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Hello to attention seeking patsies everywhere.
Boy are they going to regret this when they figure out they’re not saving The Planet, just the banksters and socialists.
— XRSouthAustralia (@XRSouthAus) December 22, 2019
So this is what happens when Extinction Rebellion grows up:
Just another ordinary worker trying to warn us about climate werewolves:
 What? Someone someday is going to do a very interesting study on the power of suggestion on gregarious hominids. Could industrial marxists convince university educated young men and women to strip naked in public and paint their bodies while forecasting the end of the world if people don’t buy their products? Isn’t education supposed to protect them from that? We got the kids out of the mines and factories and they grew up to be advertising banners for big government instead.
Don’t stop now XR. All you need is someone like this on every street corner.
Seriously, just watch the expressions of South Australians as they walk past the XR Christmas Choir. That’s a nation not freaking out.
h/t To Graham Richardson in The Australian
… anything is possible in a land where we sit on 400-year supplies of high-quality coal that will guarantee supply at a reasonable price and a vocal crowd is dumb enough to say we should leave it in the ground.
The worst part of this selfishness is the attempt by some to prevent India from importing our coal to fuel its endeavours to increase living standards. It was only in recent decades that some people there still starved to death.
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Just when you think banks are only in it for the money, along comes Goldman Sachs to advise us on the planetary atmosphere:
 All these nice banks want to save Earth too. Yusef Kahn, Business Insider, Sept 2019
For some reason (what could it be?) a few months ago the Goldman Sachs investment bank was gripped with a sudden urge to repackage the IPCC report. Perhaps they were afraid their clients didn’t watch CNN, the BBC, or, pick-any-channel, maybe they couldn’t afford a television?
- A Goldman Sachs report on the impact of climate change on cities across the world makes for grim reading.
- The bank warned that “consequences of a warming world may well play out over several decades to come, even if efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions are successful today.”
- Rising temperatures would lead to changing disease patterns, more intense and longer-lasting heatwaves, more destructive weather events, and pressure on the availability and quality of water for drinking and agriculture.
“Despite the uncertainty around the timing and scale of the impact, it may be prudent for some cities to start investing in adaptation now,” Goldman says. “Urban adaptation could drive one of the largest infrastructure build-outs in history. Given the scale of the task, urban adaptation will likely need to draw on innovative sources of financing.”
In his abject terror, journalist Yusef Kahn forgot to ask if Goldman Sachs would profit from this.
The very day the UN Galactic Junket COP25 ended in near complete failure, Goldman Sachs was ready to step in with good news.
December 17th:
Elizabeth Dilts-Marshall, Sydney Morning Herald
- Goldman Sachs said it’s planning to spend $750 billion on sustainable finance-related projects over the next decade.
- The firm also said that it will restrict financing to all new oil production and exploration projects in the Arctic, and that it would impose stricter lending requirements for coal companies.
- “There is not only an urgent need to act, but also a powerful business and investing case to do so,” Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon wrote in an opinion piece published Sunday in the Financial Time
- “To give us the best chance of combating climate change, governments must put a price on the cost of carbon” says Goldman Sachs, CEO David Solomon.
And what wonderful investment opportunities there are if governments can be hectored into demanding forced payments from citizens for better weather. But the profits in this are not so much in the suckers buying windfarms as is the banks doing the brokerage. The windfarm owners will be completely dependent on government rules in order to make any profit (and the fickle wind). Their market could evaporate and they may be left with a bunch of factories making intermittent random and sleep destroying volts that no one wants.
As Tyler Durden says —
Tyler Durden at Zero-Hedge
Goldman CEO David Solomon announced the plans in an editorial in the Financial Times, where he wrote that there is “a powerful business and investing case” for the bank to take steps to address climate change and the growing worldwide opportunity gap. Very powerful: having failed to make almost any money from the bank’s last foray into carbon tax and cap-and-trade, Goldman is now seeking to directly appeal to fellow fake virtue signalers, who in turn will hope to extract capital from naive investors pursuing the oh so noble goal of only investing in green, renewable, and “clean” (whatever that means) projects. Goldman’s bottom line, assuming a blended 3% commission on the $750BN in financial services it sells to gullible clients, works out to about $22.5 billion – a “powerful business case” indeed.
…earlier this year Goldman worked with Italian electricity company Enel to raise $1.5 billion through a bond offering that linked the investments to Enel’s commitment to increase its renewable energy base by 25% before 2022.
Translation: Goldman made about $15 million selling a bunch of bonds to a bunch of “green” liberals managing other liberals’ money. Because when central banks have taken over the market and Goldman’s own trading desk is shrinking quarter after quarter, and when the coming negative rates will make Goldman’s recent investment into retail banking a disaster, one can always make money betting on liberal guilt,…
As I’ve been saying for ten years and six months that the main game is the international carbon market, and the main beneficiary are the bankers. Climate change is potentially a $7 Trillion dollar money making venture (for bankers).
If Goldman Sachs can earn twenty-two-thousand-million dollars for shaking a few green hands, why wouldn’t they hire a squad of science hacks to write reports and issue press releases? Indeed, they’d be crazy if they weren’t donating a few million here and there to Greenpeace types too. Who knows — there might even be a business case for hiring teams of astroturfing trolls? It’s only an idea. But $22 billion in profits makes all kinds of things possible.
Nine years ago Deutsche Bank had the same urge to write a 51 page science report. They also built 70 foot tall clock towers of doom.
Here we go again in Climate Bubble 2.0.
The bankers are back.
h/t Treeman, Pat, Dave B, Hugh P.
Related stories on Bankers in Climate Change
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It’s a taxpayer funded bonfire: The billion dollar ABC does cut-n-paste “journalism” from the largely taxpayer funded Monash Uni, which wrote a one-sided, badly researched piece as advertising for The Australian Conservation Foundation. Not only have Australians played cricket in 42 degree heat a thousand times before, but on days when the sun was obscured by smoke from bushfires. It’s all easy to find history from 150 years ago recorded on official sites and searchable for anyone with “the internet”.
No hard questions asked — the only question that matters is “how does this help Big Government?”
By Richard Willingham and Joseph Dunstan, ABC, News
The Boxing Day Test may need to be moved to November or March in the future to avoid extreme heat, which is a danger to players and cricket fans, a new report has suggested.
Cricket Australia must also work to help grassroots clubs deal with extreme heat, the report from Monash University’s Climate Change Communication Research Hub has found.
The study, commissioned by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), urges Cricket Australia to use its prominence to push for greater climate action and do more to look after player and spectator welfare.
Evidence = one guy who didn’t drink enough water on a 42 degree day which has happened in summer for 150 years in Australia (and probably the last ten thousand years):
Conditions in the middle of the ground can reach into the high 50s, with English captain Joe Root hospitalised with dehydration during the Sydney Test in 2018 when the air temperature hit 42 degrees Celsius, as a heat tracker in the middle of the ground showed 57.6C.
