Wind farm in Xinjiang viewed from the Lanxin railway. | Image by “Train to Xinjiang Provnice” (sic)
The command economy strikes again. China is touted as the renewables leader, installing a gobsmacking one third of all the worlds wind towers. But with a recent economic slowdown, when push comes to shove, coal power is used and wind farms are not.
[NY Times] — More than 92,000 wind turbines have been built across the country, capable of generating 145 gigawatts of electricity, nearly double the capacity of wind farms in the United States. One out of every three turbines in the world is now in China, and the government is adding them at a rate of more than one per hour.
But some of its most ambitious wind projects are underused. Many are grappling with a nationwide economic slowdown that has dampened demand for electricity. Others are stymied by persistent favoritism toward the coal industry by local officials and a dearth of transmission lines to carry electricity from rural areas in the north and west to China’s fastest-growing cities.
Apparently the wind farms are not well connected to the cities that need the power (not to mention that the wind probably doesn’t power them at peak times, always needs back up, is unreliable, and unpredictable.) The transmission lines are just not good enough. A friend from Switzerland writes: “When I studied Communist Economic planning 1978, we called these type of investments Economic Bermuda Triangles.”
Meanwhile in the US, the Amazon wind farm, a 104 turbine plant costing $400m is being built so close to military radars that people are saying it should be shut down before it starts because it is within the exclusion zone and is a threat to national security.
Not surprisingly, pensioners in the UK say they are cutting back on food so they can afford to keep the heat on. Still, their sacrifices will mean the world will be 0.00C cooler in 2100. Hard to argue with that.
And a third will be forced to ration their heating in a bid to keep the bills down, according to a new survey.
Of Britain’s 11.5m over 65s, nearly one in ten (nine per cent) are anticipating either a new health problem or the worsening of a current condition, like arthritis, as they struggle with the cold.
As many as 90 per cent of the 2,000 pensioners surveyed by comparison website comparethemarket.com believe the high cost of gas and electricity presents a real health threat to elderly people living in the UK.
At this minute the UK is apparently a balmy 5C. Parts of Canada and Alaska are minus 40. Siberia, minus 44C. I wouldn’t want to be a pensioner living in the highlands of Greenland though, where it is minus 54C right now.
FergusFallsJournal has a list of things to keep in the car in winter in case you get stranded. Conversely, in Pakistan, the news tells mothers how to spot when pneumonia in children requires a hospital visit. Two hospitals in Rawalpindi report that 500 children a day are being admitted suffering from pneumonia. Apparently, ninety thousand children a year die of pneumonia in Pakistan every year. Puts things in perspective.
Donald Trump nominated the man who is the expert at running lawsuits against the EPA to run it. Naturally this threatens a lot of sacred totems, not to mention a very big trough. Protests are raging. In reply, people are speaking up in support of Pruitt.
Those who think his nomination should be opposed are confused saying that “Mr. Pruitt’s backers tout it as a virtue that he has sued the EPA. … In every instance, Mr. Pruitt has joined forces with polluting industries seeking to avoid clean up responsibilities.”
The EPA is so lost, it doesn’t know what real pollution is anymore. Opposing the EPA is what any good environmentalist would do.
The EPA is so lost, it doesn’t know what real pollution is anymore. Opposing the EPA is what any good environmentalist would do.
The religious mission against plant fertilizer in the hope of holding back the tide by half a millimeter in 2100 is noxious, damaging, dangerous in so many ways. It deprives the poor of cheap energy, good jobs, and warm houses. It hurts the environment because it makes the EPA, the US, so much less effective at solving real environmental problems. The pogrom against carbon (we are carbon life forms) is anti-science, eating away at the core tenets of the scientific method, and teaching a whole generation nonsense. The CO2 fixation is over-riding every other environmental issue because the EPA makes it so. The toxic effect the EPA has on the broader community, the economy, on science and on education makes this more important than any single environmental issue today.
The EPA has run so far off the rails that only someone who has opposed it could possibly fix it. Trump can’t defeat the madness on his own. The nomination hearing is Wednesday morning US time. And Dr Nan Hayworth is collecting messages and names in support. If you want to add your name and thoughts below in comments or email them to me, I will forward them to her. Thank you. And if you think that international names don’t count, remember that science is bigger than any one country, and if Obama can threaten the Brits on Brexit, why can’t Brits help explain what science is (and what pollution is) to Congress.
