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Not a bad Friday.
Tony Abbott will not be travelling to Warsaw with a hairdresser, photographers, and a chef in an entourage of 114. Nor even is Greg Hunt (the Environment Minister) going. They are too busy back home trying to cut expenses and repeal the carbon tax (though that looks like it will have to wait til the new Senate starts in July).
It breaks the chain of Ministers bowing to the IPCC, though last year the Labor Party only sent a Parliamentary secretary for Climate Change. This year we will be sending a junior (but why send anyone at all?).
Not a good look for the IPCC. Australia’s carbon tax was the main bright spot on their outlook, and now it’s being snatched away from them. Bravo, I say. But can we stop sending the money?
Soon we might be free to speak again
More good news — the Racial Discrimination Act (which was used against Andrew Bolt) is a high priority on the chopping list. It’s the first thing Attorney-General George Brandis will bring to Parliament. Not a day too soon.
If we have to have a human rights commission, then it ought to protect the right to speak. (I thought we had laws for that?)
“The Australian Human Rights Commission will also be given a broader mandate to protect all human rights instead of confining its activities to selected areas. At least one “freedom commissioner” will be appointed next year to protect traditional rights such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion that Senator Brandis said had suffered from past neglect. “The classic liberal democratic rights that in my view are the fundamental human rights have been almost pushed to the edge of the debate,” he said.”- See more at: The Australian
A shrinking bureaucracy?
Meanwhile, Abbott has taken the radical, extreme position of freezing spending on public servants. In a world where no line is flat, and no English word is fixed, that’s called “a cut”. The target is …12,000 jobs cut by natural attrition. Apparently there are “14,273 non-ongoing employees in the public service.” Another casualty is CSIRO, “where an estimated 1400 people are on casual or term arrangements.”
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10 out of 10 based on 1 rating
How much don’t we know? This week doctors announce that yes, really, there is a whole ligament in the human knee that we didn’t know about, and it’s not a small one tucked away but a mid-size one and “hidden” on the outside of the knee. They’ve named it the anterolateral ligament (ALL), and it does matter if it fails, people’s knees collapse suddenly. “Only” 97% of people have one. But how is this, it was first postulated by a surgeon in 1879, and took 134 years to find. For much of that time you might have been told there was a consensus on knee anatomy, and because thousands of doctors have done knee surgery and knee replacements are now de rigeur, you might have thought the science was settled.
Sorry about the graphic photo, but when I saw that headline, I thought this would be a tiny artifact. You need to see it to appreciate just how remarkable it is that this has been missed for so long. UPDATE: It’s so remarkable, I find Chrism comments below are useful #5, #8, #12, and quite possibly the ligament was known by another name, or associated with a different malady. Is it possible that doctors have missed it completely or more likely that the PR-team are exaggerating? I’ll go with “b”. Still the point about settled science remains the same. Now there is another point too — how our funding systems encourage sensational PR rather than careful analysis. – Jo
 Blue label and arrows point to the newly discovered ALL ligament. *This photo probably exaggerates the size of the ALL — there is another shot in the paper which makes it easier to understand how it might have been overlooked. Scroll through the comments (sorry it’s another gory shot).
New Ligament Discovered In the Human Knee
Nov. 5, 2013 — Two knee surgeons at University Hospitals Leuven have discovered a previously unknown ligament in the human knee. This ligament appears to play an important role in patients with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears. Despite a successful ACL repair surgery and rehabilitation, some patients with ACL-repaired knees continue to experience so-called ‘pivot shift’, or episodes where the knee ‘gives way’ during activity. For the last four years, orthopedic surgeons Dr Steven Claes and Professor Dr Johan Bellemans have been conducting research into serious ACL injuries in an effort to find out why. Their starting point: an 1879 article by a French surgeon that postulated the existence of an additional ligament located on the anterior of the human knee.
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9.7 out of 10 based on 3 ratings
Tom Quirk has taken look at the numbers for the Australian Government’s direct action plan (someone had to do it). Not surprisingly in a vast nation with hardly any people, the numbers that matter are the ones about “land-use” — which means anthropogenic changes to farms and forests. Electricity is our largest emitter of CO2, but without shutting down the nation there are no easy gains to be had. Demand is inelastic. Cuts are expensive. Renewables are pathetic. Ditto for industry and agriculture. Whether we meet our targets and whether there is P-A-I-N all depends on whether we count the CO2 molecules that come and go from agricultural land and managed forests.
The big question then is do we pretend those CO2 molecules coming and going from plants, soils, lakes and animals are irrelevant? (Greenpeace and the EU seem to think that’s a good plan). It’s a make or break thing in the carbon accounting world. But if carbon is causing global warming, surely all CO2 molecules are equally to blame. However only net emissions caused by humans (and which wouldn’t have been emitted naturally) count towards the national tallies and targets.
If we are to save 5% from our 2000 emissions, the figure to aim for is either 5% less than 500Mt of CO2 (if we ignore “land use” changes) or 5% less than 550Mt (if we count the CO2 involved in “land-use”). If we ignore the CO2 in land-use, things are tough for Australia. We start at 500Mt, are at 552Mt now, and are headed for 594Mt by 2020 instead of 475Mt. We need to find savings of about 120Mt — a huge 20% of net emission levels. Instead, if we include CO2 in land-use, we start at 550Mt, are at (who knows) 511Mt and are aiming for 525Mt, which is pretty close to where we are headed (subject to accounting methods). And if we included fire and oceans all bets would be off, but we don’t because they are not “anthropogenic”.*
Bizarrely, fire is an Act of God, so it doesn’t count at all in natural forests (natural forest and “natural” fires are not included in Kyoto agreements). That leads to a perverse incentive where in a managed forest, Governments might want to grow a crop of trees then burn them catastrophically. The CO2 going in gets taken off the tally, and the CO2 going out is invisible. As it happens, most of the carbon in the trees and debris goes up in smoke but about 1% becomes charcoal, which is stored in the soil for thousands of years because it is chemically and physically inert — permanently sequestered by humans. This is of course a joke and not seriously considered anywhere, but the perverse incentive exists under carbon accounting rules.
Quirk notes that the numbers on land use are highly variable. In 2011, for some reason (perhaps an accounting change) the land use changes wiped out nearly half the entire emissions from all the cars, planes, trains, trucks and buses in Australia. I didn’t hear the Greens celebrate.
I have long said that attaching monetary value to a basic molecule of life is stupid, and I’ll say it again. These numbers prove my point. We can’t account for it, most of the players can’t pay (because they are gum trees), the loop-holes are bigger than the loops, and we have to defy chemistry and treat identical molecules of CO2 as if they are not the same.
Does Greenpeace want more Green? It doesn’t seem so. — Jo
—————————————————————————-
The Australian ¡®Direct Action¡± plan to reduce CO2 emissions
With the looming demise of the carbon tax, imposed not to reduce emissions but to prolong the life of a minority government, we are faced with an alternative of ¡°Direct Action¡± to meet our Kyoto target of 2020 CO2 emissions being 5% less than that in 2000. This approach may be unique amongst developed countries as its success will depend on how much CO2 can be absorbed by modifying farming and forestry in the very large land mass of Australia, ¡°adjustments¡± made to the accounting protocols for CO2 emissions, and the use of uncertainties in measurements.
The Australian anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases as estimated by the Department of the Environment and Climate Change are given by sector and total in Table 1 along with estimates for the year 2020 based on the performance of each sector from 2002 to 2012. The estimates of fugitive emissions and agriculture largely depend on estimates of methane emissions[1] that have large uncertainties. Similarly there are large uncertainties for land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF). Table 1 also shows the average annual changes in emissions and the projected amounts for 2020 based on the average annual increases.
