Prof Andy Pitman admits droughts are not worse and not linked to climate change

Drought Panic Over

h/t to Jim Sternhill, Frank Brus, via Jim Simpson.

Droughts, Australia, Climate Council.

Professor Andy Pitman, UNSW

In June Professor Andy Pitman quietly dropped a bomb:

“…as far as the climate scientists know there is no link between climate change and drought.”

“…there is no reason a priori why climate change should made the landscape more arid.

He’s admitting there’s never been a scientific basis for the endless climate drought scares? He went on to say that in Australia, droughts are not increasing, and there’s no drying trend in one hundred years of data. He’s also admitting the models can’t predict extremes in rain either. Where are the press releases?

It’s great to hear him speaking like a skeptical scientist, with candor and care, but 52% of Australians (including many of our politicians) think “climate change” is already causing more frequent droughts. So half the country is not only convinced droughts are increasing, but they think climate change is causing an effect that isn’t happening. And the world is spending $330b a year on windmills and solar panels in the hope of stopping droughts, among other things.

Professor Andy Pitman, UNSW

There’s no link? Has Andy Pitman told the Climate Council?

Pitman follows this with: “this may not be what you read in newspapers…” No, Sir. And the 64 billion dollar question (which isn’t asked) is —  why not? And what are you doing about that?

Does Andy Pitman keep trying to tell journalists the full and accurate story and they won’t print it? (Well, we know what that’s like.) Given his roles as Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, and as a Lead Author for the IPCC, does it bother him when he sees his specialty misreported over and over again? Since the taxpayer funds him, isn’t there an obligation to correct the record?; to flick an email to the ABC journalists who keep saying climate change is linked to drought, or drop a five minute phone call to Peter Hannam of the Sydney Morning Herald who is still getting it wrong? He may even want to call his own researcher at the centre where he is a director. Andrew King advised Hannam on that last link which is filled with “human fingerprints” of “drought” and emerging “greenhouse signals”. The article even says — completely incorrectly —“Australia is among the regions of the world where the drying trend is clearest”.

The SEI forum: Adapting Climate Science for Business

Wednesday 19 June, 2019, Sydney Environment Institute (SEI), University of Sydney.

At 1:11:20

Professor Andy Pitman:

“…this may not be what you expect to hear. but as far as the climate scientists know there is no link between climate change and drought.

That may not be what you read in the newspapers and sometimes hear commented, but there is no reason a priori why climate change should made the landscape more arid.

If you look at the Bureau of Meteorology data over the whole of the last one hundred years there’s no trend in data. There is no drying trend.  There’s been a trend in the last twenty years, but there’s been no trend in the last hundred years, and that’s an expression on how variable Australian rainfall climate is.

There are in some regions but not in other regions.

So the fundamental problem we have is that we don’t understand what causes droughts.

Much more interesting, We don’t know what stops a drought. We know it’s rain, but we don’t know what lines up to create drought breaking rains.”

Bookmark this page. I’ll be referring back to these quotes.

Just trying to help Prof Andy Pitman get his message out — the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

As I’ve been saying, the Federation drought was worse than anything modern. The worst droughts in Australia were 1,000 to 2,000 years ago and there’s no trend in Australian droughts. And who could forget the recent study by Ashcroft showing that 178 years of Australian rain has nothing to do with CO2?

UPDATE: Figure this: Andy Pitman says “we don’t understand what causes droughts” but “the indirect link is clear”!

 

Professor Andy Pitman: UNSW

Andy is a climate modeler with a major focus on terrestrial processes in global and regional climate models. He has explored the global and regional impacts of land cover change and currently co-leads the Land use change: identification of robust impacts project. He has interests in climate extremes and how these are likely to change in the future. His leadership and research experience is extensive nationally and internationally. Between 2004 and 2010 he convened the ARC Research Network for Earth System. Since 2011 he has been the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science. This national centre involves five Universities, major Australian research agencies and many international groups. Andy is a member of the Academy of Science’s National Committee for Earth System Science and the NSW Minister for the Environment’s Science Advisory Committee. He is closely affiliated with the World Climate Research Program (WCRP). He was chair of the WCRP’s Land Committee for the Global Land Atmosphere System Study from 2006 to 2008, and is now on its Science Steering Committee.

 

9.3 out of 10 based on 121 ratings

184 comments to Prof Andy Pitman admits droughts are not worse and not linked to climate change

  • #
    Lionell Griffith

    Obviously, all the expenditure and effort put to reversing climate change is working. There is no man made climate change today. Also obviously, the expenditure and effort must be continued so as to keep climate change from happening.

    On the same line of thinking, if you spill salt, toss a pinch of salt over your right shoulder. Avoid crossing the path of a black cat and don’t step on a crack in a sidewalk. Avoid getting or giving bad luck by doing these things.

    The second set of actions are meaningless and mostly harmless but the first set of actions are deadly and almost only harmfully.

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    • #
      Another Ian

      Lionell

      You left out not walking under ladders

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      • #
        Lionell Griffith

        That one almost makes sense because people on ladders tend to drop things – heavy things. Best not to be under a ladder when they do.

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    • #

      I wonder how many are now beginning to get a bit worried about the lack of catastrophic climate change as the writing on the wall starts to become obvious? This may well be a tactical move as a first step to distance themselves from the catastrophians and the eventual metaphoric firing line.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        Meanwhile….good news for oil production and energy self sufficiency in Oz:

        https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-12/multi-billion-dollar-oil-project-using-fracking-west-kimberley/11389046

        “A network of oil wells that involve fracking in the Great Sandy Desert, connected by pipelines to new and existing ports, may become Australia’s biggest oil producing project.

        “Documents on the website of privately owned Theia Energy, some of which have since been removed, say they have found as much as 57 billion barrels of oil in the desert location 150 kilometres south-east of Broome.

        “The oil find is described as “unconventional” meaning it is locked in dense rock that will need hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to allow the oil to flow to the surface.

        “Theia Energy, a small and privately owned Perth-based company, was created in 2018 when Finder Exploration split into Finder Energy for its offshore projects and Theia Energy for its onshore Great Sandy Desert Project.
        Theia Energy is in negotiations with the Karajarri traditional owners of the area to gain permission to confirm commercial flow rates of oil by fracking rock over a kilometre underground.

        “Leading the negotiations on behalf of traditional owners is Karajarri Traditional Lands Association chairman Thomas King.

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        • #

          Don’t worry, some bunch of Green numb-nuts led by Bob Brown will drive their caravans of doom into the desert to vent their displeasure.

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        • #
          Sambar

          O.S they will probably do what the do with Australian produced gas. Sell it off shore and then buy it back as refined products for the locals. At world parity pricing of course, don’t let the locals share in the bounty of their own land . Make em pay.. pay …pay

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        • #
          Alan

          I wouldn’t get too excited about this typical ABC tripe with no understanding of what a “resource” in the petroleum industry actually means. As of this time last year there were no confirmed ie drilled shale gas/oil producing intersections in that part of the basin and have not seen any reports of drilling since. The noddy map/diagram with Chinese text on it, which has now mysteriously disappeared is a dead give-away of a junior spruiking a whole lot of ifs and maybes.

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        • #
          Alan

          Anyone interested in a little bit of reality with attached hype see presentation here

          00

      • #
        sophocles

        bemused @ #1.2 wrote:

        I wonder how many are now beginning to get a bit worried about the lack of catastrophic climate change as the writing on the wall starts to become obvious?

        It will come. At the moment they’re all still looking around to see if they can spot the cause of the Klimate Krisis. It’s going to be interesting listening to them when the cooling really bites (over the next few years — 2019 is now 75% over; it’s end is in sight):
        The models didn’t predict this! and Cooling is what you get when it warms. and similar hilariously silly things.

        So our “woke” Professor is saying the models are wrong, Wrong WRONG! All this Warming, warming the sea, causing gobs’n gobs of evaporation, adding water vapour to the atmosphere which is supposed to increase droughts because it can’t come back down — the warm atmosphere prevents it from re-condensing or some pure balderdash like that — and floods and things … is all unconnected and with no trend.

        I’ve never yet worked out how the models (or the modelers) can put droughts together with floods and precipitation together with drying out. But we do know that 30 years of models has only produced 30 years of pure error — constantly, continuously and all the time and kept a number of … idiots in paying “jobs” if creating propaganda can be called a job.

        That’s most likely because the IPCC has written the Sun and it’s effects out of their mandate and out of the scope of their “investigation.” Man-made anything is so weak it’s continuously and easily swamped by Gaiea and Helios. We now know tropical cyclones of all types (hurricanes, typhoons etc) are caused/created by the Solar Wind. Variations in Australia and Indonesia’s monsoon seasonal variability appear to be driven by solar activity (Heredia and Elias 2016). Ben Davidson notes this confirmed previous findings that grand solar minima drive more extreme rainfall across the entire region. (Steinke et al 2014)

        He also notes that Antarctic region precipitation appears to be driven by solar activity, GCR and large oscillations like the ENSO and PDO which are also modulated by solar activity. (Mayewski et al 2017)
        He says “there are numerous reports of mega-drought and famines worldwide during the last solar minimum [aka: The Little Ice Age] including million-death famines in India, Africa, Eastern Asia and Europe.

        So much for the LIA not being a global phenomenon. Idiots. So why are we continuing to allow/permit money to be wasted on the Useless Climate Models and their High Priests? We can see where research funding should be being spent and it’s not there.

        1. Heredia & Elias: Precipitation over two Southern Hemisphere locations: Longterm variation linked to natural and anthropogenic forcings. Advances in Space Research.[2016]

        2. Steinke et al: Mid- to Late-Holocene Australian-Indonesian summer monsoon variability. Quaternary Science Reviews [2014]

        3. Mayewski et al: Ice Core and Climate Reanalysis Analogs to Predict Antarctic and Southern Hemisphere Climate Changes. Quaternary Science Reviews.[2017]

        GCR = Galactic Cosmic Rays.
        PDO = Pacific Decadal Oscillation
        ENSO = El Nino Southern Oscillation – a well-known solar driven oscillation

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    • #
      Geoff

      Lionell, mate, you need to be paid by the UN, the state and Federal governments if you toss a pinch of salt over your right shoulder, avoid crossing the path of a black cat and don’t step on a crack in a sidewalk. Otherwise you may be tempted to do something completely useless and become a Climate Change scientist, a danger to our economy.

      170

    • #
      Bill in Oz

      Jo has given us some scientific ‘truth’
      From an unexpected source !
      Pitman is part of the University of NSW
      Climate Change Center.
      Woooooooohhhhhheee !
      Let’s celebrate his honesty
      And willingness to tell the bloody truth.

      As for the media
      Well even here in the Adelaide Hills of SA
      The two local weekly papers
      Refuse to publish anything about the BOM’s
      Wacky Mt Barker
      Weather station.
      It does not conform with their
      Journalistic ‘scare script’
      Utterly incompetent editers.

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    • #
      Bill in Oz

      Off Topic : Over at Ken’s Kingdom, he has just done Bairnsdale & Fall Creek

      https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/

      Up to 27 BOMb sites now !

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      Lionell,

      That crack in the sidewalk thing becomes a practical necessity when sidewalks have cracks you can almost disappear into. Some around here got just about that bad before they wee repaired. So walk carefully, we don’t want to lose you.

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      • #
        Lionell Griffith

        You have a point. Although I haven’t seen a crack in a sidewalk quite that large. At most they were several inches wide.

        When I lived near the San Andreas Fault, all the earthquakes were elsewhere. So no man eating cracks opened where I walked. Also, there were no sidewalks to be cracked. Huge tumble weeds, fire ants, scorpions, and rattle snakes were the primary things I had to avoid stepping on.

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        • #
          Roy Hogue

          I haven’t seen tumbleweeds in years. The coming of civilization tends to be the death of them. Snakes and all that you mention I’ve lived with on many camping trip so I don’t fear them, just respect them. It’s the man eating cracks in the sidewalk that will get you every time. 😉

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          • #
            Roy Hogue

            The real problem of course is that some cracks you can trip on if not careful. And that could easily be as bad as falling into one.

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    • #
      PG12

      Lionell,

      You missed the biggy. Using the precautionary principle all of the climate change concernees must be active, practicing religious folk. Too be otherwise damns their souls to eternal damnation. If one is willing to complete upend our society for a “just in case”, then surely they should put more work into their soul “just in case”.

      Of course it then get complicated, do you become one of the chosen (there are a number of religions on offer here) monotheistic, polytheistic Abrahamic, eastern, western, orthodox…….

      Of course the only logical thing to do is, all of them, “just in case”.

      80

      • #
        Lionell Griffith

        You forget the rational choice is “none of the above”. Magical thinking does not work in this universe: no way, no how, no why, no when, and no where!

        80

  • #
    Frank Brus

    Actually this was picked up by Climate Realist of Five Dock member Jim Sternhill who sent me an email:

    I almost fell off my chair on the night scrambling for my note pad. At 1 hour 10 minutes, Andy Pitman makes an extraordinary admission.

    https://soundcloud.com/sydneyenvironmentinstitute/adapting-climate-science-for-business

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    • #
      theRealUniverse

      Pitman had better watch out that UNSW doesnt give him the JCU treatment. Hope he survives. Maybe UNSW admin is better informed..?
      ‘no link between climate change and drought.’ Of course there never was, he just restated the facts. But you know who wont take any notice, the ‘Agenda’ rules over all. This is the UN mantra.. Agenda Uber Alles!

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      • #
        Rupert Ashford

        My thoughts exactly – he might soon end up in the same lines as Prof Ridd and Israel Folau…

        110

  • #
    TdeF

    As all climate extremes are due to Global Warming, when will we Australians start to see any real benefit from blowing up coal power stations, up to a 900% increase in the price of electricity since 2000, a $6Billion load in our electricity bills for what is largely coal power and an acute shortage of gas with exploration banned? When will all the sacrifices make sense?

