File this under Nasty Nature. This is the sort of thing planet Earth throws at life.
The is real “sea level rise” — where most of a continent (called Zealandia) sinks under the waves — and — as far as we know, though I could be wrong — fossil fuel use was minimal circa 50 -80 million years ago. Can Exxon be blamed?
New Zealanders may be feeling a bit cheesed that they carelessly lost something like 80% of their land. (Call that “Old Zealand” which was once as big as India.) Given that it is one kilometer underwater, it looks like it isn’t coming back soon. But think of all the national parks, reefs, etc that were destroyed?
Zealandia. | Credit: IODP
The story is that the Pacific Rim of Fire “buckled” 40-50 million years ago, and Zealandia sunk a lot deeper. There is a suggestion that it was originally submerged about 80 million years ago (or so), when this renegade land split from Australia and Antarctica.
Since 1,000 tide gauges estimate current sea level rise at around 1 mm a year, real climate change puts the current panic about sea levels into perspective. Even the next ice age, with a 125m sea level drop, is not going to uncover all this lost real-estate.
Lost continent of Zealandia: Scientists return from expedition to sunken land
- Source:National Science Foundation
- Summary:After a nine-week voyage to study the lost, submerged continent of in the South Pacific, a team of 32 scientists from 12 countries has arrived in Hobart, Tasmania, aboard the research vessel JOIDES Resolution.
Researchers affiliated with the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) mounted the expedition to explore Zealandia. IODP is a collaboration of scientists from 23 countries; the organization coordinates voyages to study the history of the Earth recorded in sediments and rocks beneath the seafloor.
“Zealandia, a sunken continent long lost beneath the oceans, is giving up its 60 million-year-old secrets through scientific ocean drilling,” said Jamie Allan, program director in the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Division of Ocean Sciences, which supports IODP.
“This expedition offered insights into Earth’s history, ranging from mountain-building in New Zealand to the shifting movements of Earth’s tectonic plates to changes in ocean circulation and global climate,” Allan said.
Earlier this year, Zealandia was confirmed as Earth’s seventh continent, but little is known about it because it’s submerged more than a kilometer (two-thirds of a mile) under the sea. Until now, the region has been sparsely surveyed and sampled.
Expedition scientists drilled deep into the seabed at six sites in water depths of more than 1,250 meters (4,101 feet). They collected 2,500 meters (8,202 feet) of sediment cores from layers that record how the geography, volcanism and climate of Zealandia have changed over the last 70 million years.
According to expedition co-chief scientist Gerald Dickens of Rice University in the U.S., significant new fossil discoveries were made. They prove that Zealandia was not always as deep beneath the waves as it is today.
“More than 8,000 specimens were studied, and several hundred fossil species were identified,” said Dickens.
“The discovery of microscopic shells of organisms that lived in warm shallow seas, and of spores and pollen from land plants, reveal that the geography and climate of Zealandia were dramatically different in the past.”
The new discoveries show that the formation 40 to 50 million years ago of the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” an active seafloor zone along the perimeter of the Pacific Ocean, caused dramatic changes in ocean depth and volcanic activity and buckled the seabed of Zealandia, according to Dickens.
Expedition co-chief scientist Rupert Sutherland of Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand said researchers had believed that Zealandia was submerged when it separated from Australia and Antarctica about 80 million years ago.
“That is still probably accurate, but it is now clear that dramatic later events shaped the continent we explored on this voyage,” Sutherland said.
“Big geographic changes across northern Zealandia, which is about the same size as India, have implications for understanding questions such as how plants and animals dispersed and evolved in the South Pacific.
“The discovery of past land and shallow seas now provides an explanation. There were pathways for animals and plants to move along.”
Studies of the sediment cores obtained during the expedition will focus on understanding how Earth’s tectonic plates move and how the global climate system works. Records of Zealandia’s history, expedition scientists said, will provide a sensitive test for computer models used to predict future changes in climate.
h/t Dave B.
Considering that human evolution spans, possibly, the last two million years, this current story tells us how very lucky we are to be able to have such a stable surface to live on.
When a surface that may have once been near our current level has been drawn down an extra 800 metres or so it shows just how turbulent the past has been.
Atlantis, by comparison, may now be under possibly 100 metres of water at most.
KK
71
Interesting stuff…read something about it fairly recently but forget where.
We are in a very benign age if people did but realise that.
81
Hi Annie,
Yes we are in a very benign period at the moment. but the poor people of Atlantis (11,000 years ago?) and those who experienced the Biblical flood, (5600 years ago?) certainly had it worse than us.
By contrast we live in a period when ocean levels have dropped about 1,200 mm over the last short 2,000 years with little worry of flooding.
Putting sea level change and tectonic events in some context:
1. During the possible Atlantean period oceans may have been rising at up to 13 mm per annum at times. If Atlantis was built on a flood plain, the rising water could have liquefied the foundations of the city and seen it washed into deeper waters.
2. Sea level oscillations over the last 7,000 years may have seen a “flood” of say two metres that relates to Noah.
3. The Zealandia thing was in a totally different time frame involving 40 million years but assuming that the 1200 metre drop in ground level was spread over that time the changes would not have been noticeable had there been any observers.
That drop is about 0.12 mm per year but to be honest it probably occurred a bit quicker than 40 million yrs.
As Rereke suggests, this whole “study” may be just another exercise in keeping academics occupied. They do give the global warming meme a bit of recognition in their last paragraph and you might ask what does a climate model have to do with something that occurred 40 million years ago: Nothing.
KK
32
Zealander
like Atlanta,
(geological)
or Oceania,
(sly political)
or Zoolander
(human comical)
context’s the thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc1ECyCVMxA
20
As usual, when practitioners of “the seance” rush to make dramatic pronouncements, they get it base over apex.
The simple matter is that New Zealand sits on a string of volcanoes, some of which are still active. Those volcanoes (and the rest of New Zealand) are the result of the Pacific Plate riding up over the Australian Tectonic Plate, or vice versa, I don’t remember which.