Other evidence = junk climate models we know are wrong:
Meanwhile, the “shoulder months” of November and March are expected to heat up to become as warm as recent Decembers.
Two minutes of actual research that the ABC didn’t do:
Over 150 years ago people played cricket in Melbourne at 42C and in partial darkness due to smoke from bushfires. Heres a man in 1912 remembering a match he went to as a child Jan 14th 1862. It may have been even hotter than that. The BOM offical records say it was 44C. But hey, it’s not like we pay the ABC to phone the BOM and ask them…
 Heatwaves, Cricket, 1862, Australia.
Then there was the time players had to abandon cricket due to heat, when it was 45C in Albury in 1939 and the town ran out of ice. Forget the hype, “conditions were not the best, and the “players generally stood manfully up to the heat” — unlike modern snowflakes at Monash Uni and millenials at the ABC.
Usual lies-by-omission pretending that Mildura did not exist before 1970:
Both Monash Uni and the ABC are either incompetent or deliberately erasing history:
ABC 2019:
Mildura batting away heatwaves and dust storms already
Over the past 40 years, the north-west Victorian city of Mildura’s average daytime January temperature has increased by 2.7C. Recently it endured three days over 40C, with last Saturday’s round of games cancelled.
A quick search for Mildura, Cricket, Heat finds a cricket game in Mildura in November 24th, 1900 at 42C. The Meteorological records were printed right next to the cricket column, and in Nov 1900 there were four days above 42C.
Past peer reviewed science reports told us scientists were worried that temperatures in Australia had fallen from 1880 to 1950. (Deacon et al 1952)
The only thing this story shows is that big government funds are always used to make Big Government even bigger.
Readers here might like to find even hotter more scary stories from Trove. I didn’t have long to look…
REFERENCE
Deacon, E.L. (1952) Climatic Change in Australia since 1880, Australian Journal of Physics, Volume 6, Pages 209-218. [PDF]
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Wishing everyone a wonderful day today. Thanks for all the support!
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Here’s the anti-witchdoctor kit for bushfires and “climate change”
Hi to all the new readers. Keep these graphs handy…
To Recap: In order to make really Bad Fires we need the big three: Fuel, oxygen, spark. Obviously getting rid of air and lightning is beyond the budget. The only one we can control is fuel. No fuel = no fire. Big fuel = Fireball apocalypse that we can;t stop even with help from Canada, California, and New Zealand.
The most important weather factor is rain, not an extra 1 degree of warmth. To turn the nation into a proper fireball, we “need” a good drought. A lack of rain is a triple whammy — it dries out the ground and the fuel — and it makes the weather hotter too. Dry years are hot years in Australia, wet years are cool years. It’s just evaporative cooling for the whole country. The sun has to dry out the soil before it can heat up the air above it. Simple yes? El Nino’s mean less rain (in Australia), that’s why they also mean “hot weather”.
So ask a climate scientist the right questions and you’ll find out what the ABC won’t say: That global warming means more rain, not less. Droughts haven’t got worse, and climate models are really, terribly, awfully pathetically bad at predicting rain.
Four reasons carbon emissions are irrelevant
1. Droughts are the same as they ever were.
In the 178 year record, there is no trend. All that CO2 has made no difference at all to the incidence of Australian droughts. Climate scientists have shown droughts have not increased in Australia. Click the link to see Melbourne and Adelaide. Same thing.
 Rainfall trends, cycles, Australia, Sydney, Graph, 2019, 1840 – 2020. All the data we have, looked at in all the ways we can think of shows CO2 is not controlling our rain. A warming world means more rain. Mega droughts were worse. 178 years of CO2 emissions have no measurable effect on rainfall in Australia.
LindenAshcroftabDavid J.KarolyacAndrew J.Dowdyb(2019) Historical extreme rainfall events in southeastern Australia, Weather and Climate Extremes , 100210
And even more droughts and trends graphs here.
2. No more 40+ hot days either (unless you “adjust the data”)
The raw data shows no trend in days over 40C since World War I.
There are a hundred ways to measure a heatwave or a hot day. This is one from our 60 best and longest stations. The BOM could easily slice, dice and change the parameters and create a scary graph. The only antidote to being bamboozled is to read the old newspapers. Go Trove.
 History changing before your eyes. Here’s a PDF copy of these three animated graphs side by side. Thanks to Chris Gillham WAClimate for this work.
3. Rainfall trends across Australia have gone up not down
Despite the Cracked-Earth propaganda there is not, on average, across the nation — a trend towards dryness. Some regions are drier, and since climate models can’t predict where or when that’s just something that happens.
I’ll leave it to Professor Andy Pitman to explain how there is no a priori reason for a link between climate change and drought.
To be fair he clarified this later saying “we don’t understand what causes droughts” but “the indirect link is clear”. This sort of clarity happens all the time in the climate world.
4. Climate models can’t predict the rain thing:
A lack of rain causes fires, but climate models can’t predict rain. (See the whole post about the five different models predicting five different rainfall patterns). Only solar factors appear to be linked to rainfall, and none of the models include those factors (could be a clue there). For ideas about the solar influence see here, here, here, and here. Send them to your neighborhood climate modeler.
Here are comparisons of 5 different models over Australia. Is CSIRO Mk 3.6 the “right” model, and who predicted that in advance?
One of them might get it right, accidents do happen, especially if you predict nearly every possible outcome.
 Figure 2.1.1: Leading mode of annual rainfall variability over Australia, from observations (Bureau of Meteorology), the CSIRO Mk3.6 and Mk3.5 climate models, and three leading international models: HadGEM1 (United Kingdom), GFDL CM2.1 (USA) and MIROC 3.2, medium resolution (Japan). Source: Indian Ocean Climate Initiative
4. Prescribed burns are the only way to stop massive firestorms.
Fuel reduction in WA has reduced fires for 60 years. Here’s that graph from WA for the sixth time… let’s keep repeating this killer graph as long as people are still blaming “climate change”.
 As prescribed fire reduction declined, wildfires increased in South West Australia. (Click to enlarge) 5. The worst recorded fire in Australia was in 1851
Read some of that misery at the link. CO2 was perfect and five million hectares went up in flames.
Last word: The is one risk that extra CO2 incurs and that is that burnt areas will regrow faster. Thanks to CO2 the biomass of greenery has increased all around the world. So preparing for climate-change means we need to do even more hazard reduction than we did fifty years ago.
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The conversation Australia needs: should we prevent fires with prescribed burns or solar panels?
The wildfires in NSW so far have burned 2,700,000 ha or, if it were one square area –a box 164km x 164km and destroyed at least 720 houses (that was Dec 11).