Here’s one from Professor J. Scott Armstrong:
Dear Dr. Hayworth, January 15, 2017
Following up on your correspondence with Willie Soon, I strongly agree with the policies favored by Scott Pruitt.I have spent over 50 years as a forecaster and, over the past decade, have had the pleasure of working with Willie Soon, who I view as one of the leading climate scientists in the world. Along with Kesten Green, I am a Director of the primary website dealing with forecasting methods, author ofLong-Range Forecasting, and of a handbook on forecasting methods, “Principles of Forecasting.”Our studies have produced what we claim to be the only evidence-based forecasts of long-term global mean temperatures: there is no evidence that long-term warming is occurring.I proposed a ten-year bet with Al Gore on this issue in order to increase interest in testing predictive validity. (Ten years is not sufficient time to assess long-term trends and I expected to have only a 2/3 chance of winning, given natural variability). Mr. Gore refused to take the bet, so Kesten Green has been posting what would have happened had he done so on theclimatebet.com. Year nine just ended.We have been unable to find scientific forecasts showing that that warming would be harmful. I testified before Senator Boxer’s committee on this matter with respect to polar bears. My testimony was based on this paper.We have been unable to find any scientific forecast that there are cost-effective ways to affect global temperatures, up or down.
Here is a short summary of the above studies on climate change.
Now this is climate change. If you can believe this study, wow:
“In the tropics, annual mean temperature fell from 27 to 5 degrees Celsius”
And we worry about a warming of one degree in a century.
“It became cold, I mean, really cold,” says Brugger. Global annual mean surface air temperature dropped by at least 26 degrees Celsius. The dinosaurs were used to living in a lush climate. After the asteroid’s impact, the annual average temperature was below freezing point for about 3 years. Evidently, the ice caps expanded. Even in the tropics, annual mean temperatures went from 27 degrees to mere 5 degrees. “The long-term cooling caused by the sulfate aerosols was much more important for the mass extinction than the dust that stays in the atmosphere for only a relatively short time. It was also more important than local events like the extreme heat close to the impact, wildfires or tsunamis,” says co-author Georg Feulner who leads the research team at PIK. It took the climate about 30 years to recover, the scientists found.
The real threats are not fertilizer and balmy weather, but rocks from space, and cold, cold, cold…
How the darkness and the cold killed the dinosaurs
Who knew the US government accepted loan repayments in peanuts? And what happens to the $74 million dollars worth of peanuts that come in? They could pay politicians with it…
Other waste identified by Senator Flake in Wastebook: PORKémon Go, includes a study that found girls are more likely to play with Barbie dolls than boys are. Nearly $2m was spent on holograms of dead comedians. The IRS, not so surprisingly, says the IRS doesn’t waste tax dollars. Flake points out they spend $12m on an email archiving service in 2014 that they never even installed.
If the US government spent $12 million on using the sun to model the climate instead, it would be about 0.1% of what they’ve spent on models driven by CO2 which still don’t work after 20 years of tweaking.
Public relations and advertising amounted to a total of $1.4 billion. US national Debt is nearly $20 trillion.
Press Release
Among the 50 examples of egregious federal spending uncovered in Flake’s 2017 report are a program that accepts peanuts for loan repayments, a computer that binge-watches Desperate Housewives, and a study into what happens when you put a fish on a treadmill.
Highlights from Flake’s 2017 edition of Wastebook include (click links to view related footage and other content):
The Climate Study Group is trying a new approach with an Advert in The Australian on page 7 today. Or rather, you might say this is a very old approach…:
Socrates
Nice to meet you Mr Smith. I hear you are very concerned about dangerous global warming.
Mr Smith
Yes, we are facing an alarming prospect of a global warming catastrophe.
Socrates
What gives you such concern?
Mr Smith
Emissions of CO2 from burning fossil fuels.
Socrates
How were these fossil fuels formed?
Mr Smith
Various plant forms grew, died and formed fossil fuels before and during the Carboniferous Period.
Socrates
Was there dangerous global warming prior to the Carboniferous Period?
