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So much for momentum on climate change. Reality bites. Without nuclear power, Japans emissions have hit a new record high. At the same time, even with 17% of its energy from Nuclear power, and with 23,000 wind turbines, Germany stands no chance of reaching its emissions targets. The rich, technologically advanced nation that has spent more than any other on green energy admits they’ve failed.
Those who want to stop producing CO2 have billions of dollars to spend on advertising and pointless windmills, but in the end, chemistry and physics can’t be bought. If renewables could provide cheap reliable power, they wouldn’t need subsidies. Everyone would buy them.
Germany to Abandon “Strict” 2020 Target – 40% cut not possible
Breitbart London
Germany’s Vice Chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, has indicated that the country will abandon its commitment to reducing CO2 emissions by 40 percent by 2020, from a 1990 base level. In doing so he has won the ongoing clash with his own environmental minister Barbara Hendricks over energy policy, telling her that he will tolerate no further resistance to the change of direction, according to Der Speigel.
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8.9 out of 10 based on 76 ratings
Let’s all jump on the ghost of a bandwagon!
The front page of The West Australian declared “Barnett backs Obama’s climate plans”
The dead-horse is getting flayed a bit longer and the spectators are cheering louder than when it had legs. A foreign, lame duck President, who just suffered a major defeat in the midterm elections has managed the “feat” of getting the Chinese to shake his hand and solemnly promise to keep doing what they are doing for another 16 years. (After that, they agree to change what was probably changing anyway.) Those who spent millions on climate-scare in the US election are licking their wounds. Gallup polls show the public just don’t care — ranking it 13th out of 13.
Despite those hard numbers, those who forecast the horoscopes on herd movements are getting very excited. Andrew Probyn, political editor of The West, exclaimed “The politics of climate change are again in the ascendancy”. It’s political astrology.
As I keep saying, the media IS the problem. With journalists like that, we get politicians like this.
Colin Barnett, conservative leader of my home state, is mimicking the David-Cameron style unconservative, big spending, non-leader and dutifully joining the chorus. In 2100, how historians will mock the song and marvel that state leaders seriously fell for the idea that wind-mills would turn back the tide, and solar panels could stop the floods. Look out. Global warming causes global cooling, and a tax can change the weather! Hey but it’s just as likely as the Chinese volunteering to curb their economy because we asked them nicely.
Colin Barnett has “embraced Obama’s demand for stronger climate change action, saying Australia needs to be bolder in its emission reduction targets”. He thinks we should phase out of coal and into gas. Mr Barnett runs a state with lots of gas and not much coal. Did anyone notice? Not so much. Political editors saw the “momentum” they were hoping to see, aligned the planets, and proclaimed the mood is shifting. Any excuse will do in the rush to follow the herd.
My letter to The West Australian today:
To the Editor
Let’s get serious about the climate and start talking numbers. How much does that insurance cost, and how many degrees, exactly, will it cool the planet? The cost is measured in trillions, and the degrees are measured in one hundredths. If Colin Barnett is serious about the climate he needs to be serious about the decimal places. If it doesn’t have the numbers that matter, it isn’t science.
Buying insurance for insurance sake is something a salesman would push. Has Barnett been fooled by the advertising? There’s a word for people who are not sceptical — and it’s “gullible”.
Global Carbon markets were worth $176 billion a year at their peak and almost a billion dollars a day, globally, was invested in renewables. There are billions of reasons to try to control the weather, but they are all dollars, not satellite measurements, ice core results, or data from weather balloons.
And since we are doing the maths, lets talk about the numbers Obama has in the US Congress. This is a lame duck President freely offering other people’s money to stop storms and hold back the tide. How about some healthy scepticism?
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9.4 out of 10 based on 140 ratings
No nation has been more successful at reducing their carbon emissions than North Korea. Over the space of a few years, the carbon footprint of the entire nation was reduced by a massive two-thirds, thanks mostly to centralized planning with some help from famine, disease and the odd gulag. Anyone for Pine-bark cake? — Jo
Decarbonizing an economy – North Korea
Guest Post by Tom Quirk
The North Korean famine and general economic crisis from 1994 to 1998 is an extraordinary example of the failure of central planning and management. The results of what is called the Arduous March[1] are best illustrated by this image the Korean peninsula at night taken in 2014 (Figure 1).
 Figure 1: Night image of the Korean Peninsula in 2014 shows that North Korea is almost completely dark compared to neighboring South Korea and China (source NASA).
The North Korean disaster led to the estimated death of between 220,000 and 2,000,000 people, 1% to 10% of the population. The famine, which continues to this day, has led to food rationing, black markets and a government keen to get foreign currency by any means — including drug smuggling and nuclear technology sales. The disaster has led to a decarbonizing of the economy, which can be seen from the estimates of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels shown in Figure 2.
 figure 2: Estimated fossil fuel emissions of CO2 for North and South Korea, per capita (left) and total (right) (source CDIAC).
North Korean per capita CO2 emissions fell by more than two thirds from 1990 to 2000.
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8.8 out of 10 based on 100 ratings
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7.8 out of 10 based on 32 ratings
Showing off by sending warships near the G20? Not at all, Vladimir Putin cares about the climate, don’tcha know?