The dilemma: will it be managed fires, or unmanaged wildfires to reduce the fuel? Or if you are Tim Flannery who says it’s “immoral not to connect the dots“, the question is “how many solar panels will it take to stop those houses burning down?” Or perhaps “how do we stop lightning”?
This is the rough size of the controlled hazard reduction target area, as carried out for NSW compared to the area of “hazard-reduction” by Mother Nature. The area of official hazard reduction by the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) is 135,000 ha, equivalent to a square of dimensions 36km x 36km. There would be some other private fuel reduction. Can anyone find figures for that?
 Australian Wildfires Area, 2019, NSW, December. Map.
To protect houses we need a 100m margin (at least) and to burn 20% of the landscape each year.
New South Wales NPWS fire ecologist, Ross Bradstock, said that to protect Sydney housing:
We have worked out you have to burn 20 per cent of the landscape per annum to significantly reduce the size of wildfires, fires under severe weather.(50)
— Australian Parliamentary inquiry 2002-03
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Winning! The 1896 heatwave story is going viral and the ABC is reduced to weak, late excuses
Australians are realizing that our hot history has been hidden from us. We’ve set a new site traffic record with around 100,000 people checking in since Wednesday, plus thousands more reading the story elsewhere like Catallaxy and Facebook. Thank you for sharing! We first posted the 1896 heatwave here first in 2013, then again on Wednesday. The ABC has gone into damage control responding with a direct attempt to rebut the story, but they are too scared to name this site. What are they afraid of?
We, of course, have no such fear. Six years after skeptics let Australia know about the 1896 heatwave, the ABC and “experts” finally catch up but only under duress. So now they mention it, but use vague caveats, distractors, discuss different time spans, ignore 49 other hot sites, appeal to authority, and don’t mention their own recent artificial site changes that skeptics have documented in more detail than the BOM have. The “experts” allude to “thermometers on beer crates” but in Bourke the heat was recorded at the post office on Oxley st. Skeptics are well aware of the places using beer crates, verandahs and stone walls — they were recording temperatures like 130 F in the shade (a blistering 54.4C), and we didn’t even use those readings to create the heatwave map of 1896 (below). See Marra station N.S.W. and Berlino S.A..
If the ABC wants to focus on Bourke, bring it on. Let’s talk about how cooling trends were changed to warming ones, and how they threw out original data, and from a Stevenson screen — a record of 51.7C in 1909 — wiped “because it was a Sunday”. We can detail the site, the moves, the ground, the equipment and the flaws — apparently better than the “experts” can.
 The Australian heatwave of 1896 My point remains — how can the BOM say they “know” it was cooler?
Where is the scientific accuracy to a tenth of a degree coming from? They can’t admit they don’t know and that it might have been as hot or hotter in 1896.
By Sophie Meixner and Daniel Nancarrow
This is what 97% certainty looks like — a bunch of vague caveats
Wait for it: they “know” it was cooler because it can’t be “easily compared” and is “likely suspect”?
The Bureau of Meteorology noted in a 2017 report the 1896 data “cannot be easily compared with modern recordings”.
“Detailed study has shown that extreme temperatures recorded at Bourke during the 1896 heatwave were likely suspect due to non-standard exposure, and likely around two degrees warmer than temperatures recorded with standard instrumentation.”
The Experts don’t even know the Bourke readings in 1896 came from the post office on Oxley St:
University of Melbourne climate researcher Linden Ashcroft said thermometers in Bourke were likely placed in sub-standard conditions in 1896. “Some thermometers were under verandahs, or they were against stone buildings,” she said. “I’ve heard of thermometers being kept in beer crates.
How about 51.7C in Bourke recorded in a Stevenson screen in 1909 then? Still not good enough?
It wouldn’t matter if Bourke had a Stevenson screen in 1896, high temperatures would still not be accepted. How do we know, because Bourke had a modern Stevenson Screen and recorded 51.7C in 1909 and the BOM threw the original data in the bin and declared it invalid, “Because it was a Sunday”. Jennifer Marohasy and Graham Lloyd documented the whole scandalous incident where a long cooling trend was changed to a warming trend, and original documents were binned:
January 3, 1909, an extremely hot 51.7C (125F) was recorded at Bourke. It’s possibly the hottest ever temperature recorded in a Stevenson Screen in Australia, but the BOM has removed it as a clerical error.
The Stevenson Screen went to the dump and, but for fate, the handwritten notes could have gone there too. But without instruction, the records were kept and are now under lock and key, held as physical evidence of what the weather was really doing in the mid-20th century.
Independent research, the results of which have not been disputed by BOM, has shown that, after homogenisation, a 0.53C warming in the minimum temperature trend has been increased to a 1.64C warming trend. A 1.7C cooling trend in the maximum temperature series in the raw data for Bourke has been changed to a slight warming.
Apparently official temperatures were not recorded on Sundays in 1909 in Bourke, therefore it didn’t occur. Sure. No observer would voluntarily come in to work on the hottest day in history to note down the temperature. Probably there were too many other exciting things to do in Bourke, right? How about the observer in Brewarrina, a town near Bourke, who recorded 123F the same day. Both liars? Both wrong. It didn’t happen. You vill repeat after me comrade…
History is being destroyed.
Who’s in denial?
This is not just about Bourke. Lance Pidgeon and Chris Gillham and the BOM audit team including Warwick Hughes list extraordinary hot temperatures in 49 places. This was an Australia wide heatwave. Were they all wrong?
Geraldton W.A. , Geraldton W.A. Geraldton W.A. Perth W.A., Mullewa W.A. , Carnarvon W.A., Pinjarrah W.A, Southern Cross W.A., Wilcannia N.S.W., Isisford Qld. , Bourke N.S.W, Canowindra N.S.W, Farina S.A., Ungarie N.S.W, Farina S.A., Quirindi N.S.W., Bulli N.S.W. , Kiama N.S.W. , Parramatta N.S.W., Camden N.S.W, Araluen N.S.W. , Brewarrina N.S.W, West Wyalong N.S.W , Nannine W.A., Farina S.A. , Broken Hill N.S.W., Farina S.A., Charleville or Cunnamulla QLD., Olary S.A. , Adelaide S.A , Swan Hill Vic, Farina S.A., Mildura Vic , Broken Hill , N.S.W., Halbury S.A. , Rapanyup Vic , Natimuk Vic , Bega N.S.W. , Geelong Vic , Hergott Springs S.A. , Grenfell and Ivanhoe N.S.W, Charleville, QLD , Cunnamulla QLD , Isisford QLD, Wilcannia N.S.W., Hillston, N.S.W. , Wilcannia N.S.W. , Middle camp station Netely N.S.W. Gundabooka Station near Bourke. (or try here). Nelyambo station . Namagee N.S.W., White Cliffs. N.S.W., New Angeldool, N.S.W. Mossgiel N.S.W.
