California’s devastating Kincaid Fire located in Sonoma County has grown to over 66,000 acres and NASA’s Terra satellite captured this dramatic image of the smoke plume cascading down the coast. OCt 27, 2019. | NASA image.
In Western Australia (WA) we have incendiary gum trees, regular droughts, and humidity so low that sometimes the clothes dry in the washing machine. Far be it for me to tell Californians how to manage their forests, but thought it worth a mention that Western Australian State govt do managed burns on 8% of the forest each year, and our top experts say it should be twice as much.
Compare that to California, where the rate of prescribed burning is now around 0.2% of the forest or so. Not the same type of fire-loving trees, but still the flammable kind…
A regime of green burning also produces a healthier and more vigorous forest and is better for biodiversity. This approach was applied rigorously in WA forests for nearly 30 years, with tremendous success. Unfortunately since about the 1980s green burning has been under constant attack from environmentalists and academics. As a result, in Victoria and New South Wales, especially in forests which are now national parks, almost no effective prescribed burning is done. Even in WA, where green burning was once championed, the area burnt each year has now fallen well below that required to ensure an effective fire management system. Here the annual burning target is 8% of the forest – simple arithmetic allows you to calculate that this equates to a turn-around time of 12 years, which in the jarrah forest at least is nearly twice the recommended burning rotation length if summer wildfires are to be manageable.
Jon E. Keeley & Alexandra D. Syphard
Although national parks began this movement 50 years ago, it is clear that, over this period of time, they have not come close to returning historical fire frequencies (estimated at 10 to 30 years) to Sierra Nevada forests. For example, 50 years of prescription burning in national parks has only burned around 10% of the forested landscape, which, at this rate, would take 500 years to burn all of the forested landscape, assuming no reburning of previous burns.
Mechanical treatments that remove understory fuels and thin the density of trees has two advantages over prescription burning: it can be done over a greater portion of the year and potentially can pay for itself through timber sales.
Let’s see that data again. After truly awful fires of 1961, prescribed burns were ramped up dramatically, and then wildfires were almost non-existent for the next twenty years in WA. See that data (before someone alters it). Gradually greens took more control of forest management. As less controlled burns were done, the fires of the uncontrolled type increased to “fill that gap”.
As prescribed fire reduction declined, wildfires increased in South West Australia. (Click to enlarge)
In Australia we can either have man made fires or natural catastrophes.
Ryan Sabalow, Dale Kasler, Maya Miller, The Sacramento Bee
In much of CA firefighters are not even allowed to let natural fires burn in safe conditions:
In California, the debate over prescribed burns is complicated by a deadly history with wildfires that have grown quickly out of control, the state’s stringent environmental regulations, fear of liability lawsuits and infringement on property rights, and the huge swaths of federal forestland with their own management rules and oversight.
For their part, the Tahoe National Forest’s managers say they understand the ecological value of allowing fires such as the Sugar to burn when conditions are safe. But while the agency has loosened the rules on letting fires burn on some national forests, managers of the Tahoe are still required to extinguish any fire that ignites in the woods as quickly as possible.
Researchers estimate that in 1800, 15% of Californian forest would burn each year:
By some estimates, many of the state’s forests have up to 100 times the amount of small trees and underbrush than what grew prior to white settlement. Meanwhile, researchers estimate that prior to 1800, some 4.5 million acres of the state’s forests burned in a typical year — more than the 1.9 million acres that burned in 2018, the most in modern history.
That has fallen to 0.3% per year:
Yet in a state with more than 30 million acres of forest, only about 87,000 acres of California land were treated with prescribed burns last year to reduce undergrowth prior to the state’s deadly fire season, according to data from Cal Fire, the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
CA doesn’t have the incendiary mix that Western Australia does, but perhaps needs something more than burnoffs once every 500 years.
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology is paid more than a million dollars a day, and the planet is under seige, yet the paint is peeling off some Australian thermometer screens, the grass is long, and wasps are nesting in them. What once were large 230 litre wooden boxes have shrunk to 60 litres and are now even turning to plastic. The old glass thermometers are being replaced with electronic gear that can record a burst of hot air — yet somehow those freak high spikes are supposed to be comparable to temperatures recorded 100 years ago by slow glass thermometers.
Old larger boxes protected thermometers from sudden changes in air temperature.
Left: Len Walker with a 230L screen in 1940. Right: Blair Trewin with a modern 60L Stevenson screen.
Possibly the hardest thing to explain is that even though the BOM collected comparison data on the different types of thermometers, which might help to assess new versus old, they routinely throw the data away. Compounding that, the metadata on sites is incomplete, missing, lacking in documentation. Giant six lane highways are built next to equipment sites but not recorded. There is a huge disconnect between the urgency and the fear of climate change and the care and attention paid to measuring the climate. Despite all this the BOM repeatedly tells the public that the science is settled, and we’re hitting new record temperatures which are supposedly accurate to a tenth of a degree.