Table 1 Australian CO2 equivalent emissions in millions of tonnes
| Year |
Stationary energy |
Trans-port |
Fugitiveemissions |
Industrialprocesses |
Agri-culture |
Waste |
Total net
Emissions
(excluding
LULUCF)
|
Land use change and forestry
|
Total net
Emissions
(including
LULUCF)
|
|
Elect-
ricity
|
Other
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2000
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
500.0
|
|
550.0
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2002
|
186.4
|
79.5
|
76.2
|
34.4
|
28.0
|
91.1
|
13.9
|
509.5
|
70.8
|
580.3
|
|
2003
|
186.5
|
82.4
|
78.9
|
34.2
|
29.4
|
89.9
|
13.2
|
514.5
|
44.2
|
558.7
|
|
2004
|
196.6
|
84.5
|
80.9
|
35.3
|
29.1
|
89.7
|
13.0
|
529.1
|
49.6
|
578.7
|
|
2005
|
195.5
|
85.9
|
81.0
|
36.0
|
29.5
|
89.5
|
12.7
|
530.1
|
74.3
|
604.4
|
|
2006
|
201.8
|
86.8
|
82.0
|
38.2
|
30.0
|
88.3
|
12.8
|
539.9
|
69.0
|
608.9
|
|
2007
|
202.5
|
88.3
|
84.4
|
40.4
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31.1
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86.6
|
13.1
|
546.4
|
58.4
|
604.8
|
|
2008
|
208.2
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89.7
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85.4
|
40.1
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32.0
|
85.4
|
13.3
|
554.1
|
31.9
|
586.0
|
|
2009
|
204.9
|
87.6
|
85.0
|
40.0
|
29.1
|
82.7
|
13.4
|
542.7
|
17.7
|
560.4
|
|
2010
|
199.6
|
94.6
|
86.1
|
42.3
|
33.2
|
82.9
|
13.1
|
551.8
|
28.3
|
580.1
|
|
2011
|
200.1
|
93.5
|
89.0
|
38.9
|
32.9
|
86.0
|
12.8
|
553.2
|
-40.3
|
511.9
|
|
2012
|
190.8
|
94.2
|
91.5
|
42.3
|
32.3
|
88.0
|
12.8
|
551.9
|
|
|
| Average annual increases in emissions from 2002 to 2012 in Mt CO2-e per year |
|
|
|
|
Mt CO2
per yr
|
1.01
|
1.40
|
1.31
|
0.81
|
0.45
|
-0.62
|
-0.04
|
4.31
|
-8.54
|
-3.68
|
| Projected annual emissions for 2020 based on the average annual increases |
|
|
|
|
2020
|
210.6
|
106.2
|
100.7
|
48.9
|
36.4
|
79.2
|
12.5
|
594.5
|
-74.9
|
527.8
|
The target for the year 2020 is emissions 5% below the level in 2000. This is either a reduction to 475 Mt or 525 Mt CO2-e with and without the land use changes. This requires a reduction of 120 Mt CO2-e without land use changes from the projected 2020 total emissions of 595 Mt of CO2-e. It is not possible to get an estimate of land use changes owing to the erratic variations of the annual values (see values shaded green in Table 1).
Some 66% of emissions come from stationary energy and transport. Table 1 shows annual increases in these sectors. The Australian population may grow by 10% from 2012 to 2020 (ABS models of population growth) and it is unlikely that stationary energy use or transport use of fossil fuels will fall significantly.
The Renewable Energy Target (RET) scheme with 20% of electricity from renewables by 2020 would give about a 40 Mt reduction in the electricity contribution to CO2 emissions. However the present impact of this scheme is uncertain as the decline in electricity use after 2008 and hence emissions may be partly due to a drop in economic activity or the carbon tax that started in July 2012. Since the growth in electricity demand has fallen since the RET was set, there are already calls for reducing the target and the success or failure of the scheme is not determinable at this time.
The effect of the RET if fully met still leaves a balance of 80 Mt to be found from other activities. This cannot be found from reductions in any combinations of the remaining emission sectors except perhaps in land use changes (see Table 1).
The net emission changes in land use, land use change and forestry vary quite markedly from year to year. In addition they vary quite markedly by the year in which they are reported. The components of this are shown in Table 2 and are taken from the website of the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat…
Table 2 Emissions from land use, land use change and forestry
|
|
Estimated emissions in Mt CO2-e
|
| Land use |
1990
reported in 2009
|
1990
reported in 2012
|
2011
reported in 2012
|
| Deforestation |
132.2
|
|
|
| Forest land |
-47.3
|
-45.6
|
-102.1
|
| Cropland |
-0.3
|
33.3
|
16.1
|
| Grassland |
89.1
|
123.2
|
48.6
|
| Other |
|
-4.4
|
-2.9
|
| Total |
173.6
|
106.6
|
-40.3
|
The changes in forestry are said to be the shift from harvesting in old growth forests to the use of plantations. What is remarkable is the variation of this contribution as this shift has been taking place over many years. What it may well illustrate is the use of uncertainties in measurement to yield a favourable result. There have also been changes in accounting rules. As an example trees felled in forests were treated as immediately converted to CO2 but now accounting may be delayed until the CO2 from the wood actually enters the atmosphere! [Note from Jo — David Evans –carbon modeler, says that our Kyoto accounting program has allowed for slow decay for as long as he can remember, around 2000 onwards.] Bush fires are treated as ¡°acts of God¡± but as He or She is not anthropogenic (an interesting philosophical question), these emissions are no longer included.
The Coalition Direct Action Plan as detailed before the election of the Abbott Government had two main programmes:
- An Emission Reduction Fund to bring emissions down by 140 Mt CO2-e by 2020 thus meeting the target of emissions 5% below that in 2000. This fund, capped at about $3 billion, would ¡°buy¡± reductions by paying companies to produce fewer emissions. This fund might assist old power stations to be modified to reduce CO2 emissions such as the conversion of brown coal burning stations to using gas. An expensive exercise in rebuilding boilers and using more expensive gas. An example is to compare the short run marginal cost of brown coal burning Hazelwood at $6 per MWh to Newport, with gas fired boilers at $40 per MWh. So changing fuel source is not the answer if you do not want to add to the cost of generating electricity and Australia needs to keep the advantage of low cost electricity. Innovations will not be easy to find and will take time to develop and demonstrate. How they might be implemented without adding to costs is the key and unanswered question.
The other area of activity that might yield some reduction in emissions is farming and forestry. Landcare Australia, spending a modest $6 to $8 million per year, has achieved some notable demonstrations of how returning carbon to the soil can increase crop yields as well as removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Chapter 22 of the Garnaut Report discusses some of the possibilities and opportunities for absorbing CO2 emissions through changes in land use.
Perhaps the greatest example of land recovery is the experience of the Dust Bowl in the United States and Canadian prairies in the 1930s. Extensive plowing of the virgin topsoil displaced the deep-rooted grasses that normally trapped soil and moisture even during periods of drought and high winds but applying dry-land farming methods gave rise to a recovery.
There is also a promise to plant 20 million trees in public spaces with no estimate of the resulting reduction of emissions. The higher levels of atmospheric CO2 should enhance tree growth, just as the forests in the far northern hemisphere have been growing at about 1% a year for the last 40 years.
The fund will spend its $3 billion over the next 3 to 4 years.