Bourke: Perhaps the BOM should hire a skeptic and find out about their own sites?
Let’s talk some more about Bourke. Skeptics like Dr Bill Johnston have inspected it closely (We published his 8 page documentation here). Did the BOM “detailed study” explain that they artificially warmed their own modern expert site in 2013 by clearing the ground around it? Bourke’s temperature station is one of the eight longest running and best in Australia, yet it’s still terrible. It started in 1871 and is still listed as one of Australias top 104 ACORN sites. The reading in 1896 would have come from the official post office, in Oxley Street several allotments east of the courthouse. The site has moved several times (Johnston lists them all). Bourke temperatures are hotter now than in the past because of site changes, not the climate.
Temperatures recorded there since 1999 have been artificially raised by site moves, a shrinking screen, electronic “super sensitive” thermometer, faulty and missing records and possible calibration problems:
“an automatic weather station (AWS) 700 m away in 1999, which used a small 60-litre screen and which reported whole-degrees before 2002. The many temperature values that were culled shows the AWS was frequently over-range, probably because its [rapid response-rate probe]* operating in the small screen recorded flurries of warm air that would not affect thermometers housed in large screens; or that due to calibration problems it was prone to spiking on warm days.
* Lance Pidgeon clarifies that it’s the rapid response rate which is likely causing the artificial spikes.
The BOM doesn’t fix their sites, they just magically homogenise the data instead, through a secret process. We call it vandalization:
Australia’s ACORN-SAT temperature datasets are riddled with problems. The process is opaque; lacks statistical control; synchronous inter-site changes such as replacing 230-litre screens with 60-litre ones and thermometers by AWS at infrequently serviced sites beside dusty tracks and in paddocks at airports, are propagated across the network by the process. Thus few ACORN-SAT datasets are independent of collective problems. Using comparator data that are not homogeneous to adjust faults in ACORN-SAT has no merit and should be abandoned. — Dr Bill Johnston
But the taxpayer funded “expert” doesn’t seem to know any of that, and the taxpayer funded ABC journalists are so incompetent they don’t ask. They only needed to do a ten second internet search to find the skeptics here that have done all their homework for them. It’s yet another example of how the ABC acts as a apologist propaganda agency to cover up for incompetent work from other government groups. Save the children, sell the ABC!
It’s all religious faith and excuses — not science
The UNSW genius explains that more people died in Bourke because “they wore more clothes”:
People weren’t prepared for heatwaves in 1896
University of New South Wales climate researcher Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick said people in 1896 were largely unprepared for extreme heat, meaning they were more vulnerable to its effects.
“Back then everyone wore a lot more clothing than what they do now, there was no air conditioning, people worked outside, they moved outside a lot,” she said.
“It’s like comparing apples and oranges.”
So if it’s like “apples and oranges” how can the BOM / CSIRO / UNSW say they “know” it was cooler? Only because of their faith, not their science.
Air conditioners, and cheap electricity will save more Australian lives than anything else
The only point the ABC gets right is that more people died in 1896 because there were no airconditioners. They don’t mention that scientific studies show these are the biggest lifesaver around (Achebak, 2018), they also reduce indoor pollution, and that more Australians will die if electricity prices keep rising as we force more unreliable, random, bat killing, volt-busting, generators which force out the cheap baseload suppliers and cost us more in pointless capital, land, staffing, inefficiency, and maintenance. Airconditioners save 20,000 lives in USA each year. (Barreca, 2016).
Scores dying in Bourke in 1896
Lance Pidgeon points out that the ABC are downplaying the deaths, saying “The town of Bourke lost at least 40 people — 1.6 per cent of its population” (as if that isn’t catastrophic!). He finds evidence that it was many more than this:
Of those 40 I have only been able to name 61.
So far. See https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/104104740/10771354
Even now it is not known how many men perished ; and it may not be known for months. There was a time when the “travellers,”
having fairly defined beats, were known and almost expected ; but latterly quite a new class has appeared —unknown city men, who, generally biding themselves under aliases, may be dead for months and never, if indeed ever, be missed. Already a few unfortunates have been found—one near Warri Warri, another on Morden, two on Nundora, and another, it is stated, on Yancannia. On Tickalara, on the Queensland border, a young man named Myers and an old man named George Smith succumbed ; the cause in each case is said to have been sunstroke.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/44137042
How about those names from South east QLD.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/3619787
Who’s dodging the point?
Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick then tries to distract us from the topic the BOM and climate experts are unscientifically exploiting — the short heatwave. Suddenly she is talking about seasonal averages or annual averages, but the BOM is generating headlines and trying to scare people about heatwaves this week. Watch the goal posts shift:
Temperatures today are still hotter overall
Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick said even taking into account flawed thermometer conditions, average temperatures in 1896 were still lower than last year’s average. “Around [1896], temperatures on average over Australia for that season were about one degree hotter than the overall climate mean,” she said. “But then in 2013, that summer was 1.5 degrees hotter than average.
“And last summer was over two degrees hotter than average.
“So although [1896] was a hot season, it wasn’t nearly as hot as some of the seasons we’ve seen since then.”
History denial?
The record “hottest day” in Australia graph on the ABC news last night only started in 1970 (a cool time when scientists were panicking about the coming ice age). Have they even tried to calculate the “hottest day” in 1896? And would we believe them if they did, after they have homogenised away many of the hottest days in Australia with two revisions of 100 year old data in the last six years?
h/t to Warwick Hughes, David B, George. Based on great research from Lance Pidgeon and Chris Gillham and the whole BOM audit team. Thank you!
If you are fed up with the ABC and BOM please help fund the independent research and commentary here.
To find out the real history of the Australian climate start here:
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If you can help me, I can say more the things that need to be said in the battle with the freeloaders
The war on science continues, and the bank account needs your help. It’s ammunition to keep exposing corruption, incompetence, hysteria and history. Thanks for you support via Paypal and Not-paypal. I can’t do this without you…
We battle against the self-interest of “Green energy investment” which is around $400 billion a year. The Big Bankers too, still want their cut of a $7 trillion global carbon market — perhaps they want to save the world, or maybe they need a new yacht? But Big-Government don’t seem keen to give grants to writers who want to stop Big-Government abusing science. And fossil fuels — they not only don’t fund me, the largest gas and oil producer in Australia wouldn’t even let me speak at a Christmas dinner for geologists. Such is the toxic spell being cast. Woodside dropped like a bomb on a volunteer run committee.
The self-serving are gaslighting the gullible.
Keep reading →
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They declare a climate emergency and use children as political weapons and wonder why children are distressed?