Bill Johnston is a seasoned weather observer and agricultural climatologist. He’s been documenting the dismal state of our national climate monitoring network for years, all unpaid. See his previous posts here on Bourke, Port Hedland, Canberra, and Sydney Observatory.
The Bureau of Meteorology has lost its way. Replacement of standard 230-litre Stevenson screens with 60-litre ones, which accelerated over recent decades; automatic weather stations (AWS) becoming primary instruments in September 1996; installing PVC screens in the hottest places they could find, closing offices, sacking staff and reducing maintenance to one or fewer site-visits per year have warmed Australia’s climate.
Lack of site control is endemic and it’s not true that changes in data are due to climate change and warming. Small Stevenson screens relocated to dusty paddocks and airports, which are seldom cleaned or repainted, are invariably biased-high (Figure 1). It matters that paint peels off and screens lose their lustre, grime builds up and that grass is not regularly mowed (Figure 2). Recent record temperatures and increases in the frequency of warm days are predominantly due to relocating screens to warmer aspects, AWS and small screens becoming primary instruments, and lack of maintenance.
Figure 1. While the screen and other equipment at Wagga Wagga airport were well maintained by Bureau staff in June 2016 (left), placement of the AWS temperature probes 2-cm closer to the north-facing rear of the screen made the temperature warmer on warm days. At Rutherglen (right), by July 2019, the neglected screen was grimy; home to a mud wasp (arrowed) and outside paint was peeling around the roof and louvers. Lack of regular maintenance results in bias and causes the frequency of warm days to increase. (Sensors measure relative humidity (RH) and temperature (T).). Stevenson Screens, Australian, Bureau of Meteorology.
The Bureau has lost its way
Standards have slipped and the Bureau’s core function of monitoring the weather can no longer be trusted. The community is poorly served by its penchant for hitting the headlines with exaggerated claims of record hot days, months and years in time for the evening news.
Even worse, in 2017 they established seven new sites in southwestern NSW in the warmest places they could find using PVC screens with mat-black interiors that radiate heat onto the instruments on warm days. It is therefore no coincidence that temperatures have increased in recent time; that records are regularly smashed and that heatwaves and extremes seem more frequent. However, it’s a major problem for climate catastrophists that trends and changes don’t reflect what’s actually happening with the weather.
The climate emergency doesn’t exist. In order to fit the narrative, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology has altered the conditions under which temperature is measured. Aided by the Monash misinformation hub, the ABC, The Conversation the Fairfax press and The Guardian, a campaign is underway to tag our normal weather as non-normal and extreme.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has not only disappeared the Very Hot Days graph but they have wiped out thousands of 40 plus hot days in the years from 1910 – 1963 — years when almost all temperatures in Australia were recorded on Stevenson screens by trained officials under the central management of the Bureau. Volunteer, Chris Gillham, found the data and the changes between ACORN 1 and ACORN 2 and created this transformative graph below.
1952 had more hot days than any year since. Not any more. All those poor sods in 1952 who endured an average twenty one 40-degree-plus days will find now that it wasn’t really that hot. The BoM is like an air conditioner that cools the country 70 years in the past. And it’s only a million dollars a day…
As Craig Kelly MP points out — 2011 had the fewest “very hot days” of the last century, but even the recent data from expert equipment can change eight years later.
Chris Gillham also tested the effect of the latest secret ACORN 2 changes on the “old century” 100F cut off, and found, remarkably that there were more “hotter-than-100” days in the raw data in the first half of last century. All that global warming eh? You’ll be shocked I tell you, shocked, to find that the BOMs latest adjustments change that trend from a fairly stable one to … an increase.
Ponder that with millions more people, concrete and cars in the modern era, it’s the old measurements in good screens in open fields that are being quietly adjusted down, not up, and by secret methods.
If the BOM were a bank adjusting it’s own tax receipts, the Labor Party and Greens would be demanding a Royal Commission.
Check out Chris’s site, a vast amount of data-crunching, all done unpaid. Thank him here!
Guest post by Chris Gillham who publishes WAClimate
Only a few people know that in early 2019 the Bureau of Meteorology updated its ACORN dataset and increased Australia’s per decade rate of mean temperature warming since 1910 by 23%.The Australian remains the only media that has ever mentioned ACORN 2 or its ramifications. At least 25 million Australians have never heard of ACORN 2 …
Even fewer are aware that ACORN 2 has influenced and distorted the number of days at 40.0C or above, defined by the bureau as “very hot days”, since 1910.
The animated graphic below shows very hot days from 1910 to 2015 in the ACORN 1 dataset source archived bureau pages within the WayBack Machine when compared to very hot days from 1910 to 2018 within the ACORN 2 dataset sourced to current readings at the BoM website.
Sweeping changes in record hot days? The Bureau of Meteorology adjusted raw data to make ACORN 1 and has adjusted that further to make ACORN 2!
The animation points arrows at how the record high averaged number of very hot days in 1952 within the ACORN 1 dataset was reduced by 24.1% in the ACORN 2 dataset, and the ACORN 1 averaged total for 1952 is still more than the ACORN 2 averaged total for 2018.
