A miracle? CO2 at record highs but Australia’s risk of Megafire Summer reduced

Global carbon dioxide levels hit record highs in 2020. But through incredible luck, or perhaps a Pacific La Niña event, Australia is now less likely to get massive bushfires this summer.

Looks like carbon dioxide will now cause more floods and cyclones, not fires and droughts.

It’s just physics, you know.

La Niña set to bring cooler weather, more rain and cyclones to Australia

Lisa Cox, The Guardian

The last La Niña occurred from 2010-2012 and brought widespread flooding and record rainfall. The Bom said its modelling currently suggested the latest event would be strong but would not reach the same intensity.

[Andrew] Watkins said La Niña would likely bring increased rainfall in both northern and eastern Australia and increased risk of flooding. It also raises the chance of increased cyclone activity during the tropical cyclone season, with a typical season being nine to 11 cyclones.

He said an active La Niña would also reduce the bushfire risk this season slightly, but would not eliminate it.

Dr Joelle Griggs, a climate scientist at Australian National University, reminds us that even in La Niña years sometimes early rain produces bulk grass which, if things dry out, can still feed a good inferno (like Black Saturday in 2009 and Black Friday in 1939). But despite then hinting that “hottest ever La Niña’s” might still cause bushfires, she understands what matters:

The horror bushfires of last summer have already burnt a lot of fuel which should shield them.

“It’s the areas spared during our Black Summer that we need to worry about,” said Dr Griggs.

With uncanny accuracy that no global GCM’s can manage, even a climate scientist knows which exact regions are at risk of turning into incendiary events. But only because it has nothing to do with CO2.

Spin the wheel

What effect will CO2 have in Australia. In blue years of the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) CO2 causes floods. In red years, droughts and fires. Adjust your press releases accordingly.

REFERENCE

Australian Seasonal Bushfire Outlook: September – November 2020 (August 31)

SOI: https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/southern-oscillation-indices-signal-noise-and-tahitidarwin-slp-soi

 

9.1 out of 10 based on 63 ratings

83 comments to A miracle? CO2 at record highs but Australia’s risk of Megafire Summer reduced

  • #
    James Poulos

    Isn’t that because CO2 extinguishes fires?

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    • #
      GD

      So why does anthropogenic CO2 supposedly contribute to increasing bushfire intensity?

      Pure insanity.

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      • #
        Rowjay

        Makes plants grow quicker – especially the lower story woody weeds and ground cover that grow rampantly if not controlled.

        70

    • #
      sophocles

      But, but, but: trees are stored CO2, just waiting for a good fire to be released back into the atmosphere.
      Aren’t they?

      (So is coal but we’re not supposed to say that.)

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      • #
        James Poulos

        Ah coal… the original solar energy storage method.

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        • #
          M Seward

          Aand one of the best being of high energy density, 40 times grater than even the best current battery technology, stable, solid, easily storable and transportable. I think Gaia might be just a wee a bit smarter than the eco loons.

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    • #
      Geoff Croker

      This means we can expect a Cat 5 cyclone that will do far more damage than a massive bush fire. Our preparations for such an event, as usual, almost zero. The bottom of the solar minimum is the driver, nothing to do with a La Nina, this is just a symptom.

      When is the BoM going to analyse the incoming from the BIG Yellow Ball? We could then get useful predictions that could be tested against existing, “uncorrected” data , over hundreds of years. This is not that hard.

      Do it for our farmers. Do it to get our respect. Do it because its the right thing to do.

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      • #
        Peter Blackmore

        BoM is too busy “homogenising” (PC for fraudulent tampering) the records and destroying old records. When they have finished that, the data will be so corrupted that it will be meaningless.

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      • #
        el gordo

        ‘ … analyse the incoming from the BIG Yellow Ball?’

        We are watching and waiting to see the effect of a quiet sun, including the lag. Temperatures on earth should drop with the approach of La Nina, but if they then bounce back up to the plateau they will say solar forcing is a myth.

        ‘ … nothing to do with a La Nina, this is just a symptom.’

        Strongly disagree, ENSO is independent, but its fair to say that La Nina was more common during the Little Ice Age.

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        • #
          Geoff Croker

          “Overall, models do not currently anticipate this event will be as strong as the La Niña of 2010–12”

          “El Niño and La Niña. The World Meteorological Organization says the 1997-’98 El Niño was the strongest in the 20th Century. It was a major factor in 1997’s record high temperatures.”

          May 88 to July 89

          June 73 to June 76

          March 64 to December 65

          December 49 to February 51

          April 38 to April 39

          August 29 to March 30

          http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/history/La-Nina-2010-12.pdf

          Looks like last nine La Ninas were after the bottom of the sun spot solar cycle.