    When can we afford to process recyclables again instead of dumping them in the Phillipines and Vietnam and China? The only recycler in South Australia had to close because they could not afford the electricity. Then why is our landfill pollution when shipping them overseas to landfill is acceptable and no longer pollution? When will we get payback on all the foreign owned windmills built at our expense and how long will they last and how many more do we need to see a benefit? When can we stop subsidizing them just to operate?

    Most importantly, can we be assured by our governments that we will never again experience a terrible drought in Australia, thanks to windmills and solar panels and tide power and hot rocks and all those public servants administering the schemes? The Australian Energy Market Commission, Australian Energy Market Operator, Energy Regulator, Clean Energy Finance corporation, Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Energy Regulator and all the state bodies responsible. Like Energy Safe Victoria who pay $100Million a year to trim trees, mainly in the city, to prevent city bushfires.

    As opposed to the 20th century when Australia built cheap, long lived, efficient, reliable and adequate power stations which are still working and on which we are totally reliant?

    And why did we pay for a Federal ‘Climate Commission’ when not a single one had qualifications in meteorology, the study of the weather while we had 300 meterologists in the BOM and at least another 350 in the CSIRO?

    Or is it all just a UN inspired money bonfire, a massive ripoff based on no demonstrable rational science at all?

    Can we have our money back please?

    501

  • #
    Diogenese2

    I think this posting is focusing in on the core of the whole issue. The obvious point is that compared to the federation drought, the current climate IS Changed! But Prof Shipman is using the phrase “climate change” as a synonym for the global warming narrative which is concerned with only one element of climate – global near surface temperature. This “global temperature” is not a physical entity but a metric derived from the temperature records that has no meaning other than that described by its derivation. It’s purpose is to create time series from which can be deduced the relationship between atmospheric CO2 levels and this derived metric and that is “climate sensitivity”. However the algorithm is irreversible, that is, a predicted increase in the global temperature cannot be translated even to regional temperature let alone local temperature.
    Until it is possible to relate the relationship of current global temperature to regional and local “climates”, the consequences of FUTURE “global temperature” are, as the IPCC admits, not possible to predict.
    This means that all of the 200+ consequences of global warming that we are continuously assaulted with are without any rational basis whatsoever! There is no link scientific between “climate change” and ANYTHING.

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    • #
      TdeF

      And when will the BOM, the custodian of all the State data up to 1909 after Federation actually decide whether the 1895-1903 Federation Drought was longer and more severe and hotter? With only say 300,000 man years of full time work by climate scientists since they were entrusted with all the States data, you would think we would have the answer by now? There was hardly a steam engine or petrol engine or jet aircraft South of the Equator before 1890 but clearly man made Global Warming happened first in Australia just 120 years ago. And what would it mean if the Federation drought was longer and hotter than the millenium drought, a hundred years later?

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      • #
        PeterS

        When hell has an ice-age.

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        • #
          sophocles

          When hell has an ice-age.

          Isn’t the innermost circle of hell made up of ice? I seem to remember this from Chris Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus* (shortly before Shakespeare).

          The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, c. 1589 – 1592.

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    • #
      Mike Jonas

      Diogenes2 – “I think this posting is focusing in on the core of the whole issue.”. Yes and no. At one level I agree, but there is another level, a deeper core. Those in control of the narrative wish to remain in control of the narrative. Machiavelli knew how it works. When the public start to see that the “facts” are changing then some of the people in control quietly start to change their narrative. It’s a very cynical exercise.

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    • #
      theRealUniverse

      Yes, and averaging the so called ‘global temperature’ is totally meaningless.

      50

  • #
    Travis T. Jones

    Where was the BoM public correction after claiming the millennial drought was permanent:

    January, 2008: “IT MAY be time to stop describing south-eastern Australia as gripped by drought and instead accept the extreme dry as permanent, one of the nation’s most senior weather experts warned yesterday.

    “Perhaps we should call it our new climate,” said the Bureau of Meteorology’s head of climate analysis, David Jones.

    The only uncertainty now was whether the changing pattern was “85 per cent, 95 per cent or 100 per cent the result of the enhanced greenhouse effect”.

    https://www.smh.com.au/environment/this-drought-may-never-break-20080104-gdrvg6.html

    February 2013: The Millennium Drought in southeast Australia (20012009)
    Natural and human causes and implications for water resources, ecosystems, economy, and society –

    https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wrcr.20123
    . . .
    2nd link is via the Conversation The Conversion, a site of ‘scientific’ integrity, which continues to push the made up 2℃ target:

    April 2010: “a group of German scientists, yielding to political pressure, invented an easily digestible message in the mid-1990s: the two-degree target.”

    https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/climate-catastrophe-a-superstorm-for-global-warming-research-a-686697-8.html

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    • #

      Excellent Travis. Thank you. These kinds of references are useful. If readers find any from the IPCC / CSIRO / BOM / Aust Acad Science / ABC / UNSW it would be especially helpful. Especially recent refs. Though Pitmans statement that there is no fundamental a priori reason that climate change should be linked to droughts makes is “timeless”.

      If there was never a scientific reason for linking climate change to droughts, why didn’t they say so in 1995, in 2007?

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  • #
    Broadie at WA

    That Andy Pitman?

    In one email sceptics are described as “idiots” in another, the 2004 death of Australian sceptic John Daly is called “cheering.”

    Andrew Bolt, columnist at the Herald-Sun, says something is seriously sick in the culture at top of the climate warming “cabal”.

    “It’s indicative of a tribal mentality, a demonisation of anyone who dares doubt their work. Now they gloat over the death of a very gentlemanly sceptic, John Daly, who was in Tasmania in fact, who did wonderful work on sea level rises,” he said.

    Andy Pitman, of the Climate Change Research Centre of NSW, says he doesn’t think anybody should be happy if someone dies, “but I think we can hold those sceptic, like Daly, to account for placing future generations at risk.”

    Climate scientists complain they’ve been accused of far worse.

    We have been accused of scientific fraud. That is a sackable offence,” says Professor Pitman.

    “If a climate scientist can be shown to have committed scientific fraud, they should be sacked. But I’d like same standard to sceptics.”

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-11-24/climate-emails-hacked-published/1155898

    Time for Pitman to fall on his own sword.

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    • #
      theRealUniverse

      ‘Andy Pitman, of the Climate Change Research Centre of NSW, says he doesn’t think anybody should be happy if someone dies, “but I think we can hold those sceptic, like Daly, to account for placing future generations at risk.”’
      Slightly changes my comment earlier I didnt know of this , thanks. I suggested he might get the Ridd treatment but not with those remarks.
      So where is he coming from?

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      • #

        I’m holding you to account, Andy. As a scientist where was yr objective enquiry regarding real world whatsis?
        Yr ‘concerned scientists’for… whatever, have made ‘the data’ subservient to some perceived political or religious
        ‘greater good.’

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      • #
        Broadie at WA

        To refer to Pitman and Ridd in the same sentence is in my opinion a blasphemy. Peter Ridd is a scientist. Pitman will just slither to another sunny spot and continue to sell his oil.
        Pitman was exposed by John Daly for what he is, one of Gramski’s memebots. Pitman used all the techniques we have come to expect from the Doomsday Cult. From my memory of Daly’s blog posts Pitman was part of the smear of Captain Ross in order to disparage Daly’s research.

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  • #
    Travis T. Jones

    Another link from the Conversion: Recent Australian droughts may be the worst in 800 years

    https://theconversation.com/recent-australian-droughts-may-be-the-worst-in-800-years-94292

    [“The Conversion” — Love it. Thank you. – Jo]

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    • #
      Serp

      You’ve a stronger mental stomach than I Travis T. Jones –my theconversation emails are routed directly to spam and seldom inspected.

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  • #
    Drapetomania

    Expect Andy to be receiving a phone call..soon..
    Expect Andy to make a statement clarifying he did not mean..what it appears he did mean.
    Expect the Herald/The Age to not report this at all..unless they box it in with words to make it appear its [snip].
    Download and save the audio from here https://sclouddownloader.com as it might have a technical glitch after phone call and statement by Andy..
    Good luck working in the Southern Sudan(all cultures are equal remember) in your new job Andy…

    110

    • #

      Yes, exactly: look out, Caveat-Coming (!) The climate system is complex and Andy Pitman never meant to imply that anthropogenic climate couldn’t cause droughts in certain regions, he was referring to the whole continental average. Chaos theory. Butterflies. Etc. Nothing new here.

      The thing that matters is that their climate models cannot predict which areas will get more droughts. Because their models ignore most solar factors they have no chance of predicting rainfall, jet streams, cloud cover and other variables tied to solar cycles but not predicted by pure TSI, the one and only factor they do include.

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      • #
        Greg in NZ

        But… but… Greta sees it! She feels it! She nose it –

        Applying the sniff test [and waiting…]

        Ah well, there goes another imaginary friend.

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  • #
    Another Ian

    All this reminds me of a Replay I notice on another thread:
    ” Dave Fair
    October 6, 2017 at 5:49 pm

    Aw, Christ, people; get a grip. In the climate realm, nothing bad has happened, nothing bad is happening nor will anything bad happen based on current trends.
    Modelturbation and other numerical speculation is warping your minds. There is no factual information that would lead one to fundamentally alter our society, economy and energy systems.
    Bite me, Trolls and profiteers.”

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/08/11/climate-change-and-land-discussion-thread/#comment-2767846

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  • #
    Kinky Keith

    When trying to understand something as complicated as “The Weather”, it’s essential to look at it from several viewpoints.

    We’ve tried “the science” but nobody can see the picture there.

    Back on the earlier thread Serp posted a link to a great Quadrant article which helps put things in better perspective.

    Climate Change is not about climate, it’s about power, control and skimming through an alliance between Government and Banking.

    We must force Governments to be more accountable, and only then will we be as free as we are entitled to be.

    Make Our Governments Great Again.

    http://joannenova.com.au/2019/08/weekend-unthreaded-272/#comment-2175220

    MOGGA.

    KK

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  • #
    Keith Bates

    I have never heard the good professor mention such uncertainty on the ABC. He’s all doom and gloom, “we’ll all be rooned” when he’s interviewed. Is this a recent change?

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  • #
    Antoine D'Arche

    Hear that gasping and gurgling?
    That’s AGW dying a slow and painful death. And I’m not inclined to ease their suffering.

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    • #
      Kinky Keith

      Who’s suffering?

      “And I’m not inclined to ease their suffering”. Good point.

      Looking at the bigger picture we are all suffering and will continue to suffer until Every last rooftop solar and hilltop wind mill is decommissioned. The companies in Chyna which profited from these things won’t be around at the decommissioning and the Australian government will foot the bill.

      Our governments are Not serving us in any way, shape or form.

      Think about it, MOGGA by making them accountable for their actions, Very Accountable.

      KK

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  • #
    Mr.

    Why would ANY salaried ‘journalist’ employed in the alarmist news industry report ANY backdowns by prophets of the existential “crisis” / “emergency” of CO2-driven climate apocalypse?

    That’s a sure-fire path to an involuntary career change.

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  • #

    “…no link between climate change and drought.”

    Sorry, but what does that even mean?

    Andy Pitman needs to be wary of using the diffuse term “climate change” without attaching definitions and context. Common language must never be hijacked or loaded for a political purpose or replace scientific terminology through conditioning and repetition. A patient can complain of spots or aches. A doctor is required to prescribe for specific conditions, not “spots” or “aches”.

    Is Andy Pitman saying that actual climate change – ie a change of winds, temps, rainfall etc as in the fall of the Old Kingdom or Bronze Age collapse – doesn’t involve drought or act as a causative factor in drought? That the Nile dried without a change of climate? That a cooling climate is not more likely to involve drought or be such a causative factor in more parts of the world than not? If so, this comes as a shock to skeptical me. But maybe he means something different by the words “climate change”. With a whole “Centre of Excellence” at one’s disposal, it should be possible to find usable definitions and give some context.

    Start by refusing to use terms like “climate change” and “global warming” which mean next to nothing and which have been cooked up by manipulators and activists and left deliberately vague so they never have to nail down their own claims. Demand that terms be defined before any debate proceeds. This is the last thing the manipulators and activists want, it is the first thing a skeptic should require.

    Challenge them on the language first.

    “We know what we mean”…No, we don’t!

    “There is now an accepted meaning”…Accepted by thee, not by me!

    “Climate change is now defined by the McQuaggin Dictionary…” Good, then use the definition, not the diffuse terminology!

    Challenge them on the language first. They won’t like it. Diffuse terms give lots of wriggle space and back-doors…which may be required when the fed-up punters finally break out the tar and the feathers.

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    • #
      Kinky Keith

      Well put, before we can solve the problem it needs to be framed, just like that!

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    • #
      John Westman

      Good point here!

      I like to ask the following of the scammers:

      Tell me how has the climate changed in the last one hundred years?

      Tell me what is a “safe” level of CO2 in the atmosphere?

      Needless to say, I have never had an answer from the crooks, despite much prompting, and badgering, .

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    • #
      Gee aye

      Have to agree with what you’ve said there Moso. I was thinking the same myself. If something changes climatically, like if a region becomes more arid, then of course the climate has changed. It defines itself. The vagaries introduced by poorly defined or loaded words helps no one.

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        Peter C

        Lets try reversing the argument. According to Pitman, droughts have not changed over the past 100 years.

        “He went on to say that in Australia, droughts are not increasing, and there’s no drying trend in one hundred years of data.”

        So if the droughts and rainy periods have not changed, ergo the “climate” has not changed.

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      RickWill

      Rising atmospheric CO2, with contribution from humans burning fossil fuels, is the prime meaning of “climate change”. Beyond that it can be whatever nasty impact weather can actually cause or forecast to cause.