To shine a spotlight within the annual averages animated above, it’s worth looking at a random sample of individual stations:
At Bourke in NSW from 1910 to 2017 there were 1,909 very hot 40C+ days in RAW (average 41.7C), but in ACORN 1 there were 1,727 very hot 40C+ days (average 42.0C), and in ACORN 2 there were 1,589 very hot 40C+ days (average 41.7C). From RAW to ACORN 2 this is a 16.7% reduction in days.
At Marble Bar in WA from 1910 to 2017 there were 11,345 very hot 40C+ days in RAW (average 42.4C), but in ACORN 1 there were 10,060 very hot 40C+ days (average 42.5C), and in ACORN 2 there were 9,962 very hot 40C+ days (average 42.4C). From RAW to ACORN 2 this is a 12.2% reduction in days.
At Alice Springs in the Northern Territory from 1910 to 2017 there were 1,526 very hot 40C+ days in RAW (average 41.1C), but in ACORN 1 there were 1,421 very hot 40C+ days (average 41.1C), and in ACORN 2 there were 1,232 very hot 40C+ days (average 41.1C). From RAW to ACORN 2 this is a 19.3% reduction in days.
At Boulia in Queensland from 1910 to 2017 there were 4,889 very hot 40C+ days in RAW (average 41.6C), but in ACORN 1 there were 4,236 very hot 40C+ days (average 41.6C), and in ACORN 2 there were 3,500 very hot 40C+ days (average 41.7C). From RAW to ACORN 2 this is a 28.4% reduction in days.
At Wandering in WA from 1910 to 2017 there were 325 very hot 40C+ days in RAW (average 41.1C), but in ACORN 1 there were 266 very hot 40C+ days (average 41.1C), and in ACORN 2 there were 219 very hot 40C+ days (average 41.2C). From RAW to ACORN 2 this is a 32.6% reduction in days.
The animation above makes clear that the overwhelming bulk of these reduced very hot days in ACORN 2 at these individual stations and at most others was in the first half of the 1900s.
What about the old Fahrenheit “Hotter than 100 days”?
I visited the famous Giles weather station a couple of weeks ago. It’s an ACORN top ranking site, it even has a Met office. Because it so central and so remote the measurements here are used to estimate temperatures across a vast area — indeed, arguably, it’s the most influential site in terms of Australia’s area-averaged temperature. It’s 1,700km drive from Perth (1,000 miles) and the last 800 km of that is dirt road with wild camels. It’s so remote the nearest post box is 340 km away across the state border at Uluru / Ayers Rock.
This could have been the best site in Australia, unaffected by UHI, open since 1956, staffed with professionals.
By the Bureau of Meteorology’s own standards the site is non-compliant.
The screen is surrounded by an extensive area of graded bare gravel, unlike the environment it is supposed to represent, (buffel grass, spinnifex, and low scrub). Bitumen was laid on the road between September 2011 and October 2012 and is less than 30 metres from the screen. 30 metres is exactly how far a [6m wide sealed] surface should be. The bare gravel surface right beside the screen is the main problem.
The BOM knows this of course, in excruciating detail. The road was sealed around 2011. This is all marked up on the BOM site info. Presumably, they’ve “corrected” for the road using sites a thousand kilometers away?
There’s a thousand square kilometers of better spots in every direction.
Giles layout. Bureau of Meteorology, Sites metadata PDF. | Click to enlarge.
The Seattle Public Schools Ethnic Studies Advisory Committee (ESAC) has determined that math is subjective and racist.
In a draft for its Math Ethnic Studies framework, the ESAC writes that Western mathematics is “used to disenfranchise people and communities of color.”
Hammers and drills too. They build mansions for white people. Tools of oppression.
Using the ESAC’s framework, Seattle’s public school students will be able to “construct & decode mathematical knowledge, truth, and beauty” so that they can contribute to their communities.
Just what we need. More people to contribute wokeness and entitlement.
Students will also analyze the ways in which “ancient mathematical knowledge has been appropriated by Western culture,” and “identify how math has been and continues to be used to oppress and marginalize people and communities of color.”
Six. Seven. Hate. Nine. Let’s ban the number hate!
In 2017, a University of Illinois math professor Rochelle Gutierrez argued in a newly published math education book for teachers that they must be aware of the identity politics surrounding the subject of mathematics.
Right now Gutierrez is oppressing black and asian mathematicians:
“On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness,” she argues with complete sincerity, according to Campus Reform. “Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White.”
Some mathematicians are more equal than others:
Gutierrez also wrote that the importance of math skills in the real world places what she calls an “unearned privilege” for those who are good at it.
Unearned privilege being defined as anyone lucky enough to spend twenty years practicing algebra.
Because most math teachers in the United States are white, white people stand to benefit from their grasp of the subject disproportionate to members of other races.
Is she really saying afro-hispanic-asian people can’t learn maths from white teachers? If I said that, they’d put me in jail.
“Are we really that smart just because we do mathematics?” she asks, raising the question as to why math professors get more grants than “social studies or English” professors.