Mr Smith
No. There’s no evidence of dangerous global warming prior to the Carboniferous period.
Socrates
So where did the carbon in fossil fuels originate?
Mr Smith
Plants absorbed CO2 from the atmosphere prior to the formation of fossil fuels.
Socrates
So the CO2 absorbed by plants is now being released from burning fossil fuels.
Mr Smith
It must be so.
Socrates
You have observed there was no dangerous global warming prior to CO2 being absorbed to form fossil
fuels, so how could the same CO2 now being released cause dangerous global warming?
Mr Smith
I find the implication of your question provocative and disturbing. You should know there is a move to bring charges against you for corrupting youth with your philosophical questions.
Socrates I am well aware that people are disturbed by my philosophical enquiries which reveal the truth with compelling logic and facts which refute long held beliefs. Our conversation has been no exception.
Mr Smith
I have to go now.
_________________________________________
…
Cue believers now telling us that the Sun has dimmed, don’t we know, therefore even though the world was warmer 7,000 years ago, and 130,000 years ago and 250,000 years ago, etc etc, on and on, for millions of years, this particular warming is “due to CO2” and millions of other warmer years were due to “something else”.
Readers will no doubt be able to think of other Socratic approaches. :- )
UPDATE:
Alarmists have caused a malaise,
In our world, by their daft climate craze,
But their angst demagogic,
Could be cured by the logic,
And wisdom of old Socrates.
David Archibald writes” From some sort of parallel universe, this is part of a speech given by the Chief of Army, as in Australia’s army.
Campbell appears to be completely duped by the weather-doctors — not the kind of gullible guy you’d put in charge of heavy machinery (and y’know, national security):
For the first time in mankind’s history our planet may become unsuitable for habitation in many of the places where large populations presently live. The Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University (ANU) asserts; changes would be irreversible on the time scale of human civilisation and would dramatically change the planet as we know it.
This is an unprecedented problem – the global population and its actions are bumping up hard against the capacity of the planet to sustain us in the present form.
He appears to have done no minutes of cross-checking, just swallowed the academics and paparazzi opinions holus. Why fight the climate? Campbell’s reasoning amounts to saying that the US is doing climate stuff (Jo notes they were then, but they won’t be soon.). It’s not too good when the head of your army hasn’t figured out the big secret that half the US voters have. (ASIO — where are you?)
Campbell tells us the Commander of the Royal Fijian Forces thinks it’s worth doing, and so do a bunch of academics (though they can’t predict rainfall, drought, floods, sea ice, humidity, clouds, or much else. — Those references here).
If Campbell was a real leader, the one our army and nation deserves, he’d pop in and ask some of the top engineers and IT-guys in the ADF for a second opinion. If the climate was such a no-brainer threat, those brains would be the first to get it, instead, two thirds (or probably more now) are skeptics. Real scientists can spot the bluff when fake scientists rabbit on about consensuses, use tricks to hide declines, and find hot-spots they never said were missing. Not only does Campbell drink that kool-aid, he believes the economic models too — citing GDP predictions for 2100.
As it happens the speech was made in September, but nobody, except a guy called Anthony Bergin, noticed for three months. Bergin lavishly praised it inThe Australian, and suggested our jets might run on eucalyptus oil. Seriously. “Scientists are close to using eucalyptus trees to develop renewable jet fuel.” Righto…
“ANU researcher Dr Carston Kulheim suggests: “If we could plant 20 million hectares of eucalyptus species worldwide, which is currently the same amount that is planted for pulp and paper, we would be able to produce enough jet fuel for five per cent of the aviation industry.””
Phillip: So I’m guessing the Chinese, Russian and Islamic milataries are just as concerned with climate change…….. well maybe not. Pure ridiculous dribble.
Brian: Just goes to prove how deeply “group think” has permeated the body politic. Memo to ruling class ….. GW/CC is a myth and its OK to be a “denier”. The proletariat now realise the green-emperor has no clothes which is just one of the reasons Trump is US President and not Hilary
Ian: Shouldn’t defence be focusing on gay marriage, domestic violence and ethical investing? Make you wonder what on earth its priorities are.