      Snow at Olinda in the Dandenong Ranges this weekend causing cars to lose grip and crash is a clear sign of “climate change”. Trees dropping onto cars and killing occupants is another clear sign of “climate change”; long spell of dry weather then a few days of soaking rain weakening root systems. Record high temperature in Paris in 2019 is yet more evidence of “climate change”.

      When CO2 was at 300ppm, and the current crop of grey headed old men were in their prime, there was no “climate change”. The weather was always perfect; sun drenched days with little wind followed by a few cloudy days with mild rain and a little wind. It was never really cold and never really hot; mostly balmy and calm with the perfect amount of rain to ensure crops prospered ever year. Dorothea was not observant, rather a fictional writer. It is the 60ppm of atmospheric CO2 added in the last 50 years that has created “climate change” – repent all carbon burning sinners.

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    • #
      Len

      Alinsky: Control the language, control the people.

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      StefanL

      Exactly, Mosomoso.
      Before we sceptics rejoice that a former AGW-er has seen the light, we should ask him what version of “climate change’ he is referring to 🙂

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  • #
    AndrewWA

    It’s good to have a growing number of credible scientists coming clean.
    The Climate Scientologists and our very own ABC won’t be happy!

    Finnish Scientists: Effect of human activity on climate change insignificant

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  • #
    bullocky

    Prof Andy Pitman: ‘If you look at the Bureau of Meteorology data over the whole of the last one hundred years there’s no trend in data. There is no drying trend.’

    Perhaps the BOM has been pre-occupied with temperature.

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  • #
    John of Cairns

    Wrong again! Berkeley earth argo buoy data strongly indicates that the southern ocean is cooling.Cooler water and wind= less evaporation=drought.Perhaps extended.That’s real climate change and the world is not prepared for it in the least.A cooler world has always meant a dryer world according to the proxy record. It’s just possible that we’re stuck with this drought until the sun wakes up again.Eight Billion people should consider this possibility,instead of committing ourselves to an energy system that’s too expensive for water purification.

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    • #
      TdeF

      Plus the rapid growth of the Antarctica. This is an area the size of South America and 3.5km high! It has been reported as growing quickly and it is a desert. What snow that lands stays there at temperatures from -50C in winter to -25C in summer, colder than a freezer. That means the seas must fall.

      Arctic sea ice is irrelevant to sea level, like all floting ice, just evidence that it is cold. A growing central antarctica is a real worry and sympotomatic of a long term trend. Given that satelites can measure height to a few mm, it would be interesting to know how much Antarctica has grown vertically in the last 20 years and to translate that into an appropriate sea level drop for the Southern Ocean and Australia. As most of the world’s trade is by sea, a sea level drop would devastate major ports. All caused by Global Warming and CO2, like everything else. How that happens seems to be of no interest.

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  • #
    Ruairi

    Most Australians express little doubt,
    That their lifestyles today brought about,
    Global warming, more rain,
    Every new hurricane,
    All climate-change, including drought.

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    Bruce of Newcastle

    Wow! Perhaps he’ll discover that droughts and floods are related to other things, maybe like the ~60 year cycle of ENSO? You know, that ocean cycle that caused almost half of the ‘warming’ last century, because the IPCC choose a start date right at the bottom of the cycle for their official 1906-2005 century?

    Why, he might then move on to discover the solar cycles that lead to such things too. How amazing would that be?

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    • #
      el gordo

      That would be fantastic, wheels within wheels controlled by the sun, moon and gas giants.

      In a Royal Commission he would fall back on the precautionary principle and survive.

      ‘Andy Pitman, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, said the thermal inertia of the oceans meant land warmed faster …’

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  • #
    PeterS

    Pretty much all of us agree that the temperature data is massaged to suit the CAGW scam. The following article is just one example of why the alarmists talk by CAGW advocates is pure rubbish.

    NO EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FOR THE SIGNIFICANT ANTHROPOGENIC CLIMATE CHANGE

    Abstract.In this paper we will prove that GCM-models used in IPCC reportAR5 fail to calculate the influences of the low cloud cover changes on the globaltemperature. That is why those models give a very small natural temperaturechange leaving a very large change for the contribution of the green housegases in the observed temperature. This is the reason why IPCC has to use avery large sensitivity to compensate a too small natural component. Furtherthey have to leave out the strong negative feedback due to the clouds in orderto magnify the sensitivity. In addition, this paper proves that the changes inthe low cloud cover fraction practically control the global temperature

    This isn’t really new but the more and more evidence is being uncovered demonstrating CAGW is invalid. Of course we won’t hear this sort of news discussed by the lunatic left and mad climate change alarmists. What I am disappointed about though is the fact so many LNP politicians are still following the mantra we must keep cutting our emissions. They ought to know better.

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      Mike Jonas

      PeterS – A link to the paper that you quoted from would be helpful. Thx.

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    • #
      Mike Jonas

      PeterS – Apologies. I’ve just seen that the link is attached to the paper title.

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    • #
      tom0mason

      And PeterS,

      As one of the top climate scientists in the world, Kevin Trenberth said in journal Nature (“Predictions of Climate”) about climate models in 2007:

      None of the models used by the IPCC are initialized to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate. In particular, the state of the oceans, sea ice and soil moisture has no relationship to the obsered state at any recent time in any of the IPCC models. There is neither an El Nino sequence nor any Pacific Decadal Oscillation that replicates the recent past; yet these are critical modes of variability that affect Pacific rim countries and beyond. The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, that may depend on the thermohaline circulation and thus oceanic currents in the Atlantic, is not set up to match today’s state, but it is a critical component of the Atlantic hurricanes and it undoubtedly affects forest for the next decade from Brazil to Europe. Moreover, the starting climate state in serveral of the models may depart significantly from the real climate owing to model errors. I postulate that regional climate change is impossible to deal with properly unless the models are initialized.
      ¯

      ¯
      Therefore the problem of overcoming this shortcoming, and facing up to initializing climate models means not only obtaining sufficiently reliable observations of all aspects of the climate system, but also overcoming model biases. So this is a major challenge.

      These quotes are still relevant because climate models still are not initialized by any rational protocol other than the requirement to display what has been assumed by modelers for the evolution of the climate .

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  • #

    Another exercise in pointlessness for a “Centre of Excellence” is conflating a bunch of climate zones to get an average of rainfall, temps etc. So you get a huge dump of rain in the east in 1950 and drought in the west at the same time…but you add them together and average them out because both regions fall in the boundaries of the vast Commonwealth of Australia. In the mid-70s you get widespread rain over the whole continent (a rarity) and treat it like 1950 because of an average, not because of what actually happened. In the far north rainfall increases after the 1970s, in the south west corner it decreases…but put them together and any trend disappears. You may as well average out Norfolk Island the Cocos Islands while you’re at it. Any statistic will do!

    There’s something about the term “Centre of Excellence” which seems to generate an awful lot of mediocrity. To tell you the truth, I’m worried that St George is turning into a Centre of Excellence.

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      David Maddison

      Be wary of any institution that calls itself a “centre of excellence”.

      It should raise alarm bells.

      It’s just like a political scientist working in the area of “climate change” who masquerades as a real scientist.

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    • #

      Sophistry of word games by those who would deceive us, corrupters of meaning, Humpty Dumpty -wise, not about what words mean as description of ‘what is’ instead what someone decides they will mean…Lots of words in the guru armoury we need to beware of. buzz-words like ‘sustainability’ and ‘renewable’ energy, sea-changes by them philosopher kings to meanings of key concepts like ‘democracy’ and ‘identity,’ words demonised so that a word like ‘individual,’ means, per se, a ‘selfish’ person, far cry from the enlightenment’ individuals’ who extended suffrage, reformed working conditions and abolished slavery, and there’s that ‘CO2,’- with oxygen a life-enabling gas and plant food morphed into an existential threat. Debasing the language, not science but propergander.

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    Drapetomania

    How come I am suddenly “moderated” and cannot get a comment live ?

    Expect Andy to be receiving a phone call..soon..
    Expect Andy to make a statement clarifying he did not mean..what it appears he did mean.
    Expect the Herald/The Age to not report this at all..unless they box it in with words to make it appear its bullshit.
    Download and save the audio from here https://sclouddownloader.com as it might have a technical glitch after phone call and statement by Andy..
    Good luck working in the Southern Sudan(all cultures are equal remember) in your new job Andy…

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    David Maddison

    The narrative is that anthropogenic global warming causes more droughts.

    Obviously the data is wrong and needs to be altered to suit the narrative.

    Now just sit back and watch them alter (“homogenise”) the rainfall and drought data.

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    • #
      Greg in NZ

      19 June, 2019, Professor Andy Pitman:

      “So the fundamental problem we have is that we don’t understand what causes droughts anything!“.

      There, homogenised it for you. Vee know nussink! Except fame & fortune, soon to be infamy and misfortune.

      https://www.snow-forecast.com/resorts/Charlotte-Pass/webcams/latest

      It would appear your ‘snow drought’ is well-and-truly over too with Charlotte Pass resembling a well-layered ice-cream cake in the sunshine today (links to other alpine area cams, and NZ’s, at bottom of page) after the wonderful Blizzard of August – huzzah!

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      • #
        sophocles

        We could watch and listen to an honest professor? Prof Nir Shaviv of Jerusalem University …

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        tom0mason

        And that David Maddison, brings me back to models and how they are ‘Tuned’.

        As written in ‘The Art and Science of Climate Model Tuning’ by Frédéric HourdinLaboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique, IPSL, CNRS, UPMC, Paris, France, available at https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00135.1

        Climate model tuning is a complex process that presents analogy with reaching harmony in music. Producing a good symphony or rock concert requires first a good composition and good musicians who work individually on their score. Then, when playing together, instruments must be tuned, which is a well-defined adjustment of wave frequencies that can be done with the help of electronic devices. But the orchestra harmony is reached also by adjusting to a common tempo as well as by subjective combinations of instruments, volume levels, or musicians’ interpretations, which will depend on the intention of the conductor or musicians. When gathering the various pieces of a model to simulate the global climate, there are also many scientific and technical issues, and tuning itself can be defined as an objective process of parameter estimation to fit a predefined set of observations, accounting for their uncertainty, and a process that can be engineered. However, because of the complexity of the climate system and of the choices and approximations made in each submodel, and because of priorities defined in each climate center, there is also subjectivity in climate model tuning (Tebaldi and Knutti 2007) as well as substantial know how from a limited number of people with vast experience with a particular model.

        and

        There is evidence that a number of model errors are structural in nature and arise specifically from the approximations in key parameterizations as well as their interactions. For example, some models systematically underestimate rainfall over monsoon regions, whereas others will do the opposite. Other biases are systematic across models, like the presence of a persistent double Pacific intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) on both sides of the equator or warm biases over the eastern tropical oceans. Those model biases are indeed often resistant to model tuning. Tuning a model to improve its performance on a specific target also often degrades performance on other metrics. For example, tuning a model to improve the intraseasonal variability of precipitation in the tropics often comes at the cost of increased biases in the mean state (Kim et al. 2012).

        and

        Because of the approximate nature of models and because of observations’ uncertainties, it is impossible to retain one unique parameter set as an objective criteria. Formalizing the question of tuning addresses an important concern: it is essential to explore the uncertainty coming both from model structural errors by favoring the existence of tens of models and from parameter uncertainties by not overtuning. Either reducing the number of models or overtuning, especially if an explicit or implicit consensus emerges in the community on a particular combination of metrics, would artificially reduce the dispersion of climate simulations. It would not reduce the uncertainty but only hide it.

        [my enboldening]

        This is the reality of the models and the ‘settled science’!

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    thingadonta

    The BOM ‘State of the Climate Report’ for 2018 states that both SW WA and SE Australia have been getting drier since 1910, however northern Australia has been getting wetter. Of course they don’t show any of northern Australia under their ‘Australia Key Points’ summary, only SW WA rainfall trends (which is itself misleading and shows their bias).

    http://www.bom.gov.au/state-of-the-climate/.

    Paleoclimate records indicate Australia is drier during Ice Ages, and wetter during warmer periods. This has long been known. Perhaps someone should ring up the BOM and tell them.

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  • #
    pat

    as mosomoso – comment #11 – says, first we must reclaim the language. no more “climate” activist/campaigner rubbish either.
    it is working only on the young, and now it is the young the CAGW mob have aligned themselves with. the school curriculums need to be cleaned out.

    meanwhile, enjoy a couple of neat snow videos:

    12 Aug: Weather Channel: Snow and High Winds Hammer Southeast Australia
    By Ron Brackett 2 hours ago
    TWEET: SNOWSEARCH australia
    Amazing footage of heavy snow earlier today at Zig Zag, Clarence NSW, just east of Lithgow!! VIDEO 15sec
    11 Aug 2019…

    TWEET: Stephen Grenfell
    Not something you see every day in Australia. Kangaroos in the snow.#Wildoz #Kangaroos #Snow VIDEO 12sec
    12 Aug 2019

    Queensland has a subtropical climate and snow is much rarer. Stanthorpe, in the southern end of the state on the border with New South Wales, got a dusting of flakes in June, according to the Bureau of Meteorology in Queensland. The weather agency said it was the state’s first significant snowfall since 2015.
    https://weather.com/news/news/2019-08-11-snow-high-winds-hammer-victoria-new-south-wales-queensland-australia

    btw no word of snow in Stanthorpe or thereabouts today, as far as I can tell.

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  • #
    J Burns

    A somewhat less hopeful take on this: The climate scam has become so profitable for those in private industry and politics capitalising on public guilt and fear; our institutions have become so institutionally corrupt and complicit in fraud that nothing short of revolution will deter them at this point.

    The activist minority who have learned to project their middle class shame and snobbery into a burning resentment of the unwashed masses (and through controlling and rationing them keep them in their proper place) have become so mind warped by their swivel eyed groupthink and Malthusian cult mentality that nothing at this point will deter them. AGW catastrophism is a drug to them and a justification for their every failure in life.