Indeed. Why do lawyers earn more than maths professors? Why do English professors get paid more than hair dressers? It’s so unfair. We could pay everyone the minimum wage. To quote that great Russian ethnic: “From each according to his ability,…” Did leftist intellectual reasoning start with Karl Marx, or end there?
Shame Prof Gutierrez cant see cultural injustice. People who are good at maths have been oppressed for a hundred thousand years. The Eulers of the iron age were wasted, digging holes and smiting voles. They were denied their cultural identity, mocked for their spear throwing and forced to live in a world without numbers, or even a PDP-11. Now, after 5,000 generations, finally they have a chance to shine.
It’s free world. We won’t expect her to turn up to the national sorry maths day, but Gutierrez can always work on her own culturally inclusive maths, with woke numbers, and use it to design her own unoppressive phone.
Here’s an inconvenient fact: Australia had the highest number of very hot days in 1952, back when CO2 levels were 311ppm and humans had not yet emitted 87% of our carbon dioxide emissions. Something else was causing that extreme heat. If only the modelers knew what it was?
For years the BOM site had this informative graph below, but yesterday Craig Kelly M.P. phoned me to prepare for his Bolt Report appearance and informed me the Bureau had dropped it down the memory hole. It used to be a tab available on their Track climate trends and extremes page. Apparently in this era of global warming, the BoM doesn’t think Australians care about the trends in days over 40C in Australia, or perhaps it didn’t fit the agenda? On the Bolt Report last night Kelly explained that according to the Wayback machine, it disappeared sometime during the election campaign this year. (It was there on March 26th and gone on March 28th.)
There’s not much a of a trend in the average number of very hot days (greater than 40C) each year in Australia. | Source: Australian Bureau of Meteorology 2016.
Apparently very hot days are defined as the number of “days over 40C” and are obtained by averaging across all stations with sufficiently long data across the country. It uses the all wonderful modern ACORN dataset (v1 in 2016). There were 21 days where the nation averaged “over 40” in 1952. Since then humans have emitted 5/6ths of all the emissions our species has ever produced. The peak in 1952 doesn’t prove CO2 has no effect, but the lack of a meaningful trend across the century highlights how misleading it is for the BOM to claim that extreme heat noise proves we need to reduce CO2. There are so many combinations of heatwaves, hot days, and hottest-ever long weekends that it’s possible for a PR institute to fish for “a record” and find one. A PR institute might also filter for records to forget them. If only the BoM was science based instead.
Pagan witchdoctors instilled fear by pointing at suspicious coincidences and didn’t mention the counter-factuals. Some things never change.
Last night, Craig Kelly talked to Andrew Bolt about the failure of MediaWatch and his concerns about the Bureau of Meteorology.
As Andy Pitman says: “this may not be what you read in newspapers…”Craig Kelly wants to know why MediaWatch have never pulled up the ABC for misleading the public on droughts. That’s what MediaWatch are paid to do, says Kelly. Now that Pitman has made the misunderstanding on droughts and climate change clear, the ABC is mythmaking — actively promoting falsehoods.
But the blame also comes back to Pitman and climate scientists at uni’s, the BoM and the CSIRO. If they are aware the public have a misunderstanding, it’s their duty to correct that. That’s what we pay them for. Where were their press releases?
I speak to Kelly regularly, and he impresses me with his detailed questions — drilling down and checking his sources. He’s determined to hold our scientists to account.
If only more M.P.s took such an interest in climate science and meteorology.
We the undersigned petitioners request the House reconsiders Australia’s commitment to the PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT that was ratified on 9 November 2016 and declared ‘entry into force’ on 9 December 2016. Australia is meeting its emission targets. We contribute approx. 1.5% of global emissions and many eminent scientists advise any changes this nation makes will have little or no effect on the overall global climate. America, the world’s 2nd largest greenhouse gas emitter, has given formal notice to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. China- the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases will SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASE their emissions to 2030, and other developing nations have been given a ‘free pass’ under the same agreement. The estimated cost to our nation is $52 billion between 2018 and 2030. This will severely impact Australia economically and socially, with taxpayers funding ‘developing, but fast-growing economic-powerhouses’ such as China and India. The Paris Agreement is not operating as intended, and there is more risk than reward for Australia to remain. We must consider an AUSExit of Paris.
We therefore ask the House to formally advise the UNFCCC of Australia’s intention to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. The first date representation can be made is 3 years from the date of the ‘entry-into-force’ of the agreement. This date is 9 December 2019. Formal removal becomes effective 12 months later.
Sign it. :- )
Please read and confirm you agree with the Terms and Conditions. You must be a resident or citizen of Australia to sign a petition. Current Members of the House of Representatives cannot sign a petition.
See Decision Canada: 170 seats to win, currently projected as Liberals–Trudeau: 156 (down 21 seats), Conservatives–Sheer: 122 (up 26 seats), 5 seats undecided.
Lib: 33.4% Con: 34.25% (as more votes are counted the Conservative vote is rising.)
