time series data – tell that to the IPCC.
So given linear trends have become something of a convention in climate science, rightly or wrongly, to attempt to discard McKitrick (2014) is effectively an attempt to throw out an entire paradigm – good luck with that.
I would point out on the other hand, that there is an whole body of climate trend analysis, none of which is linear-based.
McKitrick then, is operating inside an accepted convention and until his method is overturned (doubtful) the linear convention prevails and the paper stands in support of more overarching arguments targeted at a rather higher level than the blogosphere, Canadian Govt say, e.g. this:
‘Climate Policy Implications of the Hiatus in Global Warming’
by Ross McKitrick October 2014
Contents
Executive summary / iii
The hiatus / 1
Climate sensitivity: the connection to policy models / 12
Implications for IAMs / 18
Policy implications of the hiatus / 23
Appendix: Further evidence on the discrepancy / 27
References / 32
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/uploadedFiles/fraser-ca/Content/research-news/research/publications/climate-policy-implications-of-the-hiatus-in-global-warming.pdf
Page 5 pdf,
“Since economic models are trained to match climate models, if climate
models overstate the effect of CO2 emissions, economic models will overstate the social damages associated with them. In fact, economic models of climate policy allow for even more exaggerated effects of carbon dioxide emissions
than do climate models. Consequently, there is good reason to suppose that economic models too may be subject to revision over the next few years.
One implication of these points is that, since climate policies operate
over such a long time frame, during which it is virtually certain that important new information will emerge, it is essential to build into the policy framework
clear feedback mechanisms that connect new data about climate sensitivity
to the stringency of the emissions control policy. A second implication is
that, since important new information about climate sensitivity is expected
within a few years, there is value to waiting for this information before making any irreversible climate policy commitments, in order to avoid making costly decisions that are revealed a short time later to have been unnecessary”
# # #
In References.
McKitrick, Ross R. (2014). HAC-Robust Measurement of the Duration of a Trendless Subsample in a Global Climate Time Series. Open Journal of Statistics (forthcoming).
110
“McKitrick then, is operating inside an accepted convention and until his method is overturned (doubtful) the linear convention prevails ”
Basically. Ross has “played” the warmist game… and won. 🙂
80
btw, if you read between the lines in Ross’s paper,
I think you can see that was exactly his game plan. 🙂
60
>”Basically. Ross has “played” the warmist game… and won”
The trend game:
“Bottom line: the ‘no upward trend’ has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried.” -Phil Jones, University of East Anglia 7 May 2009
http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/4199.txt
The game rules:
“Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature.” -Santer et al (2011)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011JD016263/abstract
The teams:
Ross McKitrick
vs
Combined
P. Jones
B. D. Santer
C. Mears
C. Doutriaux
P. Caldwell
P. J. Gleckler
T. M. L. Wigley
S. Solomon
N. P. Gillett
D. Ivanova
T. R. Karl
J. R. Lanzante
G. A. Meehl
P. A. Stott
K. E. Taylor
P. W. Thorne
M. F. Wehner
F. J. Went
90
Was very pleased to receive a reply from Ross McKitrick:
Dear Phil
I don’t know why the UAH result is so different. I don’t know what algorithm is used on the SKS website. Also there might have been revisions to the UAH data set since I accessed it.
My calculations didn’t aim to measure a statistically-significant trend in the neighbourhood of zero, instead I was aiming to measure how far back the hiatus apparently started.
Cheers,
Dr. Ross McKitrick
– Professor of Economics and Chair of Graduate Studies
– CBE Fellow in Sustainable Commerce
I responded:
Dear Professor McKitrick,
Thank you very much for your reply.
Apologies for spelling your name wrong.
I guess I mentally conflate you with Stephen McIntyre.
Phil
02
So I did apparently misunderstand McK’s paper to this extent. He was not attempting to claim that his results gave a statistically significant pause intervals but that was how it appeared to be put in the blog reports I saw. (Frankly, why otherwise the fuss?)
His statistical approach is novel and complicated. (To my eyes at least. I willingly concededed to McK in my email (a few paras of introduction I did not post on this blog) and to a moderator here who actually pointed to another possible area of confusion (thanks again – a very useful comment) that McK knows a lot more stats than me but asked that the admission not be published, as for all the condemnation of appeals to authority here, certain parties would kick me to death for it. And indeed have made such remarks even in its absence.
Anyway as I said in my email I recognised (and had said so more than once on this blog) that the usual OLS criteria for statistically significant warming or cooling was “unfair” when applied to a pause.
I initially thought his paper may have solved this problem, but concluded after careful reading that it had not, but as he says, that was not his intention.
There was a difference in the UAH and I asked him if he could account for it and maybe it is the reason he proposed.
Anyway I guess we can now close the book on this. (Other than to alert Heywood at some stage that McK has answered if he has not seen this. As I said, having prompted me to write the email and asking if I received an answer yet he seemed rather disinterested in the subject until Ross gave his opinion.)
13
Good to hear he got back to you, thus satisfying my curiosity as to whether or not he would bother responding to a guy who publishes his statistical analysis in the comments section of a blog.
00
Heywood, I respect you to a large degree. That said, I think this comment 10.1.6.1.7 is not at all in good form. It actually demeans Jo’s blog and frankly ignores the sometimes valuable comments from Phil. Make no mistake, he piosses me off regularly but I think your comment here is not helpful. Good science is found anywhere including blogs. Bad science can be found anywhere too but some of what Phil types is good science. McK shouldn’t hesitate to respond to a worthy question from anyone anywhere.
10
G’day Mark,
I acknowledge your point, and maybe I did take this line a little too far. As you are aware, it is a common tactic of those who are warmist inclined to push the point of view that science is not done by blog and constantly refer you off to the peer reviewed literature. I was merely trying to ‘give some back’ in an attempt to reveal some of the hypocrisy of this attitude. I agree that Philip does offer some good commentary at times (albeit ad nauseum) and on reflection he was probably not the most appropriate target of my agenda and for that I apologise to him and to Jo. I was actually genuinely curious to if, and how McK would respond, not so much about the accuracy of the data, but more the tone that would be taken. It is good to see that he did respond in a timely manner.
20
Heywood, I hadn’t considered the sarcastic reverse smear countering “mere blog denizens” and it’s good you made that clarification for my benefit.
As to McK responding, it really doesn’t surprise me. I have formed the opinion that it is the warmist scientists that have so much disrespect that they cannot bring themselves to reach out and communicate with people that hold a different view.
My chief gripe with Shehan is that he will not ever say anything when someone has made a good counterpoint. The the advance of science requires better than that. He seems to hold the opinion that we skeptics know nothing, see nothing, are deluded. He appears to be a missionary not a scientist. Doing the bidding of some bishop of climatology. Busy trying to make converts or ruining the success of Jo’s blog rather than actually having a conversation that advances true understanding.
10
Heywood, Until I read your retraction I was typing a big serve. I accept your apology. I will delete most of it but leavesome:
I am not surprised McK took the time to reply because most scientists are courteous, but just to make sure I did, in the unposted introduction to my email, I said i hoped he did not mind me contacting him directly by email but his blog did not have a comments section, and in a bit of brief but friendly chit chat told him I was also a scientist, and deferentially informed him that my knowledge of statistics was limited to applications in the biomedical sciences, and posed questions of substance backed by calculations concerning aspects of his paper. And I thanked him for any answer “if he had the time.”
You people are used to the [“robust comment” – I was somewhat more direct in my description of the style of discussion on this blog prior to ammendment] of scientific discussion. But among themselves, scientists are courteous and eager to be helpful even when discussing matters on which they disagree.
As for Mike’s comment:
“My chief gripe with Shehan is that he will not ever say anything when someone has made a good counterpoint.”
Not true Mike. I frequently acknowledge that many comments make sound arguments, and I do acknowledge when they point out where I have something wrong.
In defence of my (often long) and numerous posts, the fact is I have said several times, and will say again in my response to an email from Ms Nova if I get around to writing it, As the often only representative of the “contrarian” viewpoint on these threads, I attract a lot of countercomment, and the abusive idiots aside, I get a lot of long well thought out arguments from a lot of people, which I feel under an obligation to respond to. And I am going to have to renege on a promise I made to Richard C (NZ)because I am afraid the volume of his correspondence has defeated me.
As for the comment from a moderator that I am trying to direct proceedings, I am simply replying to comments others have made.
And as for the complaint about the number of posts?
Well, what do you say about someone whose contrarian posts account for 22% of the comments in the section, even if the first was “off topic”.
Well if you are Ms Nova, You start an entire section dedicated to his courage for venturing into hostile territory:
The Rutherglen Stoush on homogenisation — Bill Johnston bravely ventured onto “the Conversation”
Mind you Bill had a bit of help over there from people like Jennifer Marohasy.
My count in this section, fielding comments from the skeptics is 19%.
And as I nave noted Bill writes:
After contributing an analysis of Rutherglen Research’s raw annual minimum temperatures commentary erupted at The Conversation. I naïvely thought The Conversation was about having a conversation; in this case about data.
But it wasn’t. It’s more like a $6M opinion-mosh-pit run by universities that we constantly hear are too broke to teach our kids. It involved some who knew nothing about data; some who knew lots and wanted to share; and some defending their positions, come hell or high-water.
Gee Bill, tell me all about it.
Mike. I do not consider putting counter arguments to the majority view on this blog ruining it. And as I said the volume of the response depends on the interest my comments demonstrate. Heywood’s comment that no-one is interested notwithstanding – why all the come backs and red thumbs?
And what ever my critics say, I am a professional scientists, with peer reviewed publications, talks at international conferences and many other lines of evidence to demonstrate that I know how to put a scientific argument.
Ms Nova does not like me saying this but what do you want? An echo chamber where like minded souls reinforce each others opinions?
“The the advance of science requires better than that.”
Now I formally reject all of these assertions:
He seems to hold the opinion that we skeptics know nothing, see nothing, are deluded. He appears to be a missionary not a scientist. Doing the bidding of some bishop of climatology. Busy trying to make converts or ruining the success of Jo’s blog rather than actually having a conversation that advances true understanding.
00
Phil, (I’m not “Mike” by the way) you took this thread off topic and worse made this very unscientific statement:
Surprising really, and a disappointment coming from someone with your expertise.
Jo and others have shown that it isn’t “one little weather station” and it SHOULD bother you that BOM has not offered an detailed explanation that justifies their “corrections”.
Funny too, you cop out of responding to Richard C and his excellent commentary but yet you have time to type the above tome?
Really funny that you whine about my use of ST_U (ostensibly because it offended your delicate senses) but then just a few posts later you yourself type “WTF?” (now snipped) Really rich Phil.
Wasting space with off topic posts IS the mark of a troll. Whining about “unfair treatment” is also the mark of a troll. I’ve been reading and posting on Jo’s site for years now Phil, we’ve seen many trolls come and go. Many appear to be organized behind the scenes and in how they operate. As of this thread, I am pretty sure your interest here has little to do with scientific commentary. You are trolling with intent to disrupt.
That is why I said what I said above and I’ll continue to hold my opinions about you until you demonstrate reliably that I should change my opinions. You have graduated to a troll in my view. Feel free to demonstrate that I’m wrong in my assessment. I’m not interested in Jo’s blog becoming an “echo chamber” but I’m not going to ignore trolling either.
10
Pardon me Mark on getting your name wrong.
And yes, this has turned out to be another “tome” as I deal with each of your misrepresentations in you latest chapter on my alleged failings with substantiating evidence and argument (Sorry mods.)
I DID NOT TAKE THIS THREAD OFF TOPIC.
I answered an off topic comment from someone else.
I did in fact discuss Rutherglen in several comments, and all of my comments (other than those in ‘self defence’) were on the broader subject of the reliability of temperature data.
Unlike many comments from “skeptics”. Go and see how many of the comments here are truly “on topic.”
And it is true that the first of Bill’s 22% of comments on the Conversation was off topic (about sea levels on Tuvalu). Mine was 19% before this post.