- Direct action on renewable energy is a promise of more subsidies for solar, tidal and geothermal installations. There is $100 million a year for domestic solar panels, $100 million a year for Solar Towns and Schools and $50 million a year for Geothermal and Tidal Towns. (And don¡¯t worry about sea level rises.) This does not help innovation where the driving force is either meeting a present need at a lower cost or meeting an unmet need which is not the case for electricity.
There may be a real benefit from the Direct Action plan if, in addressing farming of grassland and cropland, there is a significant rise in farm productivity from better use of soils and carbon as a fertiliser. This would thus pay for itself and would be a true innovation.
Any moderation of CO2 emissions will take a considerable time to have an appreciable impact, quite apart from the delays in auditing the claims of CO2 emission reduction.
However forestry changes resulting from accounting changes might deliver the desired reduction of our emissions to 5% less than the year 2000 emissions.
Greenpeace, the major transnational franchisee on climate, has become so upset by this possibility, calling it ¡°Australia¡¯s carbon scam¡± that they commissioned an analysis from the ANU Centre for Climate Law and Policy[2].The report discusses how, with suitable drafting of the emissions reporting protocol for land use, land use change and forestry, Australia might not need to take any active steps to reduce emissions but simply shelter behind the accounting rules that would allow the reductions of emissions to the agreed 2020 target.
The conclusion is that the policies of Direct Action will have little or no effect on our direct emissions of CO2. However the policies offer a double benefit from the Kyoto protocol escape clauses sheltering the direct emissions and the improvement of agricultural yields giving real economic benefits, a very significant achievement in itself.
The Kyoto protocol changes were proposed by Labor before the election of the Abbott Government. So the outgoing government may have bequeathed a great benefit to the new government and to the country.
[1] In the new 2013 IPCC Summary for Policymakers the projections to 2100 for atmospheric methane are kept at the present level and will have no additional effect except for one scary and unjustifiable scenario where methane has more than doubled by 2100. This is no doubt to keep the maximum temperature and sea level rises in play ¨C see: http://www.henrythornton.com/article.asp?article_id=6620
9 out of 10 based on 26 ratings
Rosenthal et al have put out quite a humdinger of a paper. They’ve reconstructed the temperature of the water flowing out of the Pacific to the Indian Ocean over the last 10,000 years and as deep as 900m. The Indonesian Throughflow is pretty significant in global ocean currents. There’s narrow routes for Pacific upper waters to squeeze through to the Indian Ocean through the Makassar and Lombok Straits, and via the Lifamatola Passage through the Banda Sea, and water comes in from both the North and South Pacific.
 An important point in global ocean currents where the Pacific flows through to the Indian Ocean. Points to note (assuming the study is right):
- Temperatures started rising around 1700AD — long before our carbon emissions.
- That temperatures were much warmer (0.65C) in 1100AD than they were in 1950.
- 8,000 years ago water was 1.5 to 2 degrees warmer — isn’t that meant to be a global catastrophe? Apparently coral reefs, fish, and turtles survived.
 Figure 4. Holocene changes in Pacific Ocean heat content. (A) Reconstructed anomalies in Pacific OHC in the 0- to 700-m depth interval for the early Holocene, mid-Holocene, MWP, and LIA periods. Reconstructed anomalies are calculated relative to the reference period of 1965 to 1970 CE (15). (B) Reconstructed rates of OHC change during the main
transition periods. Reconstructed anomalies and rates are compared with modern observations for the 2000 to 2010 and 1955 to 2010 CE periods, respectively (5). The middle line at each box represents an average estimate for 50% of the Pacific
volume between 0 and 700 m, whereas the top and bottom quartiles of the box represent 62.5 and 37.5% of the total volume in this depth interval, respectively. The bottom whiskers represent 25% of the volume; the top whisker denotes 75%. The modern value is based on the entire Pacific volume for 0 to 700 m. The error bars on the OHC rate of change seem completely unrealistic given the assumptions.
The waters come from the high latitude areas of the Pacific.
“At intermediate depths, the Banda Sea gets contributions from the South Pacific through the northwestward-flowing New Guinea Coastal Undercurrent (NGCUC). Studies suggest that the NGCUC carries a substantial contribution from the Antarctic Intermediate Water, spreading into the Banda Sea through the Lifamatola andMakassar passages (10). ”
…Thus, the hydrography of intermediate water in this region is linked to and influenced by surface conditions in the high latitudes of the Pacific Ocean …
The authors conclude the temperature swings were large and global (though I notice they are measuring sediments in Indonesia to assess temperatures of “North Pacific” and “Antarctic Intermediate Waters” (AAIW), which does not sound obvious – but these are zones of water, and for example, AAIW is the name of a band of water stretching up from Antarctica as far as 20N.
“We show that water masses linked to North Pacific and Antarctic intermediate waters were warmer
by 2.1 T 0.4°C and 1.5 T 0.4°C, respectively, during the middle Holocene Thermal Maximum
than over the past century. Both water masses were ~0.9°C warmer during the Medieval Warm
period than during the Little Ice Age and ~0.65° warmer than in recent decades.
“The inferred similarity in temperature anomalies at both hemispheres is consistent with recent evidence from Antarctica (30), thereby supporting the idea that HTM [holocene], MWP [Medieval Warm Period], and LIA [Little Ice Age] were global events.Furthermore, the similar expressions in both hemispheres indicate a strong link to global radiative perturbations rather than a regional response to changes in ocean circulation. “
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8.7 out of 10 based on 48 ratings
Photograph by NASA/SDO
Read about it, and watch the video below:
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8.8 out of 10 based on 36 ratings
Terry McCrann pretty neatly shows the vacuity of our Climate Change Authority. We need to reduce our quality of living, change the main source of energy our civilization was built on, in order to reduce our emissions by an amount so small, that others have already undone it by a factor of 120, (and that’s just since 2009). The Climate Change Authority say that our efforts are not good enough and it would be much more realistic if the rest of the world had only undone our “achievements” by a factor of 40. Their main argument (if you could call it that) is that “the world” would not think less of us? (Like we care.)
It’s an idea so silly, it barks. This is our national conversation.
MEET the fantasists of the Climate Change Authority – an institution spawned by the deal between former prime minister Julia Gillard and her climate change minister Greg Combet with former Greens leader Bob Brown; and, hopefully, to be as short-lived as its fellow blot on the public policy landscape, the already terminated Climate Commission. –
9.2 out of 10 based on 91 ratings
From Australia Christmas Cards to Europe and the US were $1.60 last year. In 2013 it’s $2.55. I have never seen a rise like it. Back in 2000, it was just 80c each card. Normally postage stamp prices creep up with inflation. The fit is so good, historians often track inflation through stamp prices — see here for Germany in 1923. When I wanted a monotonic rising line to “correlate” with temperatures, US stamp prices were the obvious first choice. To give you some idea of just how well stamps and inflation go together, consider that US post is contemplating raising prices faster than inflation, and that is so unthinkable it made the news in the Wall St Journal last month. But here in Australia, this monster leap has appeared virtually without a comment…
 …
2010 stamp compared to 2013
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7.9 out of 10 based on 31 ratings
Steve Goreham highlights a school program which spends 30,000 dollars to save 300. The program is called “Wise” and hopes to change global weather.
Presumably with such profligate wastage, delusional ambition, and little practical purpose, it will breed future political leaders. — Jo
—————————————————————————-
US citizens pay for “solar school” foolishness
By Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times
Solar systems are being installed at hundreds of schools across the United States. Educators use solar panels to teach students about the “miracle” of energy sourced from the sun. But a closer look at these projects shows poor economics and a big bill for citizens.