    The mainstream media have become so threatened by the new media and insecure in its presence that they will grasp on desperation any opportunity to view and present themselves as being relevant (the ability to cast themselves as journalistic Cassandras, saving the earth with dire finger-wagging warnings whilst enjoying luxury expenses paid climate junkets is an added perk). Nothing at this point will deter them.

    Their proprietors greedily eyeing the profits to be made from Carbon Trading and friendships with the Clintons, Obamas and Clooneys of the world have the perfect opportunity to boost their wealth and influence – nothing will deter them.

    The reason people like Andy Pitman can now be so candid about the lack of empirical evidence for any impending climate catastrophe is that it no longer makes any difference now the money is flowing and the wheels are turning. Integrity and truth hold no any value amongst the powerful, wealthy and politicised classes.

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    pat

    $2bn won’t do. theirABC have been lecturing the govt; this piece is surrounded by CAGW insanity:

    11 Aug: ABC: Climate change to be the focus as Scott Morrison attends Pacific Islands Forum
    By foreign affairs reporter Melissa Clarke
    The Federal Opposition has accused Mr Morrison of putting relations with the region at risk by not budging on climate change.
    “Scott Morrison’s priority … must be to ramp up ambition on climate change,” said Pat Conroy, Labor’s spokesman on international development and the Pacific.
    “Without taking effective action in Australia on climate change, our entire Pacific ‘step up’ is undermined.”…

    Pacific analyst Dr Tess Newton Cain expects the PIF Leaders Meeting will come to an agreed statement on climate change, but warns Australia may need to make concessions.
    “It would be very unusual for there to be a stalemate,” she said.
    “So, it really does come down to who is prepared to give ground and where. It is shaping up to being a testing time for Mr Morrison in Tuvalu.”…

    Australia has long been the biggest donor of aid and development funds in the region, but China is making in-roads through both loans to governments and investment in the private sector…
    Dr Newton Cain: “A number of Pacific island countries, not all of them, have access to other partners, including China, which can provide them with as much finance as they may need.”…
    Labor’s Pat Conroy believes stronger climate change policies are key to lasting relationships.
    “These leaders … have made it very clear that Australia’s re-engagement in the Pacific won’t be taken seriously until we take more action on climate change, so I think that is [their] the leverage,” he said…

    It will be Mr Morrison’s first time attending the PIF Leaders Meeting and he can be expected to promote the brand new, $2 billion Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the region.
    But host Tuvalu will be ensuring their visitors can’t avoid their biggest challenge: climate change and its threat to the nation’s fragile reefs.
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-11/scott-morrison-to-face-pressure-on-climate-at-pacific-forum/11400716

    ABC’s soul-mate:

    11 Aug: Guardian: Pacific Islands Forum: Tuvalu children welcome leaders with a climate plea
    Climate crisis is more than a meeting agenda item in a host country that could be left uninhabitable by rising sea levels
    Kate Lyons in Funafuti
    PIC: Children from Tuvalu sit in a moat of water around a model island to illustrate the climate crisis as leaders arrive for the Pacific Islands Forum. Photograph: Kate Lyons/The Guardian.
    As the leaders of Pacific countries step off their planes at Funafuti airport this week for the Pacific Islands Forum, they are being met by the children of Tuvalu, who sit submerged in water, in a moat built around the model of an island, singing: “Save Tuvalu, save the world.”…

    Apart from the important symbolism, Tuvalu’s hosting of the event presents considerable logistical challenges for the nation, as more than a dozen world leaders and an estimated 600 people will descend upon the country with a population of just 11,000…
    There are only three commercial flights a week to Tuvalu, so most attendees have had to fly in on chartered military planes and roughly 75% of all the accommodation that is being used for the forum has been constructed for the event…

    Morrison is likely to come under pressure from leaders of Pacific island nations…
    (Tuvaluan PM Enele) Sopoaga said the Australian prime minister was a welcome guest in his country and he anticipated “positive and progressive discussions”, but said he had concerns about Australia’s coalmining policy and its use of carryover credits as a means of reducing emissions and said the positive relationship could change if the future of his people was not taken seriously…

    China’s presence in the region also might mean Australia finds itself with far less leverage than it once did, says the Australia-based Pacific analyst Tess Newton Cain.
    “This is the first time that I can remember that Australia hasn’t been able to play the money card, and say: ‘what if we took our aid money away? What if we didn’t pay for that?’” she says. “Fiji and Vanuatu would say ‘well do what you like, I’m off to Beijing next week’.”…
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/11/pacific-islands-forum-tuvalu-children-welcome-leaders-with-a-climate-plea

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      RickWill

      From above:

      Climate change to be the focus as Scott Morrison attends Pacific Islands Forum

      In this sentence the meaning of “climate change” is “transfer payments from Australia to small Pacific Island nations”. Nothing more, nothing less.

      There is some pretence that, in the distant future, the islands will be inundated with rising sea level due to Australians burning fossil fuels. This is used to justify the transfer of funds so the island administrators can enrich themselves while promising to spend the funds wisely.

      The Green Climate Fund that promised to make the UN administrators and the administrations of small nations fabulously wealthy has failed:

      “The fund of hope is becoming a fund of hopelessness,” said Meena Raman, legal adviser to the Third World Network, an advocacy group in Malaysia, and a former nonvoting member of the Green Climate Fund’s board.

      https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/09/world/asia/green-climate-fund-global-warming.html

      so the small island nation administrators are now bypassing the UN and bringing the “climate change” focus direct to Australia.

      These small nations can squarely blame Trump and his administration for this dire state. The US controls the printing of the world currency. With QE now now reversed to QT, money is being sucked out of the global financial system:
      https://www.thebalance.com/fed-tapering-impact-on-markets-416859

      The Fed made a decision in fall 2017 to start shrinking its balance sheet, which had grown due to the buying activity from its quantitative easing program. Instead, quantitative tightening began with the Fed reducing its balance sheet assets by $20 billion each month during Q1 of 2018. The reductions have continued throughout 2018, with a potential reduction of over $300 billion by year-end, and a predicted reduction of over $425 billion in 2019.

      This does not bode well for the administrators of small nations seeking “climate change” justice.

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    • #
      Kinky Keith

      When I think back on what living conditions in Australia were like for my grandparents, parents and my generation it forces me to compare our efforts, deprivation, thrift and harshness suffered with many of those at the Pacific Climate Soiree and luncheon.

      The politics of envy and false victimhood is indeed an ugly business.

      KK

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      • #
        Greg in NZ

        Hang on, media groupies from the ABC, Grauniad, NYT (?), RNZ and Greta-knows how many more from around the globe are flying in to ‘sinking’ Tuvalu this week for yet another shindig/hoedown how’s your father what’s it forum big fella?

        https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/396497/frank-talk-and-the-two-c-s-what-to-watch-for-at-this-week-s-pacific-forum

        And not only churnos: “Funafuti… will see its population increase by about 10 percent as [1,000+] delegates pour in”.

        “Accommodation is tight, and extra flights have been put on… They’ve built new accommodation and a convention centre”.

        “The United States… China. Australia and New Zealand… Taiwan… The UK’s here… and others are coming too”.

        “Mr Sopoaga has made a name for himself… urging countries to commit to reducing carbon emissions, to increase their climate financing…” but please no problem, fly to my country, bring bags of cash, yes we take gold, thank you come again!

        • RNZ reporter, Jamie “Fa’afafine” Tahana, obviously f’f’failed maths, woodwork, geography, and spatial awareness, when s/he wrote Tuvalu’s “highest point is little more than four metres, its widest point about the same”. Say what!!!???

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  • #

    If CO2 heats lower atmosphere, it vibrates from IR infrared that reduces the amount on water freezing on mountains, it’s a well understood cycle. Read the literature, [snip] everywhere.

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      Bill in Oz

      Marc we are well acquainted with the science mate
      And also well acquainted with warmita bullsh$t.

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    • #
      Kinky Keith

      Marc L says;

      ” it’s a well understood cycle”.

      It sure is Marc L so why are you trying to spin it in the wrong direction?

      Everyone knows that since water has a greater presence in the atmosphere than CO2 the situation is the reverse of your claim.

      Water IR hits the rare CO2 molecules which heat up and move vertically under convective impulse.
      Often these rising tubes of CO2 enriched atmosphere can be seen rising up and spinning counter clockwise here in the southern hemisphere.

      We call them Willy Willys.

      PDTTS. KK

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      David Maddison

      Please post any reference that proves that CO2 in any amount causes atmospheric warming, especially in the 16ppm of CO2 of anthropogenic origin which comprises the 400ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. Don’t quote analogies with actual glass greenhouses which trap convective heat loss. We are talking about radiative heat loss.

      If you like you may wish to post any ***unaltered*** data that proves actual global warming.

      This group is about actual science, not “political scientists” masquerading as real scientists who have a certain ideological agenda to push.

      I strongly suggest you don’t make yourself look like an idiot on this group with people that are familiar with the actual science but whom receive no funding from Big Green.

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    • #
      AndyG55

      “it’s a well understood cycle”

      Obviously not at all understood by you, ML !!

      Your comment is complete anti-science gibberish !

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  • #

    The lower atmosphere is heated by CO2 being excited by long wave IR electromagnetic radiation. That reduces ice forming on mountains.
    Read the science.

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    • #
      Graeme No.3

      OMG. I hope you have never taken a science course as that would mean the rot is incurable.
      What about conduction and convection?
      And if CO2 “traps” radiation how can it warm the atmosphere?
      If all the CO2 “traps” IR radiation it must follow that the CO2 molecules are hotter. So 130ppm rise in CO2 must have caused 0.85℃ rise in temperature, so as the atmosphere is made up of cool nitrogen. oxygen and argon molecules and ‘hot’ CO2 molecules, those CO2 molecules must be all over 80℃ – no wonder the ice melts.
      And, by the way, the ice on the top of mountains is the last to melt. Glaciers melt at the lower end. You have heard of glacier retreat? It has been happening for a long time, esp. about 10,000 years ago after the Lower Dryas. The temperature in Greenland (from the ice cores) went up 10℃ in less than 50 years. That must have wiped out tall that pesky snow and ice there – Of Course, that’s why it is called Greenland. Why not go and settle there?

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      • #
        tom0mason

        And Graeme No. 3,

        Yet more models …
        Research shows revived oceanic CO2 uptake (https://phys.org/news/2015-09-revived-oceanic-co2-uptake.html)

        The researchers used a newly developed method based on neural networks to create a statistical model of the oceanic CO2 concentrations and then used this model to fill in the gaps. To this end, they also made use of satellite observations of sea water temperature, of salinity and of the chlorophyll content.

        Carbon sink reinvigorated

        The interpolated surface ocean CO2 data and the estimates based on atmospheric CO2 data clearly demonstrate that the Southern Ocean carbon sink began to revive around 2002. By 2010, its carbon uptake was once again comparable to the level expected on the basis of atmospheric CO2 increase alone.

        An important conclusions that Gruber draws from this study is that the strength of the Southern Ocean carbon sink fluctuates strongly, possibly in periodic cycles, rather than increasing monotonically in response to the growth in atmospheric CO2. “We were surprised to see such large variations in this ocean’s net carbon uptake,” he says.

        So these researchers are surprised that natural events happen non-linearly, or cyclically.
        Humm, IMO these ‘researchers’ should get out more and investigate the natural world.

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    • #
      WXcycles

      I notice your avatar appears to be an MV AUGUSTA F3, a high-powered pure-sports motorbike, that sucks gas at a high rate, and can burn through a $500 rear tire in a single day.
      Questions:
      1) Does Gaia know you ride one of these things?
      2) Have you been excommunicated from the Climate-Religion for it yet?
      3) Will you repent of buying this monstrous climate-wrecking planet destroyer?
      4) Will you bury it in a hole in the ground, as you surely can’t just allow another to ride it and expect to remain blameless?
      5) Does the Climate-Religion also offer 72 free virgins for loyalty points?

      I’m particularly interested in Q5, thanks in advance.

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    • #
      AndyG55

      “The lower atmosphere is heated by CO2 being excited by long wave IR electromagnetic radiation”

      That is a Load of UNPROVEN anti-science BALONEY

      Warming by increased atmospheric CO2 has NEVER been observed or measured anywhere on the planet.

      And then you say we should use “verified science”

      YOU AIN’T GOT ANY

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  • #

    Doesn’t matter what someone says, it has to be verified by known science.

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    • #
      Graeme No.3

      An excellent point. So I take it you accept Archimedes Principle (which says that melting Arctic icefloes can NOT raise sea levels) and Henry’s law (about the solubility of gases in liquids e.g. sea water). I won’t ask you difficult questions like what do you know about the Beer-Lambert law or Thermodynamics because I have already guessed the answer.

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    • #
      Kinky Keith

      Exzackly Marc L,

      That’s why we recommend that you go back to school and try out some basic science first before the high powered Eli Musk climate seance.

      KK

      110

    • #
      Lance

      Right you are, and wrong you are.

      It does NOT matter what someone says. It matters what they can prove.

      Objective science, not subjective opinion, wins out.

      G’day.

      130

    • #
      AndyG55

      it has to be verified by known science

      I don’t know why all the red thumbs.

      In that one phrase, you have just killed climate alarmism STONE DEAD. !!

      80

    • #

      Known science has been known to mean the present consensus as
      * Earth Centred Universe, not Copernican, Galileo Heliocentric Universe.
      * Great Chain of Being of life on Planet Earth, bot Darwinian Evolution.
      * Biblical brief age of the Earth, endorsed by Newton and other scientists
      of his day, not Hutton’s heretical view of its great age and the forces that
      create it.

      What is it?! No matter who says it or how beautiful the theory – if it don’t
      conform to the evidence, it’s wro-ong Check out those model projections and
      the data. They jest don’t match.