          I could match a lot more (a few hundred if I had the data) but you get the idea.

          The BYB (BIG YELLOW BALL) is the main thing that needs analysis.

          20

          • #
            Geoff Croker

            If you place your thumb against the sun in the sky it no longer exists. This is the careful method of analysis used by our climate change “we are all going to die” scientists.

            10

          • #
            el gordo

            This is interesting …

            ‘The 2010–11 La Niña drew to a close in May 2011, with both Pacific Ocean and atmospheric indicators returning to neutral levels by mid-year.’

            Its obvious that neutral conditions produced a temperature spike and then the second La Nina came into play.

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            • #
              Geoff Croker

              Big cyclones extend the La Nina. Cold winters at the end of the solar minimum create the conditions required for big cyclones.

              More data would tell us when and where to expect Cat 4-5s, years in advance. Instead of spending money on buoys and satellites we spend it on Climate Change boondoggles and regulations that destroy capital.

              The coming Cat 5 event will make last summer’s bush fires seem tiny.

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              • #
                el gordo

                They will say the Cat 5 is because of global warming but, as we all know, La Nina cools the planet.

                La Nina should create big cyclones, but this is typical weather behaviour. To find a solar connection we need a hindcast back to the Dalton Minimum to prove that the yellow orb is the main driver.

                00

  • #
    a happy little debunker

    So, no fuel management this year because it will be too wet?

    50

  • #
    Eddie

    [Off Topic]AD

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    • #
      Eddie

      [Off Topic again with Covid comments.]AD

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      • #
        sophocles

        Eddie:
        Thank you for telling us what we already knew. Jo brought the Reina Sofia study to our attention here last month. She has also devoted three(?) other headline posts since March to vitamin D 3 and the dangers of hypovitaminosis (low levels of vitamin D, ie: Deficiency). It’s actually good to see news getting around in other countries! The silence across Oceania has been most discouraging until now.

        Over February, through to and including April, the medical pre-print server, medRxiv.org was inundated by papers submitted for peer review outlining the efficacy and efficiency of treating/preventing Covid with Vitamin D 3. None of that reached the MSM … or the public. None. What happened? In that respect, it is good to see.

        The chant was vaccine vaccine vaccine. (with the occasional `there is no cure.’)
        Reina Sofia’s protocol (a best hospital practice) is near enough to being a cure as makes no difference!

        It may as well have not been published, even though it was the closest ever come to a Covid Cure. Oh, it’s not a vaccine … it took six days so it wasn’t an instantaneous single hit. Vaccine, vaccine. Vaccine!
        How many vaccine attempts have crashed and burned? Too many in the last few weeks.

        We need to arraign our pollies and health departments for attempted murder for their continuing, in the face of convincing evidence, willful neglect of the Good Health Hormone.

        Have you had a recent calcifediol test? If not, why not?
        (Have I? Yes! Four weeks ago.)

        So good luck. Keep spreading the news: we have to break through sometime …

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        • #
          Eddie

          Thanks Sophocles & AD. Yes I realised that. The point here is MSM picking up on it at last and climate skeptic with the ear of influential MPs in the ruling party getting Health Minister to acknowledge at last. The banging heads on brick walls may be nearing some breakthrough. I should have flagged it OT though.

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  • #
    ivan

    I have to question anything that originates from the BoM considering all their adjustments to the records that don’t match reality either past or present.

    Most, if not all, of their pronouncements aren’t worth the paper they are printed on so why should people believe this one?

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  • #
    Kalm Keith

    Penetrating;

    “With uncanny accuracy that no global GCM’s can manage, even a climate scientist knows which exact regions are at risk of turning into incendiary events”.

    The obvious extension of that thought leads us to the source of the problem: the significant failure to attend to our duty as curators of the “natural” environment.

    Following this realization by our climate worriers they should be obliged to get out of their offices and into the environment that is so horribly clogged with megatonnes of tangled undergrowth, and clean it up.

    It would be nice to be able to walk through the Bush and enjoy nature but I suspect that the environmentalists won’t like that.

    Fifty years ago the regular curation of the Bush was terminated on the grounds that nature should not be touched by human hand.

    As a cynic I would ask:

    the huge amounts of money saved, where has it gone?

    KK

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    • #
      sophocles

      It would be nice to be able to walk through the Bush and enjoy nature but I suspect that the environmentalists won’t like that.

      Of course ‘they’ won’t like it: the trees might catch covid, and because ‘there is no cure’ it would surely cause a disaster™ …

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  • #
    TdeF

    Isn’t it amazing. The BOM was predicting a dry year and then the rains came. The Indian Dipole apparently. Quite unexpected and a perfectly good excuse for being completely wrong.