Earlier this month, the National Resources Defense Fund (NRDC) launched its “Solar Schools” campaign, an effort to raise $54,000 to help “three to five to-be-determined schools move forward with solar rooftop projects.” The NRDC wants to “help every school in the country go solar.” The campaign uses a cute video featuring kids talking about how we’re “polluting the Earth with gas and coal” and how we can save the planet with solar.
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8.9 out of 10 based on 66 ratings
The year 1851 and CO2 is 287ppm in Law Dome Antarctica. The climate is perfect, but Australians are dealing with the worst fires in recorded history, scorching heat, drought, searing wind and by the sounds of it, an arabian dust storm. There are no skycranes, no mobile phones, and no helitankers. Temperatures in the shade hit 117F in Melbourne (that’s 47C), 115 in Warnambool, 114 in Geelong. But those are not BOM official records (the BOM didn’t exist until some 50 years later). The conditions were unprecedented in living memory even though, at the time, many people said fires and droughts were commonplace. Businesses stopped, and it was described as “wanton martyrdom” to go out in the streets. People fighting the fires realized they had to flee instead and took en masse onto galloping horses to head for bare hilltops or watercourses. One writer two weeks later suggests the fire consumed 150,000 pounds of life and property, “to the utter ruin of many families.” The population was around 80,000. Despite the devastation, no one suggests a carbon tax.
 ‘When the smoke turned day into night’ Painted by William Strutt | Library Of Victoria Apparently the pall of smoke was so bad, the sun was completely blocked in some places. Australians of European origin found baffling and unnatural, but it appears Aboriginal people had seen this effect before. It says something about the attitude of the settlers that calls immediately went out to raise funds to help the afflicted. Notably in Kilmore, 7 out of 15 declined the aid, “having friends from whom they could derive assistance”. Others canceled outstanding debts they were owed.
Romsey Australia has a helpful collection of quotes. Thanks to Chris Gillham for finding the first two quotes here, and Tom Quirk for his Great-grandfather’s quotes.
It was searingly hot with blasting sand:
“BLACK THURSDAY.” In its most literal sense, meaning and acceptation, the “oldest inhabitant” of Geelong does not recollect such a day as yesterday, Thursday. It surpassed all previous experience of hot winds and sandy whirlwinds. The morning was bright and balmy, and the breeze from the bay was grateful to those who sought its restorative induence. But about half-past seven o’clock in the morning a sudden change occurred. The north-west horizon was seen to be suddenly obscured, and presently a dense and lofty cloud of dust was observed to move bodily downwards towards Geelong, borne on the wings of the hot blast, which struck on the sense with a feeling of sudden and overpowering suffocation. The appearance of the moving mass of sand, or rather fine dust, which filled apparently the whole space between earth and sky, was very similar to the descriptions given by travellers of the sandy and hot whirlwinds which sweep across the deserts of Arabia, or rather those which occur on the great Desert of Sahara, in the north of Africa, and which are stated occasionally to bury whole caravans of men, camels and baggage. To quote, though with a very different application, the words of Macbeth, we can truly say, that so “fair and foul a day” we have never seen. A hot sun, piercing even the dense stand-fog; a hot blast which howled all day, bringing with it clouds of penetrating dust; a dry atmosphere, exhausting the animal grame, prostrating bodily and encrasing mental vigour – these were only some of the characteristics of our “Black Thursday.” As a natural consequence, nearly all buisness was suspended in Geelong, for all who could escape from the necessity of going abroad felt that it would be indeed a work of supererogation, if not of wanton martyrdom, to brave so “pelting and pitiless” a blast, which yesterday brought literally hot and heavy on all exposed to it. The thermometer before nine o’clock rose to 102 in the shade, unattached; at two o’clock it stood at 114 in the shade, attached. But the most lamentable feature of this “Black Thursday” has been the great destruction of property by extensive bush fires.
Empire Sydney 5 March 185 1
WARNAMBOOL AS IT WAS ON THURSDAY, The 6th ULTIMO.-Thursday, in the morning, from the north-westward came sweeping along over and among the lofty gum and wattle trees, a heavy cloud, accompanied by towering columns of dust and smoke driven with a tempestuous hot blast; so sudden was the change that the fiery blast might be felt on one cheek, whilst the south-easterly wind played on the other. This was about ten minutes past seven o’clock. The wind grew in fury and in heat. The air was full not only of sand and dust but small stones, which drove with incredible force. The heat increased every hour, and the wind blew with resistless fury, it swept the roads and streets, it hovered, round the angles of the buildings, and fell with a deadening heat on all that it came in contact with – man was prostrate and helpless, business stopped, the streets deserted, the houses closed, and for many weary hours the blast and the sand storm ruled supreme. The sun, where it struck, seemed to leave a burning spot; but O! worse than all, came the suffocating dry air that filled the lungs with a parching heat, and choking thirst, and an insatiable desire to drink. The thermometer ranged 115 in the shade, sometimes rising, sometimes sinking, as the hot wind swept by or partly lulled. All were stricken and cowered before it.
People fled on horses at the maddest gallop
Source: Argus Newspaper ( Melbourne, Vic.) Saturday 20 February 1926
When men saw the flames threatening to consume the produce of their long toil many gallant efforts were made to beat them back, but it was soon apparent that before the roaring blasts such attempts only tended to reduce the prospect of individual escape.
Flight was the only chance, and even that, on foot was a doubtful resource, for, where the fuel was abundant the flames travelled at a rate that overtook and consumed the flying stock at their maddest gallop.
Every horse that could be obtained and mounted under such conditions of panic carried some distracted settler or his family at topmost speed towards some bald hill or other fancied point of refuge. Those who could not command such aid fled to the nearest creek or water hole, and, plunging in, passed long hours of agonised suspense while the fiery tide rolled over them.
When at length it was safe to crawl forth from their sanctuary it was to find homes, furniture, farm equipment, crops, barns, and fences all disappeared, their live stock roasted or dispersed, and the hard battle of life to begin all over again.
If fire had broken out in Melbourne the city would have “been lost”:
Source: Argus Newspaper ( Melbourne, Vic.) Saturday 20 February 1926
MELBOURNE’S ORDEAL
In Melbourne the day opened with a scorching north wind and an unclouded sky. Under the influence of the fierce sirocco the city was soon enveloped in blinding dust, and by 11 o’clock the thermometer marked 117 degrees( 47.2 Celsius ) in the shade.
By midday, rolling volumes of smoke began to converge on the city, and outdoor life became intolerable. The streets were almost deserted, a dull sense of suffocation oppressed even those who cowered in the coolest recesses of their homes, and anxiously asked what it meant. Fortunately no fires broke out near the city, for had it once done so, in all probability the whole place would have fallen.
With sunset came a change of wind to the south, and anxious crowds gathered towards nightfall on the summits of Batman’s Hill and the Flagstaff Reserve to note with awe and wonder the red glare that marked the Dandenong Ranges and illuminated the whole of the northern horizon.
It was hot in South Australia and NSW too
Tom Quirks Great-grandfather was William Westgarth who wrote several books on the era. (Tom Quirk has articles on this site, another coming very soon.) Here is Westgarth’s account of the Victorian 1851 bushfire:
These (hot) winds, with the violent changes by which they are terminated, are of less frequent occurrence in the adjacent colonies, but occasionally in these warmer latitudes they are exceedingly severe. At Sydney, and in the interior of New South Wales, the thermometer in the shade has been as high as 120°, and even 129° is recorded by Sturt, on the occasion of his exploring the river Macquarrie in 1827. The severest of these visitations on record, in Victoria, occurred on Thursday, the 6th February 1851, — a day ever since remembered under the designation of Black Thursday. The thermometer ranged between 100° and 110° in the verandas and other shaded parts of the dwelling-houses throughout the colony. The country, exceedingly dry from a long cessation of rain, took fire in many directions, —the flames overrunning the grass, spreading among the trees with frightful avidity, and occasioning the loss of much property. Similar weather was experienced at the same time in the colonies of South Australia and New South Wales.