ABC needs to run advice columns now dealing with the aftermath of watching the ABC:
How to talk to children about climate change
ABC Radio National By Sarah Scopelianos
It’s bad:
… one protest, against the Adani coal mine, sparked a “tough moment” for her son, who was around six at the time. He became “absolutely devastated” about global warming and damage to the Great Barrier Reef. “He cried, and he was so distressed, and I was quite taken aback just how strong his feelings were,” Ms Roberts [his mother] says.
Expert psych says give them both sides of the story… no wait, she says turn them into mini activists:
Environmental psychologist and therapist Dr Susie Burke co-wrote the Australian Psychological Society guidelines on talking to children about climate change.
Dr Burke advocates for parents to support their children, which could include helping their child write or send their letters to a local politician, or to heroes of the environmental movement.
“It’s helping children to shift their anxiety from just focusing on the troublemakers,” Dr Burke says.
Skeptics say “teach them history” instead, and that they need to research both sides of the debate.
Ms Roberts, the activist parent, thinks nature made her kids activists:
The Roberts family has a strong connection with nature that began with simply spending time outdoors — camping, gardening, visiting beaches and forests. “That’s mostly where their strong feelings of wanting to get active are currently coming from,” says Ms Roberts, who is a member of Australian Parents for Climate Action.
Does spending time outdoors make kids want to be climate activists, or is it spending time with activist parents really the problem?
She might want to look at the data on postcodes of kids suffering with climate anxiety and eco-fear.
Meanwhile councillor Dick Gross says we should scare them til we have evidence to show they are actually mentally ill:
Is this the right time to say “precautionary principle”:
His council was one of the first to declare a “climate emergency”, and he says there is space for that phrase in conversations with kids.
“The moral panic that we’re terrifying our kids is either not true or it’s exaggerated,” he says.
“To get people to change their beliefs on climate change, you have to have tangible evidence and you have to scare people,” he says.
“Until the evidence comes in that there’s been an outbreak of mental ill health because of the climate conversation, I’ll still continue to take my view that from an epistemological point of view, we have to scare people or at least make them aware.”
If only he had waited for evidence that it was worth scaring kids in the first place.
9.9 out of 10 based on 92 ratings
Tuesday was Australia’s hottest day on record sayth the Bureau of Meteorology.
And perhaps it was. But look at the temperatures reported in newspapers across the country during the month of January in 1896 when people were going mad with axes, dropping dead in coaches and railway stations and birds were falling lifeless from the trees? Emergency trains were ferrying people from the country to the mountains. Panic stricken people fled the outback on special trains and the death toll was in the hundreds.
Fifty years later scientists would publish papers talking about how Australian summers had cooled since then.
How does the BOM know for sure that it was not hotter on any one of these days? Perhaps they don’t. Wouldn’t it be more honest of the BOM to mention that? It’s not like billions of dollars depends upon it…
Seems the only time the ABC or BOM suddenly discover our historic weather records is when we get unseasonal snow or freezing cold.
See below for the links to the newspaper stories for all of these temperatures (Click to enlarge the map) |
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 Photo: Jo Nova |
The heatwave started in the West on Jan 1st and travelled eastwards, as most heatwaves do. The hottest day was possibly Jan 23 or 24 in 1896 which is when most of the Eastern States maximum temperatures shown above were recorded. And there are hints that this was both widespread and long — some of these towns recorded three long weeks of ultra high temperatures close to and over 110F (43.3C) like Nannine in WA (near Meekatharra) and Cunnamulla in Qld. Both reported peaks as high as 120F (48.8C). In Bourke temperatures were above 102F (38.9C) for 24 days in a row.
The BOM will say things were not entirely standardized or approved back then. But why would they care? Many of the BOM’s current sites fail their own standards: thermometers may sit for 30 years over bitumen, or right next to incinerators. They plough around sites, move them, build walls next to them and forget, even next to their own offices. The BOM accept one-second records from new electronic gizmo’s in small screens, and adjust old temperatures down by as much as two whole degrees. Sometimes modern BOM sites need mysterious calendar monthly corrections, or get corrected by thermometers across the Bass Strait, and sometimes they are incredibly detailed but repeat robotically year after year. Remember those temperature maps of our deserts in WWI? There are sites where there are no thermometers which record exactly the same temperatures as they did the year before (and the year after). Just “made up”? The hottest day ever recorded was probably calculated with maps like that.
The BOM can hardly be precious about scientific standards 130 years ago when they have so few themselves today.
And let’s not forget that in 1896 thermometers were nearly a 200 year old technology*. There was not much in the way of urban heat island effects — no airports, no five lane super highways, small populations, and some of these temperatures come from trained expert observatories. And let’s not forget either, as we just discovered, that there’s been no change in Very Hot Days in Australia since World War I (at least until the BOM adjusted them).
Here are the links to the hot days that were recorded but don’t exist
History down the memory hole: Links go to the newspaper article of the day
Geraldton W.A. Wednesday, 1 Jan 1896 – 114° F “ at Geraldton observatory“.
Geraldton W.A. Thursday, 2 Jan – 115° F “ A child succumbs to the heat. ” at “ Northampton, where the thermometer ranged even higher than at Geraldton.”
Geraldton W.A. Friday, 3 Jan – 125° F most papers, 115° F in some (possibly a date error as it matches the previous day).
Perth W.A. 3 Jan – 112° F ” Five deaths have been reported in the city on account of the great heat.”
Mullewa W.A. 3 Jan – 121° F “ The town has been enveloped in clouds of dust.”and “crowds of people have bad to sleep out of doors. Water is very scarce.”
Carnarvon W.A. 3 Jan – 121° F Brick House station “ It is farther reported that the mercury has been up as high as 125 in the shade there.”
Pinjarrah W.A. 3 Jan – 114° F followed by a minimum of 97° F.
Southern Cross W.A. Week ending 5 Jan – ” averaged 115deg.” “ It has often been as high as 122deg.” Mr Mkay died in his office chair of heat apoplexy.
Cue W.A. Sunday, 5 Jan – ” Three weeks of uninterrupted excesive heat“ ” each day exceeded 105“ ” on two occasions reaching 118.“
Wilcannia N.S.W. Monday, 6 Jan – 117° F “ Wyalong follows close with 114°. Then come Nowra and Corowa with 112.”
Isisford Qld. 6 Jan – 112° F ” The Government Astronomer states that the high temperature has been caused by a heat wave which has come across the continent from Port Darwin,“.
Bourke N.S.W. 6 Jan – ” The fact is that out of 93 weather telegrams sent in, 64 gave temperatures ranging from 100° at Cooma, Tabulam, Tenterfield, and a few other places, up to 118° in the shade recorded at Brewarrina and at Bourke. There were 22 stations which reported temperatures ranging from 110° to 118° inclusive.“
Canowindra N.S.W. 6 Jan – 114° F “ Reaching the highest point on record“.