      80

  • #
    pattoh

    Gee!

    I always thought the MDBA was a clever Agenda21 eugenic de-population scheme.

    The overnight news that Sydney Water is accellerating the Desal option may be just as well considering the dire consequences of the lack of maintenance of the Warragambah Catchment.

    Since the World Heritage Listing of the Blue Mountains the NSW National Parks has managed it.

    Annectdotal reports have little or no seasonal burns or fire trail maintenance [& it is very challenging terrain].

    History has recorded that wildfires can significantly impact catchment run-off for years.

    Over to you “Fireman Tony”.

    75% of Sydney’s water.
    Greater Sydney =~~1/6 of Aus population
    Greater Sydney =~~1/5 of Aus Economy

    How do you say “Would you like fries with that?” in [ pick non English Language]?

    90

  • #
    pat

    ABC’s Drought page – links excerpted are from just the past four weeks. the page goes on and on and no doubt much of it links drought to CAGW. btw the earliest piece only goes back to 11 Nov 2018:

    ABC: Full coverage: Australia’s drought crisis
    Farmers are facing ruin across New South Wales and Queensland in what some are calling the worst drought in living memory…
    Large swathes of eastern Australia have been in drought for periods ranging from a year to seven years, with the record dry conditions prompting calls for further federal and state measures…

    LINKS:
    How climate change is affecting what we grow and eat
    Farmers and scientists across the country are finding new ways to keep food on the table, as climate change moves rainfall patterns and increases heatwaves, droughts and floods.

    ‘Will it ever rain again?’: More Queensland towns reeling in worst drought on record

    Drought and climate change drive high water prices in the Murray-Darling Basin

    The search for crops that can survive climate change
    Researchers are scouring the planet for drought and heat resistant crops as many Australian grain farmers face another failed winter season

    19 Jul: It’s now the worst drought in 120 years of records and the outlook for rain isn’t good
    Every drought is different, but the Bureau of Meteorology says when it comes to two-to-three year droughts the Murray-Darling Basin is now suffering its worst.
    (Dr David Jones, climatologist, BoM) outlined three main reasons:
    1.Warm conditions in the far Indian and Pacific Oceans resulting in reduced rainfall
    2.Underlying reduction in southern wet season rainfall
    3.Underlying temperature increase…
    On top of that, it has been hot.
    Due to climate change, mean temperatures in Australia have gone up by just over one degree Celsius since the BOM started keeping records in 1910.
    “That means this drought is a bit different. What we’ve seen in the past doesn’t necessarily apply to droughts in the present,” he said…

    The rain came but the grass didn’t — drought continues to grip northern Queensland

    Drought forces sheep market to cancel for the third month in a row for the first time ever

    What if the Federation drought happened today?
    A CSIRO reconstruction of the Federation drought of 1891 to 1903 finds that if it were to occur again today, its effects would likely be even more devastating.
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/drought/

    80

  • #
    Zane

    Meanwhile Fiji says Australian coal is an ” existential threat ” to the South Pacific. How can this nonsense be countered?

    121

    • #
      WXcycles

      Meanwhile Fiji says Australian coal is an ” existential threat ” to the South Pacific. How can this nonsense be countered?

      Meanwhile [some thoroughly ignorant or dishonest ratbags in] Fiji say Australian coal is an ” existential threat ” to the South Pacific.
      –>
      Fixed it already.

      140

  • #
    Karabar

    Isn’t Pitman the bloke with whom Joanne had an online debate and blew his little boat out of the water?

    90

  • #
    pat

    ABC will not accept they lost the “climate election”:

    AUDIO: 7min31sec: 10 Aug: ABC The Science Show: Reducing emissions won’t be enough to limit rising temperatures
    by Robyn Williams
    Philip Boyd spends weeks at sea each year in far flung places. He says changing seawater chemistry due to high atmospheric carbon dioxide is evident everywhere. The oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide causing increasing water acidity. This paints a worrying picture for the future of animals which live in soft shells. The shells are becoming thinner. These animals are the basis of aquatic food chains. Philip Boyd says reducing emissions will not get us to where we need to be.
    We need to develop technologies which actively remove carbon dioxide from the air. The scale of the solution needs to match the scale of the problem. And it’s a big problem.
    Guest: Philip Boyd,Professor of Marine Biogeochemistry
    Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies
    University of Tasmania
    https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/reducing-emissions-won%E2%80%99t-be-enough-to-limit-rising-temperatures/11400000

    AUDIO: 11min56sec: 10 Aug: ABC The Science Show: Coordination required to build a hydrogen-based economy
    Chief scientist Alan Finkel says a market is now in place as Japan and South Korea pledge to replace fossil fuels with hydrogen, production costs are falling as renewables will be used to produce hydrogen, and the costs of building hydrogen vehicles is also dropping fast. In addition, there is an urgent need to move away from carbon-based fuels. These factors together make a strong case for hydrogen. Claire Johnson says government coordination is necessary so Australia can take advantage of the opportunity which is opening up.
    Guests:
    Claire Johnson,
    Co-Founder and CEO Hydrolytics
    Former CEO Australian Hydrogen Association Hydrogen Mobility Australia
    Alan Finkel, Chief Scientist of Australia
    https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/coordination-required-to-build-a-hydrogen-based-economy/11400052

    on the same 10 Aug Science Show, the irritating self-proclaimed “Earth Doctor”, a regular on ABC, Reese Halter:

    Bees worldwide under serious threat
    Bee populations are down in Siberia, and central and southern Russia. In the US, death rates are 3 times normal, with bees seen responding to nerve poisons, shaking to death. Bees and all insects are responding badly to extreme heat and longer and widespread bushfires. We should be concerned as 75% of our food crops are pollinated by bees. Reese halter reports on bad times for bees…

    The Rescue Project presents stories of land repair
    Rescue is a partnership between Landcare Australia and UNSW and forms part of a research project into the power of citizen storytelling in environmental communication. The Rescue Project is a listening experience. Stories are read aloud by their authors and listeners are transported to the author’s cherished place. We hear a story by Kathryne Read, On Planting a Forest.

    52

    • #
      pat

      also on the Aug 10 Science Show, a second go for Alan Finkel – posted for a bit of fun:

      10 Aug: ABC The Science Show: Science should emulate sport in supporting women
      The Australian Football League changed. It developed a women’s league. It challenged the long-held belief that women can’t play AFL, or don’t want to play AFL and the idea that people won’t pay to watch women’s sport…
      Chief scientist Alan Finkel compares sport with science. The context for science is different. But the challenges are similar. It’s about changing culture, supporting women’s aspirations and challenging male assumptions. He foreshadows his imminent report, the STEM Workforce Report 2019.
      2 comments incl:
      Martin Taper: I was very disappointed by Alan Finkel.
      Sporting participation for men, women and children is a very helpful and positive pursuit at many levels. However the alleged sport of which he applauds the participation of women and girls is one that is not so much a sport but the normalisation of violence and aggression that so often ends in permanent disabling injury, and even death etc etc…
      Shame on you Alan Finkel.
      https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/science-should-emulate-sport-in-supporting-women/11400092

      11 Aug: SMH: Contact sports will ‘cease to exist’ within a generation
      By Adrian Proszenko
      Doctor Bennet Omalu, the medical pioneer who discovered the first cases of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in American footballers, predicts contact sports such as rugby league, rugby union and AFL will cease to exist within the space of a generation due to the health hazards associated with concussions.
      Omalu also believes children should be banned from playing contact sports until the age of 18 due to the risks associated with concussions…

      The Nigerian-born forensic pathologist described his discovery as an “inconvenient truth”…
      “It’s almost like child abuse, to intentionally expose a child to injury,” he said. “It is not right…
      Omalu’s observations are sobering reading for administrators of Australian football codes such as the NRL, AFL and ARU…
      https://www.smh.com.au/sport/nrl/contact-sports-will-cease-to-exist-within-a-generation-20190809-p52fpf.html

      42

  • #
    Peter Fitzroy

    There must be 2 Andy’s
    https://www.ft.com/content/82c25590-2b41-11e9-a5ab-ff8ef2b976c7 (8feb2019)

    “There is no plausible explanation of the heat extremes other than the background climate has warmed,” says Andrew Pitman, director of the Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes at University New South Wales” 

    https://www.ft.com/content/34798fb4-ac22-11e8-94bd-cba20d67390c (30aug 2018)

    “The landscape is hotter than normal and getting hotter and there has been very high evaporation through winter. This accelerates drying and moves Australia into drought faster, and the drought lasts longer,” said Andy Pitman, a climate scientist at the University of New South Wales”

    Now I’m to believe that there has been a complete reversal in his thinking?

    67

    • #
      Kinky Keith

      Who said he was thinking.

      90

    • #
      Gee aye

      “Moving into drought faster” and “Droughts last longer” is not attributing a cause for the drought occurring in the first instance.

      45

      • #
        Peter Fitzroy

        Agreed, By the way I listened to the full talk, and those comments were in a response to a question about predicting droughts, and directly after the line “…as far as the climate scientists know there is no link between climate change and drought.” he goes on to say that there is a drying trend over the last 30 years.

        The remaining 90 minutes was all about how good the models are, and how they can be used in risk assessment by banking and insurance industries (who were both represented in the panel)

        37

        • #
          el gordo

          “…as far as the climate scientists know there is no link between climate change and drought.”

          Paleo climate history proves conclusively that climate and drought have strong teleconnections.

          80

        • #
          AndyG55

          ” “…as far as the climate scientists know there is no link between climate change and drought.” “

          This is a known fact. What is your problem, PF ? !

          Droughts happen. Rain happens.

          And Humans have NOTHING to do with it.

          80

        • #
          AndyG55

          ” how good the models are”

          NOT !!!

          “can be used in risk assessment by banking and insurance industries “

          Who will lap them up if they give a reason to increase premiums without any real added risk.

          80

    • #
      el gordo

      ‘Now I’m to believe that there has been a complete reversal in his thinking?’

      Yes, the loss of intensity in the subtropical ridge since the Austral winter of 2017 came as a shock, its not in the script.

      Blocking high pressure and a meandering jet stream is a global cooling signal and the klimatariat is aware of the problem.

      70

      • #
        Bill in Oz

        “Aware of the problem ‘
        And dithering about what to think about it..
        More chaotic thinking coming ?

        80

      • #
        Peter Fitzroy

        No – his thinking is unchanged, but cherry picking, and taking quotes out of context, implies the opposite.

        212

        • #
          Bill in Oz

          Hence the dithering Peter !
          Ohhhhh dearie them !

          🙂

          60

        • #
          Bill in Oz

          Is it not
          a source of
          Much gnashing of teeth for him
          And his CRC mates ?
          All those staffers !
          All that effort !
          All those computers !
          All that money spent !
          And this Climate Change Center
          Cannot explain why we have
          Floods
          Drougts
          Heatwaves
          Cold outbreaks
          etc

          In fact, he & they cannot explain anything
          Australian Climate that we most desperately
          Want to know !

          Bugger, bugger, bugger !!!!
          What a wasted effort !
          From the Ivory tower mob !

          90

        • #
          el gordo

          So he believes CO2 causes global warming?

          Aridity in Australia is more common during cooler climates, monsoon failure, but ENSO is still the major player along with PDO and SAM.

          100

        • #
          AndyG55

          ” “…as far as the climate scientists know there is no link between climate change and drought.” “

          Cherry pick the one thing he accidentally got correct.

          He should be happy !

          100

    • #
      Bill in Oz

      Except right now Peter !
      It is bloody
      FREEEEEEEZING
      In all Southern Australia !
      The Polar Outbreak has
      Us ALL shivering
      In case you had not noticed.

      🙂

      70

      • #
        Peter Fitzroy

        seasonal weather causes surprise 😉

        17

        • #
          Bill in Oz

          Huy ?
          Well actually it does & did.
          All the indoctrinated masses here in SA
          In the Social media
          Have been complaining about
          Missing out on OUR global warming !

          Meanwhile I hope you have a nice warm
          Firewood fire to keep you warm
          And a coal driven toastie electric blanket
          Tonight !

          Wouldn’t want our favourite troll
          Getting cold & sick
          This winter !

          🙂

          60

        • #
          el gordo

          ‘seasonal weather causes surprise’

          In a warming world ‘cold air outbreaks’ should have become a thing of the past, but apparently natural variability still rules.

          The authors of this abstract genuflect near the end, for the grant money, otherwise its a reasonable hypothesis. Volcanic eruptions cooled the planet in the early 19th century and not a word on the Dalton Minimum.

          My interest is in monsoon failure worldwide because of a drop in temperature.

          https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0402-y

          80

          • #
            Peter Fitzroy

            I’m sure you believe in your model, which only has one vector. weather and climate are different

            111

            • #
              tom0mason

              Peter Fitzroy,

              Most good scientist understand the limitations of their models, only the the alarmist and cAGW advocates types ‘believe’ that the climate through these models are predictable. Climate like weather is not predictable regardless of how ‘sophisticated’ the modeling or it’s imaginative interpretations. Neither meteorologist nor climate modelers have all the basic science upon which the weather and climate depend known and understood.
              The sensitive dependence of chaos on initial conditions and the imperfections in the models limit reliable predictability of the instantaneous state of the weather to less than 10 days in present‐day operational forecasts. The existence of slowly varying components such as the sea surface temperature, soil moisture, snow cover, and sea ice may provide basis for predicting certain aspects of climate at long range. The regularly varying nonlinear oscillations, such as the Madden‐Julian Oscillation, monsoon intraseasonal oscillations, and El Niño‐Southern Oscillation, are also possible sources of extended‐range predictability at the climate time scale.
              However a large dose of skepticism has to be applied to any projection of future scenarios as the climate models have so many inconsistencies, inadequacies, and fudges to cover the basic lack of scientific knowledge about how climate factors operate and evolve.