    Then the rains continued and the drought is over for most of Australia and we are expecting a bumper crop. Now we are told it is a La Nina year. Again, an unpredictable event in any climate model.

    So despite the infallible models and super computers and experts, they were completely wrong. Twice. But that’s fine because nature intervened. And who can predict the biggest events in climate? Certainly not the Climate models.

    And these events, so unpredictable are both due to ocean currents, movements of the ocean which contains 99.9% of the solar energy received with 1400x the heat capacity of the thin atmosphere and which directly receives 75% of the incident solar energy. It makes you think we should be modelling the oceans, not the air but who can question the experts?

    Surely hotter oceans mean more CO2 in the air, cycling up and down from summer to winter and hotter oceans means more rain and less drought? But that would be wrong because of ocean acidification means CO2 is disappearing into the oceans?

    Does anyone get the feeling that the computer models are a waste of time? As is any attempt to control CO2 levels which clearly do not respond to stopping all the cars and keeping all the planes on the ground for a year?

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    • #
      TdeF

      And Scott Morrison wants to know how to revitalize industry? Perhaps by stopping the theft of our electricity payments to buy Chinese windmills and solar panels? We do not even get to own them! That’s about $6Billion a year hidden by law in our electricity bills at retail, and economically forcing the closure of coal power as unprofitable. All our coal and iron ore money going to China to buy windmills? Which don’t work. And if you don’t believe it, ask the people of California.

      Manufacturing, of metals. The removal of oxygen from oxides by electricity and carbon to produce CO2? Smelting. Impossible at our current electricity prices.
      And general manufacturing, the use of electricity to shape and weld and join metals with the world’s highest electricity prices.

      Mr Morrison, you could keep your $1.5Billion stimulus package. Just stop the illegal forced seizure of our electricity bills for ‘cheap’ Green energy. Then maybe manufacturing could actually be profitable? Heavy manufacture is just not competitive without cheap electricity. After all we are still 90% dependent on coal power, but at 9x the price.

      So to save the country, stop stealing our money. Stop forcing us to buy unreliable, inadequate, replaceables in wind and solar power. Stop to forcing us to pay for private and utterly useless suburban lunchtime solar which cannot go to industry. And batteries in the sky which cost billions to build and will never be used. Monuments to ignorance.

      Invest in turning brown coal black for exports, an Australian invention. Currently this is illegal in Victoria. And let the market compete on energy sources without interference by Federal laws with the Clean Enegy rubbish.

      CO2 is natural. It is the product of every bit of life on this planet. And it is in balance, a balance set only by sun intensity and cycles in the ocean called the Pacific Dipole at 11 years and the De Vries Cycle at 200 years. This is all known science.

      And by the way, build some dams instead of fighting over the little bit of water which lands in a desert country and just evaporates.

      As Steve Bracks the primary school swimming teacher who ran Victoria said, “Dams don’t make water”. Genius. And Dictator Daniel Andrews who would ban breathing if he could and has already sold us out to the Chinese Communist Party. Can we please have our country back from the Greens and the Communists? But I repeat myself.

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      • #
        TdeF

        And the caring people of their ABC have awarded themselves a pay rise. As has the Victoria Government. Daniel Andrews gets another $48,000 a year for his good work. And the Federal government wants to know who to incentivize industry? Stop the government theft of our money by public servants who argue a very slow rise in CO2 levels fully justifies their uncaring bans on everything from gas exploration, fracking, coal export, dams and manufacturing. In this time of real crisis, the only CO2 driven certainty are their pay rises.

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        • #
          Serge Wright

          Yes, the ABC take out this year’s virtue signalling hypocrisy award. When given the opportunity to actually help reduce the tax load on workers doing it tough during the COVID lock-down, they proclaim their support for these victims, but then decide that their expansive lifestyles are more important and vote to inflict even more pain. Meanwhile, the workers at Sky News take large pay cuts and demonstrate the difference between the signalling and the doing depends on which side of the political divide one sits.

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    • #

      Help me out Tdef. I thought that the bom produced quarterly outlooks and therefore have made only one assessment of Oct-Dec.

      this might help you find your evidence http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ahead/outlooks/archive.shtml

      14

      • #
        TdeF

        These are relatively short term predictions, two weeks to three months. Even then they appear to underestimate the rainfall consistently and substantially. There is consideration of a weak La Nina effect and a weak Indian dipole. However they are much closer to the truth than the summaries reported in the press which tend to be sensationalist and consistently pushed a dry hot year.