He is having fun, pushing politically correct buttons; teasing the West for its infatuation with climate-goblins.
 Climate Research anyone? What kind of climate research will a Guided Missile Cruiser do?
The Australian
RUSSIA has for the first time explained the presence of a fleet of warships off north-eastern Australia, saying that the ships are testing their range capability, in case they have to do climate change research in the Antarctic.
The Russian embassy also said the fleet could, if necessary, provide security for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who arrives in Brisbane for the G20 tonight.
The four Russian warships are conducting exercises in international waters around the Coral Sea in a move that has been interpreted as a show of force by Mr Putin.
Russia finally explains why it has dispatched four warships to Australia:
Daily Mail: Most leaders bring gifts for their hosts. Mr Putin brings a guided missile cruiser and three attendant ships. That show of unnecessary naval presence is what might be called an intended power display of swinging decks.
What a circus: three Australian ships deployed to watch, plus some planes, HMAS Sydney on backup, and Americans are following the Russians too. Fleets of warships on the rove, and Putin pretends it’s about “the climate”. It’s not even climate research, it’s research to see if they could do climate research. Can their boats go that far? Golly. Maybe they could test that Antarctic sea ice like one Russian charter boat did last year? They could make a few polynyas in the ice, the ballistic way. (And then count the dead whales…)
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9 out of 10 based on 93 ratings
After nine months of secret negotiations President Obama managed to get the Chinese to agree to stop their emissions rising after 2030. But look what else is peaking in 2030.
Population.
 China: Projections of population growth Did Obama do his homework? Seems President Xi did.
h/t to Andrew V
9.6 out of 10 based on 108 ratings
Just another survey that takes useful results, interprets with false assumptions, and produces mostly meaningless conclusions. Vale academia.
Farmers are a skeptical bunch, who watch the weather very closely– only 8% buy the whole article-of-faith that man-made climate is the dominant factor, compared to 50 – 66% of climate scientists.
Prokopy et al start from the unspoken assumption that climate scientists know what they are talking about (even though their models are abjectly failing) and try to figure out why farmers aren’t worried about climate change. At no point do they question that inbuilt paradigm and ask the opposite question — are climate scientists failing to convince farmers because the climate scientists are doing bad work? So they miss the obvious recommendation that climate scientists need to figure out the climate before they start the communications cycle. It’s a lesson in how important it is for all scientists to define their terms and state all their assumptions.
When Prokopyu et al manage to come up with a useful suggestion it’s largely by accident. They recommend two-way dialogues between stakeholders and climate scientists (what a wild idea). Can I suggest that climate scientists start by using English, instead of namecalling — “climate deniers”.
Their assumption is that the climate experts need to send their wisdom across the table from left to right (from computer modelers to farmers). My hypothesis is that the closer people are to reality and the further they are from government monopolistic funding, the better their scientific judgement is. The wisdom needs to flow from the right hand side of this table.
Instead of worrying about threatening the “world view” of farmers, Prokopyu could notice how threatening skepticism is to the “world view” of climate believers.
| Survey Question: There is increasing discussion about climate change and its potential impacts. Please select the statement that best reflects your beliefs about climate change. |
CSCAP 2011 team survey (n=121) 86% response rate |
2012 U2U team survey (n=33) 56% response rate |
Climatologist survey (n=19) 2012 100% response rate 2012 |
U2U Extension educators survey across 12 Corn Belt States (n=239) 35% response rate |
2012 U2U Ag advisors Survey (n=1605) 26% overall response rate |
Farmer survey m(n=4778) 2012 26% response rate |
| Climate change is occurring, and it is caused mostly by human activities |
50.40% |
66.70% |
53% |
19.20% |
12.30% |
8% |
| Climate change is occurring, and it is caused more or less equally by natural changes in the environment and human activities |
30.60% |
30.30% |
37% |
31.40% |
37.80% |
33% |
| Climate change is occurring, and it is caused mostly by natural changes in the environment |
10.70% |
3% |
5% |
23.40% |
24.90% |
25% |
| There is not sufficient evidence to know with certainty whether climate change is occurring or not |
8.30% |
0% |
5% |
24.70% |
22.40% |
31% |
| Climate change is not occurring |
0% |
0% |
0% |
1.30% |
2.60% |
3.50% |
There is no discussion in the paper of the qualifications of agricultural advisors or of farmers. In the UK, to be an agricultural advisor requires a degree in horticulture or soils or biology. In the US about 30% of farmers have attended college. In Australia more than 30% of farmers have a diploma or bachelors degree. So this survey probably just reflects the big divide between the tiny club of certified climate scientists and the rest of the scientific profession. Which scientist would have more influence on a farmer — a city-based climate scientist who produces bad forecasts, or a farm-based science trained colleague who produces real food?
(See also the Big Myth About The Worlds Scientists — which explains why more scientists are probably skeptics, though no one has surveyed them en masse. The media misreports a consensus among a few climate specialists as if it was a “scientific consensus” when climate scientists are failing to convince other professional scientists because they don’t have the evidence).
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9.3 out of 10 based on 68 ratings
 … Now that the mid-term elections are over in the US, Obama is free to announce the climate commitments that voters didn’t need to hear. (I did say this would happen.) It’s a “landmark” agreement and a “gamechanger”, but no one can point out what happens if either country doesn’t stick to its agreement.