They didn’t need to go swanning around on a boat in the tropics to conduct this research. They could have looked at any Pacific-centred map of The World.
But there again, Wellington can be a wet and windy place, in the winter. Going to the tropics is tough – it can be hard to find a good latte – but I guess somebody has to do it.
82
Do you know what they actually did and what their actual motivation was or just what is reported above? You can’t take samples or make accurate measurements of specific features of interest by looking at a map.
14
This has been drilled and has nothing to do with sea level rise. This is good old fashioned subsidence people, not a sea level rise. The current sea level rise is a combination of absolute sea level oscillations and subsidence. The fact that there is no acceleration or decceleration means that the sea level is steady reflecting mostly steady subsidence or a usual compaction of sediments. This is geo 101.
31
Rereke:
New Zealand rides the Great Divide, the boundary between the Australian and Pacific Plates. The Pacific Plate is subtending (sinking beneath) the Australian Plate. Or, the Australian plate is riding over the Pacific plate. In NZ, up the South Island Southern Alps, the two plates are butting heads, which is why the Alps both exist and are rising. The main fault line, which divides the two plates, runs up the south island along the Alps, then turns right (east) and exits through Kaikoura on the East Coast where it becomes the Hikurangi Trench.
The Hikurangi Trench runs up to the east of the North Island and around East Cape. It divides somewhere off Whakatane into the Tonga Trench which heads to Tonga, and into the Kermadec Trench which runs up past the Kermadec Islands. The Kermadec Trench continues past Vanuatu (active volcano there at the moment) and around the top of New Guinea ending up in the Sunda Deep off Sarawak. That is the south western edge of the Pacific Plate.
The South Island doesn’t have much volcanism: the Port Hills, Banks Peninsula around the Akaroa and Lyttleton Harbours, Timaru to the south and Otago Harbour south of that. They’re all rather old and very dormant. So far. It does have a whole string of geothermal pools from Kaikoura across to the Alps and down the line of the Alps to Fiordland/Southland where the main fault goes out to sea. Most of the big volcanism is in the North Island and around the Taupo Field (Egmont, Ngaruhoe, Tongariro and Taupo) which is the most active. White Island off Whakatane and the submarine volcanoes (Rumbles I-V, Mt Aotearoa etc) are also very active.
10
Nearly all of the South Island of New Zealand is the Pacific plate riding over the subtending Australian plate. The North Island is the Australian plate riding over the subtending Pacific Plate. The plates are moving easily off the East coast of the North Island and there is fairly regular movement of the plates off the west coast of the South Island. But between Kiakoura and a bit north of Wellington the plates are locked and have been since 1855 when an 8.2 magnitude earthquake ruptured the Wairarapa Fault line. There was also an earthquake in Wellington about 1460 which was probably even bigger. Apparently the 14/11/2016 7.8 magnitude Kiakoura earthquake could have destabilized this locked fault line so it is quite likely that there will be a very large earthquake in Marlborough, Wellington and the Wairarapa in the next few years. Note that there was a magnitude 7.5 in Marlborough in 1848, which, like the 1848 Marlborough earthquake was felt extensively in Wellington.
Wellington was hardly settled in 1855 so only about 9 or 10 people lost their lives but land movements were significant and there was a significant tsunami in the harbour, which lost one of its two entrances. The next big earthquake in Wellington could be devastating for NZ with massive losses of life and property.
20
The fault line up the Southern Alps is behaving as more of a slip fault. The eastern side of the South Island, which is part of the Pacific Plate, should be subducting (going under) the Australian plate, but it isn’t. They’re butting heads. The West Coast of the South Island north is moving north. The ‘dividing line’ could be the Waihopai Valley from Murchison to Seddon or maybe as far south as Clarence, just north of Kaikoura on the east coast. Whatever, that Northwestern lump of the South Island is moving north with Australia. The fault line to the south is locked. Jammed. Stuck. There was the big Murchison quake in the fifties, the big Inangahua (south of Murchison) Quake in the sixties. And now Kaikoura. When the strain south of Inangahua lets go again, it’s going to be a real biggie. I wouldn’t want to be in Reefton when it does go …
The Cook Strait is full of splinter fault lines from the Hikurangi Trench some of which go up into Wellington. It’s what makes Wellington so shaky. It’s tide gauge is not totally reliable because the seismic activity makes it bounce up and down. The Wellington-Hutt motorway is built along and on top of, one of the bigger splinter faults. Either side of the Cook Strait is an active area.
10
The real Climate Deniers are the Warmists who believe that the earth was perfect and stable before 1948, 1972 (Cherry pick your own start date to support your Narrative).
They are the true creationists.
For them, Climate Change never happened before then, only since western civilisation started using fossil fuels intensively.
Why is there no comment from the Warmist supporting newspapers and Auntie ABC raising the question, why did this happen and recognising the scale of these past NATURAL changes?
175
Sigh, a straw man argument.
I can’t say I have ever met a Creationist that actually uses scientific evidence. They full well know the scientific method includes falsifiability so no surprise, really.
[Harry. Deliberately misinterpreting mal to divert the thread at the top. Classic Troll behaviour. – Jo]
35
JoNova.
“[Harry. Deliberately misinterpreting mal to divert the thread at the top. Classic Troll behaviour. – Jo]”
Seriously? You are so stupid. Luckily many of the readers of this blog are not stupid, and can judge for themselves.
36
Harry TwinOtter:
You called mal’s post a Straw Man argument. It’s not. Your response, however, is an excellent example of that logical fallacy.
mal wasn’t talking about the so-called “Creationist” pseudo-science of those of extreme religious bent, but the “true creationists” in the sense of those who create the Great Global Warming myth. So you setup a Straw Man argument yourself.
Tell me, do you have to work hard at behaving like a cretinous coprocephalic, Harry, or does it just come naturally?