        Even for the daily weather I have given up on the BOM as I get a better prediction from a Norwegian world site.

        How much need is there for the large BOM and CSIRO anyway? They are increasingly like Al Grassby’s ethnic radio and television station, SBS which is entirely obsolete in the 21st century where you can listen to any radio station in the world on your phone.

        And they all push CO2 driven Global Warming, even if the alleged rapid warming has vanished but we still are suffering the massive costs with the RET and now Snowy II, which make as much sense as building $80Billion of diesel submarines to protect the country. Already obsolete, they are a massive waste of public money for no reason except to pretend we still have a heavy engineering sector in Australia. We do not make planes or cars or trucks or engines or refine metals or petroleum without massive public money subsidies but we are the world’s best at pretending we do.

        Australia is becoming once again just an open cut mine filled with people who live on the trickle down profits of digging it out of the ground. Gone completely is any pretence of science and engineering. The only area which is world leading is medical research and that is because so much is privately and now publicly funded.

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        • #

          So you agree that this was made up by you?

          The BOM was predicting a dry year and then the rains came.

          no probs.

          18

          • #
            TdeF

            No. That’s verballing. You could read my response. These are relatively short term observations not predictions. With satellites we can see weather as it is happening and long
            before it reaches the East Coast. Expensive policy decisions however are made on long term predictions which are quite different, which was my point. This is in a world where people pushing CO2 driven warming make a great distinction between the weather and the climate and argue that their long term predictions are accurate. They are not.

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            • #
              TdeF

              As for sometimes mentioning the Indian dipole and La Nina, El Nino and the rest, that is simply guesswork like assigning probabilities, not prediction. The average punter can do that. Where are the hard predictions from their comprehensive and infallible Climate models and what is their supercomputer doing for a living?

              80

              • #
                TdeF

                Monday 2 March 2020 — Monthly Summary for Australia —

                Despite bringing its own concerns for areas which experienced flooding and other disruptions, rainfall during February has contributed to a reduction of rainfall deficiencies across parts of eastern Australia. However, the rainfall required for recovery from long-term rainfall deficiencies is substantial.

                In many areas several months of above-average rainfall would be required to have a lasting effect.

                In some locations it is possible that long-term rainfall deficiencies will never be completely removed, or that systems that depend on that rainfall will never fully recover.

                The State of the Climate documents a continuing decrease in rainfall over large parts of southern Australia, which means that a return to past average rainfall conditions is unlikely.”

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              • #
                TdeF

                It could have been written by Tim Flannery. “Even the rains which fall will not fill the dams”.

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              • #
                Dennis

                And Sydney Opera House will go under water by Year 2000.

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            • #

              thanks. Case rested.

              05

  • #
    Travis T. Jones

    “Children won’t snow what snow looks like” update:

    “A powerful and potentially record-smashing mass of Antarctic is making a beeline for Australia.
    Temperatures are set to sink well-below average for the time of year, and yet more rare late-season snow is expected.

    Rare October snow is forecast on the peaks of the Stirling Range, located in southern Western Australia, with Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) forecaster Steph Bond saying the best chance of flurries would be late Friday night.”

    https://electroverse.net/incredible-polar-blast-set-to-envelope-the-entire-australian-continent/

    If carbon (sic) causes everything, it causes nothing.

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  • #
    GlenM

    Where would we be without experts telling the obvious. BoM tells us that this imminent event will not be as strong as 2010/12. Such certainty. Somewhere will get a direct hit from a category 5 (or 10 unprecedented and catastrophic) TC and some areas will get more rain – others less. Spare us the inaneness of some bureaucrat with a so-called degree in meteorology.

    60

  • #
    el gordo

    ‘ … La Niña would also reduce the bushfire risk this season slightly, but would not eliminate it.’

    Watkins is wrong, its going to be a washout. In south east Australia the dams are already full and the ground well watered, best season in 20 years. So we can expect big floods in that quarter.

    ENSO is a dynamical thermostat designed to maintain equilibrium. Does the sun or moon have a role in triggering the mechanism?

    60

  • #
    John

    The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has web pages about the current and predicted states of the Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean, Southern Ocean and the Tropics (see http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/).

    The home page header says “Climate Driver Update”.

    No BoM, these are weather drivers, not climate drivers. Climate is the 30-year average of weather.

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    • #
      John F. Hultquist

      30 is a number from Statistics 101.
      A 30 year sliding reporting period for weather data is common.
      Climate is not an average.

      Yes, I know that people say or write this sort of thing. No reason you should.

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  • #
    Serge Wright

    Tim Flannery always gets mentioned when a La Nina forms.