              A basic question about the predictability of statistical forecasting models led to the discovery of chaos in deterministic nonlinear systems. The important property of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaotic systems renders the weather predictions to become progressively worse because of errors in observations used as initial conditions in models. The predictability studies have been carried out since the time when the first few global models were developed, and regular assessment of the predictability of the weather forecasting models is done at operational centers. Studies with idealized low‐order nonlinear models showed that the typical error growth consists of exponential growth followed by slower growth because of nonlinearities before reaching saturation. A linear theory of the dynamics of errors explains the exponential growth when the errors are small with the largest Lyapunov exponent more often controlling the growth rate. Although tremendous progress has been achieved in weather prediction models, observations, and data assimilation, reliable forecasts are limited to less than 10 days. While better representation of some of physical processes is still necessary, the magnitude of the errors in the initial conditions may pose a more challenging problem. The initial errors in the present‐day models are already in the nonlinear phase of the error growth. Any improvement in terms of a few days may require the errors in initial conditions to be reduced by an order of magnitude or more.

              While the growing recognition of seamless prediction of weather and climate seems to be a desirable goal, some fundamental questions about the predictability of climate need to be addressed. With the present‐day models being incapable of predicting the instantaneous states beyond the weather time scale, there is a need to find answers for what is predictable at the climate scale and to identify the sources of long‐range predictability of climate. The optimism for long‐range predictability of climate comes from the existence of slowly varying components such as SST and soil moisture and more regularly varying oscillations such as monsoon ISOs, MJO, and ENSO. Instead of instantaneous states, the predictability of time‐averaged variability, the embedded nonlinear oscillations, and signals associated with persisting modes of climate must be investigated. The recent study employing the phase reconstruction method demonstrated that there is reliable long‐range predictability of monsoon ISO. Certain aspects of climate variability at intraseasonal and seasonal time scales can be predicted at extended range, and therefore, the predictability of phenomena such MJO and ENSO must be investigated. Ultimately, the prediction at the climate time scale must be made by global climate models. The demonstration of the predictability of climate by simple models brings optimism for better forecasts by operational models when they are capable of properly representing the sources of long‐range predictability. For example, a major problem with the operational model in predicting the monsoon ISO is the failure of the model to correctly capture the initial phase of the oscillation. Therefore, investigations with simple models and newer methods may shed light on the sources of climate predictability and the problems that need to be addressed by operational centers.

              From https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019EA000586

              140

            • #
              el gordo

              Climate is 30 years, half the PDO cycle. This is no coincidence.

              The klimatriat has been focussed on temperature, unprecedented heatwaves, so in their philosophy there is no difference between weather and climate.

              “Much more interesting, We don’t know what stops a drought. We know it’s rain, but we don’t know what lines up to create drought breaking rains.”

              La Nina will do it every time and back to back La Nina in the early 2020s should see world temperatures fall. Australia will then become a huge carbon dioxide sink as the aridity turns to flood, greening up the desert and filling the Artesian Basin.

              81

            • #
              AndyG55

              Where as you will “believe” whatever anti-science garbage reinforces your fantasy, Right, PF !

              60

            • #
              el gordo

              ‘I’m sure you believe in your model, which only has one vector. weather and climate are different.’

              Climate can be seen in the behaviour of weather and my global cooling model looks promising.

              https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3022136/china-scientists-warn-global-cooling-trick-natures-sleeve

              10

        • #
          el gordo

          Judith Curry on weather stuff.

          “ … recent international and national climate assessment reports have reported low confidence in any link between manmade climate change and observations of wildfires, hurricanes, floods and droughts.”

          ‘As a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and a distinguished academician who has authored over 190 scientific papers, she should know. Dr. Curry notes further that, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “there is not yet evidence of changes in the global frequency or intensity of hurricanes, droughts, floods or wildfires.”

          Financial Post

          120

    • #
      AndyG55

      “The landscape is hotter than normal and getting hotter”

      Now you are highlight things he got WRONG !!

      Only urban areas are getting warmer, and they comprise a small percentage of the area,

      and a HUGE percentage of the surface calculation.

      110

  • #
    pat

    disappointed with this piece in The Australian today. not behind paywall:

    12 Aug: Australian: Pacific nations set to ambush Morrison over climate change
    Exclusive By Ben Packham, FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND DEFENCE CORRESPONDENT
    Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga yesterday warned that island nations would confront the Prime Minister at the forum, urging him to consider his Pacific “family” rather than “following the influence of Donald Trump”, who pulled the US out of the Paris climate agreement.
    Mr Sopoaga said the expansion of coalmining in Australia was contributing to the climate emergency facing Pacific Islands, particularly atoll nations such as Tuvalu etc…

    His Tuvalu counterpart said ­island leaders would challenge Mr Morrison and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on the need to cut emissions further.
    “If they don’t accept it, I don’t think we can call them leaders. I don’t think they are serious about saving their own people who are living in these island countries,” Mr Sopoaga said.
    “Your policies about coalmining, releasing greenhouse gases — regardless of how much money you spend on the step-up policy — you are helping to have serious impli­cations on your own people who are living in Tuvalu, Kiribati …
    “Australians and New Zealanders, they talk business every day, ignoring the fact that coalmining is continuing … and many, many other things leading to emissions increasing in the atmosphere.”

    Mr Morrison last year defied partyroom critics who wanted Australia to pull out of the Paris agreement by arguing for the strategic importance of keeping Pacific ­nations onside.
    Yet Pacific nations remain angry over his government’s approval of the Adani coalmine, and his decision to use “carry-over credits” from over-achieving on the Kyoto climate agreement to lower Australia’s Paris emissions task…READ ON
    https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/pacific-nations-set-to-ambush-morrison-over-climate-change/news-story/bdea2d1c4409e83ee52fdbe4f8b49c00

    31

    • #
      Bill in Oz

      Desperately trying on another way of getting Money
      Money, money !
      Let them be hung out to dry out a while !

      70

    • #
      Greg in NZ

      Surely the PM of Tuvalu realises ‘Australians and New Zealanders’ have two crises to contend with his atoll nation doesn’t?

      a). Very cold winters and b). successful homegrown industries [other than climate cargo cult belief systems].

      80

      • #
        Greg in NZ

        Uh-oh, then again:
        Enele Sopoaga ‘received a Certificate in Diplomatic Studies from Oxford University in 1990, and a master’s degree from the University of Sussex in 1994’ then at Copenhagen’s 2009 COP15 ‘was one of the chief negotiators for global action on climate change’ [wiki].

        Let’s do it for Tuvalu. For if we save Tuvalu we save the world‘ – PM Sopoaga at 2015 UNCCCrap (COP21).

        Climate Cargo Cult.

        100

  • #
    pat

    judging from ***Streem’s percentage for ABC (SEE CHART), it’s difficult to take their analysis seriously. Streem was founded in 2013 by former PM Julia Gillard digital adviser, Edgar Welch:

    2 Aug: Guardian: Just one in 20 Australian news stories about drought mention climate change
    Scientists say increasing temperatures worsen drought, but the link has rarely been made in the media in the past two years
    by Nick Evershed
    Climate change is making the drought in eastern Australia more severe and contributing to the woes of the Murray-Darling river system. However, only around one in 20 news stories about the drought mention climate change.

    An analysis of media coverage of the drought was prepared for Guardian Australia by ***Streem, a media monitoring company. The analysis looked at drought coverage from October 2017 onwards across TV, radio, online and print. Each news story was scored for the occurrence of key phrases [more detail about the methods below].

    Overall, the media were more likely to mention financial relief or assistance funding (7.6%) in news stories than climate change (5.8%). Since Scott Morrison became prime minister, he was more likely to be mentioned in a news story (6.4%) than climate change…
    The mediums least likely to include climate change in news stories were radio (2.5%) and TV (2.6%), with commercial stations particularly low…

    Guardian Australia scored the highest, at 38%…

    Since 1910, Australia has warmed by 1 degree on average. According to Andrew King, a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne, climate change is making droughts worse.
    “In general, climate change is exacerbating drought, mainly because in a warmer world we experience more evaporation from the surface, and we project for that to continue in the future,” he says.
    “So when it does rain, more of that water is likely to be lost to the atmosphere through evaporation than before human-caused climate change.”…

    David Holmes is the director of the climate change communication research hub at Monash University, and has conducted similar studies of media coverage (LINK).
    Holmes says that coverage of extreme weather trends tends to get overtaken by several common narratives that push climate change out of the story…READ ON
    https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2019/aug/02/just-one-in-20-australian-news-stories-about-drought-mention-climate-change

    23 Jul: ABC: Future Drought Fund that formed centrepiece of Scott Morrison’s summit passes Lower House
    By political reporter Tom Iggulden
    Mr Albanese accused Mr Morrison of taking a narrow view of the drought.
    “Two words the Prime Minister didn’t use: climate change,” he told Parliament…
    Government backbencher Barnaby Joyce accused Labor of playing up to inner-city voters.
    “There is not one thing this Parliament can do to change the weather,” he told Parliament.
    “What they can do is make vulnerable people poorer.”…

    SMALL “FLOCK”, BUT POSTING FOR THE STREEM SECTION:

    1 Aug: SMH: Labor MPs flock to join Craig Kelly’s ‘friends of coal’ group
    By Michael Koziol and Samantha Hutchinson
    Opposition frontbencher and Hunter MP Joel Fitzgibbon bolted out of the blocks, offering to co-chair the group.
    Now it can be revealed three more Labor MPs have said “I’m in” to Kelly’s coal corroboree…

    CHANGING OF THE OLD GUARD
    Things are going from bad to worse for troubled media monitoring outfit iSentia.
    It was exactly two years ago the Surry Hills-based firm had to write off its entire $38 million investment in King Content, killing off the brand and closing its Hong Kong and New York offices…
    But its share price has continued to fall. It’s sitting at $0.26 these days, down from just under $5 at the end of 2015. Last year it was the worst-performing media stock on the ASX…

    Compounding the agency’s problems is the rise of a rival service, Streem, set up in 2017 by Elgar Welch, a one-time adviser to ***Julia Gillard. Among its heavy-hitter investors: Quantium chairman Tony Davis and former ACCC chair Graeme Samuel.

    In a short period Streem, headquarted just a few hundred metres from iSentia, has lured big corporates away from the market leader – including Telstra and Vodafone, Origin and AGL and three of the big four banks.
    And now the heavy arm of government is changing teams. The latest convert is Scott Morrison’s sprawling Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, including the PM’s office, which dumped iSentia for Streem just weeks ago.
    AusTender records show Streem has also secured a $1 million, four-year contract with the Australian Tax Office and a $300,000 one-year deal with Michaelia Cash’s jobs department…
    https://www.smh.com.au/national/labor-mps-flock-to-join-craig-kelly-s-friends-of-coal-group-20190731-p52cn0.html

    41

  • #
    pat

    12 Aug: SMH: A climate plea to Scott Morrison from a churchman of the Pacific’s sinking nations
    By James Bhagwan
    (Reverend James Bhagwan is the general secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches, whose members represent about 90 per cent of the population of the Pacific Islands)
    As Australia’s Prime Minister arrives in Tuvalu for the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ Meeting on Tuesday, I want to remind him that he is setting foot in a country that could soon be under water.
    I want to remind Scott Morrison that for the people of Tuvalu – and Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands, and all the other Pacific Island Nations – nothing worries us more than climate change
    We’ve watched as our homes are eaten away by rising tides, and as Australia allows its emissions to rise and then uses accounting tricks to create the illusion of meeting its inadequate Paris targets.

    As one person of faith to another, I would like to tell Australia’s Prime Minister: This is not Godly leadership.
    For Christians, acting to prevent climate catastrophe is not just about survival. It is about loving your neighbour, and protecting God’s creation. Right now, Australia is doing far more than most to desecrate the precious gift that humanity has been given.
    Morrison has made much of his faith and yet brought a lump of coal into Parliament…
    Look at the government’s plans to open up the Galilee Basin for Adani’s Carmichael coal mine…

    ***Climate change is harming Australians and Pacific Islanders through worsening heatwaves, droughts, and floods, while threatening endangered species such as the Black Throated Finch and the Great Barrier Reef…
    https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/a-climate-plea-to-scott-morrison-from-a-churchman-of-the-pacific-s-sinking-nations-20190808-p52f4a.html

    31

    • #
      Greg in NZ

      They’re obviously not up with the science:
      Tuvalu, Kiribas [phonetic] and a thousand-and-one other islands are growing (morphing, shifting, adapting, alternating – y’know, ebb & flow – up and down and left and right and a bit over that’a’way) always changing…

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    pat

    12 Aug: Financial Times: Pressure mounts on National Grid after UK blackout
    Critics question whether company can cope with transition to renewable energy
    by David Sheppard and Anjli Raval in London, Nathalie Thomas in Edinburgh
    Financial Times-10 hours ago
    When a blackout hit almost 1m British homes and caused travel chaos on Friday, people joked whether someone had tried “turning the UK off and back on again” as if the country was a temperamental computer…

    But for National Grid, the joke was a reminder that the worst blackout since 2003 came as it faces uncomfortable questions about its monopoly in running a fast-changing electricity system that is moving towards cleaner-burning fuels…
    The company is navigating the government’s highly ambitious overhaul of the country’s energy supplies, which involves dramatically increasing the amount of wind and solar on the grid…

    Tom Edwards, analyst at the energy consultancy Cornwall Insight, suggested that the failure at the wind farm might have been a knock-on effect from the loss of the gas-fired power station…

    An energy analyst, requesting anonymity, said National Grid would rapidly try to work out the chain of events that led to a “very big failure to the system”, including the greater role of renewable power.
    “Before, we had a lot of gas, coal and nuclear. Now we’re close to being dominated by wind. [Friday’s blackout] might be completely separate to all that, but this is a question the government, the regulators and National Grid will want to know [the answer to].”…

    Keith Bell, a professor in electronic and electrical engineering at the University of Strathclyde and a member of the government’s advisory Committee on Climate Change: “This has become an opportunity for people — from the Labour party to climate change deniers — to promote a particular agenda, even though it basically seems like an unfortunate series of events,” he said.
    Increasing the UK’s reliance on renewable energy has broad political support, with the governing Conservative party legislating to cut the country’s carbon emissions to “net zero” by 2050.
    https://www.ft.com/content/2db14892-bc3f-11e9-b350-db00d509634e

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    pat

    behind paywall:

    11 Aug: UK Telegraph: The renewable energy con: how the ‘clean’ power you buy comes from fossil fuels
    By Sam Meadows
    Households on “100pc renewable” energy tariffs may be getting as little as 3.7pc of their energy from truly green sources…
    But consumers trying to help the planet through their energy bills may not be getting what they bargained for, according to Tom Harrison of Good Energy, a supplier that buys all its power from renewable sources.
    Providers can offer green tariffs in two ways. They can buy clean energy direct from wind or solar farms or they can purchase a “renewable energy guarantee of origin” certificate (Rego) to show that they are offsetting the unclean energy they market as green. These can be bought for as little as £1.