Bill still gets told how courageous he is for venturing to hostile territory (actually it’s a discussion over tea and scones compared with what goes on over here)and is not accused of hogging the Conversation blog or directing the agenda or being boorish etc etc etc.
My statement was not unscientific. We all decide which topics we think we can profitably spend our time commenting on.
I have looked at this issue before and found it boils down to a lot of opinion, including anecdotal evidence by octagenarians recalling whether or not the Rutherglen station has or has not moved.
You will note that Bill’s piece cannot find any definite evidence of malfeasance. He just thinks the adjustments look odd and are not explained very well and the question should be looked into.
Fine. No argument from me. Get back to me when the investigation is finished and I may think it worthwhile commenting in detail.
But if you noticed I did actually make a few comments on Rutherglen, including one comparing BEST data (To Richard C (NZ) I believe). But entirely predictably I get told that BEST is reliable.
And around and around and around we go.
It is important to note that “skeptics” highlight adjustments and question their legitimacy where the adjustments raise later temperatures relative to earlier ones, and claim this as evidence that warmists have captured institutions like BOM or BEST or NASA to fudge data to suit their warmist agenda.
They never even notice, let alone comment upon, adjustments that do not work in the “warmists” favour.
I keep pointing out if you look at ACORN over the whole of Australia, for a large part of the north of the continent, these adjustments have resulted in a reduction of temperatures. Very sloppy of the warmist conspirators if they are trying to rig the results.
Similarly I have pointed out that some GISS and Hadcrut adjustments (UHI always and others including siting changes depending on the individual station) reduce later temperatures relative to earlier ones.
Apparently these corrupt warmists are so incompetent they can’t even distort data in the right direction.
So are the adjustments at Rutherglen the product of incompetence, corruption, or maybe even entirely justified scientifically?
Who knows? Except for the skeptics who know in their bones just what these warmists are capable of.
Like I said, he said she said. And given as I said that some adjustments go up, and some down and other methods like BEST support the upward adjustment in this case, this one little station with an upward adjustment is not going to make any real difference to the global picture.
As for Richard C (NZ).
Yes I have noted that Richard C makes good comments and I have said so on previous occasions which is another point I defended myself on when you claimed I do not acknowledge good arguments by others. (And would anyone else have noticed that I had incorrectly said McK’s argument claimed statistical significance if I had not pointed out my error?. I answered many of Richard’s but he came back with quite a few more, (Go count the ones I did and did not answer – both categories are a fairly high number.)
The fact is I came back here the other day to get some facts to respond in an email to Ms Nova. So when I happened to see yet another personal attack on me, I decided I had time to take the baseball bat to Heywood (until I saw his retraction) at which point I modified it but still decided to defend myself against falsehoods and misrepresentations. As I am doing here. So yes dealing with false personal attacks is a higher priority than answering more comments from Richard which had actually started to repeat much of the same arguments. Call me touchy and egotistical if you like.
But even then I do not bother with the likes of ridiculous abuse based on Kevin’s reading on the psychology of troll directed at me.
(And if you want off topic, take a look at all those here posting on nothing but my alleged personal failings point out my personal failings. Including you.)
As for ST_U. It was not about whether it offended my sensibilities.
I commented to YOU that perhaps YOU should have delivered that comment to the person who made the original off topic comment, to which I had merely replied. I then noted that a moderator had interjected defending YOUR abusive post and telling me I was lowering the tone. I mean, WTF?
As for the trolling and wanting to disrupt and many “trolls” coming and going.
Yes I noticed one “skeptic” claiming credit for seeing off dissenting opinion, and another urging him to keep up the good work so I would leave and you could all get back to you smug self satisfied agreement with each other.
As for whining about unfair treatment. What I have done is defend myself against personal criticism. And point to evidence of the double standards that operate here.
And that gets you whining about “trolls”.
Which is skeptic speak for anyone who consistently puts arguments they don’t like.
The fact is that my comments come from a professional scientist who knows how to present evidence and argue scientifically and effectively, which is I suspect is why “skeptics” get so upset about them. This is not trolling.
And I have an interest and experience in science communication to the public. Initially I thought that “skeptic” blogs may be interested in my input. Some here apparently are, so I continue.
“That is why I said what I said above and I’ll continue to hold my opinions about you until you demonstrate reliably that I should change my opinions. You have graduated to a troll in my view. Feel free to demonstrate that I’m wrong in my assessment.”
Short of starting to agree with the skeptics here, that is never going to happen is it.
So another tome but I think I have covered this chapter of your complaints and misrepresentations.
01
Yes it did, if only you could UNDERSTAND. poor BA5!!
162
Griss,
Thank you for finally making a substantive comment on this
“A zero trend cannot be ruled out at the 2sd level in RSS going back approximately 26 years.”
You are exactly correct on this.
McKitrick says that RSS data shows that there is a 95 % probability that the trend for the last 26 years is between cooling of 0.0005 and warming of 0.2373 c/decade. And yes this matches the results for the 95% (2sd) result returned by the formerly revilled SkS trend calculator.
This means that to this level of probability the data may indicate a (miniscule) cooling trend, or indeed a pause, so it does not reach the standard for statistically significant warming.
But that does NOT mean that it constitutes statistically significant evidence for a pause because there is a probability (indeed a very high probability) that the trend is a warming trend.
But congratulations for being the first kid on this block to put a real argument.
Heywood has missed his chance.
321
“You are exactly correct on this.”
Yes and always have been.
Thank you BA5 ! You have FINALLY understood !!
After 2001 the probability is pretty much highest for a pause, in all 4 data sets.
Its a matter of how far back you can take it until the here is no probability of a pause.
Ross McKitrick is TOTALLY CORRECT in his calculation and method. !!
Live with it. !
161
I must admit to being a bit upset..
I was hoping to string you along for at least another fortnight… or two. 🙁
ps, and it is obvious that Ross is working WITHIN the 95% probability band.. that is what upper and lower bounds are all about.
131
>”McKitrick says that RSS data shows that there is a 95 % probability that the trend for the last 26 years is between cooling of 0.0005 and warming of 0.2373 c/decade.”
The IPCC model mean out to 2050 requires 0.33 c/decade.
That’s outside the RSS obs CI so the IPCC threw their models under a bus preferring instead their own “expert opinion” which implies 0.23 c/decade – just scraping under the upper bound of the RSS CI. Some face saved, phew.
Except not looking good this century:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss-land/from:2000/trend/plot/rss/from:2000
90
“You are exactly correct on this.”
Yes and always have been.
Thank you BA5 ! You have FINALLY understood !!
G, I have been telling you from my first post on this and with the periodicity of a chiming clock ever since that McKitrick’s results are correct as far as the trends and error margin’s go.
And I keep telling you with the periodicity of a chiming clock that the conclusion he (and you) draw from these results that is wrong.
A trend which includes a warming trend (and here it is a large warming trend) within the error margins cannot constitute a statistically significant pause.
27
>”A trend which includes a warming trend (and here it is a large warming trend) within the error margins cannot constitute a statistically significant pause.”
No it’s not large warming, the upper CI bound is not even commensurate with the model mean which supposedly embodies AGW. Given the mean is 0.33 c/decade, “large” would be greater than that – it certainly isn’t.
And no, it’s not whether there’s positive or negative within the CI, it’s whether the CI contains zero that defines a statistically significant trendless period in linear terms.
The paper states in the conclusion:
“The length term MAX J is defined as the maximum duration J for which a
valid (HAC-robust) trend confidence interval contains zero for every subsample beginning at J and ending at T −m where m is the shortest duration of interest”
Paper here http://www.rossmckitrick.com/
Until zero is eliminated from the CI, there’s no statistically significant warming or cooling i.e. the data is statistically trendless.
50
>”A trend which includes a warming trend …….. within the error margins cannot constitute a statistically significant pause.”
But what if the CI includes equal warming and cooling trends? e.g.
RSS from 1999.87
Trend: 0.002 ±0.227 °C/decade (2σ)
RSS from 1999.875
Trend: 0.000 ±0.228 °C/decade (2σ)
RSS from 1999.88
Trend: -0.002 ±0.229 °C/decade (2σ)
1999.875 by interpolation.
That’s a perfectly statistically significant trendless 14.795 yrs defining the pause, hiatus, or standstill.
Similarly from McKitrick page 7 pdf:
17 1997 −0.0975 −0.0109 0.0757
18 1996 −0.0813 0.0225 0.1263
Between 1996 and 1997 there’s a zero trend with equal upper and lower bounds – a perfect pause.
40
Richard, I enquired some time back if “trendless” meant showing no statistically significant cooling or warming trend.
If the CI contains the Zero value it is neither stistically significant warming or cooling.
That was the case when Jones “sdmitted” that a 15 year period did not show statistically significant warming. But only hust he added, because there was only a 90% chance of warming (I calculated 93%.)
But nobody at that time draw the conclusion that there was a pause. Because ss I keep saying not statistically significant warming does not mean a statistically significant pause.
Mcitrick’s paer used another method to cometo, as Griss keeps pointing out the same values of treand and 95% confidence level as given for the OLS method. So there was he same period in both methods where the warming trend ceased being statistically significant.
Again: McKitrick says that RSS data shows that there is a 95 % probability that the trend for the last 26 years is between cooling of 0.0005 and warming of 0.2373 c/decade. And yes this matches the results for the 95% (2sd) result returned by the formerly revilled SkS trend calculator.
But McK interprets this as a stistically significant pause. Why?
And note that the probability here is that the trend is warming, and it is very warming at the upper CI 0.2373 c/decade.
There is a very low probability it is cooling, lower CI -0.0005 C/decade. So the probability of a pause a trend of zero) is in fact very small.
The fact that these bounds may or may not match the models and the question of how well data fits the models is not the point. The question here is does the data itself show a pause?
As I note above to Kevin Marshall:
The fact that the CI’s around of a trend around zero are equally spaced around zero does not make the situation any better.
Your example:
RSS from 1999.875
Trend: 0.000 ±0.228 °C/decade (2σ)
The error margins are very large, so there is a definite probability greater than 5%, that the trend is not zero. But note what I wrote to Kevin above:
I have also said on other occasions, the strict requirements of statistical significance for a pause is unfair.
Statistically significant warming or cooling using ordinary least squares (OLS) means the error margins do not cross the zero line. A pause by definition means a trend close to the zero line, so any data set with even small error margins will cross the line, so what is the criterion for statistically significant pause?
I had initially thought that McKitrick’s paper may have found such a method, but on examination I don’t think he has.
I think that there probably has been a pause for the last decade or so but it can’t be shown statistically by OLS.
Or by McK’s method.
No change for a period as short as a year where the noise totally dominates signal cannot be in any manner statistically described as a pause, even if you wanted to say a pause of 1 year indicated anything.
14
>”If the CI contains the Zero value it is neither stistically significant warming or cooling.”
Exactly, no argument. And you agree with McKitrick too.
>”not statistically significant warming does not mean a statistically significant pause.”
Huh? What can it be then? If it’s not warming or cooling it must be trendless – the definition of the pause and what McKitrick documents.
>”Mcitrick’s paer used another method to cometo, ………the same values of treand and 95% confidence level as given for the OLS method.”
No, the paper states in 2.1 page 4 pdf:
“The trend coefficient is estimated on monthly data using OLS”
>”McK interprets this [lower bound -0.0005, upper bound 0.2373] as a stistically significant pause. Why?”
Zero has not been eliminated from the CI. Lower bound has not crossed the zero line (your own criterion from elsewhere). The data is therefore statistically trendless.
The pause ends when zero is eliminated and the lower bound crosses zero to a positive value.
>”the probability here is that the trend is warming”
Or cooling i.e. statistically trendless. When the CI becomes lower bound +0.0005, upper bound 0.2373, then you can say with 95& confidence there’s statistically significant warming. This is McKitrick’s cutoff. You cannot have 95& confidence the data is not trendless when there is zero in the CI.
>”There is a very low probability it is cooling, lower CI -0.0005 C/decade.”
Rubbish. There is 95% confidence that the trend is -0.0005 C/decade.