    From his ‘now’ infamous claims in that 2007 Landline interview…
    “We’re already seeing the initial impacts and they include a decline in the winter rainfall zone across southern Australia, which is clearly an impact of climate change, but also a decrease in run-off. Although we’re getting say a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas of Australia, that’s translating to a 60 per cent decrease in the run-off into the dams and rivers. That’s because the soil is warmer because of global warming and the plants are under more stress and therefore using more moisture. So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems, and that’s a real worry for the people in the bush. If that trend continues then I think we’re going to have serious problems, particularly for irrigation.”

    Relax Tim – That trend to which you refer is actually not a trend, but a cycle called ENSO, which contains a dry phase called El Nino that you have mistaken for a trend. This year we move to the LA Nina phase, the reversal of that same cycle and one where the rain that does fall, actually washes into rivers, fills dams and causes great floods. If you happen to venture out into the western plains in a few months and see a large volume of water covering the soils, I suggest you do a new Landline interview on “sudden sea level rise”. That way, people might forget about your earlier interview.

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  • #
    TdeF

    And CO2 allegedly drives our world climates, an amazing concept invented without proof by upper atmosphere scientist Jim Hanson, Chief of the Rocket Propulsion Laboratory of NASA and announced to the world on June 22nd 1988 as an impending catastophe. So why hasn’t it happened after 32 years? Because our planet is not Venus, his area of study? In that time we have suffered bat derived AIDS, MERS, SARS, Swine Flu, Hendra and more but CO2 is the biggest problem in the modern world, deserving of $1.5Trillion a year?

    Hanson’s idea was that CO2 provides a blanket preventing the escape of infra red. So in a dry desert climate which is boiling hot when the sun is up and freezing on a cloudless night when the heat radiates into the night sky, you would expect the nights to be much warmer. And are the nights much warmer? Who cares about reality?

    Near constant CO2 is clearly not like cloud cover, the real greenhouse gas. Still the BOM and IPCC and CSIRO push the idea that the days are hotter? Why? It’s the nights which should be warmer.

    If the importance of El Nino and La Nina and the Indian Dipole and the Gulf stream and the Humboldt current proves anything, it is that water surface temperature controls our climates, not air temperature. Even the BOM just admitted this. So why are we so concerned about CO2?

    Air temperature is a consequence of water surface temperature, and air itself is obviously not the driver of our climates. Consider that without water vapour, water evaporation there would be no climates.

    Still we are told endlessly CO2 is all important because air temperature is climate and air temperature is so dependent on CO2. But temperature varies dramatically every day. How can that be with this constant blanket? What happened to science? Obviously our world is driven entirely by the two giant heat sources, the sun and the oceans. CO2 is just blowing in the wind.

    And the IPCC is whistling in the wind, like our CSIRO/BOM/endless Clean Energy quangoes. The Australian government is trying at our massive cost to reduce CO2. Is that working anywhere? No. How much effect has 500,000 giant windmills had? None.

    We are also told America, an entirely new world built solely on refugees and economic migration and universally legalized equality is racist and CO2 polluting. But no one dares say a bad word to say about China which has no such laws and totally unrestrained CO2 output. Except bad Donald Trump, but he is a racist capitalist apparently. There is a massive disconnect in our media between the truth and reporting, both in matters of science and politics, but I repeat myself.

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    • #
      John F. Hultquist

      Jim Hanson, Chief of the Rocket Propulsion Laboratory of NASA

      Hmm!? Try again.

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      • #
        TdeF

        A technicality. “Dr. James E. Hansen, the top climate scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)”
        but in fact “NASA scientist James Hansen who runs NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies
        which is different organizationally from the “Jet Propulsion Laboratory” which also employs Climate Scientists.

        I expect his position has been miscredited at times. Both are within NASA

        10

  • #
    Neville

    Here’s the BOM update + link to the la nina and the negative IOD. It should last until Feb 2021 and is classed so far as a moderate to strong event. Who knows, but time will tell.
    Also the IOD has now turned negative and this can mean more rain below a line drawn from Broome to Wollongong on the OZ map. But sometimes above this line as well.
    If the la nina produces more rain + the negative IOD we could expect much higher rainfall over the summer. Of course nothing is guaranteed and the next 4 to 5 months will tell the story. Here’s the BOM link.

    http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/

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    • #
      GlenM

      It would appear that the effects of a negative IOD are manifested in late winter and early spring for the area you describe. Of particular note for the casual observer is the NW cloud band and a slow moving low pressure developing from a trough imbedded through a deep layer of the atmosphere. I have a hunch (that’s good enough when it comes to extending medium term forecasting)that this current set up will continue for longer than the bureau suggests. So, if the tongue of cold surface water extends further west all the better in my view.