The end-point of this grand theater of intent and glorious promises is Paris 2015.
What matters is the appearance of “momentum” — and this show ticks all the boxes. The two global superpowers make a sudden, unexpected agreement to reduce emissions and the press can call it “remarkable”, as if it has substance. Obama — the President without a majority in either house of Congress — has announced a big new target of 26% reduction by 2025. What can a lame-duck President achieve? Fluff and PR. As it happens, US emissions have been falling for years because of the miracle of shale gas and oil. This announcement supposedly doubles the pace of that reduction which was occurring anyhow, and which had nothing to do with any green policies aimed at reducing emissions. Furthermore, Obama, magically, will do it without imposing new restrictions on power plants or vehicles. What’s not to like?
The Chinese, meanwhile, were projected to hit their peak emissions in 2030 anyhow. So their big commitment is to keep doing what they were going to do anyway mostly. Let’s have a press conference. Everybody cheer. It’s historic baby.
All the important questions go unasked and unanswered
What’s the punishment, the 10,000 line legal agreement? What exactly will happen if neither country meets these “intentions” and “targets”? Is that a big slap on the wrist coming, or will someone have to pay real money — and is the fine in dollars or renminbi?
How many degrees will this agreement cool the world? Is that zero degrees to one decimal place or is that zero to two?
No one needs to mention these minor details. That’s not what matters. It’s not about the climate but about the appearance of doing something, in order to sweep the rest of the world into action:
These actions will also inject momentum into the global climate negotiations on the road to reaching a successful new climate agreement next year in Paris.
Nobody is hiding that this is about PR and not really about pollution. The first paragraph of the New York Times lays it right out:
BEIJING — China and the United States made common cause on Wednesday against the threat of climate change, staking out an ambitious joint plan to curb carbon emissions as a way to spur nations around the world to make their own cuts in greenhouse gases.
What exactly did China commit too?
…a first-ever commitment by China to stop its emissions from growing by 2030.
Sixteen years from now China may be producing a lot more CO2 each year but they promise to keep their ultra high level at the same ultra high level year after year from then on. They are promising to stick to “extreme”, but not rise to “obscene”.
You can see how strong the leader’s commitment is. Obama even wrote a letter:
Administration officials said the agreement, which was worked out quietly between the United States and China over nine months and included a letter from Mr. Obama to Mr. Xi proposing a joint approach, could galvanize efforts to negotiate a new global climate agreement by 2015.
But they did meet for two whole days with only a few distractions about military and trade stuff:
It was the signature achievement of an unexpectedly productive two days of meetings between the leaders. Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi also agreed to a military accord designed to avert clashes between Chinese and American planes and warships in the tense waters off the Chinese coast, as well as an understanding to cut tariffs for technology products. – NY Times
It doesn’t take long to change the energy infrastructure of a nation, just a couple of busy days of talking and a letter. Where is the fine print?
Al Gore came to Australia in June to get Clive Palmer to pressure Abbott to commit to doing something “if the rest of the world did”. Thank goodness he did not. How many political leaders will be fooled by a smoke and mirrors agreement like this into thinking it means something?
Bill Shorten was:
Mr Shorten said on Wednesday the “historic and ambitious” agreement showed global leadership from the US and China.
“At the G20 this week, Australia will hold the embarrassing title of being the only nation going backwards on climate change. With China and the United States representing around one-third of the global economy and over 40 per cent of global emissions, there will be significant momentum to deal with climate change in Brisbane,” he said.
Yes, let’s manage the national economy according to the “Embarrassment Index” — forget productivity, health, wealth, and happiness. It’s right up there next to the GCMF: the Global Climate Momentum Factor.
h/t to a friend in Switzerland, Janama
9.4 out of 10 based on 129 ratings
The site has been struggling with very slow access for the last few days and its getting worse. We’ve made a change behind the scenes just now that might improve things (or it might make it worse for a select few). What can I say — thanks for the emails. The feedback is appreciated. — Jo
8.8 out of 10 based on 39 ratings
The scale of government waste is spectacular, even on a global scale. Desalination in Victoria, Australia, might be the worst example, per capita, of climate waste anywhere in the world. I challenge foreign readers to outdo it.
With all the wisdom of the best Soviet-style governance, giant desalination plants on the east coast of Australia were built because of prophecies of drought. Experts said the rain wouldn’t return and the dams wouldn’t fill. Billions of dollars later, the plants were barely finished when the rain returned and the dams filled. Most of Australia’s desal plants were mothballed.
The Labor Party in Victoria signed a $22.5 billion contract over 28 years for water that could be delivered almost entirely during the “wet” 30 year part of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation when it isn’t really needed. The plant also cost $3.5 billion to build, is plagued by leaks, and so far has provided zero litres of emergency water.
Treasurer Michael O’Brien said Victorians were paying $1.8 million a day for the desalination plant to sit idle.