William Westgarth, Victoria; late Australia Felix. 1853
A different book of William Westgarth tells us that as news filtered through of raging fires, at least one trader (with advance warning) increased flour prices by 30% immediately. Westgarth also recalls that fires and drought were common.
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8.9 out of 10 based on 65 ratings
The PGA (Pastoralists and Graziers) convention is on Saturday morning in Perth. It’s a great event, has a few movers and shakers going, and I very much enjoyed the last one I went too. If you want to go, email the PGA or phone them today. The normal fee for non-members would be $250, but I put in a plea for readers who might be retired, or just coming “out of interest”, and Jenni Stawell kindly offered to reduce the price — mention you read about the offer here.
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8.1 out of 10 based on 28 ratings
Bill McKibben wants to stop a mine in Australia because it might affect the weather. He says wind power is as affordable as coal.
The Australian, Friday Oct 25: “… we’ve reached the point where alternatives have become realistic.Wind power is now as affordable as coal-fired power in Australia, not to mention the limitless energy potential of the powerful sun that shines on your continent.”
To which I say, fantastic. If wind power is as cheap as coal, we don’t need a carbon tax, emissions trading schemes, renewable targets, or other subsidies … people will use wind simply because it is cheaper. Alternatively, Bill is talking out of his hat.
Kill the schemes, cut the subsidies. Bring it on. I say!
We can see how many people rely on Windpower in Australia
That’s the yellow part. Coal is the black or brown part.
 Source: ESAA All the assertions of “cheap wind power” are only true if we assume our CO2 emissions cause warming, amplified by water vapor and cloud changes, which causes dangerous and expensive outcomes. Furthermore we must assume that it is cheaper to mitigate rather than adapt (which it isn’t), and then assume that taxes, windpower, and carbon trading schemes actually reduce emissions (which they don’t). The long chain of inference falls down at every step, but the nonsense is printed without questioning anyway.
You’d think it would be easy to get estimates of the costs of generating electricity…
You’d think it would be easy to get estimates of the costs of generating electricity, but it’s a quagmire that depends on assumptions about capital costs, maintenance, life of the plant, length of transmission lines, and–for an unreliable source like “wind”–the cost of back up and storage as well. Then levelized cost assessments may slap on the mystery carbon factor too, which means a truckload of climate assumptions stacked on estimates of guesstimates about the cost of the impacts. In the end, the uncertainties go exponential.
The Victorian Auditor General assessed the costs and found wind cost three times as much as brown coal: wind ~ 10c/kWh, brown coal ~ 3.5c/kWh. Taylor and Tanton found wind energy costs were 50% more as expensive at 15c/kWh. Advanced natural gas-burning plants cost around 6.3 cents per kWh, while coal is much cheaper again. (I’ve heard 3c/kWh for coal, but has that gone up and can anyone find a comparable, respectable value?)
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8.8 out of 10 based on 87 ratings
Here’s a stark statistic that came out last week in a new report: The Climate Industry draws in nearly $1 billion dollars a day. But here’s an ominous combination: … it openly admits that taxpayer money is its “engine-room”. Reading between the lines below, this industry is almost completely dependent on domestic policies that funnel money from citizens to itself, and tilts the playing field — without those policies, it can’t attract much private money. That is, it can only get money at least partially by coercion, people won’t give it money purely voluntarily. These same groups want even more — they want the public to take the risks too. What could possibly go wrong?
Al Gore, said it himself: “Special interests control decisions too frequently.” [See the ABC]. So he must be concerned about the lobbying weight of a $360 billion dollar baby whose existence is contingent on government gravy? As if…
From: The Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2013 from the Climate Policy Initiative
“Landscape 2013 finds that global climate finance flows have plateaued at USD 359 billion, or around USD 1 billion per day – far below even the most conservative estimates of investment needs.
OK, so in greenspeak, it’s only a billion dollars a day, and that’s not nearly large enough!
“In 2012, annual global climate finance reached approximately USD 359 billion (range of 356-363 billion). The private sector continued to provide the lion’s share, contributing USD 224 billion, or 62% of the total. The public sector contributed USD 135 billion (range of 132-139), or around 38% of global climate finance.
The public sector provides 38% of “climate finance”, but note, if it disappeared, the sector would shrink by more than 38%, because some of the private money would disappear too. This, below, is their nice way of saying they feed off taxpayer subsidies.
“Landscape 2013 confirms that public policies, resources, and money are the ‘engine room’ of the climate finance system, and can alter the balance between risk and return in ways that drive the supply and demand for finance. Private capital flows into climate investments when public incentives
and money make them commercially attractive by taking-off risk and reducing incremental costs. While many countries have policy frameworks that provide such incentives, significant capacity and incentive gaps remain.
The first thing on their list is to ensure the gravy keeps flowing from taxpayers…
“We offer the following findings as action points for policymakers:
“1. Develop well-articulated domestic enabling environments to encourage further private investment.
Point 2: Citizens need to take more risk, because the private sector realizes how fickle this all is. Private money doesn’t want to go to Uganda.
“Recognize that private actors prefer familiar policy environments where the perception of risk is lower.
“…the 24% of climate finance that flowed between countries in 2012 was dominated by mostly publicly funded North-South flows. Of private flows, the vast proportion was invested in developed countries…
Point 3: What’s a new “risk mechanism”? Is that a way of disguising real risks, or a new way of shifting risk from investors to the taxpayer? (If I invent Climate-Blackjack, is that another new risk management tool?)
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9.2 out of 10 based on 82 ratings
A favourite rock pool of mine. My photo.
9 out of 10 based on 42 ratings
On the ABC program Catalyst this week, Dr Maryanne Demasi slayed a few dietary myths–like, cholesterol and saturated fat cause heart disease.
She described how medical science was distorted for decades by the influence of money, and how one key researcher networked his way to the top of an influential association, casting ad hom insults at his competitor, ridiculing him, and calling his rival theory about sugar “quackery”. The personal attacks and name-calling worked, and for fifty years people have been paranoid of cholesterol, and scoffing corn syup instead, while study after study showed that that approach was not working.
Everything said about the processes in this tale could be equally well said about climate science: Correlation is not causation. Weak, flawed studies can be cherry picked while good studies are ignored. Associations can be taken over by one activist. Large financial interests distort science.
So the consensus was wrong about cholesterol, but is untouchable on climate? (See Witchcraft on Catalyst — Scary weather is coming, it’s all our fault, be afraid!)
Will it take 50 years for Catalyst to stop repeating the verdict of associations, and start investigating the evidence? The big lesson of the Enlightenment is that data and evidence are the highest authorities, not humans.
How myths in dietary science parallel climate science:
(I’m a hopeless optimist, I thought I’d try to help Catalyst spot the repeated patterns.)
ABC Transcript
“Dr Michael Eades
Just because there’s a correlation, doesn’t mean that there’s causation.”
- Correlation is the most compelling point IPCC climate scientists have, (after sheer bombast, and “tallies of scientists”). It’s not just weak reasoning, it’s a lousy correlation*. Skeptics have been pointing it out for years. Filed under “correlation is not causation”, see how Global Temperatures have a decent correlation with US postage Stamp Prices.
“Dr Ernest Curtis
The classic study by Ancel Keys is a textbook example of fudging the data to get the result that you want out of a study. And, unfortunately, there’s a lot of that that goes on.”