To call your hostess “stupid” for calling you on your fallacious argument is not only B*@@$y” Bad Manners,, it demonstrates a huge mental vacancy, a positive vacuum of intellect and it’s a pathetic example of the ad hominem fallacy.
You are her guest here and she can banish you if she so chooses.
If your mother taught you any manners at all, Harry, then An Apology to Jo is in order.
However, I’m not going to hold my breath, because I’ve seen a lot of your sort of behaviour amongst those whom we call “immature” and “spoilt children.” The behaviour you have evinced is true to type as that of the lackwitted who resort to ad hominem, as you have, at least three times by my count, throughout this post alone, instead of maintaining reasonable discussion.
[Harry’s comments aren’t worth your effort but I’ll be more than happy to approve this. :-)] AZ
53
sophocles.
I guess you and AndyG55 are related.
(I guess you couldn’t answer his comment about your fallacies) CYS
26
Thank you for answering my question, Harry.
You don’t have to work hard at it, at all: it’s all natural, and entirely your birthright, your greatest ability.
01
Harry has no mother.
01
“many of the readers of this blog are not stupid, and can judge for themselves”
yes twotter.. and that make you very much the odd one out !
“Defiantly stupid”, is a good description for you and your comments.
43
Well Harry, if you consider that current life on Earth evolved to only exist in a metastable, Goldilocks state that can be perturbed but an insignificant increase in a trace component of the atmosphere, then you are displaying Creationist (denier) thinking. The Earth could not have maintained this metastable state so it must have been created as such.
Logically, believers in CAGW are creationists.
[Analitik, Harry doesn’t need much provocation to lead us down rabbit holes.] ED
11
Ahh, FFS.
01
Analitik.
You have a mind that wanders. And pretty useless attempt to change the subject.
Honestly, all you two-bit insulters. Keep in mind some of the readers of this blog are intelligent. They know if someone posts something stupid or insulting like calling climate scientists “creationists”, the insulter is in turn going to be insulted themselves. Look at that AndyG55 account, insult after insult after insult – boring. But the end result is no one gets any closer to the truth.
00
Those sensitive computer climate models could be tested 1250metres below sea level,the models would work about as well as they work in the atmosphere.
72
I notice the genuflection to PC: ‘Records of Zealandia’s history…will provide a sensitive test for computer models used to predict future changes in climate’. Predict? OK…right.
81
So it was the climate wot dunnit? Pull the other one!
Now explain to me why there is so much ocean in the Pacific and so much land in Asia/Europe. Methinks the planet got hit by something big less than 200 million years ago. A small moon? Or a big asteroid?
42
Where was this Zealandia?
I could not recognize the location on the map.
41
Present day NZ sort of in the middle of so-called Zealandia.
61
Loss of an island? Smacks of carelessness, seems to me.
Can’t have CC without fear and guilt.
112
You are a harsh serf. To lose one island is a misfortune. To lose more than one island…that would smack of carelessness.
On a serious note…
I would caution against putting emphasis on remote geological change. The climatariat is happy to have us forget that Bass Strait was walkable less than eleven thousand years ago. And a bit more than a mere eight thousand years ago this happened:
http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/w4937/Readings/Weninger_2008.pdf
In short, radical climate change causing radical geological change was going on when people were settling in the first towns. The notion that this should somehow stop and that we have a right to a “stable” climate just a few millennia on is fanciful in the extreme.
But I suppose we are dealing with people who are fanciful in the extreme. Their science comes from the likes of Cox, Nye and deGrasse Tyson and their opinions from the pages of the Guardian or the nightly horror which is ABC television.
141
It was apparently attached to eastern Australia at Byron Bay and Barnaby’s ancestors migrated here just so he could become Deputy PM for a few weeks.
21
Peter C asks:
Most of the Tasman Sea.
20
Oh my cod! First we split from Mother Gondwanaland, then we caused the seas to rise (80 million years ago give-or-take an epoch or two) and now in 2017 we’re causing snow blizzards and freezing temperatures in Spring (October southern hemisphere):
http://www.metservice.com/mountain/tongariro-national-park North Island snow to 1,100 metres
http://www.metservice.com/mountain/southern-lakes South Island snow to 1,200 metres
Admittedly all this ‘weather’ is being exported from the West Island / Australia so it’s not necessarily all our fault here in NZ.
On a side note, as a kid growing up, some of my favourite books were my dad’s atlases: I’d spend hours leafing through pages of foreign lands, countries, mountain ranges, oceans, intrigued that all the continents started with ‘A’: Antarctica, Australia, Asia, Africa, America South and North, with Europe being the odd one out. Now we have Aotearoa (the Maori name for NZ) as the missing 8th continent – Zealandia. Kapai!
113
‘ …exported from the West Island / Australia …’
**chuckle**
Its my melancholy duty to inform you that the high pressure belt is mucking up, causing weird weather in the land of Oz.
42
Only three times have I seen snow falling. All we’re in October.
12
Never mind. It’s still sea bed.
Now, I wonder whether Maori will be suing the Crown for this in their unending ritualistic drama over the foreshore and seabed claims?
21
What a stupid comment
33
From you Gee Aye, a sublime accolade.
40
That action must be oppressing you
21
Given that the Maori do not (yet) have a myth/legend about Zealandia, a ‘land claim’ is not yet likely. But when they (Maori) hear that the scientists drilled six deep holes in Zealandia, then they will surely see that it isn’t going to come back to the surface anytime soon. That may spark a lawsuit. Vandalism, and other charges. We will have to watch out for extended fishing rights and quota claims.
The existing legend is about the demi-god Maui `fishing’ up the North Island using his grandmother’s jawbone as the hook.
I was in primary school when first taught this, and I got myself into really deep trouble by asking, in all innocence—I was a keen little fisherman back then—if he (Maui) used the rest of his grandmother as bait.
Be warned people: do NOT do as I did!