That works out as $113 per man, woman, and child in Victoria, or $450 per year for a family of four, paid to the Gods of Climate Change (with quite a lot siphoned off by unions and union-workers). The Labor party calls this “insurance” which was well spent because the cost of running out of water is much higher. It’s the usual innumerate argument. By the same reasoning, we should buy insurance to stop aliens invading. The cost of being over-run by Klingons is “much higher”.
Would you like to be paid for your hangover?
But what the desal plants don’t make in water, they make up for in corruption. A whistleblower has reported to the Herald Sun that bikies and thugs homed in on the river of money, turning up to work drunk or drugged, sleeping in the car instead of working, and collecting double-time rates (for night shift, in a plant that produces nothing?). Drug tests were rarely done because of union pressure. If workers turned up drugged or drunk the pay agreement was not to sack them, but to get them to agree to counseling and to pay them for two hours to do nothing so they could “sober up”.
The Herald Sun reports that the project was so badly managed that “workers had to wait days for supplies of basic materials such as bolts, leaving them unable to do any work”. (But then, it’s not like that affects the output of the plant or anybody wants the output of the plant.)
Time to get creative with those contracts
Since the plant doesn’t need to produce anything, it really doesn’t matter that bolts are delayed or that workers turn up drunk. It’s not like there is a productivity loss, but funneling money to crooked people is bad for Victoria. Instead the government could hold a lottery for one week job contracts and simply give away the “prizes” to random citizens who don’t have to turn up. At least the money is more likely to end up back in the pockets of honest Victorians.
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9.6 out of 10 based on 121 ratings
Oh the paradox! Human emissions upset the delicate balance and drive up global CO2 levels by 2ppm a year, but lordy, at the same time, that delicate balance roils and rolls with the seasons by a far larger range. Get the feeling there is more to Life on Earth than humans?
There are places on Earth when CO2 swings every year by 16ppm or more – like Point Barrow. Then there are places like the South Pole, where it barely changes all year round — a bit like the level of greenery there which varies from white to white. And there’s a clue. The other part of the world where CO2 levels don’t swing is at the equator — where it’s 100% green all year long. The big changes in terrestrial CO2 occur in the zones where plant life ebbs and flows.
Tom Quirk tracks the seasonal shifts in CO2 and finds that the northern Boreal forests are probably drawing down something like 2 – 5 gigatons of CO2 every year, and because the seasonal amplitude is getting larger each year, it suggests there is no sign of saturation. Those plants are not bored of extra CO2 yet. This fits with Craig Idso’s work on plant growth which demonstrates that the saturation point — where plants grow as fast as possible (and extra CO2 doesn’t help) is somewhere above 1000 and below 2000ppm. We have a long way to go.
Burn oil, feed the starving plants of the world I say! — Jo
 Figure 3: Satellite derived measurements[4] of changes in net primary productivity (NPP) which is the net intake of CO2 by plants. The tropical forests and the boreal forests in the far North show NPP of 1.0 to 1.5% annual growth.
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Where have fossil fuel emissions gone?
Guest Post by Tom Quirk
The standard explanation for the yearly rise in atmospheric CO2 is that it is due entirely to fossil fuel and cement production emissions. However if the recent analysis[1] of the isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2 is correct then only a fraction say 10% of fossil fuel emissions find their way into the atmosphere.
If only a fraction of fossil fuel CO2 emissions finds its way into the “well mixed “ atmosphere, what sinks have the capacity to absorb the balance?
One of the clues comes from the growth in the amplitude of the yearly seasonal variations of atmospheric CO2. This analysis assumes that the growth in the seasonal amplitude is a result of increasing vegetation, a “greening of the earth”.
The Scripps Institute of Oceanography (SIO) provides both raw and smoothed time series measurements of atmospheric CO2. The smoothed data has had the seasonal variations removed. Thus the difference of the raw from the smoothed measurements exposes the seasonal variations. Seasonal variations are shown in Figure 1 for two examples from Mauna Loa and Point Barrow.
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9.2 out of 10 based on 122 ratings
“Whole communities of climate modellers, activists, investors, accountants, lawyers, wind farmers, super funds and importers face oblivion…
 John Spooner Never underestimate the power of art to reach a new audience.
The best artists, of course, are those ahead of the crowd.
Source: SMH
The Pause continues:
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9.3 out of 10 based on 117 ratings
Remember how we were told people everywhere are “waking up to the threat of climate change”? Welcome to 2014. In Charles Krauthammers words “The National Weather Service has upgraded the election from tropical storm to tsunami, especially the results of the governorships. If you look at the bluest states in the country, Maryland, Illinois, Massachusetts, all gone Republican.”
Australians may have missed what happened this week in the US (especially if they only watch the ABC). Climate Change is over as a voting issue. Will Australian Opposition Leader, Bill Shorten, get the message? Just last month he pledged to put carbon trading on the next election agenda (again). The conservatives across the nation must be cheering.
In the US, Tom Steyer threw $74 million into a campaign to convince voters to be very afraid and vote out the Republicans. Nearly all of Steyers favourite candidates failed. It was no accidental issue. The NextGen Climate Action Super Pac took Steyers money, and spent it all (and more) to push President Obama’s green agenda, specifically targeting coal “for extinction”. The Republicans supported energy of all kinds from coal to oil, fracked gas, and more pipelines.