- The Hockey Stick Graph relied on the wrong type of trees as a proxy. The growth of bristlecone pines, which dominate the graph, is CO2 limited, with little dependence on temperature–which is why the tree rings were collected in the first place. The technique to analyze the data produced a hockeystick shape even if it was fed pure random red noise instead of the tree-rings. Virtually none of the climate scientists who assert CO2 is a problem spoke publicly to condemn these unscientific practices, which tells us all we need to know about standards in the warmer side of the climate imbroglio.
- Several studies later produced similar hockeysticks, but almost all of those studies were not independent, relied on bristlecones or foxtails, or on “Yamal 06” (a single tree in Russia with an 8 sigma growth pattern — the most influential tree in the world.)
———————————–
“NARRATION
Science writer Gary Taubes says it’s all very well to have a theory, but in science you have to prove it. And they tried.”
- The US Government spent $30 billion from 1989 – 2009 trying to prove that CO2 causes catastrophic global warming. So far there are no empirical studies that support major assumptions about upper tropospheric water vapor (the major feedback in the models) and net positive feedback from cloud cover–yet in the climate models, these factors cause about two thirds of the warming.
“Gary Taubes
And over the next 15 years, researchers did trial after trial. There were probably a half a dozen of them between 1960 and 1975. All refuted or failed to confirm the idea that you could live longer by either reducing the saturated fat in your diet or reducing the total fat in your diet.”
———————————–
“NARRATION
The American Heart Association was also reluctant to lend credence to Keys’ theory. But then he managed to score a position on the Association’s advisory panel, where he pushed for the acceptance of his ideas, and it wasn’t long before they had a change of heart.”
- Climate change advocates were even luckier than anti-cholesterol researchers — by 1992, their major patron was the Vice President of the US.
———————————–
Bad science can only be kept alive by a committee
When the science is really stupid, only a committee report can provide a big enough white-wash.
“Gary Taubes
Instead of the data not being good enough to claim that dietary fat was a cause of heart disease, they concluded that the data were good enough, and, therefore, all Americans over the age of two should go on low-fat diets.”
- Pro-warming Climate scientists didn’t need to infiltrate an association. Right from the start, a special UN body was established specifically to help them. Climate science was so bad, it needed it’s own international (unaccountable) committee. Who audits the IPCC? (Volunteers).
“NARRATION
As the idea gained widespread acceptance with the public, science was left to catch up. Two ambitious trials, costing over $250 million, involving hundreds of thousands of patients, both failed to prove that lowering saturated fat could lower your risk of dying from heart attack.”
- 28 million weatherballoons searched to find support for the missing hot spot (to show models were right). They found no warming at all, and no increase in humidity either (Paltridge 2009), thus condemning the CO2 theory to irrelevance in a rational world. This vast amount of data was called “spurious”.
———————————–
“Gary Taubes
The way the authorities responded to this was to claim that they must have done the study wrong.
- Climate scientists point out there are uncertainties in weather-balloon data (which is true, and also true of all climate data). They don’t point out that there are far larger uncertainties in global models, instead they say that because they are less sure of radiosondes, they are more sure of the models — 95% certain.
“I approached the National Heart Foundation for further evidence. They said the data was complex. They cited one study which showed only certain types of saturated fat could raise bad cholesterol, but it also raised good cholesterol. In the end they concluded – ‘We agree that we are limited by the evidence base, available at this time.’
- “Climate Science is complex” (see 135,000 google-hits) [eg CSIRO, SMH,etc ]
NARRATION
In the ’60s, British physician John Yudkin challenged Keys’ theory, claiming that sugar was the culprit in heart disease, not saturated fat. But Keys was politically powerful, and publically discredited Yudkin’s theory.
- Whole websites have been set up by specialist marketing teams to discredit senior scientists with decades of experience. (See DeSmog, set up by James Hoggan and Associates). Naomi Oreskes is a specialist at creating and selling “doubt” about expert critics – she is The Merchant of Doubt who resorts to 20 year old misrepresentations. Who knew statistically correct statements about passive smoking could disprove a NASA satellite?
Gary Taubes
By the early 1970s, Ancel Keys was ridiculing John Yudkin and his theory in papers and just on the basis of that sort of personality and political struggle, the nutrition community embraced this idea…
- When skeptics pointed out problems with IPCC statements on the Himalayas (that turned out to be correct) the head of the IPCC said skeptics practice “Voodoo science”.
Dr Maryanne Demasi
This widespread publicity meant that Keys’ theory went from weak hypothesis to medical dogma…
- Dogma? In the world of climate if you ask for evidence, or even just the data, you’re a “denier”. Sometimes you get sacked, or even stripped of email and emeritus status. Psychologists even study the strange phenomenon where independent scientists dare to doubt the conclusions of international committees. They conclude the questioning of gross errors and grand failures must be politically driven, since many of those who doubt, also “strangely” don’t want to vote for the same political parties which call them deniers. How could it be?
“NARRATION
Hundreds of articles refuting the cholesterol hypothesis have been published in the world’s leading medical journals, but they rarely get noticed by mainstream media.”
- 1,100 peer reviewed articles (and counting) support skeptics. Has Catalyst reported any of them? Are Catalyst viewers even aware that assumptions about water vapor, not carbon dioxide, cause two thirds of the projected global warming?
“Gary Taubes
So, what you do in bad science is you ignore any evidence that’s contrary to your beliefs, your hypothesis, and you only focus on the evidence that supports it.”
“NARRATION
In 1977, the US government stepped in. Senator George McGovern, an advocate of Ancel Keys’ theory, headed a committee hearing to end the debate once and for all.”
- The IPCC meets every 5 to 6 years and ends the debate every time.
“Dr Michael Eades
“And they are the ones who really have put us in the nutritional mess that we’re in now, because based on virtually zero science, they decided that a low-fat diet was the best thing for us all.”
- If the IPCC favored climate models overestimate global warming by a factor of 6 (as empirical evidence suggests), almost all the money spent trading carbon, sequestering it, and installing wind farms and solar panels has been utterly wasted. $176 billion dollars was drawn out of the productive economy to trade carbon in 2011. $243 billion was invested in “clean energy” in 2010. Is that as influential as the US corn industry? We think it might be. Has it killed as many people? That’s up for debate.
“NARRATION
“Eminent scientists at the time disagreed with the report.”
Eminent scientists disagreed in 1990 and still disagree with the hypothesis of man-made global catastrophe.
- Prof Richard Lindzen — Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Prof. Lindzen is a recipient of the AMS’s Meisinger, and Charney Awards, the AGU’s Macelwane Medal, and the Leo Huss Walin Prize. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.
- John Christy — distinguished professor of atmospheric science, and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
- Roy Spencer — Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2001. Formerly he was a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
- Christy and Spencer developed the first global temperature data set from satellites and were awarded NASA‘s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, and the American Meteorological Society‘s “Special Award.”
- Plus 31,000 scientists, including 9,000 PhDs, 4 Apollo Astronauts and 2 Nobel Physics prize winners.
Is that enough?
“Dr Stephen Sinatra
Cholesterol is really not the villain. I mean, we need it to live. The problem is cholesterol is involved in a repair process. Look, cholesterol is found at the scene of the crime, it’s not the perpetrator.”