>”The fact that the CI’s around of a trend around zero are equally spaced around zero does not make the situation any better.”
For CI ±0.228 about 0.000, there is a 95% probability that the trend is either +0.228 or -0.228. Warming or cooling has equal probability and dimension – the perfect pause.
>”But note what I wrote to Kevin above”
Addressed here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/10/the-rutherglen-stoush-on-homogenisation-bill-johnstone-bravely-ventured-onto-the-conversation/#comment-1579887
>”No change for a period as short as a year where the noise totally dominates signal cannot be in any manner statistically described as a pause, even if you wanted to say a pause of 1 year indicated anything.”
Huh? You’re the only one in that zone Philip. Well, you and your strawman.
40
Compelled to return I see….
Maybe it’s a God complex?
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Heywood, you see I actually keep my word when someone askes me to do something and I say I will.
Like you wanted me to email McItrick and let you know how I got on.
So I did, and then you said that you had no interest in the subject, unless Ross said he was right.
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Ex -warmist, I have gone through that paper and have a reply when I next see your post
[You are being boorish, in attempting to play to the gallery. I suggest you review, and revise your behaviour. This is not your blog. Please show some respect for your host] Fly
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Ummm. No. Not what I said at all.
191
[Snip]
214
My apologies Heywood. What you wrote is that you have no interest in the subject until Ross says I am right.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/09/the-mysterious-sudden-jump-in-melbourne-temperatures-in-1996-with-an-instrument-change/#comment-1578859
Either way, you are waiting for Ross to do your thinking for you and appealing to authority.
Again what Ross has done is say that because his time trends no longer show statistically significant warming, that means they show a statistically significant pause, even when his own calculations say that for the Hadcrut data, for example, this 19 year pause is a trend is 0.0925 C/decade, with 95% confidence limits between cooling of 0.0063 and warming of 0.1913 C/decade.
This is clearly not correct.
So go on, don’t wait for Ross. Take a punt. Do some thinking for yourself, and be the first person on this blog to even attempt to explain where I am wrong on this.
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Poor BA5, still hasn’t figured it out.
So funny !! 🙂
152
Richard, I know I said we could close the book on this with McK’s reply but since your post is a long and thoughtful analysis I will reply.
I have pointed out frequently that I have no problems with McK’s Method or results. They in fact agree with the OLS results as I said from post 1, G’s obfuscations notwithstanding.
It is the conclusion that because going forward in time the data stops being statistically significant warming at year x (depending on the data set)the trend after that date reperesents a pause that is wrong.
As I wrote I thought he was claiming a statistically significant pause, – he is not but simply ceasing to be a statistically significant warming does not mean a pause, statistically significant or not. McK even recognises why and says so – any trend will lose statistical significance if the data is set is shortened enough as the noise dominates the signal.
And as I wrote, when Jones “admitted” that 15 years was too short for the data to show statistically significant warming (it was only 93% certain), even the skeptics who leapt on the “admission” did not claim this represented a pause.
McK has started with an assumption, not a fact as with going forward from a statistically significant warming trend, that there is a pause, and worked backwards in time until the trend becomes statistically significant warming.
This causes him to further assume that he has demonstrated when the pause starts, which as I pointed out above, is statistically wrong anyway.
So at least his reasoning is consistent, if the assumption he makes is correct.
But what he has done is assume that which he is attempting to show, that there is a pause, and work back to when he thinks this pause started. And never mind that the start points have strong warming trends with large error margins which have only just tipped through the zero line, meaning there is a possibilty, and nothing more that the trends may at this point include a pause.
02
Richard, That reply was referring you this post of yours.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/10/the-rutherglen-stoush-on-homogenisation-bill-johnstone-bravely-ventured-onto-the-conversation/#comment-1579628
I apoligise that I have not yet responded to your detailed comment below as promised, but every time I come back here there is another comment (or several) which I deal with first and then I sort of run out of puff. There is a lot to consider in it. If I do not get back before this thread dies, come back and check in a few days and I will try to do so, but thank you for the quality of your posts if I don’t this time.
02
>”It is the conclusion that because going forward in time the data stops being statistically significant warming at year x (depending on the data set)the trend after that date reperesents a pause that is wrong.”
What conclusion is this? Yours? it’s not McKitrick’s, I’ve quoted that elsewhere.
Obviously as the length of data in consideration shortens going forwards, the CI widens and eventually the analysis is meaningless.
But McKitrick goes in the other direction, lengthening the dataset from present to identify at what date zero is eliminated from the CI and the lower bound crosses the zero line. At this date the CI is narrowest and most statistically significant. This defines the start of the statistically significant pause because prior to that there’s 95% confidence that the lower bound is greater than zero (warming) but after there is 95% confidence that the trend includes zero i.e. stasis (or pause). This is certainly not “wrong”
>”simply ceasing to be a statistically significant warming does not mean a pause”
As before, what else can it be? There are only 3 options: warming, stasis, cooling. When you rule out warming that leaves stasis or cooling, the latter not relevant (yet) so we’re left with stasis at 95% confidence.
>”McK even recognises why and says so – any trend will lose statistical significance if the data is set is shortened enough as the noise dominates the signal.”
As above, everyone knows this. But it has now relevance whatsoever if the dataset is lengthened as in McKitrick (2014).
>”McK has started with an assumption, not a fact as with going forward from a statistically significant warming trend, that there is a pause,”
Rubbish. There is no such assumption. He works back in time until zero is eliminated from the CI to find the beginning of the “hiatus” (read the paper and your email). This is a statistical test because as long as there is zero in the CI there is 95% confidence that the data is trendless. The 95% confidence pertains to every value bounded by the CI. If zero is in the CI then 95% confidence pertains to it.
>”and worked backwards in time until the trend becomes statistically significant warming.”
Yes, now you are following the method. That is exactly what the exercise is all about – finding the cutoff date when it can no longer be said with 95% confidence that the data is trendless.
“This causes him to further assume that he has demonstrated when the pause starts, which as I pointed out above, is statistically wrong anyway.”
Rubbish. He has demonstrated, in linear terms, that the data is statistically trendless beginning at specific dates in each respective series where the stasis is longest and therefore most statistically significant.
If he was statistically wrong the paper would not have been published. And if in fact publishing was ill-considered by the Open Statistics journal, will soon be refuted. McKitrick knows that perfectly well but I don’t think he’ll be losing sleep.
>”But what he has done is assume that which he is attempting to show, that there is a pause, and work back to when he thinks this pause started.”
If the CI contains zero there’s no assumption. It’s a numerical fact, just low significance statistically. He then lets the time test do the work to find the greater significance.
As he states in his email, he wasn’t looking for significance of the zero trend. That’s the “perfect pause” scenario for which i gave examples. Those are the instances where there is equal confidence of positive or negative trend of equal dimension.
There are many instances of that but the instance with the longest dataset and narrowest CI has the greatest significance as I see. But I’m not a statistician. McKitrick didn;t analyze that in his paper because that was not his aim as he stated in his email.
20
Sorry about the delay Michael but there is a lot of material in the link and I want to go through it thoroughly before I respond. In the meantime you could read this:
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/09/the-mysterious-sudden-jump-in-melbourne-temperatures-in-1996-with-an-instrument-change/#comment-1578382
and this
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/09/the-mysterious-sudden-jump-in-melbourne-temperatures-in-1996-with-an-instrument-change/#comment-1578394
323
MichaelP, Still have not been through all the Pielke stuff (so many critics to answer, so little time, while I am still allowed) but I assume your remarks on SkS refer to my use of this graph:
http://static.skepticalscience.com/pics/AMTI.png
I hope you have read my above links and understand my attitude to SkS.
Boehm/Steaely did indeed go nuts every time I posted it, saying it was “without provneance” or a “cartoon” by John Cook. And I was a charlatan (and worse) for even putting it up. (As I have stated elsewhere, this abusive and proven data manipulator never lets on that he is actually a moderator over there as well as a contributor, and appears to occasionally wear both hats at the same time.)
I repeatedly put up the “provenance” for this graph which is in fact by Dr Robert Way. The all temperature index is the average of (I think 10) data sets and the curve fit is shown. My one complaint is that Way does not tell us what the function is.
Anyway as we are here actually discussing SkS I will put up a direct citation to the SkS page. The moderator at Watts (Boehm/Stealey?) refused to put the link up, saying that it was an ad hominem attack on Monckton. It is not. It is a critique of Monckton’s claims, although it does describe these claims as “myths”. This is very mild compared to the attacks on individuals over there and here who are not so favoured by Watts.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton-Myth-2-Temperature-records-trends-El-Nino.html
Anyway I though I would get around Boehm/Stealey’s objections by posting a similar graph from a source other than SkS. Of course it did not stop the abuse from Boehm/Stealey.
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/11901124/img/Anonymous/hadsst2-with-3rd-order-polynomial-fit.jpeg
I will still look at Pielke’s compalints, but I think this answers your question.
315
Philip #10.1
Agree that describing the secular trend as linear is bogus. Kravtsov, Wyatt, Curry, and Tsonis (2014) are being caled out on this e.g. at Climate Etc:
Tomas Milanovic | September 30, 2014 at 11:08 am |
[Excellent treatese on SSA snipped]
“Why to detrend ? “ [emphasised]. Especially why to detrend when one is using M-SSA ?
It seems to me that it defeats the very purpose of using M-SSA.
M-SSA finds a data adaptative basis set of eigenvectors (here eigenvector=function). See f.ex the Groth&Ghil paper quoted above which gives explicitely the first eigenvectors in a case study.
And now we force suddenly on the data a special basis function (x=at+b) which is justified by nothing. If something can create artifacts then this is it.
Why not to use M-SSA as intended, e.g without any prior data manipulation ?
If one is interested, one can always compare later the eigenfunctions with and without detrending even if I don’t see what relevance that could have.
http://judithcurry.com/2014/09/28/two-contrasting-views-of-multidecadal-climate-variability-in-the-20th-century/#comment-633923
But this leads to a big problem with this Philip:
>”And indeed it is better fit by a curve: http://static.skepticalscience.com/pics/AMTI.png”
Unfortunately that’s not the secular trend curve. Early analysis by empirical node decomposition (EMD) showed the secular trend turning down e.g.
‘Multi-scale analysis of global temperature changes and trend of a drop in temperature in the next 20 years’. Lin Zhen-Shan and Sun Xian. Published online: July 31, 2006 # Springer-Verlag 2006
http://www.crikey.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Media/docs/Zhen-Shan–Xiuan-MeteorAtmosPhys-2007-d1227bc1-3183-456f-a935-69c263af1904.pdf
More recently by SSD,
Diego Macias, Adolf Stips, Elisa Garcia-Gorriz. Application of the Singular Spectrum Analysis Technique to Study the Recent Hiatus on the Global Surface Temperature Record. PLoS ONE, 2014; 9 (9): e107222 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0107222
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140911092905.htm
Zhen-Shan and Xian didn’t gain any traction because their abstract reads “Even though the CO2 greenhouse effect on global climate change is unsuspicious, it could have been excessively exaggerated. It is high time to re-consider the trend of global climate changes.”
But several news items on the latter e.g.
‘Last decade’s slowdown in global warming enhanced by an unusual climate anomaly’
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140911092905.htm
First sentence:
“A hiatus in global warming ongoing since 2001 is due to a combination of a natural cooling phase, known as multidecadal variability (MDV) and a downturn of the secular warming trend.”
The downturn of the secular trend (red line in article graph) away from CO2 is the death knell of AGW.
200
Re #10.1.7 (in moderation as this time)
The Met Office steers well clear of trend analysis, I’m guessing because it is becoming uncomfortably incisive. See:
‘Statistical models and the global temperature record’
Professor Julia Slingo, Met Office Chief Scientist. May 2013
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/2/3/Statistical_Models_Climate_Change_May_2013.pdf
Executive summary
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/news/statistical-models-and-temperature
Page 9 pdf,
Thus, the Met Office does not [emphasised] use one of these statistical models [linear trend or 3rd order in this case] to assess global temperature change in relation to natural variability. In fact, work undertaken at the Met Office on the detection of climate change in observational data is predominantly based on the application of formal detection and attribution methods. These methods combine observational evidence with physical knowledge of the climate (in the form of general circulation models) and its response to external forcing agents, and have a solid foundation in statistics. These methods allow physical knowledge to be taken into account when assessing a changing climate and are discussed at length in Chapter 9 of the Contribution of
Working Group I to IPCC AR48.