This was the “biggest investment the environmental community has ever made in politics”, and yet it failed dismally:
[Washington Post] The spending plans are laid out in a document, acquired by The Post, that summarizes the activities of five top green groups — the Environmental Defense Action Fund, Steyer’s NextGen Climate, the NRDC Action Fund, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), and the Sierra Club — and has been circulated internally among them. Asked about the document, which is dated October 17, LCV president Gene Karpinski commented, “this is by far the biggest investment that the environmental community has ever made in politics.” Karpinski said that LCV will spend over $25 million this year, compared with $5 million in the 2010 election cycle and $15 million in 2012.
Little Green Machine (Wall St Journal, paywalled)
In Kentucky Mitch McConnell made opposition to the “war on coal” the centerpiece of his campaign. He won what was expected to be a close election by 15 points. Coal-supporting Shelley Moore Capito became the first GOP Senator in 55 years from West Virginia, where voters also ended the 38-year career of Democratic Rep. Nick Rahall, who couldn’t separate himself from Mr. Obama’s energy policies.
Nearly every one of Mr. Steyer’s favored candidates—in Colorado, Iowa, Florida, Wisconsin and Maine—lost. New Hampshire’s Jeanne Shaheen won, but Scott Brown had her playing defense for supporting a cap-and-trade carbon tax. A recent Gallup poll found that climate change ranked last among 16 issues that voters cared about in the midterms.
It was about “the climate” according to the Washington Free Beacon:
Environmentalists, and Steyer in particular, stated their intention early in the 2014 election cycle to make climate change a “wedge issue” that could win tight contests for Democrats in purple states.
“It is very difficult to find an issue that voters place lower on the list than climate change,” according to Republican pollster Whit Ayres.
NextGen Climate Action, one of the election cycle’s most active and well-funded Super PACs, spent more than $5.5 million in the race, nearly 15 percent of all outside spending on Udall’s behalf.
The group had 68 staffers working in the state.
Imagine having 68 staffers in one state for an environmental campaign and still losing?
Has “the climate” reached the tipping point where it turns off more voters than it gains?
In exit polls 27% of Republicans think it’s a serious issue (and might be tempted to vote Democrat), but only 15% of Democrat voters are skeptical. Graph from New York Times. Have the Democrats “wedged” themselves?
 Exit Polls showing the partisan divide on climate change | NY Times Most voters rank the issue last so they aren’t going to change their vote. The Republicans who think climate change is a problem are not shifting to vote Democrat. But the Democrats who are skeptical may have already moved the other way. (I’d like to see some historic comparisons, have these proportions changed?).
For the record Steyer was involved in some way in 7 gubernatorial races losing four and winning three. In the three winning seats the Democrat candidates were already ahead in the polls before Steyers campaign began.
What does it mean for US climate policies?
Brad Plumer, on Vox, says: The biggest loser in this election is the climate” . Obama is going around the congress with EPA regulations anyway. But there are now more conservative governors who may refuse to implement the EPA plans.
In the short term, the election’s impact might seem negligible. After all, the action in Washington over the next few years will center on the Environmental Protection Agency, which is crafting rules to cut carbon-dioxide emissions from US power plants. These rules don’t need congressional approval (they’re being done under the existing Clean Air Act), and President Obama is expected to veto any attempts by Congress to block them. (Conservative governors refusing to implement the EPA’s plan may be the bigger pitfall here.)
But congressional indifference is a huge problem for future climate policy.
h/t Des Moore
9.2 out of 10 based on 120 ratings
Neville Nicholls and Sophie Lewis are striking back at George Christensen, MP, who accused the BOM of “wiping” the official records of heat waves in 1896 and demanded an inquiry. For some reason, despite their world class work, Nicholls and Lewis still don’t seem keen on having an inquiry — so they go to some length to explain why it’s “false” to say it was hotter in 1896 than it was in 2013. Oddly though, to come to this conclusion they don’t use BOM work, because the BOM concluded “it would be very difficult to compare the 19th-century temperature data with modern observations.” Instead that difficult task was done by Berkley. Nichols calls it “brave”, but a “fact” at the same time.
In their long article, what they don’t explain is why they almost never mention any of the hundreds of ultra hot historic temperatures in their press releases and national news. George was “wrong”, and that’s a “fact” we’re told, but most of their article on The Conversation explains why we don’t know what the temperature was in 1896. Try not to get confused.
That old data is dodgy see — I’ll paraphrase:
- Satellites agree with the BOM. (Seriously, this is their first point). Apparently Nichols and Lewis expect that the gloss of this fabulous scientific achievement, which occurs after 1979, will glow all the way back to 1896. It rather ignores the fact that the biggest BOM adjustments occur to the oldest records. (I marvel that the BOM has discovered UAH and RSS. When those same satellites didn’t agree with the BOM’s “hottest” ever records, no one at the BOM seemed to know they existed.)
- Not all thermometers were Stevenson screens in 1896, therefore none of the early readings count. The presence of non-standardized records renders the others useless. Who knew?
- Since some thermometers were older types called Glaisher or Greenwich Screens, their data is unusable, even though there are decades of temperatures comparing the two types of screens and they are remarkably similar.