I did get a small gain out of it: I had some new words to look up: ‘irreverant,’ vilipendent, rapscallion,’ and `runagate.’ I already knew ‘disrespectful, ‘discourteous,’ ‘malefactor,’ and ‘caitiff.’ I gathered from this bawling out that I had quite offended the tale-teller. It was a warm sunny day outside to which I was banished, so I didn’t mind. I was able to hide in the school library for the rest of that class where I looked up those new words.
el gordo said:
We know that. Most of the weather NZ gets has already been filtered, strained and tasted by the south coast australians. And we have a pattern of regular low pressure areas spinning up in the western Tasman sea to the east of Victoria and Tasmania which creates “wash, rinse and repeat” weather here. Especially the repeat! That’s what we have had all winter and now into the spring. Last time I saw this pattern was just after the 97/98 el nino, so it’s no big surprise. Just tedious. Seems to be part of La Nina but I have no proof of that.
10
Oh lord you took it seriously
20
Gee Aye alleges
I was agreeing with Manfred, my neighbour, about the possibility/probability of claims from a certain polity in NZ. In NZ, any new geological discovery almost inevitably sparks a claim of some sort from this certain polity. It’s either a standing joke or a standing tragedy, depending on which polity you identify with.
Don’t worry Gee Aye, I seldom take you seriously. 😉
50
Me neither but when we do?
Serious is what serious does.
00
Manfred, don’t knock foreshore rights. They might be thinking long term to the next glaciation that seems to be imminent.
Just imagine how much new land they would own and control when the ice piles up over New York and brings the ocean down 120 metres or so.
Here where I live in Australia the land covered and lost to the seas during the last melt extended about 19 km out from the present shore line.
Think of the future.
KK
10
Actually KK, it’s vastly more short sighted than that: it’s all about “the food from the sea” and the rights to pick, pillage and plunder said food. [Kai (food) Moana (the sea).]
20
News just to hand, it appears no one in the SA government remembered to add the 100 day or its free clause in the Musk contract. I am sure Musk will abide by his pledge regardless being an upstanding member of the international community and all
131
I thought the 100th day was to arrive before Christmas. But I never expected Jay to keep his end of the contract in order, so Elon should be safe. Might still be embarrassing, though!
51
Sign at the SA border:
“Fire sale, everything must go….!”
“One premier and cabinet, heavily soiled, high milage but can only turn left due to significant left leaning.
Free to a good home, responds well to hard labour, no warranty….”
121
Are you selling with or without brain?
20
You had to ask?
00
The Cairns hinterland in Queensland is going to be saturated with a huge number of wind turbines that landed on a ship in cairns today. When they are assembled and installed Cairns wont be as nice as it is now (to put it mildly).
111
That would be up Mareeba way, situated on private land near Mount Emerald, mooted to supply a third of North Queensland’s energy needs.
They are a blight on the landscape and not conservational, but you have to hand it to the green blob with their ‘harvesting the winds’ meme. Its a winner.
71
So, when we get one of those stronger, larger and longer super-cyclones that the CSIRO has been promising us, I wonder how the windmills will go?
I hope they’re well bolted down.
81
Herewith Sceptical Sam, from Denmark,
wind-mill-capital of the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcwBSzW4t64
51
Obviously a software problem….
31
Oh. with all these extra wind turbines they are putting in on the quiet, there won’t be any super cyclones. So the turbines will be okay but oh no!….huge numbers of wind farms = no carbon dioxide = no climate change = no cyclones = no carbon dioxide = no plant food = no Daintree Forest! Oh dear, a double hit for Cairns! Oh Al, what went wrong!
91
Re Greg in NZ
Can I claim “West Island” is an example of “squishy words” so this isn’t O/T?
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2017/09/squishy-words-that-create-problems-for-using-results-of-scientific-studies.html
21
Re: Another Ian
I “virtually certainly” spent a week in Melbourne, Australia this time last year for my “very likely” niece’s “likely” 30th birthday. “About as likely as not” the sun was shining upon the “unlikely” streets paved with gold as the “very unlikely” smiling pedestrians squished and squeezed their “exceptionally unlikely” happy way to work. “Most” of the above is true.
Just to make sure my reconstructed (and novel) model of memory had the authority of academic consensus, I conducted a scientific experiment as per the IPCC rule book: I yelled across the fence to my neighbour, “What’s the name of the island to our west?” “Horse-trailer” came the reply. I therefore concluded that between the two of us, our majority of opinion in the unity of our harmonious agreement concurred that antipodean trans-Tasman humour was undeniably – with 97% confidence – settled satire.
If I’m awarded a grant to develop this hypothesis further, I’m more than happy to split it 50/50 with you Ian.
51
Greg
An A+ for bs! Your grant should be a walk in.
32
Is this why the Kiwis beat us at Rugby?
21
Nah, the Wobbolies just can’t play rugby.
Just like Kiwis can’t play League.
I do enjoy a good roolz game, though.
10
The force that made landmasses shift,
And continents worldwide to drift,
Folding land up and down,
Or Zealandia drown,
Could spread from an ocean-floor rift.
141
Damn genius.
71
So, sea levels ARE rising. I blame the Haka.
71
How many sheep were drowned? How many lives were lost? It is shocking that the prehistoric New Zealanders discovered the diesel engine and doomed their country. An environmental tragedy.
For hundreds of thousands of years it was uninhabited, a desolate land. No sheep. No Scotsmen. No red heads and old cars. No Pinot Noir nor Sauvignon Blanc. Giant Wetas ruled the land. Then seven hundred year ago the Maoris arrived and saved the blessed land, a precious tiny land without coal or gas or fossil fuel. We thank God for Hydro. And cows. And sheep. And Green energy, milk and cheese and sheep. Too bad about the Wetas.
71
No, the wetas are doing okay. It was too bad about the moa, though.
10
BoM needs help predicting the weather two days in advance.