Obama declines to bomb an ISIS convoy because burning trucks will boost CO2 emissions … Australia’s defence wallahs fret about rising seas and drowning air bases … alarmist ratbaggery distorts strategy and budgets. Military effectiveness has a new enemy: the climate-scam crowd.
The third order problem I will address is that of an unstable planet. The instability I refer to is global. It is being caused by climate change associated with global warming.
I note Colonel Sapenafa Motufaga, the Commander Land Forces – Royal Fijian Military Forces, has agreed to speak to us in more depth about this serious issue in our plenary on, ‘The Indo-Pacific region in a global context’.
The Fake Conversation where Bill’s informative, polite comments are removed, but the replies are left there.
Last week Bill Johnston posted a detailed, comprehensive analysis of Sydney Observatory thermometer record here that shows that most of the warming recorded there is due to buildings and freeways. But photo’s and graphs are “denier” stuff, and The Conversation is so afraid some its readers might see those historic photos they ban links to Bill’s work and joannenova.com.au. Apparently when the Bureau of Meteorology discusses “Australia’s hottest decade” it is off topic to discuss the condition of their thermometers.
Bill Johnston was happy to defend his work in comments at The Conversation, but Blair Trewin, who wrote the post itself, was entirely absent. Cory Zanoni had to close the dangerous thread. He removed scores of comments, but left replies to Bill Johnston intact. Some “conversation”.
Some skeptics will say “don’t bother writing comments there” — but that is exactly what The Conversation editors appear to want, so don’t! It’s a fake conversation when half the views get censored. Copy your most informative, considerate comments and put them here so the world can see what The Fake Conversation is afraid of. Tax dollars were used to set up a site that appears to be non-stop advertising for the academic grants machine. A lot of the contributors are funded by tax dollars, and the site is still supported by universities which also get tax dollars. Unless the Conversation allows dissenting voices the Liberal Coalition are crazy to let it get away with being a propaganda outlet for “Big-Gov”. Let it run on private funding and donations.
Bill may have set a new record for censorship at The Conversation. He wrote to me yesterday with this (examples of the hot and banned comments are below).
Jo,
Here are their community standards. The truly wonderful thing about this particular post, is that its Author, acclaimed Bureau climate scientist Dr. Blair Trewin didn’t come near the thing. The outcome is entirely embarrassing for Trewin, the Bureau, the Minister and the politics of climate change generally. It is also embarrassing for those associated with the Technical Advisory Forum, who could not be bothered researching any data.
Homogenisation has an interesting history. While there are reasons to adjust data to account for weather station moves and other discontinuities, the way it is done assures that if suitable trends exist they are preserved in some form; if they don’t, they become implanted by the process. Unfortunately, historical records are poorly documented and researching their history like I’ve been doing is tedious work. (Try getting a research grant LOL).
Staff working in the Sydney Weather Bureau office would notice that the site moved from the northeast to the southeast corner of the cottage yard in 1949; that the Cahill Expressway opened in 1958; that the 1.8m high brick wall was built in 1972/3; later that instruments moved to a relocated single large screen (possibly around 1974); and that the large screen is replaced by a small one in 2000.
The default position with homogenisation is that if data changes are not explained by metadata (or someone forgets what happened), they are due to the climate; which as a fall-back position is absurd. Combined with opening of the Cahill Expressway, the 1949 step-change is the one the professors tell us evidences “unprecedented climate warming in the latter half of the 20th century”. The 1973, brick wall, caused accelerated warming; while moving sensitive instruments to the small screen caused increased frequency of extremes and trends in extremes. The story is absolute bollocks.
While the girls and boys over at the Conservation lap it up and in obnoxious haste slap down anyone or any evidence that challenges their fantasies; Blair Trewin is missing in action.
The real significance of undocumented changes at the Observatory site, is that although data are not used directly to estimate Australia’s warming; the homogenisation process spreads the embedded faults far and wide. Potentially, they infect ACORN data as far away as Alice Springs (via Tibooburra).
Many sites have undocumented faults that are detected statistically then carefully researched. Homogenists prefer to tell the data what changed and then invent an adjustment using other data that are not homogeneous. Homogenisation of Williamtown RAAF involves numerous datasets that are faulty; same for iconic sites such as Broome, Laverton RAAF; Alice Springs; Mount Gambier; Geraldton; Melbourne; Rockhampton; Launceston. Across Australia no data are useful for detecting unambiguous climate-related temperature trends.