Called as a minority Liberal govt. Trudeau to stay with support from either the NDP or The Bloc. Canada is divided. The Conservatives won slightly more of the popular vote but it was concentrated in the two oil-rich provinces Alberta and Saskatchewan, so they won fewer seats. In the largest, most populous province – Ontario — the liberals won twice as many seats as the conservatives. The Liberals are the party of the politically correct inner city voters.
Big loser is the NDP (social-democrats) falling from 39 seats to ? 25. Big winner is Bloc Québécois (separatist/centre left) going from 10 seats up to 22.)
In the US, Brexit and Australian elections the pollsters missed the hidden conservative vote. It was so strong some people said they’d vote Labor, but then they voted the other way, and then they left the polling booth and still told exit pollsters they voted for Labor. It wasn’t til the first hour of vote counting that people realized what had really happened.
When a whole side of politics becomes unfashionable, people know what the pollsters want to hear. The Conservative Party led by Andrew Scheer is running on a lower tax, No Carbon Tax platform, so there might be enough there to excite potential hidden voters. But will the voters throw out a one term government? Maybe. The old days of loyalty are over. How much is Canada hurting from political correctness?
According to the Australian ABC the key issues are what the PM wears for overseas trips and what he wore to dress up parties twenty years ago. I feel pretty confident that real Canadians have other concerns.
The news about droughts was banal and obvious, because more water evaporates in a warmer world, and therefore, more rain falls — how could it be any other way? What goes up, must come down. But that quote was very important because it had never been stated so unequivocally by a high ranking believer and modeler. (Thanks to Jim Sternhill for spotting this incendiary and unwittingly honest quote.) Since being posted here, those quotes have been picked up by Maurice Newman, Alan Jones, then Chris Kenny (The Australian editor) and Andrew Bolt — which means the Pitman-drought-admission has become a major headache for the climate machine. Hence, they had to come up with some fogging excuse to muddy up the clarity, and here it is. Pitman forgot one word.
Barry said this “clarification” said Pitman had “left out a crucial word”: that “there is no direct link between climate change and drought”.
“But does global warming lead to changes in rainfall patterns that can lead to drought? Yes. This indirect link is clear … In some regions, this increases the risk of drought, in other regions it decreases the risk.”
As recoveries go, this rates “Good try, but no banana”. Adding just one word leaves open the vague-fortune-teller-type possibility that our car exhausts can indirectly cause droughts — but none of the Global Climate Models can predict regional rainfall reliably, or even unreliably. They can’t even manage to predict the plus or minus sign in precipitation trends. GCM’s are officially up there with coin tosses. So it is a bit (as in, totally) misleading of Pitman to say the indirect link is clear. There’s no definitive evidence that changing CO2 levels has any measurable effect on rainfall patterns at all — if there was, the modelers might have some clue of which regions would get wetter and which wouldn’t, instead of being completely skillless on precipitation. (see Anagnostopolous, 2010 for starters).
Lets not forget what Andy Pitman also said in June:
“…the fundamental problem we have is that we don’t understand what causes droughts.”
Yes, exactly. That’s rather a bomb on the idea that anything might “be clear”. Apparently, even though the forces that drive droughts are a mystery to climate scientists, they “know” that CO2 has a connection somehow, someway. Lo, and Neptune is travelling through the constellation Pisces — causing carp to rain on the GCMs. Expect a mysterious man to steal your heart next month, or perhaps just part of your wallet through your electricity bill.
Meanwhile for people born under The Sun, UNSW is stealing part our inheritance, our tax and sanity with fake science. Enough is enough.
So, you have left out two crucial facts. The first is that there IS a drying trend over the last twenty years. The second is that there is a long-term drying trend in some regions and not in others.
Andrew Bolt called it pathetic deceptive and evasive, pointing out he had put the full quotes on his blog, and that falling rainfall in the last twenty years was irrelevant if there was no trend in the last 100 years, and that even Andy Pitman said that these changes in trends show “how variable Australian rainfall is”.
Today Andrew Bolt has a slide from a Pitman presentation.
…
In the words of Andy Pitman:
“Current science cannot tell us of the sign of the change in future drought.”
Paul Barry has no idea how bad the rainfall predictions are — he’s a lamb to the slaughter. He accuses Bolt of hyping up the Pitman speech:
Paul Barry: Note the emphasis on “admits”, as if he’s known it all along and finally fessed up.
But here’s the thing, that’s absolutely true. The modelers have known all along. A warmer world means more rain.
And all the “evidence” Paul Barry cites are just guesstimates that come from a simulated planet in a galaxy far far away:
Also, if you look at the published research — as Kenny, Jones and Bolt could easily have done — you’ll find any number of climate scientists concluding that global warming is having an effect.
The recent drought in South Africa, for example, in which Cape Town nearly ran out of water, was made three times more likely by climate change, according to researchers led by Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute.
And studies by different researchers of 45 droughts around the world — mapped here by UK website Carbon Brief — have found that 30 were made worse or more likely by human-induced climate change.