48 hours ago, BoM was still forecasting 37C for Brisbane today (Thurs 28 Sept 2017).
then they walked it back 24 hours ago, as they often do with Hot forecasts, predicting it would be 35C.
well, it was nothing of the sort. if i’m reading it correctly, it was 30.3 Max.
BoM: Brisbane
Thursday 28 Sept 2017: Max 30.3 at 3pm
http://www.bom.gov.au/places/qld/brisbane/observations/brisbane/
Ipswich is NOT Brisbane, ABC:
28 Sept: ABC: Brisbane weather: September records broken as Ipswich swelters above 40 degrees
September temperature records were broken in south-east Queensland as the mercury soared above 40 degrees Celsius in parts of the region.
Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Steve Hadley said new records were set west of Brisbane when it reached 40.1 degrees in Ipswich, as well as 39.5 in Gatton and 39.5 in Beaudesert.
“We usually see this kind of heat a little later in the year and perhaps through January sometimes,” Mr Hadley told ABC Radio Brisbane.
In the Brisbane CBD, temperatures were lower than forecast due to northerly winds bringing cooler air from the sea, he said.
The mercury reached 30.8 degrees in the CBD, while on the Gold Coast Seaway the maximum temperature was 28.1 degrees…
Griffith University associate professor Jason Byrne said more paving and fewer trees made housing estates hotter than other areas.
“These are places like Archerfield for example, Jindalee, Bowen Hills or even the Brisbane CBD, [were] significantly hotter than surrounding areas,” Associate Professor Byrne said.
“Ipswich, for example, is a hot suburb and because of the new kinds of developments that are occurring with smaller lots, less area for garden spaces and fewer street trees it tends to be significantly hotter.
“It’s important when developing suburbs quickly that planning authorities take account of the need to protect existing vegetation.”
***Energex support manager Keiron Walsh said the local power grid was not challenged by the heat on Thursday.
“The network demand today is significantly lower than the high temperatures we experienced in January earlier this year,” he said.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-28/brisbane-weather-records-broken-as-mercury-reaches-40-ipswich/8998242
42
ABC two days ago:
26 Sept: ABC: BOM warns record-breaking temperatures set for Queensland this week
By Talissa Siganto
Brisbane is expected to reach the high 20s on Tuesday and Wednesday but is due to peak at ***37 degrees Celsius on Thursday — almost two degrees hotter than its highest-recorded September day…
Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Rick Threlfall said the conditions were uncommon for this time of year.
He said the summer-like weather was due to the lack of rain…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-26/queensland-temperature-records-to-tumble-in-heatwave/8986454
ABC reporting faulty BoM Brisbane forecasts the previous week:
20 Sept: ABC: Brisbane weather: City and Ipswich set to sizzle through scorcher weekend
By Meghna Bali
boxed forecasts – Brisbane 23-25 Sept 2017
Saturday 32C Max
Sunday 34C Max
Monday 35C Max
actual Max temps from BoM, if I’m reading them properly:
Saturday 28.5C
Sunday 28.9C
Monday 29.0C
I’m only noticing this because it’s Brisbane. is BoM making wild predictions all over the country, leaving the impression with the public that manmade global warming is happening all over Australia?
a neighbour even rushed out to get another fan because of today’s 37C prediction, even tho I warned you couldn’t believe a word BoM says.
I have remarked way back about BoM predicting extreme hot temps 8-10 days out, then walking them back as the dates get closer.
how about ABC do a Four Corners investigation of BoM? lol.
there’s so much material to work with, and people to contribute, like Marohasy, Pigeon, Nova, etc.
63
A strong geomagnetic storm may accelerate the volcanic eruption in Bali. Observations indicate an increase in lava levels in volcanoes during geomagnetic storms. For example, in the Kilauea volcano.
https://www.facebook.com/Sunclimate-719393721599910/
32
Someone above mentioned Atlantis, the last island of which is reputed to have sunk quite abruptly into the depths of the North Atlantic Ocean, “west of the pillars of Hercules”, at about 11,500BP.
This idea is ridiculed by historians for one reason or another, not least of which is the apparent lack of a submerged landmass in that region.
However, there is something called the Azores Plateau, a feature of the ocean bed some 2000 metres down, which sits about where Atlantis may have existed. I’m led to believe that beach sand and the remains of freshwater organisms have been recovered from the plateau area, materials indicating that it must have been at or above sea level at some stage in the past.
As for Zealandia, much of which lies 1250 metres or more below the surface of the South Pacific Ocean, it is situated on the notorious ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’ – an almost continuous join in Earth’s tectonic plates surrounding the Pacific Basin. I presume Zealandia’s submersion most likely came about because of its unfortunate position on a particularly active part of the crust. In fact, modern-day New Zealand’s hot springs and frequent earthquakes stem from the same cause.
But what of the Atlantic Basin?
The Azores Plateau lies at the intersection of three tectonic rifts, which are part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This ridge is a demarcation of an upwelling of magma from within the Earth, pushing the American and European tectonic plates apart. The forces involved are unimaginable!
Iceland is a large island sitting astride this ridge and represents the only significant part of it which is above sea level. But how long it stays above the waves is debatable.
If a formerly-dry South Pacific landmass the size of India can sink to between 1000 and 2000 metres below the sea, why can’t a smaller North Atlantic landmass also sink to 2000 metres below sea level?
Especially since, at 11,500BP, the last glacial period was ending and the weight of countless billions of tonnes of ice was lifting from the North American and Eurasian land masses. Who knows what stresses were set up in the Earth’s crust at that time.
There’s no reason at all to ridicule the possibility that what we know as the island-continent of Atlantis, out in the Atlantic Ocean, might have disappeared during that period.
But why the difference in attitude between Zealandia and Atlantis (the Azores Plateau)? Purely speculation, of course, but might it be something we could call the ‘historical consensus’ which is holding us back from a seminal discovery in the Atlantic, just as the so-called ‘scientific consensus of global warming’ is holding us back from discovering the truth about ‘climate change’?