The whole thing is a carefully contrived myth which should be openly investigated (and not by the CSIRO).
Cheers,
Bill
—————————————————————–
Comments The Conversation don’t want you to see
Claims are made by the Bureau, that Sydney has just experienced its hottest ever year.
There is indisputable photographic evidence available in the public domain, that the Stevenson screen was moved to a more exposed position within the enclosure in front of the cottage in 1949. This caused minimum temperature to step-up (not trend, but step).
It is unarguable that the Cahill Expressway opened in 1958. This caused warm air to wash-over the site; Tmax stepped up abruptly in 1958.
Photographs also show a brick wall was built immediately south, and within metres of the relocated screens, most probably in 1972; possibly 1973. Tmin stepped-up indicating the wall trapped heat within the enclosure, which is not dissipated by advection to the local atmosphere, or radiation to space during the night.
A Bureau publication confirms that a small screen replaced the former large one in 2000. Both Tmax and Tmin stepped-up. The small screen is more sensitive to transient heat eddies, than the large screen and the sensor is more sensitive to slight temperature changes, than thermometers.
Google Earth shows vegetation close to the site (trees etc) were removed in 2006; which is also confirmed by site metadata (Page 7 vs. P.8), causing an abrupt increase in exposure to the east; which of course warms the site. Since 2006, the site has been kept fairly clear, except that there is now a hedge along the front fence, which matches the one on the western (cottage) side of the enclosure.
With those changes NOT adjusted-for by homogenisation (which can be verified by the ACORN adjustments file), how can it be that:
Claims are made by the Bureau, that Sydney has just experienced its hottest ever year?
That is a fair question; Blair Trewin is the homogenisation expert; he should be in a position to answer.
Claims are not extraordinary. Evidence, which is in the public domain, is presented in my essay at Jo Nova’s site. (I offered to do an article here once!) I deny being a denier (whatever that is);
I am an open-minded scientist asking a reasonable question.
As you say Ben:
“ When you ask a genuine question, you’ll see people make an effort to answer it – which is one of the great positives of this site.”
These are Enercon wind turbines in Germany, Lower Saxony. Image: Philip May
This could be a watershed — if word gets out that turbine manufacturers will not even contest claims of noise damage, there could be many more claims around the world. There are rumors these cases are often settled out of court with confidentiality agreements, but who would know?
In an update to the Irish court case we discussed last month, the latest news confirms that the wind turbine manufacturer has admitted liability without contesting it. The court will be deciding damages in April. As I deduced at the time, the wind industry was using desperate wordsmithing to minimize attention on the story. The news item related to it even disappeared from the Irish Examiner. The turbine industry must be hoping no one notices this story.
NSW recorded its worst figures in at least five years for diseases caused by food poisoning and mosquito bites, as doctors warn climate change is looming as a public health emergency.
Statistics released last week show 2016 was the worst year on record for diseases including legionnaires’ disease, salmonellosis, listeriosis, E. coli and dengue fever, which flourish in warmer conditions.
–-Harriet Alexander, Sydney Morning Herald
More scary than 4000 cases of salmonella is the state of intellectual rigor among medico-unions:
The Royal Australasian College of Physicians [RACP] has released a position paper that described climate change as a “global public health emergency”.
The RACP called for a national climate and health strategy and reduced emissions of greenhouse gases.
With reasoning like that, they could make a lot more people very sick. Are they advocating we use solar panels to stop salmonella?
There has hardly been any warming in the last 20 years anyhow. And if we are doing cosmic epidemiology, so far global warming seems to come with longer lifespans, health, wealth, food, and less polio.
It’s likely that climate change will make you throw up, but it won’t be gastroenteritis. Salmonella is spread through bad food handling — by mixing up a bit of manure with dinner, say. (Wash your hands. Wash your salad. Wash. your. hands).
Hot weather not to blame for salmonella on egg farms
New research conducted by the University of Adelaide shows there is no greater risk of Salmonella contamination in the production of free range eggs in Australia due to hot summer weather, compared with other seasons.