Farina S.A. 6 Jan – 113.5° F “ the place occupied by the thermometer being a shadebox such as is used at the Adelaide Observatory.“
Ungarie N.S.W 6 Jan – 125° F “ rural districts do not always recognise the nice distinctions between true shade and other shade.”
Farina S.A. Thursday, 9 Jan – 112.3° F
Quirindi N.S.W. Monday, 13 Jan – 120° F. Out of 54 temperatures shown on that list only one does not meet the 95° F (35° C) heatwave threshold.
Bulli N.S.W. 13 Jan – 115° F “ This has been, the hottest day known“.
Kiama N.S.W. 13 Jan – 117° F ” A Scorcher Everywhere. Death and Distress.“
Parramatta N.S.W. 13 Jan – 111 ° F “ Fruit Broiled on the Trees.” “ Birds and Animals Drop Dead.”
Camden N.S.W. Tuesday, 14 Jan – 123°F ” Great Heat Wave ” “ LIST OF CASUALTIES.”
Araluen N.S.W. Friday, 17 Jan – 110° F “ It was thought that the heat had passed, but it was back again to-day“
Brewarrina N.S.W 17 Jan – 122° F “125 deaths attributable to heat apoplexy” (Sydney).
West Wyalong N.S.W 17 Jan – 114° F “ The thermometer at the post office“.
Nannine W.A. Saturday, Jan 18 – ” After about three weeks of most oppressive heat, with the thermometer frequently registering 120deg. in the shade, the weather has broken.”
Farina S.A. Tuesday, Jan 21 – 112.3° F “ Old residents say this is the hottest summer they have ever experienced.”
Broken Hill N.S.W. Wednesday, Jan 22 – 113½° F ” Two horses dropped dead in the street from the effects of the heat.“
Farina S.A. 22 Jan – 113° F “ The temperature of our police cell was 148° several times.”
Charleville or Cunnamulla QLD. 22 Jan – 120.5 ° F (116 °F official ) “ The average daily temperature from the 1st instant exceeded 114 degrees.” 25 days!!
Olary S.A. Thursday, 23 Jan – 116° F “ and dust flying in clouds during the afternoon.”
Adelaide S.A. 23 Jan – 111° F “Herbert Crown, an ostler at the Langham Hotel, fell down in King William-street this afternoon with sunstroke.”
Swan Hill Vic 23 Jan – 116° F “To-day, it is again exceedingly oppressive”.
Farina S.A. 23 Jan – 114.3° F “ Five deaths have occurred in the town and one outside“.
Mildura Vic 23 Jan – 120° F “ PHENOMENAL HEAT IN VICTORIA.“
Broken Hill 23 Jan – 115° F “ Dr Enill took the temperature of the body an hour and a hall after death, and found that it was 109¾ .”
Halbury S.A. 23 Jan – 118° F “ Many children are unwell, and it will go hard with them unless a change soon, comes.”.
Rapanyup Vic 23 Jan – 113° F “ To-day it is again exceedingly oppressive“.
Natimuk Vic 23 Jan – 115° F ” Telegrams from the country districts show that the heat was general throughout the colony.”(Victoria).
Bega N.S.W. 23 Jan – 113° F “ The minimum heat during last night was 73 . To-day the heat was terrific In the true shade the reading was 113 at 2pm“.
Geelong Vic 23 Jan – 110° F ” Largely due to a burning north-west wind.“
Hergott Springs S.A. 23 Jan “ On three different days it showed 118° and three times 116°, the average for the last month having been 113°F. “
Grenfell and Ivanhoe N.S.W. 23 Jan – 122 ° F “ At Ivanhoe the heat was so intense that the mail horses fell dead on the road.”
Charleville / Cunnamulla QLD. Friday, 24 Jan – 126/5° F “ The official readings at the Post Office are lower; but the instruments used are placed in a thickly-planted garden which has been heavily irrigated during the last week,” So at which town was this garden and non stevenson screen recording? The clue is in the name “Grosvenor” here.
Cunnamulla QLD 24 Jan – ” The official record showed a reading on Tuesday of 111 degs. in the shade, on Wednesday 116 degs., and to-day 117 degs. On Wednesday at midnight, the high temperature of 99 degs. was recorded.”
Isisford QLD 24 Jan – “ The thermometer on Monday rose to 114 degs., on Tuesday to 112 degs., on “Wednesday 115 degs., and to-day 118 degs. The country is very bare and the water is giving out fast.”
Wilcannia N.S.W 24 Jan – 123° F “not a breath of wind was stirring during the night”.
Hillston N.S.W. 24 Jan- 115° F “ Anything under 110 is now beginning to be looked upon as contemptibly cool.”
Wilcannia N.S.W. Saturday, 25 Jan – 120° F “ The thermometer fell 50deg. at Wilcannia, but a death from sunstroke occurred there yesterday.”
Plus
125°F at Middle camp station Netely (Perhaps 160 kilometres south-east of Broken Hill). 121°F at Namagee N.S.W. “ There is no appearance of a change“. There are even more extreme examples listed in the original 1896 post, like Berlino 130F, which ““hangs on a stone house with a thickly thatched verandah facing West” … “never reached by the sun“. Instead, these seemed like the more reliable estimates.
Thanks to Chris Gillham, Lance Pidgeon, Ken Stewart, Warwick Hughes, and all the BOM audit team. So much more still to come. Thank you!
* Was 300 years.
9.5 out of 10 based on 136 ratings
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0 out of 10 based on 0 rating
The big decision Australia faces — We could try to stop all arsonists, lightning, wind, droughts and cool the entire world, or we could reduce the fuel. Which will it be?
In Australia, the situation is comi-tragic. As potential record-breaking heatwave heads eastwards across the country our fire-fighters are reduced to emergency backburning— an act of sheer desperation on the verge of panic in these conditions. The fires they light in the hope of stopping firestorms are causing firestorms — with flames 70 meters high — even burning down one of the RFS captains homes. This is fuel reduction six months too late. One twelve year old drove a car to escape a fire. 2,000 firefighters are battling 108 blazes. A coal mine and a power station are in the path in NSW. The Mount Piper Power Station generates about 10 per cent of NSW’s electricity and is 3km from a fire front. At the coal mine unprocessed coal lies on the surface. How much fun can you have?
Temperatures of 44C (111f) and 46C (114f) are forecast for the outskirts of Sydney on Friday and Saturday.
Fire has already consumed almost three million hectares of land across NSW this bushfire season driven by hot, dry and windy conditions. Six people have died, and 724 homes, 49 facilities and 1582 outbuildings have been destroyed. — Nine news
The East Coast is a cauldron of fuel, millions of hectares of dense match-sticks waiting-to-go. Meanwhile Greens are complaining about the smoke haze and pollution that their policies created and chanting about “climate change” with all the indulgent self righteousness and scientific reasoning of injured four-year-old fortune-tellers.