If an Atlantean civilisation existed prior to the earliest dynasties of Egypt and Mesopotamia, the whole careers of tenured professors of history and archaeology would become largely null and void. Imagine the turmoil and embarrassment!
And the sinking of Atlantis, if indeed partly due to purely natural climatic variations, would be a sobering reminder too that the climate wasn’t stable before the Industrial Revolution at all, and its present mild changes needn’t be due to humans either.
Nope! Best keep laughing at it. We definitely can’t be having any of that!
81
it’s not forecasts or predictions…it’s a revelation:
28 Sept: SBS: AAP: Australia’s weather outlook for coming months revealed
The Bureau of Meteorology has provided a glimpse of what to expect for the warmer months ahead with its summer climate outlook report.
Temperatures are likely to be warmer than average through October to December.
Day and night time temperatures are forecast to be likely warmer than average for most of tropical northern Australia and some parts of southeast Australia…
Hot winter
The outlook comes after Australia experienced one of its hottest winters on record…
VIDEO: 6mins45secs: Naomi Klein talks about Trump and climate change
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2017/09/28/australias-weather-outlook-coming-months-revealed
more from Naomi, who flew to Brighton in England while Trump prepares to fly to Puerto Rico:
26 Sept: RedPepper UK: Naomi Klein: the Corbyn movement is part of a global phenomenon
What radical writer Naomi Klein said in her guest speech to Labour Party conference.
Most days there is simply too much to take in. So I want to start with an example that might seem small against such a vast backdrop. The Caribbean and Southern United States are in the midst of an unprecedented hurricane season: pounded by storm after record-breaking storm. As we meet, Puerto Rico – hit by Irma, then Maria – is without power and could be for months. Its water and communication systems are also severely compromised. Three and half million US citizens on that island are in desperate need of their government’s help.
But just like during Hurricane Katrina, the cavalry is missing in action…
Ours is an age when it is impossible to pry one crisis apart from all the others. They have all merged, reinforcing and deepening each other, like one shambling, multi-headed beast…
I want you to know that what you have done here is reverberating around the world – so many of us are watching your ongoing experiment in this new kind of politics with rapt attention.
And of course what happened here is itself part of a global phenomenon. It’s a wave led by young people who came into adulthood just as the global financial system was collapsing and just as climate disruption was banging down the door…
We have to do more to keep it front of mind that we are in a state of climate emergency, the roots of which are found in the same system of bottomless greed that underlies our economic emergency.
But states of emergency, let’s recall, can be catalysts for deep progressive victories. So let’s draw out the connections between the gig economy – that treats human beings like a raw resource from which to extract wealth and then discard – and the dig economy, in which the extractive companies treats the Earth in precisely the same careless way…
I applaud the clear stand Labour has taken against fracking and for clean energy. Now we need to up our ambition and show exactly how battling climate change is a once-in-a-century chance to build a fairer and more democratic economy.
Because as we rapidly transition off fossil fuels, we cannot replicate the wealth concentration and the injustices of the oil and coal economy, in which hundreds of billions in profits have been privatised and the tremendous risks are socialised…
We can and must design a system in which the polluters pay a very large share of the cost of transitioning off fossil fuels. And where we keep green energy in public and community hands. That way revenues stay in your communities, to pay for childcare and firefighters and other crucial services. And it’s the only way to make sure that the green jobs that are created are union jobs that pay a living wage.
The motto needs to be: leave the oil and gas in the ground, but leave no worker behind…
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/naomi-klein-the-corbyn-movement-is-part-of-a-global-phenomenon/
too much Naomi!
27 Sept: Guardian: Naomi Klein: Trump’s like the fatberg – horrible, noxious, hard to dislodge
Author tells Labour conference Trump is political equivalent of fatberg
Huge mass of fat and sanitary products was recently found in London sewers
by Martin Pengelly and agencies
In remarks greeted by laughter and applause, Klein said: “It’s tough to know exactly how to adequately sum [Trump] up. So let me try a local example.
“You know that horrible thing currently clogging up London’s sewers – I believe you call it the fatberg – well, Trump is the political equivalent of that…
UGLY.
42
Our local weather station (established 1991) had its hottest July on record, or so our local paper said, with maximum temps 1.6 degrees above the long term average.
It also registered its coldest July on record, with minimum temps 3.6 degrees below the long term average, I seem to be the only one reporting that.
That minimum figure was only 0.1 of a degree above the phenomenal July 1970, when the weather station was in town. A much smaller town, I add. I expect that this year’s figures will become less extreme when the one second reading issue is sorted out.
51
She utterly disgusts me with her absolute tripe.
32
extreme cold is CAGW:
28 Sept: InsideClimateNews: Ice Loss and the Polar Vortex: How a Warming Arctic Fuels Cold Snaps
The loss of sea ice may be weakening the polar vortex, allowing cold blasts to dip south from the Arctic, across North America, Europe and Russia, a new study says.
By Bob Berwyn
When winter sets in, “polar vortex” becomes one of the most dreaded phrases in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s enough to send shivers even before the first blast of bitter cold arrives.
New research shows that some northern regions have been getting hit with these extreme cold spells more frequently over the past four decades, even as the planet as a whole has warmed. While it may seem counterintuitive, the scientists believe these bitter cold snaps are connected to the warming of the Arctic and the effects that that warming is having on the winds of the stratospheric polar vortex, high above the Earth’s surface.
Here’s what scientists involved in the research think is happening…
“The shift toward more persistent weaker states of the polar vortex lets Arctic air spill out and threaten Russia and Europe with extreme cold,” said the study’s lead author, Marlene Kretschmer, a climate scientist with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “The trend can explain most of the cooling of Eurasian winters since 1990.”…
Primed for Longer Stretches of Extreme Cold
The research, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, helps explain one way that rapid and intense Arctic warming affects climate extremes in the populated mid-latitudes of the Northern hemisphere.