The findings are further evidence that the hygiene around egg handling in the supply chain and in household and restaurant kitchens is critical to reducing food poisoning from eggs.
People need to wash their hands.
The big question then, do we cripple the economy to solve this one, or give out bars of soap and teach people why it matters?
How things change. This article has a straightforward tenor, asks questions of both sides of the climate debate and discusses whether skeptics might finally be given a seat at the government funded table (so to speak). It’s so blandly normal in tone it is a bit wildly rare! (Almost like real journalism?) How often do we see Judith Curry and Michael Mann in the same article as Bjorn Lomborg and Will Happer?
Most skeptics are optimistic that the Global Freeze on skeptical scientists may be finally coming to an end. But not Richard Lindzen, the carefully spoken man, with decades of experience, who lets loose…
Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT and a member of the National Academy of Sciences who has long questioned climate change orthodoxy, is skeptical that a sunnier outlook is upon us.
“I actually doubt that,” he said. Even if some of the roughly $2.5 billion in taxpayer dollars currently spent on climate research across 13 different federal agencies now shifts to scientists less invested in the calamitous narrative, Lindzen believes groupthink has so corrupted the field that funding should be sharply curtailed rather than redirected.
“They should probably cut the funding by 80 to 90 percent until the field cleans up,” he said. “Climate science has been set back two generations, and they have destroyed its intellectual foundations.”
For most of this year 2016 was expected to break the 1998 record (which was the hottest year in the UAH satellite data set). But a sudden drop in Dec pulled the yearly average down so that statistically they are indistinguishable.
From one big El Nino year to another big El Nino, we’ve put out one third of all human emissions that have ever been put out since hunter gatherers wandered the steppes, but it appears to have made very little difference.
Does it mean much? Not a heck of a lot. The pause was already long enough to show the models don’t work, and whether or not 2016 was another record is neither here nor there, except as a PR point.
The superficial reason is that I want to do other things…
The deeper reasons have to do with my growing disenchantment with universities, the academic field of climate science and scientists.
Dr Curry elaborates:
A deciding factor was that I no longer know what to say to students and postdocs regarding how to navigate the CRAZINESS in the field of climate science. Research and other professional activities are professionally rewarded only if they are channeled in certain directions approved by a politicized academic establishment — funding, ease of getting your papers published, getting hired in prestigious positions, appointments to prestigious committees and boards, professional recognition, etc.
How young scientists are to navigate all this is beyond me, and it often becomes a battle of scientific integrity versus career suicide (I have worked through these issues with a number of skeptical young scientists).
By “career suicide”, Dr Curry means that, if you dissent from the Big Climate orthodoxy, thug enforcers like Dr Michael E Mann will take the hockey stick to you until there’s nothing left…
The taxpayer-funded DeltaStream project in Pembrokeshire in Wales, was designed to use the flow of the ocean with a 39ft turbine installed on the seabed
But the system developed a fault and stopped generating electricity weeks after
Tidal Energy Ltd has now gone into administration and is seeking a buyer
The iconic Sydney Observatory is Australia’s longest running weather station. But everything around the site has changed. Bill Johnston has spent months researching, photographing, and hunting through historic files to document those changes. He wasn’t paid for this work, but what he found was that the BOM has missed that the area around the thermometers has changed dramatically over the last century, so much so, that he claims it’s scientifically meaningless to try to construct climate trends from this data. Aerial photographs show exposure of the instruments changed in 1950, when Stevenson screens were moved, and after a brick wall was built metres from the screen in about 1972. It is suspicious that the changes are undocumented in Bureau reports, especially given they are responsible for much of the “unprecedented warming” in Sydney’s temperature data. The BOM may counter that this site is not used to calculate warming trends across Australia, but as Bill points out, Sydney Observatory is used to homogenize other sites that are. So site changes and the urban heat island effect infects many country sites, and the traffic in Sydney “warms the nation”. — Jo
While reporters are at the beach watching sea levels rise; Prime Ministers are having drinkies with mates in their harbourside mansions, while organizing group-hugs over the NBN for those at Hazelwood and Portland destined to loose their jobs in the new-year; and professors are off on jaunts and junkets; hardly any one is left looking-out for fake climate-news.