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  • #
    Neville

    Co2 levels in 1988 were about 350 ppm and today are about 415 ppm.
    That increase of about 65 ppm is from China and developing countries, see the graph at top right graph at link.
    And the CSIRO tells us that the SH is a NET co2 sink and the NH is the NET co2 SOURCE. See Cape Grim CSIRO.
    The so called mitigation of so called CAGW is the greatest fra-d and con trick in human history and yet silly, delusional fools still believe.
    Check the Wiki link and graph for yourselves since 1970 and 1990. See top right for graph.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

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  • #
    Ross

    All this reminiscent of the annual bushfires warnings from local state authorities. They usually begin with warnings about hot weather in the coming 6 months ( gee, who would have guessed, its going to be Summer after all). Then depending on whether the winter has had average rainfall or less the warnings are modified. If it’s been a wet winter/ spring that means lots of growth (eg. grass) which will dry out during summer and be a fire hazard. If it’s been a dry winter all that grass will have dried out earlier producing a fire hazard. Blah, blah, blah. The fire authorities would be better producing estimates of fuel loads in all all areas and the amount of hazard reduction burning achieved. Its October in southern Australia – major cities should be getting partly shrouded in smoke from hazard reduction burns. But no, the greenies have another excuse this year – cant do burns because of COVID.

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  • #
    Neville

    At the Wiki link I linked to in last comment you’ll note that Australia’s emissions are now about 1.1% and NZ are about 0.1% of global emissions.
    China about 29% and USA now under 14%.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

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  • #
    sophocles

    Lisa Cox from the Guardian said:

    It also raises the chance of increased cyclone activity during the tropical cyclone season, with a typical season being nine to 11 cyclones.

    We know the Guardian writers are idiots and Ms Cox has more than confirmed it with those words.

    ENSO having turned into a La Ninja has no effect whatsoever on Cyclone activity. Cyclones (which includes Typhoons and Hurricanes) are created by the Solar Wind. This has been part of the Scientific Record for at least two years, so that makes Lisa Cox an Ignoramus and an Idiot. I hope your socks and stockings don’t taste at all nice, Ms Cox.

    Here’s a few I found:
    Prikryl P, Nikitina L, Rusin V (2019) Rapid intensification of tropical cyclones in the Context of the solar wind -magnetosphere -ionosphere-atmosphere coupling. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 183, 36-60 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaspt.2018.12.009

    Prikryl P, Iwao K, Muldrew D.B., Rusin V., Rybanski M., Bruntz R., (2016) A link between high speed solar wind streams and explosive extratropical cyclones, Journal of Atmospheric and Solar Terrestrial Physics, 149,219-231,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jastp.2016.04.002

    Prikryl P, Bruntz R, Tsukijihara T, Iwao K, Muldrew, D.B., Rusin V., Rybanski M., Turna M., Stasny P. (2018) Tropospheric weather influenced by solar wind through atmospheric vertical coupling downward control. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar Terrestrial Physics 171, 94-110.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jastp.2017.07.023

    If I can find those with a search engine and a few minutes of my time, what’s stopping an MSM scribe? Lack of Reading and Comprehension skills? Or sheer laziness?

    Of course Science is never Settled and my search uncovered more papers which are now on top of my reading heap. I’m going to have an absorbing weekend:
    titles such as “Space weather and hurricanes Irma, Jose and Katia” [2019] and “Hurricane genesis modelling based on the relationship between solar activity and hurricanes “ [2017] (Vyklyuk Y. et al) look sorta interesting … and there’s a paper from Trouet V, et al (2016) “Shipwreck rates reveal Caribbean tropical cyclone response to past radiative forcing.” I wonder what period that covers?

    It was early 2019 when I last visited this subject…

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  • #
    GlenM

    Of course not all of those designated tropical cyclone will directly impact the continent. Lisa Cox is part of the Guardian’s brain-dead pool of drones.

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    • #
      sophocles

      Lisa Cox is part of the Guardian’s brain-dead pool of drones.

      … that’s now very obvious.

      I guess if the Guardian wants to hire them, it gets the odium they deserve.

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  • #
    PeterS

    Can someone please remind me why we are going through much hardship and pain to reduce our emissions? It’s certainly not to change the climate since it’s fine the way it is.

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    • #
      el gordo

      The initial fear was that human induced CO2 would destroy the planet, but temperatures failed to rise in line with increased CO2. Scott and Donald believe carbon dioxide is causing warming, so maybe it does.

      Do you have evidence to the contrary?