Page 16 pdf ,
Studies of statistical modelling using a wide range of models continue to be published in the peer-reviewed literature and we continue to take this work, along with other information, into consideration when making assessments of climate change.
# # #
GCN’s “have a solid foundation in statistics” apparently.
However, the UKMO do take “Studies of statistical modelling using a wide range of models” “into consideration”.
SSD returns a downturn in the secular trend (see above comment #10.1.7) so what was their consideration of the model I wonder?
‘A METHOD OF TREND EXTRACTION USING SINGULAR SPECTRUM ANALYSIS’
Author: Theodore Alexandrov (2009)
– Center for Industrial Mathematics, University of Bremen, Germany
http://www.ine.pt/revstat/pdf/rs090101.pdf
2009 publication so UKMO consideration appears to have led to dismissal. Gee, why am I not surprised?
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Thank you for your very detailed analysis Richard. Late but I will get back to you if I am allowed.
———–
1,566 comments so far by Phillip Shehan. – Jo
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Phil,
I quite enjoy your replies. I red thumb you when I disagree with your opinion.
The red thumb this time is for playing the victim.
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Well thank you James, I do try to provide meaningful answers to those who make good points.
Perhaps you could put in a good word for me with Fly and Ms Nova. Go read Fly’s comment to me above and my response. I am to get an email from Jo apparently.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/10/the-rutherglen-stoush-on-homogenisation-bill-johnstone-bravely-ventured-onto-the-conversation/#comment-1579235
17
And James, just because I am paranoid does not mean people are not out to get me.
05
Phil,
I wrote that I enjoyed your responses, I’m not in a position to give character references as I have fallen foul of moderators from time to time myself.
I agree, paranoia is a healthy survival trait, it’s the thing that allows normal people to question the motives of others and avoid the unecessary heartache of blindly following a political ideology based on demonising those who dissent.
It’s delusions of grandeur that should be avoided, these are the things that make you think you are being vitimised because of what you know, when you are merely being sanctioned for what you do.
If I may offer some advice:
1. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant.
2. Although atmospheric CO2 levels increase – global warming has not.
3. Obviously the climate model failures prove CO2 is not a factor.
4. Who set the optimum atmospheric CO2 level and global temperature at pre-industrialisation levels, I mean really, that is a tad arrogant.
5. If the planet is in such a catastrophic climate spiral why do those who claim to be able to save it seem to demand upfront payments – it’s almost like they are planning to do a runner with the loot once the scam is tumbled.
6. Which ever way you look at it, homogenised data is all imaginary.
7. And this is a biggy – analogies about atmospheric CO2 with holes in buckets beneath dripping water tanks are patronising and illogical – analogies are like statistical representations without all the parameters.
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Thank You James. I was not asking for a character reference, just confirmation that there are some skeptics here who actually want to engage in discussion with contrary views.
[SNIP – further repetitive comments about moderation will be snipped, we asked you to email us, not dilute threads with self-referential administrivia or discussion of moderation on other sites. – Jo]
00
Thank You Ms Nova.
How many by “the Griss”?
00
Philip,
1,566 Comments!
That is impressive.
I do hope you are contributing handsomely to Jo’s tip jar!
00
re Philip Shehan
October 2, 2014 at 9:59 am · Reply
The unreality of these trend graphs is plain. Peak to peak variability is the same in 1840 as 2010 – tosh. A global peak to peak variability of c0.1 degC in 1840 is tosh squared. Global temperatures could not be measured to 0.1 degC in 1840 because temperatures were only measured over a tiny fraction of the globe. It’s artifactual and probably derived from hyper-smoothing/extrapolation algorithms. Why, if it were so accurate, BoM would have no need of homogenisation to make corrections of >1 degC. Besides, a beesdongle trend of 0.6C over a century cf diurnal swings of 30 degC and annual sinusoidal beats of 20 degC IS negligible. The difference in average annual temperatures between Melbourne and Brisbane is 10 degC. The death rate per 100,000 is IDENTICAL. It. Will. Not. Be. a. major. Problem. Let’s move on to more important issues like global poverty.
120
>”The difference in average annual temperatures between Melbourne and Brisbane is 10 degC”
According to BOM, the difference between the minimum on one side of the rise and the other at Rutherglen Research is 1.8 C. But no difference in the maximums.
I suggested at Jennifer Marohasy’s that this issue will not be resolved until an AWS is installed on the north side somewhere near where BOM said the old site was and parallel readings taken to prove, or disprove, BOM’s statistical methodology.
Some changes over time on the north side but even so not enough to distort the microclimate surely. I think Rutherglen Research is an ideal test case for empirical proof of statistical method, or otherwise.
50
As the moderators are aware, Philip Shehan has taken to trolling.
Anthony Watts points to a new peer-reviewed study in Psychology Today titled “Internet Trolls Are Narcissists, Psychopaths, and Sadists“. The abstract has a definition.
I have already taken on two such trolls. Some might remember Michael the Realist who plagued the comments just over a year ago. Debate with him helped sharpen my own arguments, such as here. It made me realize there are a lot of fundamental distinctions and points that “climate science” ignores, but normal science and other areas encompass.
Just three months ago, the great Wikipedia Editor William Connolley also started trolling here. He also has the troll characteristics of being an expert on everything, and diminishing others. I looked at two aspects – Connolley’s belief that he can better define “skepticism” than a dictionary, and his legal opinion being superior to that of a host of experts in their field. The experience showed that Connolley’s arguments defied logic in a number of respects, like many climatologists.
It might be purely coincidental, but since my engagement both have retired from the scene.
182
Two down, one to go.
But bear in mind they never learn, they just go away to lick their wounds. In the meantime they send in StupidHorse and Blackbladder to lower the level of intellectual content.
121
what a great post, i think dr bill should be immediately employed by the bom.
100
Senator Birmingham, I have some outstanding nominations for your independent BOM review panel: Joanne Nova, Jennifer Marohasy, Bill Johnstone and Prof Ian Plimmer.
190
Dr. Tom Quirk, Prof. Bob Carter.
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I’m sure that Philip Shehan will agree with you, that skeptics should be given free rein to review the BOM, and their methods, since he knows that they have nothing to hide. They might also have a look at NIWA in New Zealand, to see how it compares.
Brilliant suggestion!
170
I nominate Profesor Richard Lindzen as well.
140
“In the middle of the drought, a TV crew went along the Murray to film the devastation of a river run dry. To their total surprise,the river was full of water. It was a joke. Unknown to most people, the country has built 26 weirs along the river to prevent it running dry.”
Yes, that is the purpose of the weirs. The river may have been ‘full’ but it would be a stretch to say it was running.
However, the TV crew that went to ‘film the devastation of a river run dry’ do not appear to have gone downstream as far as the Murray mouth and Coorong area. They would have got the footage they were seeking.
I am appreciative of the good work going on illustrating to what extent data is being manipulated for political ends, but the comment on the Murray river was a little too much for South Australian sensitivities.
40
Of course the river did not run in the drought and of course there were real problems at the very end where it connected uncontrolled to the sea. In previous droughts, of course the whole river ran dry, not just the ecologically and politically sensitive Coorong. In early droughts the paddle steamers sat on baked mud.
SA has always had a real water supply problem, but the new desalination plant is still not being used because river water is much cheaper.
There is a real hope to put more water in the Murray system and manage our precious water better, not just let it run to the sea ,as in the article. That was the point.
For example, in Victoria an amazing 30% of fresh water is used for power generation. If we use Victoria’s new and also unused $28Bn (over 25 years) Desalination plant to provide good water for Yallourn and Yallourn in turn could use waste off peak electricity to generate the water, real fresh water can be sent North instead of into the Melbourne water system. Then Adelaide would have more and better water and all the people along the very long Murray system as well. Also we in Victoria spent $800Million a few years ago to connect Mt Sugarloaf to the Goulburn, against the protests of many farmers, This is not used either! The Green global warming waste even in hindsight is incredible and it would make great sense to use what we have bought and what we will keep paying off for a generation and even get more water for those SA sensitivities.
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Re historical temp records, check this out. It’s a Karoly and Gergis peer reviewed paper about South East Australian temps and it does NOT seem to be a sloppy work of fiction. I know! Quelle surprise, right?
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gdj3.19/abstract
It’s as if they’ve learned the lessons of their withdrawn/retracted Oz Hockey Stick paper in 2012 and decided to stop creating fictional proxy temp series for Oz and just go to the horse’s mouth and read newspapers and farm logs etc.
Link to jen Marohasy too as you ladies are the best judges of Karoly & Gergis’s work. I think this could throw a spanner into BOM’s arguments about how good their temp records are – lots of climate variability in the past is bound to muck up BOM’s ‘hottest year ever’ ‘hottest day ever’ longest drought ever’ guff.
110
My apologies for being OT.
just noting that the pause in
man madeglobal warming has now reached 18 yearsRSS graph at the link
120
Yep, It all depends on how you calculate and the actual question you ask.
Ross McKitrick correctly showed that a zero trend is statistically supportable back some 26 years in RSS and some 19-20 years in HadCrut4.
I don’t personally think we should be going through the 1998 El Nino “event” with any trend calculations.
The real plateau started at the beginning of 2001
111
One of the few times I agree with the Griss.
The
pausehiatusHALT in warming began in 2001/2002, right on schedule if the last cycle of the PDO would extrapolate.This “18 years” fad of cherry picking one data set (RSS) and cherry picking an unusually strong El Nino to begin that window (1998) is all straight out of the warmist playbook and not the sort of thing a self-respecting skeptic should be doing. Face facts, if RSS, UAH, and SST all had a tribal council, RSS would be voted off. It was still a noticeably positive trend over that period (well 0.08 degrees per decade anyhow) when other satellite and ship data are considered.
Cut it back to 2002 and the slopes are much closer to zero (0.01°/dy), but I shall say no more lest I be accused of cherrypicking.
It will be 2030 before the climate argument is truly settled. In the meantime it will be a stalemate due to lack of measurements to disprove the competing hypotheses.
70
“One of the few times I agree with the Griss.”
Congratulations 🙂
70
The reason UAH shows more trend is that it started lower than RSS, and also didn’t show as much step in 1998 as RSS.
UAH now seems to have caught up. to the correct RSS value 😉
80
Actually, further checking shows the differences.
UAH starts lower and does basically nothing up to 1997, while RSS climbs slightly.
The El Nino step to 2001 is actually about the same.
Then because RSS is higher, it shows slight cooling vs UAH warming to now, where they are pretty much the same.
50
“but I shall say no more lest I be accused of cherrypicking.”
It is not cherrypicking to understand that the 1998 El Nino was an “event” that culminated by the beginning of 2001.
It was an atmospheric warming event, and that energy came from the ocean.. so it was an ocean COOLING event.
It just happened to occur just after the low point between solar cycles 22, 23.
70
2 Oct: Australian: Graham Lloyd: Scientists scotch ‘tenuous’ 2C climate goal
THE 16-year pause in global average surface temperature rise made the scientific case to limit climate change to 2C “tenuous”, a widely promoted article in Nature says.
As a result, a new set of indicators or “vital signs” was needed to gauge the stresses that humans were placing on the climate system, joint authors David Victor and Charles Kennel from University of California said.
The suggested new measures include the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, ocean heat content and high latitude temperatures.