The grown-ups see things differently. Roger Underwood is a former General Manager of CALM in WA (Dept of Conservation and Land Management), a regional and district manager, a research manager and bushfire specialist. Roger Underwood has 60 years experience in Australian bushfire management. He is one of the leading experts behind Bushfirefront, and this graph (below) that I keep showing. For 18 years they’ve been warning “reduce fuel”, “reduce fuel”, “reduce fuel”.
As he says: Fire need three things — oxygen, fuel and a spark. The only thing we can control is the fuel.
The big decision Australia faces — We could try to stop all arsonists, lightning, wind, droughts and cool the entire world, or we can reduce the fuel. Which will it be? The intellectual giants running the national conversation are still not sure which way to go.
In Western Australia after the major fires of 1961 a massive and dedicated fuel reduction program stopped wildfires for twenty years. Then as the prescribed burn area fell, the wildfire emergencies returned. Its obvious, unarguable, and agrees with everything else we know. It’s still to complicated for the ABC. A one degree temperature rise does not create a firestorm
The difference between 39C and 40C is not the difference between normal and catastrophic fires.
Modern witchdoctors wave their windmill-totems and want us to stop fires with solar panels and batteries — so possibly in one hundred years we might get shorter droughts, slower winds, less lightning, and temperatures that might be a meaningless 1 degree cooler (in their wildest dreams and with no possible numerical justification even through their own broken, failing models and as assessed by their favourite mass foreign committee of 26,000 experts).
Even if we sacrificed our economy and way of life and somehow achieved what they wanted the nation would be a powder-keg for the next hundred years, and then after they “succeeded” it would still be a powder keg.
Watch this space… pray for people, koalas and forests. Trainwreck in action in Australia…
— Jo
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Climate change versus bushfires: killer flaws in an unhelpful and dangerous argument
by Roger Underwood
A group of former “fire chiefs” are blaming the current bushfires across Australia on climate change, and demanding that Prime Minister Morrison takes urgent action to fix the climate. This, they claim, will fix the bushfire threat.
This position is not just unhelpful, it is dangerous. Even if we could change the climate (cooler summers, saturating winter rains, light breezes, no more droughts), it would not influence the current weather patterns or stop the fierce bushfire coming up the driveway this afternoon. Even if we knew exactly how to change the climate, anything we do in Australia will have to be replicated globally (especially in China and India) to make any difference, and even if these climate-changing measures were applied globally tomorrow, the desired new climate might not cut in for many years.
The “climate-change-is-causing-bushfires” position has two killer flaws.
- First, it takes no account of fuels; and second
- It prescribes no practical actions that will help with the immediate bushfire threat.
Ignoring fuel is an error of astonishing magnitude and seriously undermines the credibility of the “fire chiefs”. It is almost as if they never studied elementary bushfire science. In Bushfire 101 we learned about The Fire Triangle. This illustrates a fundamental reality: a bushfire (in fact any fire) can only occur if three things are co-present: oxygen (in the air), fuel (to burn) and heat (a source of ignition to get the fire started).
If any one of the three is missing the result is no fire.
Unfortunately, nothing can be done to remove the air and the oxygen it contains. Unhappily, nothing can be done to stop bushfires starting. They will either be lit by Mother Nature in the form of lightning strikes, or will be started by humans, either deliberately or accidentally.
But bushfire fuel can be removed, or at least the quantity of fuel around a house or in the bush can be reduced to a point where a fire will burn at a relatively low intensity , allowing firefighters to deal with it relatively comfortably.
On the other hand, if fuel is allowed to build up, as happens in long-unburned eucalypt bushland, the eventual fire will be of high intensity. If a crown fire results, generating a downwind ember storm, the fire will be impossible to control and highly damaging, no matter how many thousands of firefighters and water bombers you throw at it.
Blaming climate change for the current spate of bushfires ignores the fact that these bushfires have proven almost impossible to control once they got going. This is because they are burning in heavy fuels dried out by drought. Ignoring fuel is the ultimate cop-out. It absolves the authorities of any responsibility for the incubation of this fire epidemic, and especially it absolves the former “fire chiefs” for not doing their job over the years, allowing dangerous levels of fuel to accumulate in the nation’s bushlands.
Keep reading →
9.1 out of 10 based on 137 ratings
Polls are like climate models. You can get any answer you want, but not the one you need.
An immortal headline from Oct 30:
Survey also finds two-thirds of people agree climate is biggest issue facing humankind
Damian Carrington Environment editor, @dpcarrington
A majority of people in the UK say the climate crisis will influence how they vote in the looming general election, according to an opinion poll, with younger voters feeling particularly strongly about the issue.
 … And of course the greatest landslide in 30 years wasn’t won by the party aligned with teenage girls who promised better weather.
Six weeks before the UK election and the poll served no purpose other than to fool some politicians and the journalists that write about them. The biggest issue facing mankind either got solved before December 12, or perhaps no one gave a toss, they just said what the pollster wanted them to say.
Or how about the July 2019 poll:
Bigger than Brexit? Jeremy ought to have that election wrapped up….
Christian Aid poll finds climate emergency should be a top priority for Boris Johnson
by Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian
Most Britons believe climate change is more important in the long term than Brexit and say it should be a top priority for Boris Johnson’s government, according to an opinion poll. Women and young people are more likely to say that action over climate change is a more pressing priority than issues around Brexit. The ComRes survey, commissioned by Christian Aid, found that 71% of the UK public agreed that climate change would be more important than the country’s departure from the EU in the long term. Six out of 10 adults said the government was not doing enough to prioritise the climate crisis….
 … Neither Guardian journalist asked any hard questions — did people have the option to tick “Total waste of time”,or “Looks like Pagan witchcraft”.
Most surveys have 6 shades of believer and only one kind of skeptic. Without satirical skeptical options most people recognise the poll as a lecture, and just want the interviewer out the door. 30% of people in the US did say Climate change was a total hoax. Has anyone even asked?
Did the surveys ask people how much of their own money they wanted to spend or did they just do the usual apple pie wish list — would you mind if the government paid for nicer weather?
Which is, of course, why real leaders who want to win elections, don’t read The Guardian.
See posts on Polls here, where I’ve said:
Better survey’s show 80% of Australians don’t donate to environmental causes or vote for it. How committed are they? Answer, not even ten bucks a year. On flights, not even two bucks a trip. Survey after survey shows that when people rank issues, climate concerns are flat at the bottom of the barrel. Only 3% of US people think climate is most important issue.
The pollsters on climate exult,
In promoting their climate-change cult,
With questions that tilt,
At degrees of man’s guilt,
To achieve the desired result.