- Even though Stevenson screens were installed across Australia between 1880 – 1910, since they were new (ahem), they were likely to be warped and cracked, and therefore not acceptable. After that date they were better maintained (except they still needed a lot of downward adjustment).
There is a lot of data comparing older screens to newer ones. As Nicholls and Lewis mention:
The results of this 61-year experiment show that summer daytime temperatures measured using the Glaisher Stand are, on average, 1C warmer than in the Stevenson Screen.
Is it really beyond the power of the BOM to subtract 1 C from the old readings? They don’t seem to have any trouble subtracting 2C from the newer and better Stevenson screens. (Heck even 50C can vanish.)
As far as the claims of hiding things goes, the BOM carve it both ways. While they never mention the older temperatures in polite company, they publish details in graphs and tables on their site and then claim they hide nothing, as if the average person in West Wyalong will listen to the ABC news then check the depths of the climate data online.
I agree that it is a stretch for George Christensen to definitively declare “it was hotter” in 1896. It might have been, but all our surface data, even our current data is such a mess I wouldn’t put a definitive statement on anything. But Nicholls and Lewis are focusing on that, and are doing their best to avoid the real point skeptics are making. It doesn’t really matter whether it was 0.1 degree Celsius hotter or colder in 1896, what matters is that Australians no longer feel they can trust the BOM to give them the whole story about the climate. The BOM exhibit no curiosity about older hotter records, and make no effort to use any of the data — even though some of it can be used to extend some sites and some states back into the hot era of the late 1800’s. That is why skeptics are calling for an inquiry.
The BOM can’t churn out press releases announcing record after record and yet hide the historic heat of the Federation Drought. They slice and dice the permutations of every version of hottest autumn weekend, or warmest winter night since 1953, yet few Australians know that often hotter temperatures were recorded, all across Australia, back in the 1800’s. That too is why skeptics are objecting — the imbalance in the public declarations. The BOM never admit that in some towns and some places it probably was hotter.
See more of the historic heat, strange adjustments well as these other related posts:
9.6 out of 10 based on 102 ratings
An excellent article in The New Yorker: Is Social Psychology Biased Against Republicans?
It’s an article about the failings of peer review and research design in psychology due to the dominance of one particular political ideology (rather than having a spread more representative of the total population). You won’t be shocked to find there is a dominance of liberal left-leaning views in the profession. The paper it discusses is by Jonathan Haidt and co-authored by our friend Jose Duarte — the psychology PhD candidate and blogger who entertainingly and comprehensively dissected Lewandowsky on his blog: Do we hate our participants?
It will be no surprise that controversial psychology papers (which disagree with the reviewer’s world view) are usually treated harshly — no matter if the data is as strong. So, thinking of another field we know, what does it mean for research design and peer review when 97% of certified climate scientists hold one world view? (They not only agree on the scientific hypothesis but on the political action as well — and they boast about that?) What chance does a “controversial” paper have? Has anyone done a study on the political diversity of official climate scientists? There are plenty of studies claiming general opposition to climate action is split on political lines.
However much psychology is slowed by its political bias, climate science is surely doubly so. Indeed, the whole field would make a case study. It’s a long but good article in the New Yorker, though I see no solutions to the problem suggested. It needs more than checklists. It needs incentives. Some fields of science are 100% dependent on big-government funds, and if there was also a large sector of independent philanthropic research funds competing, then it would not be so difficult to find independent thinkers who held the big-government world views to the fire.
Most academic social psychologists are in favor of big-government
A 2012 survey of social psychologists throughout the country found a fourteen-to-one ratio of Democrats to Republicans. But where were the hard numbers that pointed to bias, be it in the selection of professionals or the publication process, skeptics asked?
… Tilburg University psychologists Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers published the results of a series of surveys conducted with approximately eight hundred social psychologists—all members of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. In the first survey, they repeated a more detailed version of Haidt’s query: How did the participants self-identify politically? The question, however, was asked separately regarding social, economic, and foreign-policy issues. Haidt, they found, was both wrong and right. Yes, the vast majority of respondents reported themselves to be liberal in all three areas. But the percentages varied. Regarding economic affairs, approximately nineteen per cent called themselves moderates, and eighteen per cent, conservative. On foreign policy, just over twenty-one per cent were moderate, and ten per cent, conservative. It was only on the social-issues scale that the numbers reflected Haidt’s fears: more than ninety per cent reported themselves to be liberal, and just under four per cent, conservative.
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8.9 out of 10 based on 59 ratings
The ABC bias is now so obvious, everyone with an open mind and an Internet connection knows that the ABC report the parts that suit, and hide the rest. They even edit the words of skeptics to produce sentences that were never actually spoken. But what I saw last night was a flagrantly wrong statement, counter to the truth, reported as if it were so above question it did not even need explanation, qualification or substantiation. It’s time to squeeze the ABC for accuracy.
One of the Big-Myths in this debate is that the opinions of “climate scientists” equals the opinion of “scientists in general”. All over Australia last night hundreds of thousands of Australians heard this statement as narration in the main news bulletin:
“World’s scientists reckon the climates never felt anything like them in close to a million years…” — 4:40mins ABC News report Nov 3, 2014
Ignoring the point that the sentence is grammatically incoherent, it is misleading and demonstrably false. The “World’s Scientists” don’t reckon anything, they have never been surveyed, have not voted for a spokesperson, and inasmuch as anyone could estimate the “world’s scientists” opinions, actual surveys show that skeptics would outnumber and outrank the believers.