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      • #
        PeterS

        That initial fear was a hoax. I did my research way back then and concluded as such. Climate Audit by Stephen McIntyre was one of several sites I studied. They were all based on real science not the fake science perpetrated by so many others. Man-made CO2 is inconsequential in the scheme of things. DYOR.

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        Graeme#4

        Surely it’s not up to folks to prove that it doesn’t. If somebody is claiming correlation is causation, surely it’s up to them to prove 5he linkage, and just saying that because the human contribution is 4% doesn’t automatically mean that the 4% controls our world temperature.

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        • #
          PeterS

          When we have leaders like PM Morrison proclaiming we must reduce our emissions, proof that man-made CO2 climate change is a myth is an embarrassment so they keep brushing it under the carpet.

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          • #
            Serp

            I blame Rudd for this “must” nonsense; Morrison simply follows the globalist daily briefing point and if it says we must reduce emissions so does he, at least that’s what it looks like there being no deep dissertation on offer for our perusal.

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            • #
              el gordo

              Too many people have been throughly brainwashed, so Morrison is getting around the problem by finding a way to keep CO2 in the soil, its supposedly releasing mega amounts into the atmosphere. Agricultural practice may need to change, but with monoculture its a big ask.

              The PM is pragmatic and needs to get infrastructure underway immediately and at the same time silence his critics. He has told the market that a Narrabri gas fired plant could support Premier Gladys Renewable Zones, come in on this or the taxpayers will fund it.

              The road ahead is now clear, we now have to wait and see if the market is interested.

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        • #
          el gordo

          The Klimatariat holds the whip hand, we have to prove we are right and they are wrong.

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  • #
    Steve of Cornubia

    Does anybody know how the Australian health system currently treats Covid-positive patients who are affected enough to warrant admission to hospital? Are we administering Vit D? HCL? Zinc? Something else? How many require ventilators?

    Also, how does our survival rate (of hospital admissions) look in comparison with other nations?

    It seems the only thing we ever hear nowadays is the number of new infections, with occasionally a passing reference to deaths, un-categorised by age, pre-existing conditions, gender or ethnicity. It is therefore impossible to make a reasoned, informed estimation of personal risk.

    Sometime in the past, the stream of information about Covid was turned off, replaced simply with a single figure – total new cases. Is that because the only thing that matters is the justification for stringent new containment measures?

    Scared citizens are compliant citizens …

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    • #
      Steve of Cornubia

      Sorry, wrong thread 🙁

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    • #
      Peter C

      True we are told very little about the cases, except for a few raw figures.

      The Coronvirus stats give a bit of information;
      https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/

      Among the closed cases (ie recovered or died) the mortality rate has been creeping up a little from a low of 1.52%v on May 20 to 3.46% currently. I think most of the recent cases have been in Nursing Homes but that is partly conjecture. Also we are not sure what counts as a Covid Death.

      Currently there are 1,431 active cases of which just 6 patients are considered critical (0%). Surprisingly the daily deaths often seems to exceed the number of critical patients. Why is that? Maybe the Nursing home patients just die in the night and never make it to hospital.
      The number of infected cases has been falling quite quickly.

      Hydroxychloroquine is still banned as a treatment. However you can still buy Tonic water and Zinc. I suggest those in case of emergency. Vit D and Vit C suggested as routine prophylaxis.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Back in the day you would only model a system once you understood it.

    Now government “scientists” produce the politically required data ab initio then write a model to suit that.

    What’s actually happening in the real world is irrelevant. And no climate “scientist” ever looks out the window.

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    • #

      well that certainly moved the debate along with wit and insight.

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      • #
        PeterS

        You just did the exact opposite unwittingly and with total lack of insight.

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        • #

          back in the day what I wrote was appreciated.

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          • #
            el gordo

            Would that be philosophy, sir?

            Thanks for drawing my attention to the fact that La Nina doesn’t automatically cause temperatures to drop. But what we do see here is the fingerprint of a back to back La Nina. The first dip in temperatures began in 2007, which is odd and may need further sleuthing.

            https://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_September_2020_v6.jpg

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            • #
              sophocles

              Don’t get too attached to that 2007 dip too readily. El Nino bit back with a mild rise in 2010 and then did a big one 2015-2016 which was a little more extreme than 1997-1998.

              Temps are falling, just not all that far … yet. It takes a very strong La Nina to make temps fall much. We don’t know the strength this one will develop, yet. The Southern Ocean is cooling, and the NH ocean temperatures are too. The sun warms the oceans and the oceans warm the air.