Kretschmer and her colleagues focused on the region from Scandinavia through Siberia, where winter snow cover has increased and average winter temperatures have dropped since 1990. Co-author Judah Cohen, a climate researcher at MIT, said the results also provide new clues about how the Arctic affects cold extremes in the U.S…
Step Toward More Accurate Forecasts
Along with helping explain how melting sea ice affects the atmosphere, the new study is a step toward more accurate seasonal forecasts that can help prepare communities for extreme conditions, Cohen said…READ ON
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27092017/polar-vortex-cold-snap-arctic-ice-loss-global-warming-climate-change
22
The deepest oceans are about 35,000 feet. Who knows what changes take place on the floor? Yet we have the ‘warmers’ whining about alleged millimetre changes supposedly due to human produced CO2.
Laughable.
52
Well, they’ve found one lost continent. I wonder: What did they find by the wayside while looking for MH370?
42
Probably part of Lemuria.
30
Global sea level rise is something more like 3.4mm per year, not 1mm.
https://climate.nasa.gov/
Even if it does not accelerate (which is probably will), this means around 285mm rise (or around 11 inches in the old money) by the end of this century.
45
Harry Twinotter: My comment was intended as a reference to the range within which changes are being reported – mm amounts rather than cms, for example. Perhaps I should have put it differently.
31
I was not aware of your comment when I posted my comment.
43
Around New Zealand less dramatic.
“Available tide gauge data showed rising trends in all long-term monitored sites over approximately 100 years, between 1900 and 2013.
The Wellington tide gauge showed the most marked trend: + 2.14 ± 0.16 mm/year. Other sites with less marked changes were:
Auckland + 1.55 ± 0.08 mm/year
Dunedin + 1.36 ± 0.08 mm/year
Lyttelton + 1.98 ± 0.09 mm/year
New Plymouth + 1.31 ± 0.28 mm/year.”
42
John of Cloverdale:
-you should also check the pa (per annum) rise over the last 50 years, and again over the last 25 years. I found it was less over each interval: about 0.98 mm pa over the last 50 years and 0.95 mm pa over the last 25 years. I am interested in what you will find. (see http://www.psmsl.org).
Wellington’s sea level bounces around because of tectonic crustal movement there. They’ve been having earth quakes there over the last few years. Lyttleton has had earthquakes over the last five years. Note: earthquakes, not an earthquake.
For a whole-of-NZ, you could average Dunedin’s and Auckland’s tide gauges. These are both very stable.
Last time I checked, which was only two years ago when this little bit of hysteria and this little bit of a hysteric, last broke out, it was 0.95 – 0.98 mm per annum averaged between those two gauges.
So, Mr Twinotter, which NASA was doing the measuring? JPL? or GISS?
What sea was NASA measuring? The Bermuda Triangle? Or the slosh in Lake Superior? The sea level around Sarawak, where the westerlies push it up?
If it’s not happening around NZ’s coastline, then it can’t be Global.
And where is this “acceleration” you keep bleating about going to come from?
Mars? The Kuiper Belt?
Antarctica is adding to its ice cap, so is Greenland.
The NZ tide qauges have shown this as a slow deceleration, or negative acceleration over this century so far.
Do try and get it right.
54
I got these measurements from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level Rise
(http://www.psmsl.org)
For Auckland NZ: (Tide Gauge).
150: AUCKLAND II
1900 to 2015 (= 115 years)
Trend: +1.29 ± 0.17 mm/yr
(or +1.12mm/yr min to 1.46mm/yr max)
Let’s look a little closer. Maybe the rate of rise is slowing. It was when I last looked a few years ago.
150: AUCKLAND II
1950 to 2015
Trend: +0.60 ± 0.44 mm/yr
Well. That’s a smaller rate of rise than I got those few years ago! But then, the website does say they have changed their method of calculation.
I hope you’re paying attention Mr. Twinotter. This is all for your benefit.
You are alleging NASA claims c. 3.4mm pa. for Global Sea Level Rise.
That is a nonsense. The Auckland tide gauge says, from 1950 – 2015, which is a mere 65 years, sea level rise is a mere 0.60 +/- 0.44mm per year. That’s a low of 0.16 mm to a maximum of 1.04 mm with 0.60mm as the mean, millimetres rise per year.
This is the rise around New Zealand so the Global rise can’t be 3.4 mm per year.
Rubbish, Mr Twinotter, Rubbish.
64
sophocles.
What a silly post, unless you intentionally make a fool of yourself. In that case you succeeded.
(Did you notice he used the official sea level data for the area?) CTS
55
Poor twotter, DENYING reality yet again.
FACTS about New Zealand tide gauges on a topic of New Zealand sea levels..
and you think its sophocles making a fool of himself?
look in a mirror, twotter, and see what a fool really looks like.
64
“(Did you notice he used the official sea level data for the area?) CTS”
Well I certainly hope you know what an average is. And the difference between global and local.
13
The topic is about New Zealand sea levels , twotter.
The average of all tide gauge data is around 1.5 – 1.8mm/year
Does the fudged 3mm/year scare you twotter?
Really.. try not to PANIC !!
[edit]ED
32
“ll” = all
23
Tide gauges measure sea level rise rise at the coast, and are not global. For example the tide gauges at Florida and other locations on the east coast of the US are experiencing sea level rise faster than the average global sea level rise, even after taking into account land subsidence.
44
“ When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
1 Corinthians 13:11, King James Version.
It’s beyond time you grew up, Harry. You’ll notice I’m no longer addressing you as an adult. You’ve proven otherwise.
To be blunt, Harry, you’ve convicted yourself out of your own mouth. First, you claim it is global , and now you’re arguing about local not being global. This, Harry, is a fact: when local measurements differ from Global, then it can’t be GLOBAL..
No amount of special pleading, no amount of wriggling, no amount of claiming otherwise will change that, Harry.