The fact is (and any genuine reporter would find this out easily) almost half of meteorologists — fergoodnesssake — are skeptics, survey after survey shows that two-thirds of geoscientists and engineers are skeptics, and most readers of skeptical blogs (who chose to respond to surveys and list their qualifications in comments^) have hard science degrees. Dan Kahan conducted a survey of 1,500 people and found people who knew more about maths and science were more likely to be skeptical. In other words, skeptics were better informed about science^. If we had to name a list of skeptics versus believers, the skeptics number 31,000, yet there is no list of named scientists who believe that comes close — let alone a list of 300,000 which would imply some truth to the statement that the science is settled, and the world’s scientists agree.
A tiny percentage of total scientists would call themselves “climate scientists”. They have never been able to convince the tens of thousands of other scientists with their bizarre theory about a trace gas being the dominant driver of our climate. Around the world climate scientists say one thing, but tens of thousands of physicists, engineers, mathematicians, chemists, and medical science leaders disagree. Skeptical scientists have won Nobel Prizes in Physics* (and we don’t count “Peace” as a prize in science) and they’ve walked on the Moon, flown around it, and returned to Earth. Unskeptical scientists have wasted billions of dollars, predicted warming that didn’t happen, asked for desalination plants that were not needed, and told everyone to stop the storms by building windmills.
Only 62 scientists reviewed the chapter that mattered in the IPCC Assessment Report 4, and presumably the numbers wouldn’t be that different in the latest report. The ABC’s careless attitude to reporting accurately portrays the opinions of a few scientists (who have a bad record of predictions) as if they represent the opinions of an entire profession numbering in the order of 10 million. The ABC staff are reporting what they would liketo be true.
UPDATE: Only 43% of certified climate scientists agree with the IPCC “consensus” that man-made CO2 is the main driver of climate change.
Science is not a set of discrete subjects with separate rules
The same laws of logic, reason and physics and the same limits of statistics apply to every sub-branch. If one tiny group of scientists has a theory they should be able to convince the rest. If they can’t explain and verify their theory with nuclear physicists or geologists and atmospheric chemists there is something wrong with the theory. The ABC’s Catalyst program, supposedly produced by a “science unit”, made the same mistake a few weeks ago.
The ABC has become a naked propaganda unit for big-government. It is beyond saving. The sloppy research standards and the culture of gullibility regarding government and official press releases are endemic. Sell if off for the good of the nation. (We can pay off some big-government debt.)
In the meantime, for entertainment, people can write to the ABC asking them to provide substantiation of their statements that the “world’s scientists” believe the IPCC pronouncements. If they name scientific associations, ask them whether that association actually surveyed its members. Almost none of them do. Members of the largest and most influential associations have risen up in protest at the official declarations produced by “committees of six” self-appointed association fellows. See the American Physical Society, The Royal Society, American Chemical Society, and Aust Geological Society.
If we have to have a public broadcaster (and I don’t see why we do) they can start again with people who meet the low bar of being able to speak in accurate English, with defined terms, and who can substantiate everystatement or issue a correction and apology.
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* Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize in Physics 1973, Robert Laughlin, Nobel Prize in Physics 1998. NASA Apollo Astronauts, Buzz Aldrin, Harrison (Jack) Schmitt , Walter Cunningham, Charles Duke, Richard Gordon.
^Added the brackets. Fair point. Thanks to Dry in comments. Respondents to surveys and people who chose to make comments are self selecting. I added the note about the Dan Kahan study which also supports the theory that skeptics are better with numbers than believers. His was not self selecting.
9.5 out of 10 based on 135 ratings
Gullible journalists are swooning today with more and glorious prophesies of disaster.
This from the team that relies on simulations that not only fail on global scales1, but they can’t predict regional2, local3, short term, continental, or polar effects4 either. They are also wrong about humidity5, rainfall6a,6b,6c, drought7 and clouds8, as well as the all-important upper tropospheric patterns too.9, 10
Speaking to the BBC earlier, Dr Pachaudri said today’s announcement was, categorically, the “strongest, most robust and most comprehensive” document that the IPCC has produced. — BBC
They are robustly, comprehensively, and consistently wrong. But it’s OK, they only want 0.06% of GDP (for now).
The IPCC says that the cost of taking action to keep the rise in temperature under 2 degrees C over the next 76 years will cost about 0.06% of GDP every year. Over the same period, world GDP is expected to grow at least 300%. — BBC
The religious leader has returned from the mount, for he hath heard the word of the God:
“BAN KI-MOON: Science has spoken.” — ABC
Who knew the name of God was “science”?
What do we call the people who get nearly every prediction wrong? What else — “the world’s top scientists” (Jake Sturmer, ABC) The only rule when reporting IPCC predictions is to never ask a hard question.
It’s all about power in Paris in 2015. How much of the world’s GDP will they grab? — As much as we let them.
Can’t wait to get your hands on the “new” IPCC Synthesis Report? Download a copy here. It has all the same politically picked factoids and projections of storms, plagues, pestilence and doom you’ve come to expect.