So fake evidence from fake planets. And Paul Barry, master journalist of journalists, could have “looked” at the published research too, just as easily as he says Kenny, Bolt, and Jones could have. Obviously he didn’t. Or he could have just googled and found joannenova.com.au and I would have explained for free just how meaningless those modeled calculations of “percentage chances” are when they come from skillless models that even the modelers admit ” don’t understand what causes droughts.”
Might as well ask as astrologer how many droughts were caused by your air conditioner. It’s be better national policy than asking UNSW – it’d have just as much chance of success but be a lot cheaper.
I’ve been pointing out for years how dismal climate modelers are with rainfall, quite possibly because they don’t include solar spectral, magnetic or solar wind variation and solar cycles seem to be linked to rainfall, streamflow, jetstreams, floods and droughts:
[1] Anagnostopoulos, G. G., D. Koutsoyiannis, A. Christofides, A. Efstratiadis, and N. Mamassis, (2010). A comparison of local and aggregated climate model outputs with observed data’, Hydrological Sciences Journal, 55: 7, 1094 — 1110 [PDF]
Professor Andy Pitman, (2019) Presentation — The SEI forum: Adapting Climate Science for Business, Wednesday 19 June, 2019, Sydney Environment Institute (SEI), University of Sydney.
Extinction Rebellion leader says its not about climate — it’s about toxic white European racist heterosexists, especially old Brits
Basden o-chosen-one is here to save us from our delusions — if you thought fossil fuels caused climates to break, you are in denial. Storms and floods are really a symptom of the toxic infection that is European civilization!
Apparently even the IPCC are denialists that the real cause of bad weather is old white English men.
I’m so grateful to Stuart Basden, one of the first 15 XR founders, for explaining what XR is really about. Thanks to Charles the moderator at WUWT, and Chris D for sending the Medium essay.
Share this link widely I say, the more people who read this the better.
… I’m here to say that XR isn’t about the climate. You see, the climate’s breakdown is a symptom of a toxic system of that has infected the ways we relate to each other as humans and to all life. This was exacerbated when European ‘civilisation’ was spread around the globe through cruelty and violence (especially) over the last 600 years of colonialism, although the roots of the infections go much further back.
Feel the hate.
As Europeans spread their toxicity around the world, they brought torture, genocide, carnage and suffering to the ends of the earth. Their cultural myths justified the horrors, such as the idea that indigenous people were animals (not humans), and therefore God had given us dominion over them. This was used to justify a multi-continent-wide genocide of tens of millions of people. The coming of the scientific era saw this intensify, as the world around us was increasingly seen as ‘dead’ matter — just sitting there waiting for us to exploit it and use it up. We’re now using it up faster than ever.
Thought I was joking about old English men?
Euro-Americans violently imposed and taught dangerous delusions that they used to justify the exploitation and reinforced our dominance, while silencing worldviews that differed or challenged them. The UK’s hand in this was enormous, as can be seen by the size of the former British empire, and the dominance of the English language around the world. There is stark evidence that everyday racial bias continues in Britain, now, today. It’s worth naming some of these constructed delusions that have been coded into societies and institutions around the world:
The delusion of white-supremacy… blah…etc
The delusion of patriarchy,… Eurocentrism, The delusions of hetero-sexism/heteronormativity and class hierarchy
Note the reasoning: “If you don’t agree with me you are a brain-dead idiot”:
To focus on the climate’s breakdown (the symptom) without focusing attention on these toxic delusions (the causes) is a form a denialism. Worse, it’s a racist and sexist form of denialism…
Make that a racist, sexist brain-dead idiot.
It appears this self hate is what happens when civilizations get too comfortable. There’s no cause to fight for anymore, all the big problems are solved, like dysentery, famine and small pox. There’s too much food, too much education, too much welfare, but not enough time to remember we are the luckiest generation on Earth.
Comments under the Medium article:
AKB Lndn says
Before I read this article, I thought XR was a movement I could support and believe in. Now, frankly, I’m just confused….
I admire The Guardian’s honesty. If the sun drives climate change and a foreign unaudited UN committee is grossly exaggerating, at least we know that The Guardian will be the last commercial news outlet on Earth to report it.
The Guardian helpfully puts this message on all the pages we read — just in case we forget for a moment and think it might be pursuing actual journalism and full fearless investigations.
….
The Guardian’s pledge is to pursue “Guardian journalism” whatever that is. Apparently the editors are experts in radiative atmospheric physics, even moreso than Prof Richard Lindzen. Why does the government bother to fund more scientific research — The Guardian already knows all the answers.
For the third time this year, they are broadcasting their approved mangled language for use in climate news. Presumably they are hoping their version of Climglish will catch on.