The Nature article confronts head-on the dilemma of the pause in global surface temperatures that climate scientists have long argued did not exist…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/scientists-scotch-tenuous-2c-climate-goal/story-e6frg8y6-1227076982880
2 Oct: Guardian: Adam Vaughan: Could the 2C climate target be completely wrong?
The global warming goal that nearly 200 governments have agreed on should be ditched, say scientists writing in Nature
In a nondescript conference centre five years ago, as temperatures fell to freezing outside in the streets of Copenhagen and protesters gathered, world leaders did something remarkable: they put a limit on how high temperatures should be allowed to rise as man-made global warming takes hold…
But two academics in the prestigious journal Nature now argue that the 2C target has outlived its usefulness…
Under the headline, “Ditch the 2C warming goal”, they argue the 2C limit is “politically and scientifically … wrong-headed”, it is “effectively unachievable” and it has let politicians off the hook, allowing them to “pretend that they are organising for action when, in fact, most have done little.”
David G Victor, the University of California professor who co-wrote the comment along with former Nasa associate administrator Charles F Kennel, said he felt compelled to speak out after watching climate diplomacy efforts and working on the latest blockbuster report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…
Michael Jacobs, a special adviser to Gordon Brown when he attended Copenhagen and now an adviser to the recent New Climate Economy report, says the timing of the intervention is far from helpful…
“15 months out from the Paris conference and a week after a successful summit put climate change back on the international agenda is completely the wrong time to consider abandoning that commitment.”
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Angela Merkel’s climate adviser and the man often credited as the inventor of the concept of a 2C limit in the 1990s says that the arguments have been made by the authors before – what’s new is the visibility of the journal, Nature, that they are writing in.
“This will create a little storm I guess. Many lobbyists will celebrate tonight because this provocation will of course try to stop the momentum which was building up last week in New York. For the first time since Copenhagen, people feel a new movement emerging towards a meaningful agreement in Paris and such a piece can serve as an excuse for inaction again. It somehow conveys the message the science is unclear. All in all, it’s a provocation at a critical point in time,” he said…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/01/2c-climate-change-target-global-warming-nature-paper
50
“new measures include the level of CO2 in the atmosphere”
I doubt very much that reality will bit in that area.
They need to realise that anything UNDER 400ppm is a stress on plant life, and anything above is a massive bonus. !!
171
24 Sept: Harvard: Doug Gavel: Robert Stavins on the U.N. Climate Meeting
Robert Stavins, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government, is director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program and the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements. We sought his perspective on the U.N. meeting.
Stavins: The original objective of the meeting when it was first planned was to provide an opportunity for heads of state to announce their targets, called “nationally determined contributions,” (NDCs) under the new policy architecture that is emerging under the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action to be finalized in Paris in December, 2015. Those announcements were originally due in the 3rd quarter of 2014 (that is, now). So, that drove the timing and the purpose of the U.N. Climate Summit.
***However, at the annual negotiations in Warsaw in December, 2013, the United States delegation successfully argued that the deadline for submissions ought to be moved back to the first quarter of 2015. The reason, of course, was to put it after the Congressional elections in November of this year. The other countries agreed.
As a result, the U.N. Summit lost its major raison d’etre…
But, the Summit – including the hundreds of thousands of people marching in Manhattan on Sunday – will have essentially no effect on the negotiating positions and eventual announcements of NDCs of any countries…
Stavins: I have not read the report, and so I cannot comment directly on it. However, as I noted in my Op-Ed (LINK)in the Sunday New York Times, the costs of reducing carbon emissions to the degree frequently discussed will be significant. Otherwise, it would already be happening!
Doing what is necessary to achieve the United Nations’ target for reducing emissions would reduce economic growth by about 0.06 percent annually from now through 2100, according to the I.P.C.C. That sounds trivial, but by the end of the century it means a five percent loss of worldwide economic activity per year. And this cost projection assumes optimal conditions — the immediate implementation of a common global price or tax on carbon dioxide emissions, a significant expansion of nuclear power and the advent and wide use of new, low-cost technologies to control emissions and provide cleaner sources of energy. If the new technologies we hope will be available aren’t, like one that would enable the capture and storage of carbon emissions from power plants, the cost estimates more than double.
Then there are the politics…
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/news/articles/rob-stavins-on-un-climate-meeting
reminder of what we heard non-stop from the MSM prior to the Summit:
17 Sept: Guardian: Fiona Harvey: Barack Obama welcomes report saying fighting climate change can be low cost
World can cut greenhouse gas emissions, grow economy and improve lives, says study before UN summit in New York
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/16/barack-obama-report-economy-grow-fight-climate-change-un-summit
30
An interesting Read.
The comment that temperatures may not even be read by a thermometer is an eye opener; which probably says more about my lack of interest in modern methods of weather craft than anything else.
Presumably electronic measurement would need to be “standardised” against a test set of Thermometer readings from a Stephenson screen setup?
In this article I had expected an analysis of temperature measurements and homogenisation and certainly got that.
The bonus was to get a picture of the green drama squashing farming in Australia and to see its human and business effect.
KK
90
I read that a bit differently. Not necessarily the use of thermocouples vs. liquid in glass for acquiring data but the use of “peer reviewed best practice” statistical imagination to create data without observation. This has always been my problem with how recorded weather data is used by most of the “climate science” community.
They whine about missing data messing up their precious time calculations and whine about “anomalies” in real measurements of actual events in specific locations that artificially skew their trends and complain about areas that are devoid of station data at whatever grid level their model needs. So they make up numbers to fill holes, filter out actual data because it doesn’t “fit” and create “composite” data series out of whole cloth for fictional stations like Unicorn Run or Mermaid Key that never existed. Then they plunk it all into a model and torture it with filters and functions until it cries “uncle” and gives them an upward trend at an accuracy that is one to three orders of magnitude higher than is possible with even a single sensor’s time series. Then they pat themselves on the back whilst publishing papers about some bump or curve they created matching some other bump or curve from another Climateer’s work who’s using the exact same “best practices.” Others of their ilk perform the now “holy” rituals with data on land ice, sea ice, fresh water, salt water, CO2, “extreme” weather events and anything else that will garner some grant money.
Now if they just traded these “research” papers back and forth across the globe between other like minded individuals, the same way comic book reviewers interact, I wouldn’t care. No, instead they have become the willing tools of whatever Progressive or Marxist oligarchy is amassing power and have used the fantasy as another means of control over us dumb serfs. I, for one, am getting really tired of it.</rant>
121
Well Niels that is a brilliant summary of the Full Catastrophe!!!
I was aware that some data is acquired by satellite, imagined that some ground based data is obtained by machine/automatic/ thermocouple type set-ups, but not sure of the extent of these practices.
Have done two very intensive half year university Statistics modules at University and well before that studied Mass, Heat and Momentum transfer plus two years of modeling complex systems and cannot see any sense in the great debate about weather records.
It is stupid to try and relate this data to Man made Global warming for many reasons outside of the inconsistencies in data gathering and meshing.
If people truly understood “modeling” they would understand that the effects of CO2 belong in the “Black Box” and the main factors of interest would be in the realm of orbital mechanics on time scales unimaginable to the average warmer who needs results “right now” for the next grant of our tax money.
At the moment we have just come into spring.
If I walked around my house at 11 am I would be quite cool in the shade and quite hot in the sunlight areas.
If we place temperature recording gear on two sides of the house we would get two different pictures of “the weather”.
Man made Global Warming is a bit like that : CONFUSED and STUPID.
KK
71
From an engineering point of view, mixing different types of measuring equipment on the same network is a nightmare.
It plays havoc with tolerances and error corrections.
Hmm? Perhaps that is the point.
60
It allows for greater “adjustments” 😉
70
RW
I have no “tolerance” for CAGW.
🙂
KK
50
Boooo
30
I look at a bunch of people trying to model an amazingly large, interdependent, chaotic system comprised of elements acting on both molecular and planetary scales… and, as you say, on variable time scales from inter-atomic collision rates to galactic orbital periods perturbed by countless influences. They haven’t got a clue about where or what to measure so they grab the only data they have and pretend that it’s all they need to predict the future of what is probably the most complex set of interactions on (and around) our planet.
I design very large scale imaging systems and I spend a great deal of time building 3D models of every element and I get every single piece of technical data available for each piece of the system and I do all the math several different ways before I release a design to be built. My job is to eliminate as much error and guesswork as I can. Once it’s in place I (or one of my colleagues) take a bunch of test gear and meters and measure the performance of the system and then tweak everything to optimal levels. Now, I know every single operating parameter before I start. I use a lot of the same equipment in my designs. I get excruciatingly exact performance data for all of the optical elements. Every single element has a tolerance and all those pluses and minuses are going to add up to whatever the universe has decided they will be. I have NEVER had a system using more than one set of elements where I predicted it’s performance by a order of magnitude over the equipment specifications. Usually I’m thrilled when the real world comes in within 10% of the design value out of the chute.
Climate guys create this amazing precision and accuracy out of thin air and statistics. I’ve never figured out how one can add a whole mess of thermometer readings, each at +/- 0.1°, and globally extrapolate that data out to the third decimal place. How does that happen? In the rest of the world, tolerances add up and each one increases your error. In climate “science” every tolerance is subtracted until you’re talking about milliKelvin accuracy… it boggles my mind and makes me mad at the same time.
Climate guys tout precision that is physically impossible to achieve and since their models aren’t cutting it they have decided to start making their adjustments inside the Stephenson screen.
101
Again Niels, brilliant.
Hard to get across to the general public what is meant by “modeling” but you have nailed it there.
Some previous comments on the futility of claiming to “model” the CO2 / Atmospheric interaction wrt temperature;
like describing how an elephant is really troubled by the weight of that flea jumping around under his tail.:
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/05/the-secret-life-of-internet-climate-trolls/#comment-1277363
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/05/major-30-reduction-in-modelers-estimates-of-climate-sensitivity-skeptics-were-right/#comment-1277354
KK
21
Should have added that your hands on approach is it!!
*Design
*Produce a working model.
*Test it and measure looking for improvements.
*Adjust design.
*Go for full production.
KK
20
In a vacation job, I volunteered to assist in an exercise modelling wind flow over a yachts mainsail, for various wind conditions, and different boat speeds.
The number of variables required to do this is staggering, because as the boats angle of incidence to the wind varies, so does the profile of the sail itself vary, and the attitude of the boat to the wind changes, and the boats’ vertical angle of incidence to the wind changes, and …
Put me off sailing for life, that did.
20
Just do it by feel RW
KK
10
How on earth do you model fluid flow over a surface as dynamic as a fabric sail? That’s really got to be a challenge… especially during tack and jibe transitions when the sail starts luffing. You are much smarter than I am, that’s for sure.
10
What I took from it Niels, was that he couldn’t do it.
In any case we have a great sensory system which allows us to sail much better than any computerised sail boat.
Of course there are a few modern ships with those vertical metal sails ; don’t know about them?
KK
00
I didn’t say I could do it. I just volunteered to do it because I rather fancied one of the lab assistants.
As it turned out, both “projects” were total non-starters.
10
Sorry to hear that RW.
KK
00
IMO the only valid record is one that shows raw data, including the middle-late colonial period, with error bars or colour gradation; in that way the general public can get an appreciation of the uncertainties and form their own opinion of Australian climate change™ .
150
Rutherglen Homogenising Data is a worry
How about other Data sets around the world
Like the five-year averaged Nasa GISS data?
And how will it affect the David Evans bet against Brian Schmidt?
Isn’t the 1st payout due in 3 years or so
Who’s looking likely to win at this stage?
Exciting outcomes ahead
How time flies
100
Dave, in Australia it isn’t only Ruthergen. And it isn’t only Australia BOM. Same issues in US both NOAA GHCN and NASA GISS. And in UK HadCruT. And Meteoschweiz. And NZ NIWA. Documented in an essay in forthcoming book. Jo has an advance copy.