–Ruairi
9.8 out of 10 based on 93 ratings
Stupid engineers think we need climate models that work and electricity that costs less than a dollar a kilowatt hour. All along we’ve been worried about FCAS, moist adiabatic lapse rates, voltage surges, and frequency drops, while the answer was staring us in the face.
The cheapest way to change the global climate is to call men petty names, bully them into submission and kick their truck nuts.
Here’s “genius” Megan MacKenzie: Professor of Gender and War at the University of Sydney showing us how little she knows about climate, men or war.
Is fragile masculinity the biggest obstacle to climate action?
Megan MacKenzie, ABC
Leaving fossil fuels in the ground symbolises a loss of power and money. Some male leaders see real climate action as a threat to power and to profit, through extraction and exploitation of the environment.
Male resistance to climate action has bipartisan support. Any hope that the Labor party might offer climate policy alternatives the Liberals went up in smoke in the past few months as Anthony Albanese announced he doesn’t want to phase out coal.
Researchers in Norway also found what they call a “cool dude effect” when it comes to climate change.
They show that white conservative men, especially those that think they understand the science of climate change, are the biggest climate deniers and the least likely to be moved by further research.
There are multiple examples of ‘cool climate dudes’ and petro-masculinity, including “right wingers…going crazy about meat”, by embracing diets called “the carnivore” or “the caveman” at the same time that vegans are belittled as “soyboys” and “beta males”.
We knew Sydney Uni and the ABC are intellectually primitive, incompetent, slaves to fashionthink, but this dumber than that.
Time to just say No. No more funds to Sydney Uni, no more funds to the ABC. No more funds to the human rights commission either. Sexist, racist, self-serving intolerance is apparently fine.
Toxic white men with balls are the reason Megan MacKenzie has the freedom to write noxious self-serving trollop and get paid for it.
— h/t David B
9.6 out of 10 based on 109 ratings
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8.4 out of 10 based on 22 ratings
Experts predict a warmer world will be “geologically turbulent”. Join the dots, get a solar panel, and stop the world cracking up ok?
Below one national news outlet speculates about the effects storms, melting ice and floods have on crustal plates, and fault lines. It’s possible, unknown, or at least not-entirely-ruled-out that man-made CO2 could maybe theoretically lead to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis. The story contains stacked “ifs”, “buts”, “coulds” and caveats, plus some links that are not-statistically-significant and several “unknowns”.
This is essentially one-sided scientific rumour mongering. Quick let’s transform our economy.
h/t Andrew V
Jamie Seidel
… experts predict a warmer and more geologically turbulent future for the planet.
The US Geological Survey has discovered there is one link between weather and earthquake.
Just one link?
Major storms, such as cyclones and hurricanes, can produce substantial changes in atmospheric pressure. This sometimes triggers a ‘slow earthquake’ – a slow but steady movement that does not create any noticeable jolt.
“They note that while such large low-pressure changes could potentially be a contributor to triggering a damaging earthquake, the numbers are small and are not statistically significant,” Buis says.
So experts say there is really no evidence at all here?
What does this next line even mean?
And then there’s the fact that weather is not the same as climate.
Would you like an earthquake with that?
Recent NASA research in California, Oregon and Washington indicate extended drought could have implications of seismic proportions.
Between 2011 and 2017, the Sierra Nevada mountain range lifted by up to 2.5cm as it shed water and lost weight. Then it fell more than 1cm after heavy rains.
“Such stress changes could potentially be felt on faults in or near the range,” Buis writes.
It supports earlier research linking depleted subterranean groundwater aquifers to seismic activity on the San Andreas Fault. Once again, the change in pressure and weight had a domino effect.
You don’t say:
But there are still too many unknown variables at play to be sure.
“We’re not close to being able to predict when an earthquake may occur as a result of climate processes,” he concludes.
Don’t be surprised if the Earth cracks up:
Researchers already know dramatic changes in the water levels of lakes and dams can trigger local seismic activity.
But upscaling this impact to a global level is difficult.
We know glaciers are retreating rapidly around the world.
So, what if such enormous weights shift?
“With this in mind, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the loading and unloading of the Earth’s crust by ice or water can trigger seismic and volcanic activity and even landslides,” Professor McGuire says.
Stopping surprises like this is just what we have professors for.
The article mentions “climate” nine times, and the the sun, solar magnetic, solar wind and solar weather not at all. Get the picture? Your taxes pay for these experts.
Climate change could produce more stacked caveats.
9.7 out of 10 based on 64 ratings
Photos just in from Bill Johnston in NSW show why Sydney is shrouded in smoke and why so much is still at risk this summer.
The sign marks the fire trail — which is lucky, otherwise no one would know it was there.
Spot the sign in the photo below. Spot the fire-trail.
How many fires would this stop? About as many as a solar panel.
 Fire trail or fire trap? | Photo Bill Johnston This is NSW fire preparation in 2019.
..
This is what a different fire trail looks like (one that works):
 Fire meets fire trail, stops. | Photo: Bill Johnston This break was small but still stopped a manageable fire. Only the ocean will stop a firestorm.
As as Bill says — rainfall lowers the temperature, and drought raises it. Wet soils are hard to heat. Wet woodlands are slower to burn. If there is fuel to burn, a lack-of-rain causes a high fire risk, and everyone knows climate models can’t predict rain on any short term or regional basis. The only thing we know for sure is that a warmer world is a wetter one. Thus and verily 1 + 1 = a new water bomber. Blame Climate Change and say Give us your money!
— Jo
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Accumulated fuel is an environmental time-bomb
Guest post on the climate-science emergency by Dr. Bill Johnston
The Guardian decrys that if only Australia had reduced its minuscule emissions, something would have happened to stop kiddies and other arsonists causing the allegedly earliest, longest, hottest, beastiest fire season in Australia’s history.
Resident catastrophist at the University of New South Wales Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick was “surprised, bewildered, concerned”, IPCC’s Professor Mark Howden from ANU thought “the public had already joined the dots” – the most obvious being that fire needs fuel and that ever since restrictions on fuel reduction were imposed by various native vegetation and biodiversity reforms twenty or so years ago, fuel loads across eastern Australia have inexorably increased.
Although supposedly paid to think, Euan Ritchie, wildlife ecologist at Deakin University misses the obvious. Not reducing fuel loads will always look like a raging bushfire every seven years or so when La Niña fades, the landscape dries out and El Niño kicks-in. Fire in Australia has been around for as long as there is fuel to burn and they invented two sticks to rub together. [Or since God invented lightning]. Surely the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action[1] would also understand the ferocity of fire is only abated by preemptively controlling the fuel load, which in their time they didn’t do.
Keep reading →
9.4 out of 10 based on 95 ratings
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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