    Any generator of renewable power can apply for a Rego, issued by the Government, and then sell it on to an energy supplier. The issue, Mr Harrison said, is that a firm can buy them without purchasing the actual energy created…
    Mr Harrison said Regos are a “nice little marketing trick”…

    According to analysis by Good Energy, Shell Energy’s 100pc renewable tariff could get as little as 3.7pc of its power directly from renewable sources, while just half of E.On’s newly launched green tariff is made of clean power…
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/bills-and-utilities/renewable-energy/renewable-energy-con-clean-power-buy-comes-fossil-fuels/

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    pat

    12 Aug: Reuters: Iberdrola to sell stake in East Anglia wind farm – FT
    by Akshay Balan in Bengaluru
    Iberdrola SA has agreed to sell a stake worth more than 1 billion pounds in its UK energy business ScottishPower’s East Anglia wind farm to Macquarie Group Ltd’s Green Investment Group subsidiary, the Financial Times reported on Monday.
    Iberdrola will sell to the group slightly less than 50% of the wind farm located off the Suffolk coast and currently under construction, the FT said. The deal will be funded using third party debt, the report added (LINK).
    Iberdrola, Macquarie and Green Investment Group did not respond immediately to requests for comment from Reuters.
    https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-iberdrola-macquarie-green-investment/iberdrola-to-sell-stake-in-east-anglia-wind-farm-ft-idUKKCN1V2007

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  • #
    Zane

    Some massive players are lined up against coal. I can only see it as a collusion of giant natural gas interests, being the Arabs, esp Qatar, Russia (Gazprom which means the Kremlin), and the oil/gas majors being ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP. They have spent tens of billions on gas to liquids projects and need to sell the output. Exxon partnered with Qatar to develop the world’s biggest natural gas resource. Shell built the world’s largest GTL plant in Qatar. LNG is shipped from Russia to Europe, sold to Shell, who transport it to UK electric utilities.

    These guys have huge vested interests in demonizing coal fired electricity and replacing it with natural gas. Greens are useful idiot partners. It’s all about money, not science. It usually is.

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      Ross

      You’ve got it a nutshell Zane.
      The stupid alarmists do not understand they are being used by the massive players you mention. They do not understand why an oil company, for example, would give an environmental activist group some funding.

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  • #
    pat

    11 Aug: Daily Mail: We’re like Venezuela – next time the lights could be out for weeks: Political analyst RICHARD NORTH on the power cut that sent Britain in meltdown
    By Richard North For The Mail On Sunday
    The wind farm industry was bursting with good news on Friday. Wind was generating as much as 47.6 per cent of our electricity, announced Renewables UK, a body which promotes wind power in the EU. ‘A new wind record!’ it exclaimed.
    Shortly afterwards, Britain’s electricity system went down in a catastrophic failure that deprived nearly a million people (CUSTOMERS) of power, stranded thousands of rail passengers and caused chaos on London roads.
    The blackout was little short of a disgrace…
    Part of the problem is the obsession with ‘renewables’ such as solar and, particularly in Britain, wind power. We ignore how patchy their contribution is. The wind doesn’t always blow…READ ON
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7344987/Political-analyst-RICHARD-NORTH-power-cut-sent-Britain-meltdown.html

    10 Aug: UK Spectator: How renewable energy makes power cuts more likely
    by Ross Clark
    At 16 minutes past four on Friday a press officer at National Grid put out a tweet which seemed to signal Britain’s progress towards its much-vaunted zero-carbon economy. The proportion of UK electricity generated by wind power, it boasted, had just reached a record high of 47.6 per cent. What, with the weather sunny as well as windy, the total coming from renewable energy was nearly two-thirds.

    They were not to know that around half-an-hour later the lights would go out over a large swathe of Britain. There would be power cuts from London to Lincolnshire to the West Country. Trains would stop running, traffic lights would stop working. Ipswich hospital would not only lose its main electricity supply but backup generators, too, would fail, leaving emergency systems reliant on battery power…

    Such outages have occurred before, and before wind power was a significant contributor to UK power supply…
    Yet Friday’s incident is a reminder of the pressure under which the National Grid is being put by ever-increasing quantities of intermittent renewable energy being fed into it. When the UK’s electricity was most supplied by a few large coal and nuclear power stations it was relatively easy to manage the National Grid. We knew where the power was coming from, and where it was likely to be needed. Yet with renewables management of the grid becomes a whole lot more complex. Sometimes, like yesterday, wind and solar will be rampant. At other times – such as on a calm January evening, when the demand for electricity is at its highest – they will be producing nothing…READ ON
    https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/08/how-renewable-energy-makes-power-cuts-more-likely/

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    pat

    11 Aug: WSJ: Giant Batteries Supercharge Wind and Solar Plans
    Utilities are investing in large units that make it more affordable to store renewable energy and deploy it when needed.
    By Neanda Salvaterra
    Government-owned utilities and companies are buying batteries that can be larger than shipping containers. Some like Tesla Inc.’s new utility-scale battery can hold enough energy to power every home in San Francisco for six hours. Battery makers also are working on more advanced models that will hold more power and last longer.

    In the U.S., the Silicon Valley-based firm introduced its new battery technology called Megapack last month that Pacific Gas & Electric Co. plans to use in California. Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems is developing high-capacity batteries for a 1,000-megawatt venture in Utah that it touts as the world’s largest renewable-energy storage project.

    In the U.K., ScottishPower is spending $7.2 billion on renewable energy, grid upgrades and battery storage between 2018 and 2022. The utility owns Scotland’s largest electricity network and operates in Europe’s windiest region, and generates all its power from renewable sources after selling its last fossil fuel assets in January.
    China’s goal is to increase the use of renewable energy and batteries by 2030 as part of a massive national energy overhaul aimed at helping to reduce the use of polluting coal-fired power plants.

    And the World Bank Group has set aside $1 billion to invest in battery projects, including one of the world’s largest mixed solar, wind and storage power plants in India and a battery project in South Africa anticipated to be the largest of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa…

    High-capacity batteries have previously been too expensive for most energy providers to invest in, which has slowed the growth of renewable power, according to analysts…
    But storage-battery prices have dropped nearly 40% since 2015, according to Wood Mackenzie data. The prices of lithium and vanadium—two of several key raw materials that are used in such batteries—also have declined over the past year or so…

    Utilities around the globe deployed a record 6.1 gigawatt hours of energy-storage capacity in 2018, ***enough to power about 50,000 households for a day***, according to Wood Mackenzie.
    That is relatively small, but spending on high-capacity batteries is set to grow sixfold to $71 billion by 2024, according to Wood Mackenzie…

    China and South Korea deployed more than 40% of the new gigawatt hours put into service world-wide for stationary energy storage solutions last year, according to the market intelligence firm IDTechEx…

    Meanwhile, the World Bank’s battery program is aimed at providing power to the more than 800 million people world-wide particularly in parts of Asia and Africa that don’t have access to electricity. The bank expects to raise an additional $4 billion in private funding to drive ventures such as the partnership with South Africa’s state-owned utility Eskom to develop a 1.44 gigawatt-hour battery…

    ScottishPower’s investment in batteries is intended to help prevent some of the wind power it generates from going to waste and to help balance the electricity supply on the grid…
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/giant-batteries-supercharge-wind-and-solar-plans-11565535601

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    Maptram

    The climate “scientists” only predict higher temperatures. They claim droughts and flooding rains and cyclones as climate change after these events have happened.

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      el gordo

      … and if you care to look back in time it becomes clear AGW is a concoction.

      ‘I’ve spent many years poring over temperature data from a diversity of locations across Australia, and what I’ve found is that when such records are extended back in time — even just a few decades — the overall temperature trend is quite different and ‘the catastrophe’ disappears.’

      Jennifer Marohasy

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      Speedy

      Yes, it’s a funny thing that when the BOM “homogenise” the data, they seem to make the present hotter and the past colder. In that respect, Global Warming truly is man-made. Artificial, if you like.
      Cheers,

      Mike

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    Brian

    I suspect that Prof Pitman will be treated to the same vitriol by his contemporaries as Prof Ridd. Never underestimate the fury of academics if their gravy train is threatened.

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    Zane

    Apparently New Zealand plans to decimate its economy by pandering to climate hysteria. https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2019/08/kiwi-climatology-land-of-the-long-white-clods/

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    TdeF

    People really believe they can change the climate. One way to do it is vegetation. I remember a US team who came here looking for an explanation for the fact that Australia’s rainfall halved 50,000 years ago. The megafauna died out too in that 1,000 years. The entire country changed. We all know why, a stone age people with the gift of fire and dogs for companions.

    After all the fuss over a species of common finch, surely we should be mourning the wiping out of many significant species?

    However why not reverse it? We cannot get the giant wombats back, but if we could restore the landscape and flora and make the deserts bloom by reticulation, we could slowly get back to that 50,000 year high in vegetation and then rainfall. While the Amazon is being stripped and Indonesia burned to the ground, we are spending $6Billion a year on. Windmills?

    So whatever you believe, we should be trying to change the country. Would we like it wetter, more productive, more green? The problem is we are not allowed to do anything. We have to ask permission of the same people who did the damage, the custodians. And thank them every day at every meeting, when we should be trying to put it all back.

    For less than Turnbulls useless Snowy II, we could have our North South pipeline, bringing the Ord river south.

    Why not some serious terraforming?

    We could create a canal to connect Lake Eyre to the sea and create a wetland of immense size in the middle
    What about a NS strip 200km long and 2 km wide of black rutile, a huge updraft and make it rain in Western Victoria and NSW? Glider and hang glider heaven. Cheaper than solar farms and no electricity needed and free rain from clouds which drop no rain.
    What about dams feeding canals and storing the enormous runoff of the Goyper and Diamantia and even saving the water of Lake Eyre as fresh water?
    Where is the imagination of the Egyptians or the water savings of the Nabateans or the ingenuity of the Iraqis in Bagdhad?

    When in the last thirty years of ecologists and make believe Climate Scientists and Bemoaners and stop the world activists like Dr. Bob Brown did anyone actually propose something useful instead of blowing things up and stopping mining, exploration, fracking, dams, farming, meat eating? When did the Greens actually propose something, other than importing free windmills for foreign investors? Now Dr. Brown wants to stop his own monster?

    Where are the smart ideas from the smart country? How are our boomerang exports going? Or are they too expensive to make with the cost of electricity?

    After all, if we truly believe we can change the climate, we should. A bit warmer in Melbourne and Hobart. A bit cooler in Darwin (government issued cardigans) and Marble bar. And a Green centre to Australia and a food bowl for the world.

    Or we can just keep building German/Chinese windmills and listen to the ABC/Fairfax moaning about Climate Change. They are like the professional wailers in a Middle Eastern funeral. And then head off to Europe on a well earned long holiday in Europe without doing anything of good for anyone. The people against everything and all change is bad.

    Besides, where in Australia has the Climate actually Changed? Where has the sea risen? Another 12 years to Armageddon? This is the fourth one.

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      Annie

      Israel made the desert bloom. Our daughter-in-law in the UAE has twice made a beautiful garden blossom on what was bare sand in the frightful climate of the Gulf.

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      Bill in Oz

      It was the removal of trees
      By the use of fire by Aborigines
      Which lessoned the rainfall
      In the Inland.
      They wanted extra grassland for grazing kangaroos etc.

      Areas that have been revegetated
      With native trees & shrubs
      Transpiring increased water vapour
      back into the atmosphere from deep in the soil.
      That boosts rainfall be about 10-13%
      And in a dry part of the world
      That is a big amount.
      I once knew an old timer organic farmer
      Near Mt Gambier who did exactly this
      On his 1200 ha.s of land.
      As the planted revegetation grew
      He measured increased rainfall
      On his farm.
      Now long gone.
      I wonder what happened to his farm afterwards ?

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      • #
        Bill in Oz

        Just had a senior’s moment.
        His farm was on the Eyre Peninsula
        Near Port Lincoln !

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        Maptram

        I think this is what Peter Andrews and his Natural Sequence Farming does. He wrote a couple of books “Back from the Brink” and “Beyond the Brink.”

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        Another Ian

        Bill

        Careful of generalising.

        In this case you’re generalising assumes a Mediterranean climate – wet winters with slow rain, low evaporation, low plant growth rates, plenty of time for infiltration and deep percolation.

        Which assumptions do not apply in northern Australia, and why the last “dry land salinity hazard” was a beat-up in Qld.

        Where the rainfall is mainly in summer, so hot, high plant growth rates and evaporation, with mainly storm rain so not much chance of deep percolation.