61
In regard to the issue of the temperature gradient and subsequent convection, this is explained in great detail in the book “Why It’s Not Carbon Dioxide” for which you can read reviews on Amazon. As stated in Wikipedia and physics websites, the Second Law of Thermodynamics “states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases, because isolated systems always evolve toward thermodynamic equilibrium, a state with maximum entropy.” Now in thermodynamic equilibrium “there are no net macroscopic flows of matter or of energy, either within a system or between systems. In a system in its own state of internal thermodynamic equilibrium, no macroscopic change occurs.” Basically, this is because it is the state of maximum entropy within the constraints of the system. Thermodynamic equilibrium embraces all forms of internal energy, but, in the assumed absence of phase change and chemical reactions, we are mostly just interested in considering the mean kinetic energy of molecules in a region (this relating to temperature) and the mean gravitational potential energy. Because there are no net flows of energy we have no unbalanced energy potentials. This means that it is the mean sum (kinetic energy + gravitational potential energy) which must be homogeneous at all altitudes. Hence, because potential energy varies, so too does kinetic energy, this meaning we have a temperature gradient. The kinetic energy difference can be represented by the energy required to raise mass M by a temperature difference dT. We get this using the specific heat Cp. We equate this with the difference in potential energy for a height difference dH.
M.Cp.dT = M.g.dH
So temperature gradient
dT/dH = g/Cp where the direction of the gravitational force is of course the opposite of that of dH
This is the dry rate. However radiation between two small regions (in contrast to the diffusion and convection process) has a temperature levelling effect, as is well known. But there’s not a high percentage of radiating molecules in the atmosphere and the gravitationally-induced gradient is only reduced by about a third by water vapour (plus a very small amount by carbon dioxide) and that is why the “wet” gardient is less steep and thus leads to a lower supported surface temperature.
41
See #25 above.
20
Yes Peter – I have replied there.
20
Doug,
please check out what is currently my #42/43
00
[CO2] will probably plateau at c.450 ppmV in about 20 years.
In that time, World average temperature will probably rise by (-1.5 K) as the new Little ice Age bites hard on World food production.
Should we start introducing elite greenies to the lamp posts now, with a choice of wire or rope as the suspension medium?
40
As pleasant as that thought maybe.
Look after yourself and your own and stand back and let the idiots be hoisted by their own petards.
All the things the socialist-left-green proponents promote will come crashing down.
The biggest single factor will be their greed.
This time anti-carbon is the motivator.
The ideology is not sustainable.
They will kill the goose.
It comes back round.
It’s all a cycle.
50
That is very poetic, James. You are a man of hidden depths, it seems.
10
Pure anecdotal evidence from our farming district.
The Federation drought 1895-1901 forced pioneer farmers off the land.
The late 1930’s to the mid 1940’s droughts forced their sons out.
Tough years on the late 1960’s to early seventies pushed the Grandkids away.
The millennium droughts of 2002, 2004, 2006-2008 have made the Great Grandkids seriously ponder their future (me). When it’s all said and done, Australia is a fair bastard of a place to farm. How this fits into climate trends, I don’t know.
140
A nice little compendium on Australian droughts.
71
Thanks Mr ‘the Griss’ for this interesting link. It brought back some memories …
I was curious about what a drought looked like, so in 1980 (I think it was) I drove from Sydney down Broadway to Broken Hill, turned right and trundled along Silver City Highway to Tibooburra and the Queensland border, and hung around the corner country for about a month in the middle of a bloody hot summer. Returned via Wanaaring & Bourke for a bit of variety. Xavier Herbert’s “Poor Fellow My Country” and a book about wool shipments along the Darling were my idle entertainments for the trip. And stereo photography.
50
This has got to be the greatest understatement of all time:
” I drove from Sydney down Broadway to Broken Hill”
Hilarious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Broadway is a thousand meters: Broken hill is ten thousand kilometres!!!!!!!!
Following a prompt from Tony I now have all but 4 of the Bony series.
Not sure of the content but also have a copy of Poor Fellow which I will eventually get to.
Arthur Upfield happens to be born on the same year as my grandfather and I keep wondering at his amazing skill.
KK
00
My thoughts and prayers are with you.
If you lived in Europe you would have been well a truly “subsidized: into continued existence.
Unfortunately you are not in a union so you miss out.
KK
00
***Parkinson gives no title to the PM, (nor to Maurice Newman, for that matter) but Steffen is Prof every time:
2 Oct: RenewEconomy: Sam Parkinson: Maurice Newman refuses briefing with top scientists
Unsurprisingly, yet still remarkably, Maurice Newman has rejected the opportunity to meet with Australia’s top scientists for a briefing on climate science following his disturbing article in The Australian on Tuesday that called for an investigation in the Bureau of Meteorology…
The Climate Council, disappointed and concerned with ***Abbott’s chief business advisor’s comments, sought to organise a meeting with him and the top scientists available in Australia to discuss the real impacts of climate change on business and the economy.
“It is tempting to simply ignore Mr Newman’s ignorant and unfounded utterances,” said Professor Will Steffen…
“Every major country in the world accepts the science across the political spectrum, except for Canada and the Tea Party in America. What he is proposing is like saying the world is flat. To paraphrase (US President Barack) Obama, its time for the flat earth society to pack up and go home”.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/maurice-newman-refuses-briefing-with-top-scientists-82996
***isn’t it ironic?
2 Oct: Australian: Staff Reporter: First major power station begins carbon capture
The International Energy Agency (IEA) today welcomed the launch of the world’s first large-scale power station equipped with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, calling it a historic milestone along the road to a low-carbon energy future.
The 110MW retrofit of SaskPower’s Boundary Dam coal-fired power plant in Saskatchewan, Canada will trap around 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year. The captured CO2 will be injected into nearby oilfields to enhance oil recovery***
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/latest/first-major-power-station-begins-carbon-capture/story-e6frg90f-1227078016449
30
I would love to see the CO2 balance sheet on that second one.
I wonder how much extra oil it will them allow to recover, and what volume of CO2 that represents. 🙂
60
typo… them allow -> allow them…..
saw it just as I pressed post !
20
Now that should get a few green knickers in a twist.
Carbon capture is good, but using it for frakking is bad. I can see them going round in ever decreasing circles.
70
“I can see them going round in ever decreasing circles.”
More like they have held a baseball bat upright on the ground, and holding the top run around it several times.
When they finish, they have no idea where they are going.
Reminds me of a particular prolific propaganda poster on this forum. 🙂
50
one more laugh about Sam Parkinson’s Maurice Newman piece:
i love how he gives Obama his title … in brackets! LOL.
“To paraphrase (US President Barack) Obama…”
40
That should be “to parrot phrase…” 🙂
40
As if there’s another “Obama” bent on the complete destruction of freedom along with crushing Western Civilization’s advancements in technology, medicine, education and the rule of law… (except, of course, for the ruling elite.)
40
Doug,
You are a bit off topic here. Why not save it for the next Unthreaded weekend.
Also you seem to be loosing the plot a bit.
The lower wet adiabatic lapse rate (compared to the dry lapse rate) is (in my view) due to the release of heat of condensation. I thought that you used to think that as well. Where did all this radiating molecules stuff come from.
Without your new radiating molecules theory the Thermo gravitational theory has a lot going for it.
20
Yes Peter C – I did think that up till about two years ago when I realised such condensation cannot lead to a uniform reduced gradient throughout the troposphere. For a start, there’s far more water vapour in the lower troposphere and far less in the upper troposphere, so there would be more warming in the lower troposphere which of course would not reduce the magnitude of the gradient. I’m the first to admit that some concepts like this were overturned in my thinking about two years ago when I first understood the huge significance of the gravito-thermal effect and began giving a lot of thought to how the necessary energy flows could occur in order to produce and maintain the gravitationally induced temperature gradient. The release of thermal energy in condensation just leads to a spreading out of that extra energy in all directions until thermodynamic equilibrium (with its associated temperature gradient) is re-established. What we need to understand is that radiation plays a part in establishing that very state of thermodynamic equilibrium, nearly as much a part as gravity working in the opposite way. None of this is in text books yet, so one has to think for oneself. Not many climatologists do that, so that’s why they keep regurgitating various conjectures about which I wrote an article once entitled “The Old Wives’ Tales of Climatology.” Just Google that title in quotes and have a read.
10
A bit OT, but I saw this on WUWT.
“China demands $100 billion a year for carbon restrictions
According to a document deposited at the Geneva-based U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in advance of a planned meeting next month, China insists that the U.S. and other developed countries endure most of the economic pain of carbon emission cutbacks, and need to make significantly more sacrifices in the months ahead.
Carbon emission cutbacks by China and other developing countries, the document says, will be “dependent on the adequate finance and technology support provided by developed country parties” to any new climate accord. In other words, only if Western nations pay for it. More specifically, only if Western taxpayers ante up. Among other things, the Chinese communist regime insists that the incentive payments it demands must come from “new, additional, adequate, predictable and sustained public funds” — rather than mostly private financing, as the U.S. hopes.
In addition, the Chinese state:
— A promised $100 billion in annual climate financing that Western nations have already pledged to developing countries for carbon emission control and other actions by 2020 is only the “starting point” for additional Western financial commitments that must be laid out in a “clear road map,” which includes “specific targets, timelines and identified sources;”
–In the longer run, developed countries should be committing “at least 1 percent” of their Gross Domestic Product — much more than they spend on easing global poverty” into a U.N.-administered Green Carbon Fund to pay for the developing country changes;
–In the meantime, the $100 billion pledge to the same fund should be reached by $10 billion increments, starting from a $40 billion floor this year;
–Western countries also need to remove “obstacles such as IPRs [intellectual property rights]” to “promote, facilitate and finance the transfer” of “technologies and know-how” to developing countries in advance of any future climate deal;”
Posted by Sasha on September 30, 2014 at 12:29 am on http://wattsupwiththat.com/tips-and-notes-2/
With countries like the US and most of Europe already massively in debt, the Chinese politicians must surely be laughing their assets off. 🙂
80
This is the problem with Acorn as expressed by Rutherglen
The BOM state that they do adjustments for homogenisation that are not based on prior trends. They shift blocks of data up or down
All such shifts (apart from a few with small probability) will affect the trend. You cannot do a customary adjustment without affecting the trend.
So if there are 112 stations and there are 315 adjustments to maxima and 345 to minima, you have to be careful that no bias is introduced.
You can state that the number of positive adjustments is 153 on maxima and 154 on minima and imply that there is a balance.
However, when you examine the data, you realise that you have to go beyond that balance. You have to look at the magnitude of the changes, whether they are in balance: at the duration of the change, are they in balance; at the date of the change, as those a long way from the centre date have more leverage on the overall trend.
When you do that exercise, you find that balance is not everywhere equal. It is badly done at Rutherglen, which is why it was chosen as an example. Over the whole Acorn set, the BOM claim a 0.9 deg C warming since 1910. If you use historic data from CSIR reports and Commonwealth Year Books, you are flat out making it more than 0.5 deg C for the century past.
That is why we have a problem.
No amount of wishful thinking can work around it, the numbers are what the numbers say, not what adjustment does.
Rutherglen has a further, particular problem that neighbouring comparison sites lack the warming trend that BOM have calculated. Rutherglen minims show essentiall no warming whatsoever since 1913, when the public record starts. There are years like 1957, with no minima for October, November or December. There are missing years from Acorn, from Nov 1959 to Dec 1964. which is somewhat inconvenient for reference periods for anomaly calculation if you choose the 1961-1990 convention. There are years like 1975, where most of the minima public data are whole or half degrees, while the rest is to a tenth of a degree, which is inconvenient for finding break points by computer, especially as one is close to the alleged global climate shift of 1976-77 which might chuck a break point of its own to confuse the analyst. There are years where the record does not exist on most weekends.
We know that at the time of collection of these records, nobody could have suspected that they would be analysed in great detail in the name of global warming. If Rutherglen is one of the better sites – where the official record stated that no site shifts are documented, the Heaven help the rest.
No amount of adjustment can overcome the fundamental deficiencies of the raw data, because most adjustment steps are guesses. Raw data, used properly, will always trump guess.
There is simply no scientific place for a “one size fits all problems” like Acorn. It is far more desirable for adjustments to be made to the record – if they have to be – in the context of the needs of a particular line of research, on a case-by-case basis.
Acorn is misleading as to trend over time. Full stop.