              We have 10years to get through to the next SunSpot Cycle. If Cycle 25 (the current one) is as weak as Cycle 24 was then it will be cooling all the way and if Cycle 26 doesn’t happen, then the cold will make itself really felt.

              Willi Dansgaard’s climate forecast (1970) was for “warm until 2015 and then cooling. The next fifty years will be chilly.

              Patience, Grasshopper.

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                el gordo

                Taking a fresh look at the ONI I see a Nino wedged in between two Ninas and realise more reading is required.

                According to UAH world temperature is still on a high plateau, so Will Dansgaard is not right on the start point.

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                sophocles

                Maybe not Swiss-watch exact, but it was based on the solar cycles he deduced from the Camp Century ice cores which have a little momentum in them. Over all that time, it’s been deuced accurate.

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                el gordo

                Find me a solar hindcast back to the Dalton Minimum and we’ll see …..

                ‘It is at this point my sense of wonder is stirred, because the PDO has failed to follow the cycle I expected it to follow. Rather than working like clockwork, and switching from “warm” to “cold” in the manner a sixty-year-cycle would predict, the PDO was very rude to amateur scientists like myself, for it “broke the rules”.

                ‘What we were expecting, back around 2000, was for the “warm” cycle of the PDO to swing to the “cold” cycle, and for a time all went as predicted. But then late in 2013 it swung back back to “warm” again, and has remained “warm” ever since.’

                Caleb Shaw

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              • #
                sophocles

                There are always lags especially when the sun is involved. David Evans’ research shows an eleven year lag … so why do things need to be exact?

                Phil Jones of the CRU said in an interview (2008) that it had been cooling since 2003 “but it’s not statistically significant.”

                No, I’m not going to find you a solar hindcast, sorry, but that’s up to you. I’m busy with my own agendae 😀 on somewhat different subjects. If I should trip over one, I’ll try to remember to let you know. What you can be sure of is the sun being a law unto itself. It doesn’t follow anyone’s timetable except it’s own. If that coincides with one of ours, it’s probably more a measure of luck than physics…

                This may help:
                Scaife A.A. et al (2013) A Mechanism for lagged North Atlantic climate response to solar variability [10733] Geophysical Research Letters, 40(2) doi:10.1002/grl.50099

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                el gordo

                OK thanks, I’ll read it at my leisure and leave you with some words from the Evans lectures.

                ‘A major objection to substantial solar influence is the finding of Lockwood & Froehlich in 2007, who showed that four solar indicators including TSI peaked in about 1986 then declined slightly. However temperature continued rising for several years after 1986. This has been widely interpreted to mean the recent warming cannot have been due to the Sun. However, the delay can explain this: 1986 + 11 = 1997, about when global warming ended. Thus the delay overcomes another of the bedrock beliefs of anthropogenic global warming.’

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                el gordo

                ‘El Nino bit back with a mild rise in 2010 …’

                It wasn’t El Nino, ENSO was neutral in that particular instance.

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              • #
                el gordo

                IPO causes global warming.

                ‘ … a transition to the positive phase of the IPO from the previous negative phase and a resumption of larger rates of global warming over the 2013–2022 period consistent with a positive IPO phase.’ Meehl et al 2016

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  • #
    David Maddison

    APOLOGIES, OFF TOPIC

    President Trump and the First Lady tested positive for covid. It doesn’t mean they have clinical symptoms of course, or will ever get them.

    I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised of the DemocRATS deliberately infected him.

    I wish them a speedy recovery in the event that they do develop clinical symptoms.

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    Rock

    We should be happy that covid exposed the fallacy of a “human fingerprint” in CO2. After months of greatly diminished industrial activity and travel worldwide, CO2 continued its rise unabated.

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    • #
      sophocles

      After months of greatly diminished industrial activity and travel worldwide, CO2 continued its rise unabated.

      … which should put the Paris Agreement on rollers (they’re way faster than skids).
      As usual, the Greens are wrong.

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        el gordo

        We shouldn’t expect to see a reduction in CO2 levels, simply because the human input is too small to measure. Returning to the 19th century, free of CO2, there were things happening which may support the solar hypothesis.

        ‘We compared our historical rainfall data to previous El Niño/La Niña events and found a weakening in the relationship during 1920–1940 and 1835–1850. The breakdown was especially clear in data from the southern part of our study region. This is the first time the 19th-century breakdown has been seen in Australia using instrumental data.

        ‘Of course, the next question is why? Why does the impact of El Niño and La Niña on Australian rainfall change over time? What happened in the mid-1800s? It might be El Niño’s cranky uncle, the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, or perhaps strange behaviour in the atmosphere around Antarctica.’ (Ashcroft et al …. The Conversation 2017)

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