A short glossary of the changes we’ve made to the Guardian’s style guide, for use by our journalists and editors when writing about the environment
In addition to providing updated guidelines on which images our editors should use to illustrate the climate emergency, we have updated our style guide to introduce terms that more accurately describe the environmental crises facing the world. Our editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, said: “We want to ensure that we are being scientifically precise, while also communicating clearly with readers on this very important issue”. These are the guidelines provided to our journalists and editors to be used in the production of all environment coverage across the Guardian’s website and paper:
They want to be scientifically precise which is why they will stop using partial ambiguous hyperbole, and opt for pure hyperbole instead:
1.) “climate emergency” or “climate crisis” to be used instead of “climate change”
Climate change is no longer considered to accurately reflect the seriousness of the overall situation; use climate emergency or climate crisis instead to describe the broader impact of climate change. However, use climate breakdown or climate change or global heating when describing it specifically in a scientific or geophysical sense eg “Scientists say climate breakdown has led to an increase in the intensity of hurricanes”.
Apparently when fewer people die from natural disasters, less wildfires occur, more rain falls, and more food is produced, “it’s an emergency”.
As for climate breakdown, it sounds like the climate is disaggregrating into lots of little pieces, or perhaps Earth’s run out of gas and has stopped by the side of the orbit? How accurate is that…
Petty namecalling — the first resort of losers when they’ve run out of reasons
Climate denier is a religious term of pure denigration and insult. You have the brain of a lizard, your opinion is worthless. That means The Guardian does not have to ask deniers opinion. It helps to scare off “journalists” from interviewing half the population lest they hear something they can’t un-hear, which is important when your religion is paper-thin glass bubble of nonsense. The last thing the politbureau wants is journalists being exposed to ‘dangerous” information.
In making this a blanket advisory, The Guardian is effectively claiming there are no climate sceptics left on Earth — the term is to be replaced. They don’t offer examples where “skeptic” can be used. Everyone who isn’t an XR wing commander is practically a denier.
It’s a lame projection of their own religious certainty. But in reality, the only people who have already arrived at a definitive predetermined conclusion are the believers — and the only people seeking the truth are the “deniers”.
2.)“climate science denier” or “climate denier” to be used instead of “climate sceptic”
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The OED defines a sceptic as “a seeker of the truth; an inquirer who has not yet arrived at definite conclusions”. Most “climate sceptics”, in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence, deny climate change is happening, or is caused by human activity, so ‘denier’ is more accurate.
Dear “The Guardian” — just name that overwhelming scientific evidence skeptics deny, and then skeptics’ll explain what scientific evidence is and how it doesn’t come from a simulation. As for scientific accuracy, go on, name that person who thinks there is no climate, or that climate science does not exist.
Climate, Science and Denier are all simple words with well defined meanings in English. It’s pretty obvious what they should mean, and pretty obvious that there is nothing scientific about this definition.
Next, The Guardian can explain what accuracy means — now that it’s no longer something exact, precise or correct.
3.) Use “global heating” not “global warming” ‘Global heating’ is more scientifically accurate. Greenhouse gases form an atmospheric blanket that stops the sun’s heat escaping back to space.
How is heating “more scientifically accurate” than warming? The atmospheric blanket the Guardian mentions is “an insulator” not a heater. Thus, if scientific accuracy mattered, The Guardian would be talking about increasing global insulation. Greenhouse gases don’t add heat, they add insulation, eh? But obviously heating sounds so much more scary than warmth.
And once again The Guardian chooses PR — not news, not evidence and not accuracy. It’s just the Greens Left Weekly, but on a daily basis.
Case #412 of religious fanatics overplaying their hand again
Two protesters in London had stopped the Jubilee line train by standing on top of it with a banner. Two more were planning to glue themselves to the train, but the crowd was fed up. Mahatir Pasha is a journalist for ITV News who apparently witnessed and filmed the furious commuters. He writes on twitter: “One commuter shouted “I need to get to work, I have to feed my kids,” when the protestors initially went up.” Then there was the “shocking moment angry commuters drag two #ExtinctionRebellion protestors off the top of a train in Canning Town and attack them.”
The crowd cheered as the protesters and their banner were removed, and though people called for calm, some got violent. In an awful moment, one of the protesters was kicked and bruised (UPDATE: Looks like that was exaggerated. No photos or reports today of any injuries). The protesters shouldn’t have been there, and the mob shouldn’t have got violent. *The mob it seems just got rough.
This is what we get after two decades of shutting down the conversation — most people aren’t convinced, and most activists are loopy. No middle ground.
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Instead of trying to force the crowd to bow before their lecture, they could always stop namecalling, and actually listen to the people they are trying to persuade. Just a thought.
At the moment all XR protests have been banned across London, which is being challenged in court. In this case, even most XR members thought the Jubilee line protesters went too far.
Add Susan Crockford’s name to the list of scientists being tossed out of the academic cathedral because they dare speak the truth. University of Victoria give no reasons for suddenly ending her long unpaid role as adjunct professor, but if they had evidence of incompetence, misinformation, deceit or poor performance, you can be sure they would say so.
Untold are the stories of all the academics and business people who stay silent, move jobs, change departments, and even leave the West in order to escape the punishment. From emails to me, I know it’s happening all over the scientific world, not just in climate change. Western universities are a toxic wasteland of political correctness. You can study namecalling at Queensland University, but not free speech or logic and reason.