80
In calm conditions air doesn’t actually move in parcels at all. Assuming there’s no wind complicating things, molecules continue to move in all directions and nothing whatsoever keeps a parcel together.
Now a point of definition: Diffusion becomes advection when a net movement of molecules can be measured. The term convection in physics includes both diffusion and advection.
If there is a pre-existing state of thermodynamic equilibrium, but it is then disturbed by the absorption of new incident solar radiation in the troposphere, we get a local region in which the temperature is higher than it was or would be if thermodynamic equilibrium existed with its associated temperature gradient. Hence the new energy will disperse in all accessible directions away from the source of that new energy, even downwards into warmer regions, until a new state of thermodynamic equilibrium is attained.
That’s how the surfaces of Venus and Earth get warmed. Yes in direct sunlight on a clear day the Sun can warm a region with temporary thermal energy being deposited into the solid surface in the morning, for example. So then convection is observed going upwards, but it also goes downwards from the warmed surface layer of the oceans into the colder thermocline region. Conduction also conveys thermal energy into the solid surface regions.
But during sunlit hours there is 21% of the incident solar radiation being absorbed mostly by water vapour before it reaches the surface. This disturbs the thermodynamic equilibrium and some thermal energy will move towards the surface as the whole thermal profile in the troposphere rises to a new parallel position. On Venus, for example, the rise by day and the fall by night are each about 5 degrees, and that’s how the extra energy gets into the surface by day, and back out by night.
The same process operates on all planets including Earth. Broadly speaking, the only exception is the extra warming of non-polar land surfaces when a significant amount of direct sunlight strikes any region. Because such a region warms quickly, it also cools quickly until the cooling rate is slowed and almost stopped in the early pre-dawn hours by the supporting temperature at the base of the troposphere. From that point onwards the whole troposphere has to cool, maintaining the same temperature gradient, so it’s a much slower process, as on Venus where it takes 4 months to cool by 5 degrees.
There is nothing left for any radiative Greenhouse forcing to accomplish.
92
Thank you Doug,
I have finally managed to understand (with my Engineering background) what you are actually on about 🙂
20
Thank you Rereke. If you care to email me at [email protected] I could post you a copy of the book – gratis if you care to write a brief review on Amazon.
20
This statement reminds me of something a math instructor said to the class a long time ago. His statement was, “There’s a difference between data and information.” He went on to discuss the topic saying that what you can do with data is exactly nothing unless you can turn it into information. Information is valuable, it can guide your decision making, while data is just numbers. The point he was driving home is that you must know how to turn your data into information. I had remembered the principle all along but forgot the source of that little tidbit until reminded by this thread.
Obviously Bill Johnston knows the difference and can tell what his data is really saying to him. In this case, context is everything, as it almost always is.
Over the years I’ve collected a lot of timing information on programs I was developing, especially when I started to create a real time graphic display, a moving surface plot representing the current set of data and 74 sets into the past. My trouble was that I could never tell exactly what some of those execution times meant. I had a nice collection of numbers but sometimes little or no insight as to what they told me about actual performance under real conditions.
It’s only too obvious that the CO2 alarmists are more interested in making a preconceived point than in understanding the data.
60
Context is everything
KK
20
The other point that is often overlooked is that you can take information, and extract the data; but you cannot then take that data and reconstruct the data exactly as it was, without some loss of the original information. You always loose something.
50
Entropy scores every time and always wins.
30
Rpy, the CO2 alarmists understand the data perfectly well. Which is why they have put so much effort into adjusting and homegenising it to fit their models, so as to continue the gravy train for a few more decades.
20
Stan,
I’m sure some of them do understand the data. But proving their preconceived point has overpowered any will they may have had to fully figure out the real meaning. It has become a crusade with all the zeal of a preacher trying to save souls from the devil.
10
OT. Steven Goddard finds some real gems sometimes.. 🙂
50
The Conversation? I think I’d rather have my vasectomy again. At least they give you good drugs.
50
Haha Ursus talk about low hanging fruit!
I agree, nuts to the Conversation. 🙂
50
*** NEWSFLASH***
Climate change causes massive beaching of walruses…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-02/35000-walruses-beached-in-alaska/5784956
Apparently aerial surveys have been estimating the numbers beached. One of the quotes:
Immediately a thought flashed through my head … what if the aerial survey plane frightens the poor creatures? Lo and behold .. in the next paragraph:
Cynical me… I was thinking, I bet if the plane causes stampede deaths the learned scientists would blame the deaths on climate change. Slightly more cynical me wonders if they are upping the frequency of aerial surveys…
61
Marc Morano gives a good background overview on this rehashed beatup story here and so does Susan Crockford on Polar bear Science here , fret not sweet Bulldust all is good. 🙂
31
O/T apologies:
3 Oct: Australian: AFP: Poland may veto carbon emission cuts
Poland’s new prime minister says her coal-reliant country would not rule out vetoing the high carbon cuts likely to be demanded by other European Union members.
“We will definitely be firmly stating our position,” Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz said in an interview with Poland’s commercial broadcaster TVN24 on Thursday…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/latest/poland-may-veto-carbon-emission-cuts/story-e6frg90f-1227078597735
they’d be crazy not to veto!
18 Sept: Euractiv: Poland’s carbon emissions billions to be spent on coal, cutting budget deficit
The allegations, by Greenpeace, the WWF and the Climate Action Network, were made in a report ahead of October’s summit of EU leaders in Brussels and put the spotlight on Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s patchy record on climate change…
Emissions allowances can be sold on the financial markets…
Assuming an average €10 carbon price between 2013 and 2020, Poland stands to receive €3 billion in solidarity and Kyoto payments.
The report said it plans to use the money to cut its budget deficit. That is against the ETS Directives recommendations, which call for half of revenues to go to fighting climate change…
A transfer of about €7.5billion worth of free emissions allowances for electricity producers over the 2013 to 2019 period will be spent mostly on Poland’s dominant coal industry, the report found.
82% of planned projects in Poland support fossil fuels, i.e. coal, capacity modernisation and investments. 7% support biomass co-firing, which is linked to coal-firing.
10% of planned projects would support investments in the electrical grid and just 1% , three projects, would support renewable energy investments…
A 2012 EurActiv investigation exposed that at least one of the coal plants for which Poland was requesting €7 billion of free carbon allowances under the 10c derogation did not exist…
Grabowski announced in June that around 60 exploratory shale gas wells had been dug in Poland, which is in the forefront of European exploration for shale.
http://www.euractiv.com/sections/energy/polands-carbon-emissions-billions-be-spent-coal-cutting-budget-deficit-308534
20
??? nice try, bloomberg.
2 Oct: Bloomberg View: Doubt Climate Change? Then Support Carbon Taxes
By The Editors
Skeptics may still ask, Why bother about climate change at all? The science isn’t settled, they rightly point out. So why go to extraordinary lengths to deal with what may turn out to be an imaginary problem?
This is an unforgivably simpleminded position. When it comes to climate change, certainty isn’t required to justify action. The risk is such that sane societies should, in effect, insure themselves against it…
It’s wrong to dismiss the threat posed by climate change — and there’s no excuse, either, for dismissing the best way to solve it.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-10-02/doubt-climate-change-then-support-carbon-taxes
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Poland is being singled out, but…
1 Oct: Reuters: Ben Garside: West-to-east cash transfer shapes Europe’s climate goal tussle
Western European nations are preparing to divert tens of billions of euros in revenue to help cut greenhouse gas emissions in eastern Europe to ensure the bloc sets the world’s toughest targets for tackling climate change.
The 28 European Union leaders meet on Oct. 23-24 to agree on a package of 2030 targets to cut emissions, deploy renewable energy and improve energy efficiency but are divided over how to share the related costs and efforts…
Germany, the EU’s economic powerhouse likely to foot much of the bill, admits “solidarity for low income member states will play a role” but says agreement isn’t needed upfront, according to an environment ministry spokesman…
But the so-called Visegrad 4+ group — Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania — on Tuesday insisted a 2030 deal required the same basis of west-to-east funding as under the current 2020 climate package…
Some 7.5 million euros of the 12 billion euros-worth of allowances to be given to utilities for free are in Poland, where 82 percent of the 378 investments are to modernise existing coal and gas-burning plants and none are for solar or wind power generation, EU documents show…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/01/us-europe-climatechange-idUSKCN0HQ4NO20141001
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is anybody listening? or is the EU self-destructing?
2 Oct: Ecomento: Richard Lane: ‘Carbon targets potentially fatal’ says VW chief
The boss of Europe’s largest carmaker has warned that increasingly stringent emissions regulations handed down by the European Commission could prove ‘fatal’ for the industry.
Dr. Martin Winterkorn, who as Volkswagen Group CEO oversees the successful Audi, Porsche, and Bentley brands among others, said that new regulations beyond the 95 g/km carbon dioxide fleet averages in place for 2020 would threaten business for carmakers…
Despite debuting a recent onslaught of new hybrid and electric cars, Volkswagen Group has historically been reluctant to offer expensive ‘green’ technology in markets where the majority of buyers react with ambivalence…
“Every gram of CO2 that we save in our European fleet costs our group almost 100 million euros – 100 million that we have to invest in advance, without knowing when these investments pay off,” he told journalists…
“It’s too early for concrete targets. Taking the third step before the first would be fatal,” Winterkorn said. “We cannot allow Europe’s companies to be impeded in global competition and this danger has never been greater.”
http://ecomento.com/2014/10/02/carbon-targets-potentially-fatal-says-vw-chief/
2 Oct: Reuters: Carmakers urge EU regulators to be realistic with emissions limits
Car executives at Volkswagen and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) on Thursday urged European regulators not to overburden the industry with excessive emission targets, especially in times of an economic downturn…
Winterkorn’s comments were echoed by FCA Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne who urged Brussels to be realistic and take the current economic environment into account.
“There is a limit to what the industry can take and I think we are at the limits now,” Marchionne said.
“There are things you don’t do in times of economic contraction: you don’t throw an additional cost on an industry that is already struggling.”…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/02/autoshow-paris-carbon-idUSL6N0RX5S520141002
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and how will you convince me and all my non-Conservative CAGW sceptic friends? psychologically unsound, but read it all:
1 Oct: NY Mag: Jesse Singal: Psychologists Are Learning How to Convince Conservatives to Take Climate Change Seriously
How do you do that? The answer has more to do with psychology than politics…
“Although climate scientists update, appropriately, their models after ten years of evidence, climate-science communicators haven’t,” said Dan Kahan, a professor of law and psychology at Yale who studies how people respond to information challenging their beliefs. Luckily, social and political psychologists are on the case. “I think there’s an emerging science of how we should talk about this if we’re going to be effective at getting any sort of movement,” said Robb Willer, a sociologist at Stanford…
In a larger context, social scientists have shown in laboratory settings that there are ways to discuss climate change that nudge conservatives toward recognizing the issue. Research is proceeding along a few different tracks. One of them involves moral foundations theory, a hot idea in political psychology that basically argues that people holding different political beliefs arrive at those beliefs because they have different moral values (even if there’s plenty of overlap). Liberals tend to be more moved by the idea of innocent people being harmed than conservatives, for example, while conservatives are more likely to react to notions of disgust (some of the conservative rhetoric over immigration reflects this difference)…
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/09/how-to-convince-conservatives-on-climate-change.html
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Some of the ~37,000 ACORN data values at Rutherglen have been corrupted in that there are whole blocks of temperatures that are in numbers ending with ‘.0’ which are effectively integers. For instance, some notable examples of blocks of values follow:
1998: 35.0 38.0 28.0 20.0 25.0 28.0 31.0 35.0 35.0 35.0
1978: 15.0 11.0 11.0 13.0 10.0 11.0 11.0 11.0 11.0 12.0 (notice an internal series of 11.0 x4)
2001: two blocks of 29 and 33 integers
Some unlikely distributions of real values occur in small blocks as follows:
1955: 30.0 30.0 30.0 26.0 and 30.0 30.0 30.0
1956: 10.0 10.0 10.0
1969: 30.0 30.0 30.0 30.0
There was also a bad period between 1972 and 1980 when the total number of integers was too high but not distributed in long series.