Sydneysiders are told incessantly they are experiencing a scorcher: “sizzling end to city’s hottest year on record” says Fairfax’s Peter Hannam; backed-up by Fairfax’s own Weatherzone meteorologist Joel Pippard who pipped-up that “without a doubt” the late December heat means Sydney would notch the city’s hottest year in records going back to 1858 … and already on the ABC, the Bureau reported it will be Australia’s fifth warmest year since 1910 ….
The trouble is, its bunkum – the climate-club is making it up as they go along!
Sydney Observatory data are affected by four influential site changes:
Before they were moved to a large Stevenson screen in 1908, thermometers were housed in a large louvered shed from 1876, which is re-built in its former position in front of the Observatory. (Before 1876 they were held on an open Glaisher stand). Except in Hannam’s and Pippard’s imagination, there is no comparison between temperature measured in 2016 and conditions under which they were measured in 1858.
Thermometers moved to a large Stevenson screen at the present site in 1917, which was located in the northeast corner of the cottage yard. Many changes happened between 1938 and 1948 and photographs show the screens were moved to the opposite (south-eastern) side of the yard between 1947 and December 1949. The change in exposure caused Tmin to increase abruptly.
Tmax is consistent from 1908 until the Cahill Expressway (which encircles the site) opened in 1958. A trend from 1958 to 1999 is due to traffic increases. Tidal traffic-flow (4 lanes southbound in the morning and reversal of that in the evening) was implemented from the early 1950s; one-way (southbound) tolling is introduced in 1970; and the Western Distributor (first stage) opened in 1974. The screen is less than a footy-punt from the middle of one of Australia’s busiest roads and around the time Tmax occurs (between 2 and 4pm), heat from traffic washes over the site adding to the climate signal.
A 2.4m brick wall constructed south of the cottage yard probably in 1972 didn’t affect Tmax, but due to heat entrapment at night, Tmin stepped-up in 1973. Both Tmin and Tmax stepped-up when the large 0.23 m3 Stevenson screen is replaced by a 0.06 m3 small one on 20th January 2000.
It is astonishing that the Bureau and all the professors, failed to correct for the move in 1949; and construction of the wall, probably in 1972. Together with opening of the Cahill Expressway, and replacing the large screen with a small one, changes modified the environment and created trends that have nothing to do with the climate.
Although Observatory data are used to create fake-news about Sydney’s climate, they are not used to calculate Australia’s warming. Nevertheless, despite that data are faulty, they homogenise ACORN sites at Cobar, Walgett, Gunnedah, Williamtown RAAF, Bathurst, Richmond RAAF, Nowra RAN and Moruya Heads Pilot Station. Those sites homogenise others: Moruya Heads Pilot Station is used for Sydney Observatory, Bathurst, Canberra and Dubbo; Williamtown RAAF for Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie, Scone, Bathurst, Sydney Observatory and Moruya Heads Pilot Station; Canberra for Dubbo, Nowra, Moruya Heads Pilot Station and Bathurst; Gunnedah, for Moree, Inverell, Dubbo and Bourke; Dubbo is used for Tibooburra and so-on. Few ACORN datasets are independent and it’s easy to see how faults in Sydney data get propagated across the network by the homogenisation process. Homogenised ACORN data with their embedded faults are used to calculate Australia’s warming.
The details are below.
____________________________
Fake temperature records at Sydney Observatory
For the last two decades Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology has engaged in a fake-news campaign to convince Australians that average temperatures are rising; extreme temperatures are more frequent, and that trends in extremes are increasing. Tracking back through standalone reports, low and mid -level scientific papers, published for example in the Australian Meteorological Magazine and the various publications of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (AMOS) (the AMOS Bulletin and the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Journal (now the Journal of Southern Hemisphere Earth Systems Science)); as well as top-shelf journals; a handful of people, some at the University of NSW, Melbourne University, ANU and Monash, are stand out weather-fakers. The campaign is championed by the Bureau; whose many reports and opportunistic press releases are designed to stir alarm.
Much of what is claimed about the weather is based on inadequate analysis, data-picking and purposeful data manipulation in the name of homogenisation. Sydney Observatory is used here as an example.