        And the potential for water use by plants and evaporation is much greater than most rainfall.

        Water use measured experimentally over mulga country from totally cleared to unthinned showed that ALL of them used all the rainfall that fell.

        The Qld Salinity Management Handbook stated “that in areas of Qld with rainfall less than 600 mm the chance of dryland salinity is negligable” well before that beat-up.

        One suggester use for Premier Beattie’s “Big Red Salinity Hazard Map” was to frame it, call it “Red Poles” and hang it in the Queensland Art Gallery as the Qld answer to “Blue Poles” – in that it probably cost about as much and caused similar controversy (Ringers Column, Qld Country Life of the time)

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    pat

    we all know Pitman has been featured often on ABC, even as recently as the “climate election” that wasn’t:

    7 May: ABC: Climate change is a federal election issue for voters, so how do the policies stack up?
    By Michael Slezak
    “Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale. Our greatest threat in thousands of years. Climate change.”
    This was a message recently delivered by renowned naturalist Sir David Attenborough. And he meant it for our politicians…

    Professor Andy Pitman, head of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW says the Coalition’s target — if replicated by other countries — isn’t nearly enough to avoid two degrees of global warming.
    He says the 26 per cent cut to emissions is “about a third” of what’s needed…

    Director of the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy at ANU Professor Frank Jotzo says Labor’s target “will be seen as a strong target for Australia”…
    But Professor Pitman says it still won’t mean Australia does its fair share to stop global warming at below 2C, so it would need significant ratcheting to comply with the aims of the Paris Agreement.
    “There is a fundamental misunderstanding I think across western governments on how deep the emission cuts need to be to achieve the 2 degree limit on warming,” says Professor Pitman.
    That view is backed by the Climate Change Authority…

    Labor has also said it will aim to reduce net carbon emissions to zero by 2050. The same target has been discussed by the EU and has just been recommended to the UK by its official climate adviser.
    “If implemented globally that would be a good and strong target,” Professor Pitman says…

    Professor Pitman concedes that if Australia eliminated its emissions completely, and every other country did nothing, it would have virtually no impact on global warming.
    But that’s not the point, he says. “If we’re not cutting emissions we have no leverage, no influence, no moral right to ask other countries to do the same.”…
    Professor Pitman says Australia has a “vested interest” in taking a lead on climate action.
    “We are vulnerable to heat. We’re vulnerable to flood. Our ecosystems seem to be quite vulnerable like the Barrier Reef and so forth.”
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-07/climate-change-federal-election-morrison-shorten-policies-votes/11084580

    Sydney Environment Institute has also been featured often on ABC, as has Pitman’s ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes.
    yet somehow ABC missed the event being discussed here, in June 2019, when surely it would have been perfect for a Radio National “Big Ideas” program!

    however, in June, they did have time for the following “novella” by David Schlosberg, Professor of Environmental Politics in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, Director of the Sydney Environment Institute…PLUS another 42-plus minutes from him on the most pretentious of RN’s programs – “The Minefield” – presented by Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens:

    25 Jun: ABC Religion & Ethics: An ethic of ecological justice for the Anthropocene
    by David Schlosberg
    David Schlosberg is Professor of Environmental Politics in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, and Director of the Sydney Environment Institute. He is the author (with Luke Craven) of Sustainable Materialism: Environmental Movements and the Politics of Everyday Life. An earlier version of this article appeared in Political Animals and Animal Politics. You can hear Professor Schlosberg discuss democracy and ecological justice with Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens on The Minefield.
    ***RELATED LINK:
    Is democracy an impediment to addressing climate change?
    on (ABC’s) The Minefield with Waleed Aly, Scott Stephens
    42mins 28secs
    Wed 26 Jun 2019, 11:30am
    https://www.abc.net.au/religion/an-ethic-of-ecological-justice-for-the-anthropocene/11246010

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      Zane

      Talk about alarmist hyperbole. ” Man made disaster of global scale “. That statement is wrong on so many counts it isn’t funny.

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  • #
    neil

    I am surprised how resilient this religious sect is, I thought three years ago that the failure of predictions and omens of their high priests was finally getting through to the gullible faithful. It seemed that the hollow predictions had seen most of their foot soldiers in the MSM turn their backs. But the hard core at the ABC, Fairfax and The Project have regrouped and feel rejuvenated by their IPCC church’s decree that mother Gaia appeared before them in an apparition and spoke these holy words, it’s no longer global warming or climate change, it’s GLOBAL EXTINCTION.

    And they are renewed, HALLALUYA.

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    John Nicol

    This is actually dishonesty writ large. For Andy Pitman to acknowledge this fact which many, many skeptics and simple rural folk like myself (whose family has been working the land in Australia since 1860 with no discontinuity and there ate thousands of others like us) means that many others on his side of the fence must ALSO know it.

    It isn’t rocket science – not even climate science, for God’s sake – it is just a matter of getting hold of the numbers and adding them up or in the case of the long term family farmers/graziers, going into the station office and flicking back across the rainfalls reaching across time into the mid 1800s.. It also involves passing on stories as when my family lost a huge number of sheep in the 1915 drought and again in 1926, horses went up onto the basalt country North of Hughenden and only mustering half of them at the end etc etc. Floods through the fifties – five in a row not seen since 1917,… on and on I goes while these clowns have been denying this until they could hide it no longer.

    This needs to be promoted far and wide and the ARC FORCED to make it public. John Nicol

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      el gordo

      Thanks for the anecdotal evidence, back to back La Nina was the cause.

      ‘Floods through the fifties – five in a row …’

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    pat

    PICS: 11 Aug: Russia Today: ‘Feels wrong?’ Elites’ darling Greta Thunberg poses next to German ‘eco-extremist’
    The young Swedish environmentalist, Greta Thunberg, who has found attentive audiences among Western elites and media alike, has flabbergasted a German politician and police by posing with a masked “left-wing extremist.”…
    Located in western Germany, Hambach Forest is an arena of a longstanding battle between environmentalists-turned-squatters and Germany’s second largest electricity producer, RWE, which operates a local open-cast coal mine.

    Much to the dismay of a local politician and a police official, the now prominent climate activist seemingly sided with those whom German security services have branded extremists for quite some time.Photos taken at the scene show Thunberg posing next to a masked figure in black alongside local environmentalists. The veiled woman is one of the squatters who occupied the 12,000-year-old forest in an attempt to prevent it being razed to the ground for the sake of the mine expansion…

    Police attempts to forcibly remove them from the area often ended up in clashes and violence. The German domestic security service, the BfV, has designated them as “left-wing extremists.”…
    Now, Thunberg’s alleged support for the said “extremists” has unnerved the local authorities.“The photos show a disturbing lack of distance between the moralizing alleged climate champions and violent masked extremists and anti democrats,” Gregor Golland, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party and the deputy head of the party’s faction in a regional parliament, told the German tabloid Bild.
    “[Seeing] Greta Thunberg near a masked person feels wrong,” Michael Mertens, head of the regional office of the German police association, told the paper…

    Thunberg’s own movement’s activists did not see any problem, however…READ ON
    https://www.rt.com/news/466285-greta-thunberg-germany-left-extremists/

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    pat

    ***when will the CAGW plan to raid pensions become common knowledge?

    12 Aug: Guardian: City urged to attach ‘climate risk’ reports to ***pensions
    by Jillian Ambrose
    Britain’s biggest companies, investors and pension funds must come clean to investors on the financial risks they face due to the climate crisis, MPs have said.
    The environmental audit committee (EAC) has called for the City of London to face mandatory climate reporting within the next three years to avoid jeopardising hundreds of billions of pounds worth of pension savings.
    The cross-party committee of MPs criticised ministers for failing to take specific steps to drive forward climate disclosure plans, despite publicly supporting international recommendations…

    The MPs urged the government “to clarify in law” that pension funds have a duty to take into account long-term environmental risks to protect their savers.
    The report comes just weeks after the Treasury outlined plans to force firms and funds to show how the climate emergency could jeopardise their finances.
    The committee said it did not believe a voluntary approach would be effective and instead called for climate risk reporting to be mandatory on a “comply or explain” basis by the same deadline. The new plans would take effect by 2022 and include financial services firm, too…
    The committee’s report on “greening finance” found that the UK’s financial investment chain was “structurally incentivised” to prioritise short-term profits rather than long-term issues including the climate crisis…

    ***Mary Creagh, who chairs the committee: “We want to see mandatory climate risk reporting and a clarification in law that pension trustees have a duty to consider long term sustainability, not just short-term returns.”…
    Creagh said the low-carbon transition “also presents exciting opportunities in clean energy, transport and tech that could benefit UK businesses”…

    The committee also called for pension savers to have a say about how their money is invested by forcing pension funds to actively seek the views of their beneficiaries when they set their investment principles…
    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/12/city-urged-to-attach-climate-risk-reports-to-pensions

    ***Wikipedia: Mary Creagh
    Mary Helen Creagh MP FCIL is a British Labour politician who has represented Wakefield as its Member of Parliament (MP) since 2005…
    Creagh worked in Brussels for four years, first as an intern at the European Parliament and then for the European Youth Forum…
    Creagh supported Remain in the EU referendum, a move that was seen at odds with her Leave-voting constituency…
    As chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, Creagh voiced her support for a 25p “latte levy” on plastic disposable cups…
    She has also stated that the UK leaving the EU would be bad for the planet, and “more than the harm” which would be done by Donald Trump.

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    pat

    10 Aug: DesmogUK: Funding for Annual UN Climate Talks Plummets as Mining Companies Slash Contributions — Reports
    By Matt Maynard
    Chile’s Tele 13 Radio journalist Paula Comondari reported on Wednesday that the national Mining Council’s expected $10 million funding package for the UN’s 25th Conference of the Parties (COP25) was to be slashed to just $2 million. Mining is Chile’s biggest industry and is intensive in terms of its water, energy and associated carbon emissions.
    Arturo Aguirre, Mayor of the Los Cerrillos COP event district, was unable to substantiate the details of the leak regarding COP25 funding with Desmog, but confirmed that “support has been less than expected.”…

    He spoke to DeSmog as he attempted to overcome a stand-off between members of civil society and industrialists by launching a Social Summit for Climate Action conference, to be held parallel to the COP. Civil society groups are angry at the Chilean government for what they see as “exorbitant” costs of participating in the COP, while the country’s major polluters are continuing to lobbying against more stringent climate policy…
    Chile is currently trying to pass a Climate Change Law that binds them to carbon zero emissions by 2050. The mining bureau have dismissed the scientific validity of the 2050 date as a “self-imposed” target “lacking discussion and substance.”…
    The Chilean Construction Association have also publicly criticised the proposed law citing its mitigation focus as costly and “not a priority for a non-emission relevant country like Chile which contributed approximately 0.25 percent (to global emissions) in 2015.”…

    Many groups remain angry despite the intervention by Chile’s high-level COP25 climate champion Gonzalo Muñoz offering limited free-of-charge space for civil society in the Green Area…READ ON FOR DETAILS
    https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/08/10/funding-annual-cop25-un-climate-talks-plummets-chile-mining-companies-slash-contributions-reports

    TWEET: Senator Jordon Steele-John, Greens Party, WA
    1)We should be focused on training the ADF for humanitarian and disaster relief associated with the inevitable impacts of #ClimateChange, not spending billions of dollars on new weapons
    LINK: ABC: Billions going into Defence for new weapons and armour for special forces soldiers
    Australia’s special forces will sport new weapons and body armour as part of a $3 billion spend on new equipment and training over the next ***two decades…
    12:54 AM – 12 Aug 2019

    2)The latest US weapons tech will do absolutely nothing to address the impacts of climate change in Australia or the Asia Pacific region – what is the actual point of $3billion worth of new weapons for our SAS? #AusPol
    12:55 AM – 12 Aug 2019

    3)It’s wildly irresponsible to continue pouring money into arming our defence force personel for ***imaginary future conflicts whilst totally ignoring the ***imminent global and regional threat of climate change/preparing for it #AusPol
    12:56 AM – 12 Aug 2019
    https://twitter.com/Jordonsteele/status/1160822287991316480

    ***could have swapped around “imaginary” and “imminent”!

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    Bill Hall

    How the worms squirm !

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    Speedy

    Does that mean we can get our money back? Just wondering.
    Cheers,
    Mike

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    High Treason

    This is why we need to go to their functions to see, hear, feel(their religious fervour) and smell their BS. I almost fell off my chair scrambling for my notepad on the night. Could not believe my ears. The wait was long for the podcast to come up.
    Could someone with the opportunity please ask him why he should not expose the drought/ climate change misinformation from mainstream media. I thought of the question on the night, but did not want to jeopardize the podcast.

    I am amazed it went under the radar. As it is, as soon as it came up(logged on several times a day) I time stamped it and recorded the bit of the podcast on my phone. The podcast was edited later (stuffed my original time stamp) but kept the incendiary bit in.

    Only by keeping the pressure up by exposing them can we avoid having to taste and swallow their BS.

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    dp

    If anyone takes any of this climate-change denial seriously, you’d do well to have a glance at this – https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Joanne_Nova

    After years of being proven wrong by every credible and creditable scientific body, she still carries on, feeble-mindedly hanging on to straws of counter-“evidence” usually supplied by minds as scientifically thorough and clinically astute as D.Trump…
    The planet is dying. Climate change is to blame. And if you don’t do anything to help stop it, your children and grandchildren will try to eke out an existence in a dustbowl.

    [Keep trying DP. If readers here were swayed by rabid insults, out of date myths, lies and breathless hate mail, they’d be reading rationalwiki already. Good luck with your pogrom. I hope you find some useful mission in life. – jo

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    Denny

    DP

    Thanks for making it so easy to dismiss your unthoughtprovoking comments. It’s becoming a common characteristic as the evidence mounts…one fact on top of another.

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