You know Harry, you’re the only person I’ve ever encountered who has tried to dig a hole in the ocean with his mouth. You eat an elephant one mouthful at a time, Harry, and the gobal ocean is a bi-i-i-i-i-ig ‘elephant,’ so you have a lot of mouthfuls to go.
33
sophocles.
Are you and AndyG55 related?
22
Harry asked:
Not that I know of.
I respect his knowledge and I enjoy his humour.
Why do you ask?
53
Both intelligent..
You might catch up in 20-50 years !! or not.
23
Probably.
Yes probably, almost certainly, a very good likelihood and all that seance speak.
Inches is not money, it’s a measure of length.
Real sceance people know that we now measured in millimetres.
Real seance people also know that sea level rise has been in the order of 1mm per annum for quite a while now and the next change will see a reduction in sea levels.
You may not be aware Harriette, that sea levels have fallen 1200 mm in the last 2,000 years.
Maybe it was the Romans who caused that sea level drop.
KK
44
KinkyKeith.
I read your respond again to be sure it really was as stupid as I first thought. Yep.
(You said this several times,without backing it up.You keep at it, you get put in the mod bin again,or just get snipped) CTS
45
Denial of reality, hey twotter.
2000 or so years ago, the sea level was a metre or so higher.
Get over it !!
55
Response.
20
CTS.
“You said this several times,without backing it up.You keep at it, you get put in the mod bin again,or just get snipped) CTS”
Ohhhh I am so scared! Pleeeaaase don’t put me in the mod bin again, nooooooooo.
Do you really think I give a flying fig about what any adm of a crackpot conspiracy blog does?
01
Only on “adjusted” data
Tide gauges give around 1.5 -1.8 mm/year
But even the fabricated 3mm/year.. Has it got you in a MANIC PANIC, twotter?
44
Care to provide details from long-term gauges in Australia to backup your claim Harry? Don’t bother with one of the most reliable, the Fremantle guage, which is easy to check online, and which shows 1.3mm/year. And what about the Tasmanian tide mark from the Convict era, which still seems to be showing the same tide levels today? While I agree that in general, the increase is greater than 1mm/year, it’s nowhere near the 3.4mm/year you gave provided.
54
Graeme4.
I clearly said global sea level rise in my post, not coastal from a single gauge like Fremantle.
Surely you don’t think sea level is going to rise at precisely the same rate at all locations? Clearly it does not, there are many factors that change the rates depending on where the measurement is taken.
33
3mm/year is only on “adjusted” data from alarmist hacks..
that is the best they can manage with all their “adjustments”.
Tide gauges give around 1.5 – 1.8 mm/year, you know, at places it is actually physically measured.
But even the fabricated 3mm/year.. Has it got you in a MANIC PANIC, twotter?
44
To see just how much sea levels have been “adjusted” by the Colorado climate scammers, one only has to compare it to prior versions of their own data
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/56979-1.gif
54
Graeme4:
You’ll have to excuse young Master Twinotter. He hasn’t grown up yet and still thinks that global and local measurements are two different things and can, therefore, be different. He lives on the Twinotter planet, where the laws of physics change at his whim, where local tide gauges can read different rates of change from each other and the rest of the globe, because they aren’t global tide gauges, and this does not change global sea level rates of change, just local ones.
We are also waiting for young Master Twinotter to enlighten us all on these many magical factors
and what feat of statistical sleight of hand can combine all these small local rates into a global rate of change five, nearly six times higher than any local rate.
I’m betting on a computer model. GISS’s computer model, at that, because it’s the only one which goes for a swim every time someone uses the upstairs bathroom.
23
sophocles.
It looks like I have a blog stalker, and a babbling fool at that. This is such a classy blog.
23
Yes, you are definitely a babbling fool, twotter.
You have zero class, and zero science.
33
Let’s have a reality check here. These supposed sea level rises amount to zilch. They haven’t made a scrap of difference to anybody. A slight increase may be seen at some locations, a decrease at others, some might stay much the same. Changes which are supposedly in millimetres.
So what?
Nearly thirty years have elapsed since the IPCC was formed, with all of its ‘maybes’, ‘possibles’ ‘likelys’ and other vague notions of what may and may not happen – look at their 2007 book about the supposed scientific bases behind ‘climate change’ and count the ‘maybes’ and similar vague speculations in that tome.
The sea level changes we’re talking about amount to nothing in the real world.
Possible causes?
Cesare Emiliani in ‘The Ocean Lithosphere’ (1981) lists ten different possible mechanisms which may cause sea level change – either increasing or decreasing. These are discussed in detail in Nils-Axel Morner’s booklet on sea levels and the alleged dangerous man-made global warming. His publication’s entitled ‘The Greatest Lie Ever Told’. It’s well worth buying. He goes into detail regarding Al Gore’s ‘poster child’, the Maldives, pointing out that the sea level there has been subject to oscillations – falling for example by 20-30cm in the 1970s. Certainly, the Maldives show no sign of sinking below the waves.
Morner argues that we are facing, not dangerous man-made global warming, but “the greatest lie ever told”.
That says it all.
I agree entirely.
32
We are certainly scared by the constant 0.65mm/year* here on the NSW coast 😉
*as measured at Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour.
54
Carbon500.
“So what?”
Your opinion maybe. Global sea level rise is evidence of global warming. It is very difficult (probably impossible) to come up with any other plausible explanation.
(Look up the NULL Hypothesis) CTS
23
And sea level was rising LONG before CO2 started to climb to its current beneficial level.
No acceleration, shows ZERO effect from increased atmospheric CO2.
Just a continued highly beneficial slight warming out of the LIA, coldest period in 10,000 years.
Now eat your other sock, twotter.
33
CTS.
“(Look up the NULL Hypothesis) CTS”
Care to explain? Or are you just trying to hijack the thread?
This will be fun…
01
Well after centuries of searching people have yet to definitely nail down the location of Plato’s Atlantis (fictional or real). But Geologists have nailed the location of a continent lost to the seas 50+ million years ago.
10