Not as bad as Bourke and Laverton near Melbourne though which have about 4,000 integers in four blocks. At one decimal point accuracy, (the BoM norm), there is a limit range for say 30 C of 29.5 to 30.4, or about the same as the global rise over the last 150 years.
I’ll be emailing EXCEL spreadsheet for Rutherglen to Jo and Jen, but has anyone time to figure what might be behind it?
Data is at: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn-sat/#tabs=Data-and-network
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Some of the ~37,000 x2 ACORN data values at Rutherglen have been corrupted in that there are whole blocks of temperatures that are in numbers ending with ‘.0’ which are effectively integers. For instance, some notable examples of blocks of values follow:
1998: 35.0 38.0 28.0 20.0 25.0 28.0 31.0 35.0 35.0 35.0
1978: 15.0 11.0 11.0 13.0 10.0 11.0 11.0 11.0 11.0 12.0 (notice an internal series of 11.0 x4)
2001: two blocks of 29 and 33 integers
Some unlikely distributions of real values occur in small blocks as follows:
1955: 30.0 30.0 30.0 26.0 and 30.0 30.0 30.0
1956: 10.0 10.0 10.0
1969: 30.0 30.0 30.0 30.0
There was also a bad period between 1972 and 1980 when the total number of integers was too high but not distributed in long series.
Not as bad as Bourke and Laverton near Melbourne though which have about 4,000 integers in four blocks. At one decimal point accuracy, (the BoM norm), there is a limit range for say 30 C of 29.5 to 30.4, or about the same as the global rise over the last 150 years.
I’ll be emailing EXCEL spreadsheet for Rutherglen to Jo and Jen, but has anyone time to figure what might be behind it?
Data is at: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn-sat/#tabs=Data-and-network
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Mod, my 37/38 did not post in date order
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The most recent speech from the only politician in Canberra that I actually like …
Leyonhjelm’s full speech:
S e n a t o r D a v i d L e y o n h j e l m
F r e e d o m o f S p e e c h a n d s e c t i o n 1 8 C
I speak in support of the Bill to remove insult and offend from S18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Mr Abbott says we need to adjust the delicate balance between freedom and security. Let me give him a tip. When you make decisions that authoritarians such as jihadists would approve of, like preventing people from saying what they think; when you threaten to haul journalists before courts and into jail; and when you introduce provisions that give your security organisations the power to snoop on your own people, you have gotten the balance wrong. In fact, whenever you throw away the freedoms others have fought and died for, you have gotten the balance wrong. Mr Shorten says this is not the time to be removing the government censorship that is 18c on account of maintaining national unity. Sorry Mr Shorten, but free speech does not have a timetable. You either believe that we are entitled to say what we think, or you don’t. You either believe this is a free country or you don’t. You either get the first line of our national anthem, or you don’t. In times of trouble, true leaders speak for a nation about what they stand for, not which freedoms they have decided to give away.
I fear that Mr Abbott and Mr Shorten are not true leaders. When they talk about freedom there is always a “but” to be found nearby. They believe in freedom, but not if someone might have their feelings hurt. They believe in freedom, but not all of the time. They believe in freedom, but will vote the same way that barbarians would vote. A lot of people, I suspect, are sick of hearing about democracy’s ‘but’. Those, like Mr Shorten, who believe we need to keep 18c for the sake of national unity don’t seem to understand that democracies were never meant to be places of unity; that’s a feature of fascist and communist regimes and, dare I say it, Islamist regimes. The difference that characterises a democracy is its greatest strength, because it means that propositions are put to the test of public deliberation. People who make ‘national unity’ arguments in a democracy probably do not understand democracy at all. Unfortunately, when it comes to section 18C, opinions are protected from public deliberation, in part because people are considered ‘weak’ or ‘vulnerable’, and somehow incapable of bearing too much reality.
Of all the people in the world, surely Australians are not so fragile or so gullible. Questions of Aboriginality and Australian identity are matters of great public importance. They should be debated on the basis of evidence. Likewise, the Palestinian question is a matter that should also be debated, and assessed on its merits. The Andrew Bolt and Mike Carlton controversies illustrate the silliness of this uncommonly silly law. I have no time for racism and other types of vilification, but we cannot have a situation where important matters are closed off from debate because of the potential for someone to claim they have hurt feelings. Both Bolt and Carlton may have made errors. But the remedy for errors of fact is a correction, an apology, or even defamation proceedings. Section 18C gives certain people an extra remedy based on an arbitrary characteristic, a departure from the rule of law. In short, it is not a bad time to repeal section 18C in the name of ‘national unity’, rather, it is a good time to repeal section 18C in the name of ‘national diversity’. When the government first suggested changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, much was made of a connection between
‘offence’ and ‘insult’ –words I wish to see removed from the Act – and subsequent racial violence. But, while vilification might incite violence, there is no evidence that to offend or insult someone is to incite violence against that person. Indeed, what evidence we have shows the opposite effect, because words often serve to replace violence.
As the law currently stands, instead of issues being debated and ideas criticised, toxic attitudes are driven underground or through the wires of the internet. This implicitly justifies handing over increased powers to Australia’s security agencies, so that the speakers of various nasty words can be watched over by the powers that be.
If people were free to speak, there would be less need for such surveillance. We would all know which Imams think young Australian Muslims should fight in Syria and Iraq, and we could also identify those who believe all Muslims to be terrorists.
Racial incitement and racial vilification are crimes because it is possible for a reasonable person to identify them, and for evidence of their effects to prevail in court. ‘Offence’ and ‘insult’, by contrast, should not attract even a civil remedy, because their effects are subjective, capable only of assessment by the person who chooses to take exception to them.
Last week, there were repeated calls for Tony Abbott to pull his dissenting senators into line on section 18C.
This strikes me as contradictory, for the simple reason that many of those now making calls for party discipline will, when I introduce my marriage equality bill, demand that Tony Abbott grant a conscience vote.
I commend to my fellow senators Edmund Burke’s ‘Speech to the Electors of Bristol’. In it, Burke points out that a political representative owes his party and constituents not only his industry, but also his independent judgment. People are elected to this place on the understanding that they have their own minds.
It is not possible, in my view, to engage your conscience selectively. You either use your mind, or you do not. Senators and members, to paraphrase Burke, ought to be faithful friends and devoted servants of their parties and constituents, but not flatterers.
With this bill, Senators get a chance not just to vote on their position on government censorship, but also to reveal a bit about themselves.
Some of you, I know, are passionate supporters of freedom of speech and will be voting to repeal 18C. I congratulate Senator
Day for introducing the bill and I congratulate those who will show the courage of their convictions by crossing the floor.
Then we have those who oppose the Bill because they disagree with it. At least you have the courage of your convictions, but under what authority can you constrain freedom of speech of others, while being protected by parliamentary privilege?
Why is it okay for you to enjoy freedom of speech, but not for other Australians? Do you accept this privilege because you are a senator and your constituents are not, or do you think your constituents are too fragile or stupid to manage a debate amongst themselves?
When you prevent someone from expressing their thoughts, you are in fact, insulting them.
And then there are those who support Senator Day’s bill but are voting against it anyway for the sake of expediency or some misguided belief in party loyalty.
I would remind you that voting against this Bill will not be an act of party loyalty, but an act of betrayal on your electors. I put it to you that if you are one of those people who will vote this down, that maybe you don’t believe in anything much at all.
I commend the Bill to the Senate.
Wow … a position based on principle …
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Wow indeed, I lament being capable of giving only one green thumb and I didn’t believe we had politicians who held and conveyed such beliefs.
It almost dares one to hope…..
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Have a good long weekend all you NSW guys.
I’m off to see some friends near Orange 🙂
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Thanks
Looking forward to the flypast tomorrow morning over Newcastle.
42 Tiger Moth aircraft are due to fly over the city about 9 am on Sat
KK
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Doug Cotton,
Interesting comments from you above.
Are you still hot on ‘standing EMR waves’ being the big missing factor in the “accepted science”?
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Bob – regarding standing waves see this comment.
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Mod,
I don’t get it; when I have made several open comments recently, (not as a reply), they have severally appeared upstream in the date order.
This also changes subsequent comment numbers which makes referencing by comment number rather dodgy!
E.G. what is currently my #42 of 4/Oct precedes what is currently #43 of 2/Oct by two days and may not even be sighted by Doug Cotton!
[Sorry about that Bob, there is a hiccup in WordPress that causes the numbering and placement of posts to go awry if an earlier comment is removed through a moderation decision. It isn’t a problem with your post. Please carry on and we’ll hope that Doug will see them. If you’d like we can place a note in the appropriate comment for him to look elsewhere for a reply. ] ED
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Mod, so I tried an illogical REPLY to what is currently Doug Cotton’s #49 and it came out as new comment #50
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Bob
That’s a good question about the standing waves. I have never felt comfortable in calling the radiation between, say, two parallel plates at the same temperature “standing waves” for that would necessitate the distance being an exact multiple of the wavelength. However, the effect is the same: none of the electro-magnetic radiation is converted to thermal energy assuming each is radiating with exactly the same Planck function. Basically, because each object is able to radiate the same frequencies and intensities, resonance occurs. Physically I believe this amounts to electrons being raised between energy states, but then always re-emitting an identical photon as they return to the same lower state. Without the incident radiation the object would have to first convert some of its own thermal energy into electron energy – that is, raise that same electron to the same energy level.
Now, considering the Earth’s solid surface to be warmer than the region of the atmosphere from where it is receiving radiation, then the surface Planck function is higher, but it fully encloses the Planck function of the cooler source of radiation. So some of the surface radiation (corresponding to that under the Planck curve for the cooler atmosphere) just resonates – acting like the above radiation between two plates at the same temperature. However, the surplus radiation in the surface Planck function that is above the cooler Planck function does have its electromagnetic energy converted to thermal energy when absorbed in the atmosphere. But it doesn’t happen the other way.
So we deduce two things: The back radiation cannot help the solar radiation to raise the temperature of the surface, so you cannot add the two fluxes and us the total in Stefan Boltzmann calculations to get the surface temperature. Only the IPCC can do that with their special fissics. Secondly, because there is no conversion to thermal energy for back radiation striking a warmer surface, there can be no direct effect on the rate of cooling by non-radiative processes.
These two conclusions wipe out the radiative greenhouse conjecture totally an utterly.
Now I am talking about the area between the Planck functions as representing the radiation which has its energy converted to thermal energy. However, because the Stefan-Boltzmann equation is based on the integral of the Planck function, this area between the Planck curves has exactly the same numerical value as you get when using the difference of the S-B results. That’s elementary of course. But the important thing is that what I have explained shows us how every single independent one-way passage of radiation obeys the Second Law and always transfers thermal energy only one way from the warmer source to the cooler target, even though radiation goes both ways. Sometimes it may not go both ways, such as when solar radiation penetrates water.
The climatology invention that we only need to consider the net effect was just an assumption because they did not have the valid explanation I have provided in my March 2012 paper, as outlined above. Because the Second Law refers to thermodynamic equilibrium, and because thermodynamic equilibrium involves all forms of energy, including gravitational potential energy, then, if the net concept were right, climatologists can “prove” that water will flow uphill to a lake provided that it flows further down the other side and net entropy thus increases. That is how absurd their “net” conjecture is.
Having said all of this, I still emphasise that radiation is not the primary determinant of planetary surface temperatures. Consider this ….
The Earth’s surface continues to cool in the early evening, but, even when there is complete cloud cover in some region, the cooling stops and becomes warming the next morning while the Sun is only radiating energy to the clouds and the atmosphere above the clouds. So all through the night and even under the clouds the next morning there would have to be radiative energy losses, even while the surface is starting to warm in the morning, because no solar radiation reaches it through the clouds. Why is it so? If you’ve really understood what I’ve been explaining about “heat creep” and the thermodynamics of the atmosphere then you should be able to explain how the surface gets the required energy to rise in temperature despite a lack of direct sunshine.
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