A world-renowned expert in animal bone identification has lost her position at the University of Victoria (UVic), she believes for telling school kids politically incorrect facts about polar bears.
Zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford is routinely hired by biologists and archeologists in Canada and abroad to identify the remains of mammals, birds and fish. She has helped catalog museum collections, and assisted police with forensic analyses. But UVic students will no longer benefit from her expertise, and her ability to apply for research grants has come to a screeching halt. In May, the Anthropology Department withdrew her Adjunct Professor status, depriving her of a university affiliation.
Crockford describes her expulsion as “an academic hanging without a trial, conducted behind closed doors.”
The position of Adjunct Professor is unpaid. In exchange for mentoring students, sitting on thesis committees, and delivering occasional lectures, adjuncts gain official academic standing and full access to library research services. When asked what safeguards ensure that adjuncts can’t be excommunicated merely for expressing unpopular ideas, spokesman Marck declined to respond, citing provincial privacy legislation. In his words, the university doesn’t disclose “information about internal processes. We must respect the privacy rights of all members of our campus community.”
In this case, the university is not protecting Crockford’s right to privacy. Instead, it is using a privacy smokescreen to protect members of a committee who have decided to purge an adjunct professor without reason or explanation.
G. Cornelis van Kooten, a UVic professor of economics who also holds a Canada Research Chair in environmental studies, says he is “appalled and distressed” by the Crockford removal. When, he asks, did “universities turn against open debate? There’s now a climate of fear on campus.”
Adjunct Profs cost universities very little, and offer mentoring and sometimes attract grants. (Lomborg came with $4m, but it wasn’t enough.) When they threaten the Big-Government religion and cash cow, universities will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in the most petty of pursuits to excise them and deprive them of their titles lest they speak out.
(h/t to Bob FJ, Notalotofpeopleknowthat, and GWPF)
The AEMO, theoretically the Australian Energy Market Operator, warned that people in Victoria and NSW face a high risk of blackouts this summer. Today the Sydney Morning Herald describes how big business is fed-up, calling it “disgraceful” that they have had to spend millions to install back up generators. The chief of Coca-cola Amatil Australia compared the situation to what they face in Papua New Guinea.
Australia’s biggest fruit and vegetable grower, Costa Group, has blasted the “disgraceful” state of the nation’s energy market after fears of summer blackouts forced the company to spend millions of dollars on back-up generators to protect its crops around the country.
Harry Debney, the head of ASX-listed horticulture giant Costa Group, said the company had installed back-up generators to protect crops from a disruption to energy supplies in a number of states.
“It’s a disgraceful situation,” Mr Debney said. “We’re so concerned. There’s a lack of reliability, which is even more important than the cost, because if you’re out of production it just really hurts you very badly.”
His concerns were echoed by ASX-listed Alumina Limited which, along with Alcoa owns the majority of western Victoria’s Portland aluminium smelter, and warned that long-term outages could be damaging. Last week Coca-Cola Amatil boss Alison Watkins likened the situation to one the company would face in developing countries like Papua New Guinea while Bluescope has also raised concerns.
In response, the Federal Government is building gold-plated bandaids — spending bazillions to build Snowy 2.0 which will burn up and waste 20 – 30% of the electricity fed into it, but smooth out some of the unreliable supply. Minister Angus Taylor, squarely blames Victoria for “the speed at which the Victorian government was seeking to introduce renewable energy into market – a renewables target of 50 per cent by 2030 – without the baseload capacity to support it.”
Meanwhile, the Victorian Government is in deep denial
Apparently what the nation needs is a joint headlong rush into wind and solar.
Victoria’s energy minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, said the the country was lacking “any type of federal leadership when it comes to energy policy”.
“Victoria is investing in renewable energy to put more power into the grid and drive down power prices,” she said. “We stand ready to work with the Commonwealth, whenever they are interested in being constructive on this vital issue.”
If we only had more of the same thing that caused high prices and reckless instability we could get low prices and a reliable supply?
In a test of scientists abilities, the same data was sent to 27 teams of researchers in cognitive psychology. The idea was to test the theoretical inferences they drew. But those expert teams drew conclusions from identical data that varied, oh boy, all the way from “zero to 100 percent.” One of the research team described it as a “jaw dropping” result — where only one third of the experts made the correct inferences about what that data meant. Two thirds of the experts were either totally wrong or just operating “a bit better than pure guessing”.
Researchers test expert inferences against known data, find inconsistency
What they found was “enormous variability between researchers in what they inferred from the same sets of data,” Starns says. “For most data sets, the answers ranged from 0 to 100 percent across the 27 responders,” he adds, “that was the most shocking.”
Rotello reports that about one-third of responders “seemed to be doing OK,” one-third did a bit better than pure guessing, and one-third “made misleading conclusions.” She adds, “Our jaws dropped when we saw that. How is it that researchers who have used these tools for years could come to completely different conclusions about what’s going on?”
Starns notes, “Some people made a lot more incorrect calls than they should have. Some incorrect conclusions are unavoidable with noisy data, but they made those incorrect inferences with way too much confidence.
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