- CO2 is not really the villain. It is true it is high when temperatures are high (as Al Gore said in An Inconvenient Truth). What Al Gore did not say was that two years before he made his movie, Caillon et al definitively showed CO2 rises 800 years after temperatures. It’s just Henry’s Law at work. The warmer the ocean, the more CO2 it releases. CO2 has scored the blame, but it is not the cause…
Being strictly logical
Naturally, parallels in propaganda, money or politics prove nothing about the climate. This skeptic would never say climate scientists were wrong because they were paid $79 billion dollars to find a crisis. They were wrong because the evidence goes against them, and they reason with logical fallacies.
Comments from readers
Readers have also noticed parallels, Reader Turtle of WA wrote in with a long list, including many above plus these:
- Political interference at the highest level (McGovern). –
- The appearance of the issue on the cover of Time Magazine.
- The sale of certain products based on the theory.
- ‘confirmation bias’ in the research (Dr Johnny Bowden)
- A failure of the establishment to question it
- ‘Far too many exceptions’
- Media mythmaking
So the question is obvious. Why haven’t they noticed that the same arguments all hold when made against anthropogenic climate change theory?” — Turtle
As Peter a reader wrote to me:
“As I watched the program I thought that everything they were saying about how the scientific consensus on cholesterol developed and has been promoted could easily be replaced with the consensus on CAGW. Even down to having a senior US politician pushing the consensus line – but in the cholesterol case it was a Republican (Sen. Goldwater). And they had comments from an AMA rep supporting the cholesterol hypothesis – reminding me of CAGW support from many scientific organisations. How the Catalyst Team could have not noticed this delicious juxtaposition of their views on the two topics when it was so obvious to me (and my wife) amazes me. Basically they are saying – consensus A (CAGW) is true because we agree with it, while consensus B (cholesterol artery blockage link) is a crock because we don’t agree with it.”
Ian in comments on Thursday
October 24, 2013 at 11:14 pm ·
“The parallels between the resistance to the debunking of the “cholesterol causes heart disease” mantra and the doubts that “CO2 from human use of fossil fuels causes global warming” are so similar…. those who promote the theory cholesterol causes heart disease refuse to recognise the existence of data that refutes that theory. Now isn’t that just like the climate scientists …
Derek wrote to Catalyst:
“… I have written to “our ABC” pointing out this disparity and suggesting that Dr Demasi be tasked with researching and presenting the evidence for and against on this vexed question in the same admirable and unbiased fashion…. I wonder if she and they will rise to the challenge?”
Too little too late
As for the diet info, almost everything the show revealed was discussed in the new media, or books 15 years ago. That’s why I rarely watch Catalyst. I’ve known about the dangers of oxidized polyunsaturated fat, of raised insulin, of omega 6 imbalances, and the major role of inflammation, disadvantages of the low-fat diet, and trans fats since the late nineties. I was discussing nutritional research online back then. So while I congratulate Dr Demasi for doing a good job of busting myths that still abound, one that will score her criticism from some quarters (predictably, on the site that slavishly follows “authority” more than any other – The Conversation), Catalyst could have been analyzing government and industry PR releases all along. It’s a bit too little, too late.
Doesn’t she see how most of the time, Catalyst simply repeats the press releases and perpetuates problems in science? It’s not the job of reporters to decide who is right on the climate, or in medicine, it’s their job to find the best arguments both sides can make and put them both forward. It’s to facilitate the public debate, and inform the public. On climate, Catalyst is part of the consent-manufacturing media force. It’s part of the problem.
The message for people who were surprised by the Catalyst episode: don’t wait for Catalyst to tell you. Start searching the new media or bookstores now.
(Be aware though that practically any new diet works for a while, it’s the longer studies that matter. The studies on mortality count the most, and the studies on epidemiology the least — they’re the studies that confound 400 factors by saying “people ate more X in fatland, so X makes you fat!” Ignore any site or book that says you should eat something because a committee says so. Cutting calories is the only thing that stands up to scrutiny.)
To see how much Catalyst propagate and protect bad science:
———————————————–
* How weak is that correlation? Pathetic. It’s riddled with mismatches and exceptions. CO2 rose faster after WWII, but temperatures fell for 30 years ( they say it was aerosols). Lately CO2 emissions are “worse than expected” but temperatures are flatter than expected (apparently it could be the ocean this time — but why wasn’t it the ocean before?). A third of human emissions in all history have been from 1998, yet the pause in global warming has reigned since then. The peak decadal rate in the 1980s was not different to the 1870s, though there is a lot more CO2 (the “climate is complex”). Medieval times were just as warm, but CO2 was low. (The Medieval warm period didn’t exist, “see the hockeystick”). There are always excuses, and if reporters are too lazy to question them, who will?
Only unpaid bloggers, apparently.
REFERENCES:
See The Evidence and the links above, plus:
Caillon, N., Severinghaus, J.P., Jouzel, J., Barnola, J.-M., Kang, J. and Lipenkov, V.Y. 2003. Timing of atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic temperature changes across Termination III. Science 299: 1728-1731. [Discussion, CO2science]
Paltridge, G., Arking, A., Pook, M., 2009. Trends in middle- and upper-level tropospheric humidity from NCEP reanalysis data. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, Volume 98, Numbers 3-4, pp. 351-35). [PDF]
9.6 out of 10 based on 101 ratings
Is this a 2013 Streisand-Effect finalist?
The UK has decided to build its first new nuclear power plant in 20 years. The UK Department of Energy & Climate Change posted this graphic below in a News Story probably to help justify why it really did make sense to go nuclear rather than renewable. The Renewable Energy Association called it “unhelpful”, and lo, it disappeared from gov.uk.
Credit goes to Emily Gosden’s Tweet, and Will Heaven‘s Blog. Hat tip to Colin.
 (Click to enlarge to see the fine print) The fine print (edited out in the small copy here) says that Hickley Point C “is estimated to be equal to around 7% of UK electricity consumption in 2025 and enough to power nearly 6 million homes.” About onshore wind, the fine print reads: “The footprint will depend on the location and turbine technology deployed. DECC estimates the footprint could be between 160,000 and 490,000 acres“. That’s quite some error margin.
How many National Parks does one nuclear plant save then?
It’s a good representation of just how much of the Earths surface we have to give up if we want to live off renewables at the moment. So who decided it had to disappear?
Were they afraid a few evil skeptic bloggers might use it?
The original graphic is still displayed at Swindon Conservatives, which copied the press release. [Cached by google].
9.6 out of 10 based on 94 ratings
A team of researchers looked at the solar influence on Southern Hemisphere Westerly Winds (SWW). These winds influence rainfall patterns and ocean currents in the Southern Hemisphere. Varma et al infer rainfall patterns by looking at iron deposits in marine sediments near Chile, which are apparently higher during drier conditions and lower during wetter times. They compared these to both Beryllium (10Be) and Carbon-14 (14C) which they use to estimate solar activity.
The end result is they find that the westerly winds shift northwards towards the equator during lower solar activity, and conversely move southwards towards the poles during higher solar activity. The shifting wind patterns move the rainfall. An effect is apparent in records for the last 3,000 years.
In graph a below, 10Be (solar activity) and Fe (rainfall) have a decent correlation coefficient (r) of 0.45, while the 14C (solar activity) and Fe (rainfall) correlation in b has a lower correlation (r) of 0.21. Varma et al say:
“the large correlation coefficient for 10Be would suggest that ca. 20% (i.e., r2) of late Holocene rainfall and hence SWW variability could be attributable to solar forcing.”
They conclude that the current models don’t give the sun a large enough role.
“…we propose that the role of the sun in modifying Southern Hemisphere tropospheric circulation patterns has probably been underestimated in model simulations of past climate change.