What you won’t find is an verified explanation for The Pause (or what might really be The Plateau), or the reason the world warmed up for the Medieval Warm Period or cooled down for the Little Ice Age. (CO2 levels were constant for the 2,000 years before 1750, yet the climate changed!). You won’t find out why Antarctic Sea Ice hit record highs, or where the missing heat has gone. Nor will you see an upfront admission that the models expected (depended on) humidity levels rising at 10km above the equator but that 28 million radiosondes found humidity decreased instead. This detail — like all the inconvenient ones that matter — will be disguised somewhere deep in a subclause. It may contain the best observations about the most important feedback there is, but don’t expect the IPCC to say so in the “summary for policy makers”.
Don’t expect the IPCC to mention that their models don’t include solar magnetic effects, lunar atmospheric tides, or that humans poured out 30% of their total emissions during a time when the Earth did not warm as expected.
Help warn the ABC about the IPCC’s scientific ability. Vote here.
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9.3 out of 10 based on 151 ratings
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8.7 out of 10 based on 32 ratings
What do you get when you believe a failed theory? Climate Depression
Instead of being a bad thing, climate depression is a normal healthy response when the data doesn’t match the theory. Either the theory has to change or the scientist has to stop pretending to be a scientist. Too bad there is a whole industry of depressed “journalists” propping up depressed scientists. They award them with pretend Nobel Prizes they don’t really have, and extend their pain and confusion by making out that researchers on good salaries who produce models that don’t work are the victims.
Naturally, those who don’t understand climate reality don’t have a grip on psychological reality either. Their fantasy-world is collapsing.
As Tony Thomas says — it’s so bad it’s beyond satire:
Reporter Madeleine Thomas (no relation), writing for Grist, has described how climate scientists are driving themselves into depressed states over their climate forecasts. One solution she suggests is that relieve their incredible stress by shouting out “F—k!” and other dirty words*.
My message to depressed scientists is to wake up and see through the weak excuses. Stuff like Madeleine Thomas’ Grist wailing:
And a dose of honesty may be more than just therapeutic. Some real talk about how we’re all screwed may be just what the climate movement needs.
Oh yessity yes. Honesty is needed, but lets start with honesty about the data. In science, any other kind of honesty is a waste of time if we don’t first have data honesty.
Back in March, Grist’s Brentin Mock wrote that in order to really drive home the urgency of global warming and not just view “climate change only as that thing that happened one year on television to those poor communities in Brooklyn,” maybe it’s OK, when appropriate, to ditch a very limited “just the facts” vocabulary in favor of more emotional language. In other words, he argues that scientists should start dropping F bombs. “Forgive my language here, but if scientists are looking for a clearer language to express the urgency of climate change, there’s no clearer word that expresses that urgency than FUCK,” Mock writes. “We need scientists to speak more of these non-hard science truths, no matter how inconvenient or how dirty.”
If you think the answer to your science problem is swearing out loud, it’s time to get out science.
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9.4 out of 10 based on 115 ratings
Momentum is growing. In Federal Parliament this week George Christensen (Nationals party, Qld) gave an excellent summary of questions Jennifer Marohasy and I have been raising about the Bureau of Meteorology, and announced he would be calling for an inquiry.
It’s long past time. Why does the BOM have so little curiosity about the burning Australian heat before 1910? Why do older thermometers seem to need correction 90 years later for reading “too warm”? Why do so many hot or dry empirical measurements remain invisible in our national conversation about the climate? And with so many questions, why do the Bureau insist they are 95% certain they know what they are talking about?
The Transcript from Quadrant — Wanted: Straight Answers from the BoM.
“I rise to paint a picture of climate change — a picture where Camden, just to the south-west of Sydney, is sweltering in 50-degree heat. Over in the west it is 51 degrees in the shade at Geraldton. Perth is 44, Geelong is 43, Wilcannia 48, Carnarvon 49½ and Southern Cross is 50 degrees. The death rate is 12 in 100,000 from heat-associated deaths—435 dead over the summer!
This is not a Greens scare campaign but the Federation Drought, 118 years ago. It has never been as hot since.
See our post about the extreme heat of 1896 for the original links to the news archives that underlie what Christensen is talking about. Much of this work is fueled by the number crunching and research of Ken Stewart, Chris Gilham, Lance Pidgeon and others on the independent BOM audit team. See also the heat map of Australian 50+ temperatures, and all my posts on Australian Temperatures. It’s great to see this material being spoken in Parliament yet again.
The Media — the gatekeepers
As I watched his speech, I wondered if anyone in Parliament was listening. Speeches like this can disappear. Cory Bernardi, I and others called for an independent audit in 2011, and Dennis Jensen called for an audit of the BOM and the CSIRO in March 2014. But perhaps the time is right. The story was picked up by The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and the Daily Mail Australia. Don’t miss my message, this time the media is paying attention. (Finally). But the Media IS the problem. Politicians have little power if the media ignore them. We need to fix the media first. The rest will follow. Improve the journalists, and we’ll get better policies, better politicians, and better bureaus too.
The mysteries of the Bureau of Meteorology:
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9.6 out of 10 based on 143 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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