 Fig. 2. Reconstructions of precipitation and hence, the position of the SWW (based on the GeoB3313-1 iron record) versus solar activity for the late Holocene. (a) Solar activity based on 10Be (Vonmoos et al., 2006), (b) solar activity based on 14C (Solanki et al., 2004). The time series have been linearly detrended and standardized. The bold curves show 100-year running means and the thin curves show the unsmoothed data. A lower content of iron stands for wetter conditions, suggesting northward shifted SWW (Lamy et al., 2001). Conversely, a higher content of iron reflects drier conditions essentially due to southward shifted SWW. Pearson correlation coefficients (r) were calculated from the unsmoothed data. 95% confidence intervals (in brackets) were calculated using a bootstrap method, where autocorrelation has been taken into account (Mudelsee, 2003). Note that all this has the caveat that correlation is not causation. We don’t understand the mechanisms involved. Then there is that slightly awkward point that correlation does not hold up for records older than 3000 years (it is “close to zero”), and Varma et al wonder whether the dates are inaccurate for the older records which could explain the lack of correlation. Hmm. Three thousand years is a long time.
Speculation about possible mechanisms
Varma et al talk of mechanisms that amplify the solar effect through both “top down” and bottom up” processes, and think that both types of mechanisms are needed to generate these significant shifts in response to very small changes in solar TSI.
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9 out of 10 based on 40 ratings
The Age in Melbourne said they were “keen” to get a piece like this from David on Tuesday, but on Wednesday decided not to go with it.
Unfortunately figures on fuel loads are rare. David used to do carbon accounting for the Australian Government, which included developing the ability to estimate forest debris in Australian forests from a combination of plant models, satellite data on vegetation, and weather data. That capability exists in the Department of Environment, in the unit that produces Australia’s carbon accounts. However the figures here are only what David has heard from other sources over the years, and do not reflect any official or government figures. – Jo
UPDATE: Skynews tells us Defence admit starting the mega Lithgow fire last Wednesday. “A massive fire burning in Lithgow and the Blue Mountains was caused by explosives training which was being carried out in the area by the department of defence.”
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Fuel Loads Not Climate Change Are Making Bushfires More Severe
Dr David Evans
The bibles of mainstream climate change are the Assessment Reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) every six years or so. The latest was issued recently, in September 2013. Significantly, it backs away from the link between climate change and specific extreme weather events.
The IPCC says that connections of warming to extreme weather have not been found. “There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses [that is, adjusted for exposure and wealth of the increasing populations] have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change.” The IPCC claim only to have “low confidence” in their ability to project “changes in frequency and duration of megadroughts.”
The official report does say that “drought, coupled with extreme heat and low humidity, can increase the risk of wildfire”, but there is no drought in southeast Australia at the moment.
They also say “there is evidence that future climate change could lead to increases in the occurrence of wildfires because of changes in fuel availability, readiness of the fuel to burn and ignition sources.” Carbon dioxide is a potent plant fertilizer. According to NASA satellites there is more living plant matter today, with a 6% increase in the twenty years to 2000. So there is more to burn.
Some academic papers conclude that climate change might be a contributing factor (Cai, Nicholls), others say it is not (Crompton, Pielke).
If there was any specific evidence that linked climate change to bushfires or extreme weather events, we know they would be trumpeting it loudly. That they don’t, speaks volumes.
There has been a hiatus in the rise of average global air temperatures for the last fifteen years or more. Basically the world hasn’t warmed for the last decade and a half. While this does not rule out warming in some regions, climate cannot have been much of a contributor to the worsening bushfire situation over the last fifteen years.
People have been burning off to keep fuel loads low in Australia for thousands of years.
Current fuel loads are now typically 30 tonnes per hectare in the forests of southeast Australia, compared to maybe 8 tonnes per hectare in the recent and ancient pasts. So fires burn hotter and longer. (The figures are hard to obtain, which is scandalous considering their central importance. There is also confusion over whether to include all material dropped by the trees, or just the material less than 6mm thick–it is mainly the finer material that contributes to the flame front.)
The old advice to either fight or flee when a bushfire approached, and to defend property, only made sense when fuel loads were light. The fire wasn’t too hot, it was over in a few minutes, and we could survive. With the high fuel loads of today, fighting the fire is too dangerous in most cases.
Eucalypts love fire, because it gives them an advantage over competing tree species. Eucalypts regenerate very quickly after a fire, much faster than other trees, so periodic fires ensure the dominance of eucalypts in the forest. Eucalypts have evolved to encourage fires, dropping copious amounts of easily flammable litter. Stringy bark trees are the worst, dangling flammable strings of bark that catch alight and detach from the tree to spread the fire a kilometer or two downwind.
Picture lighting a fire in an outside fireplace. The more newspaper and twigs you pack in, the hotter and faster the fire will burn. Extra heat ignites thicker denser wood, which fuels the fire for so much longer. Now imagine being an ant living in or around that fireplace, and wondering whether to fight or flee. The forests of southeast Australia are our fireplace, and the eucalypts are piling up the easily flammable material around us.
Bill Gammage wrote an excellent book, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia, which was awarded the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award in 2012. The first Europeans in Australia noted over and over that Australia looked like a country estate in England, like a park with open woodlands, extensive grassy patches, and abundant wildlife. Where Europeans prevented aborigines from tending their land it became overgrown, and the inevitable fires became dangerous and uncontrollable.
Particularly memorable is the account of driving a horse and carriage from Hobart to Launceston in the early 1800’s, before there were any roads, simply by driving along the grassy park underneath the tree canopies. Try doing that today.
People will die and property losses will be high until we relearn these lessons and reduce fuel loads again.
References
9.7 out of 10 based on 179 ratings
The Australian media are going all out on climate change and bushfires.
The ABC 7:30 Report last night clearly laid out the options for preventing mega bush-fires.
Funded by you whether you like it or not.
Watch the whole bizarre post-modern witchcraft here: ABC Channel 1
Yes, the world has warmed by 0.7C since 1900. We are living in a new climate. Before, when things were, on average imperceptibly cooler, megafires did not happen. Right?
Thanks to Peter Ritson for the short video version.
“The Science is in”. Annabel Crabb tells us “The link is established between climate change and bushfires”. (What “link” would that be Annabel? — That when there is a bushfire there are more media stories about climate change?)
As Simon at ClimateMadness jokes, obviously there is no groupthink at the ABC because they put forward all the views from every side of Greenness:
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9 out of 10 based on 109 ratings
How about some perspective on those alarming headlines:
Thanks to Steve Hunter illustrations
We are tying ourselves in knots over 150 year old records (or even less) when:
- These are just short Australian records, not long global ones. Even in the 1800’s Australia recorded heatwaves of 50+ degrees.
- The world was similarly warm 1,000 years ago, definitely warmer 7,000 years ago, and a lot warmer 120,000 years ago.
- The world has been warmer for most of the last 500 million years.
- Satellites are more reliable, have better coverage, and don’t have dubious inexplicable adjustments. They show it was not a record angry summer, nor the hottest year we’ve had.
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8.8 out of 10 based on 87 ratings
Whatever happened to polar amplification?
The oceans are apparently warming, and yet the sea-ice abounds in the Southern Hemisphere. A new record was set at 19.57 million square kilometers of ice [NSIDC-nrt], around one million more than the usual amount. (Yesterday ice covered 19.11m km2).
 … Source: http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr2/
National Snow and Ice Data Center Web site. Records date back to October 1978. NSIDC also has a similar graph of daily sea-ice-extent.
The size of the sea-ice surrounding Antarctica is spectacular. We can just see the outline of the landmass here to appreciate just how much of the Southern Hemisphere is covered with sea-ice right now.
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8.6 out of 10 based on 93 ratings
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