Since Melbourne’s La Trobe Street site closed in January 2015, Sydney Observatory (66062) is Australia’s longest same-site weather station. Its temperature series is one of the longest in the southern hemisphere and data have been analysed, used or reported-on in publications by Australian and overseas authors; commentators; bloggists; climate-alarmist professors; The Conversation; Weatherzone and the press generally. According to the ACORN catalogue (Australian Climate Observations Reference Network – Surface Air Temperature (ACORN-SAT)):
Sydney (066062)
The current site is located on Observatory Hill, in a small, grassed enclosure (about 10 by 10 m) about 100 m south of the main Sydney Observatory complex. There is a freeway immediately east of the site but it is in a deep cutting at this point.
History
Originally the site was in the main Observatory grounds. It moved about 100 m south to its current location in 1917. The earlier site was a more exposed location on a hilltop and had lower maximum and higher minimum temperatures than the current location. An automatic weather station was installed at the current site on 8 August 1990. The area is heavily built-up and has been since at least the late 19th century. An analysis of minimum temperature trends in the ACORNSAT data showed no evidence of an abnormal warming trend relative to non-urban sites in the region, indicating that any urban influence on the data was already fully developed by the time ACORN-SAT begins in 1910.
Little of the ACORN narrative is true.
At the previous observatory site, thermometers moved from a Glaisher stand to an airy thermometer house beside a rose garden in front of the west-wing of the Observatory in 1865 (Figure 1). Nighttime exposure changed and minimum temperature (Tmin) stepped-up. The garden is gone; however, the structure, which fell into decay is re-built in the same place. Although the thermometer house may have been used until 1916, a large standard Stevenson screen was operating before 1911 (Figure 1). An up-step in maximum temperature (Tmax) in 1908 is consistent with Tmax being measured in the screen from 1907.
That move from the thermometer house to the enclosed screen resulted in a Tmax up-step of 0.64oC, which was not due to “urban influence” or the climate. In contrast to Tmax, average Tmin remained the same after instruments were rehoused (i.e. nighttime exposure was not significantly affected). The move to another standard screen 100 m south at the cottage in 1917 had no impact on temperature. However, data are transiently disturbed from 1921 to about 1930 during construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which opened in 1932; and possibly building of the Weather Bureau office, which opened in 1922 (Figure 2).
The Cahill Expressway ‘circular road’ was laid out in 1938 and by 1940 construction is well advanced (Figure 2). As part of that work, most of the Fort Street School, then south of the cottage was demolished and replaced by a new school built north of the cottage, which opened in 1942. (Photographs in the City of Sydney Archives show the laneway being sealed in about 1940 and the Cahill Expressway under construction.)
Figure 1. The meteorological lawn said to be in 1864 but possibly later (a); and (b) with a Stevenson screen in 1911. Transpiration by vegetation in (a) is absent in (b), which may affect measurements. (Photos courtesy NSW State Library.)
Figure 2. The building 100 m south of the Observatory occupied by the Weather Bureau in 1922 viewed from the north on 25th June 1932 (a). The upper level appears lived-in. The historic messenger’s cottage is on the left; another house is east of the cottage and behind (south) is the Fort Street School. The open foreground is grassy parkland and the path still leads to Kent Street via the Agar Steps. (http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-157852963 (accessed 24th April 2016; from a damaged glass-plate negative.) The building is surrounded by hoarding during construction of the Cahill Expressway (b). The photo is taken across where the new school opened in 1942 (City of Sydney Archives).
Geoff Derrick writes: The John Christie talk is one of the best I have seen for a long time, keeping things simple but very very effective in the message. It should be compulsory viewing while still in holiday mode to take 1 hour off and watch the main event. It is just simply excellent, logical observation at work here.
Victoria built a desal plant in 2012 that was immediately mothballed because the rains came back and the dams that weren’t supposed to fill, got full. The total cost will be something like $18 – $24 billion.
Last year the Victorian government decided to order some water for fun anyway (or it might have been a PR trick so that people couldn’t mock them for paying for a Desal plant that was “never” used). But on Dec 11, the plant started and immediately tripped a circuit breaker (see also The Herald Sun). Stuff got damaged, and three weeks later no one is exactly sure why that happened, so it still isn’t running.
Victorian Dams are over 70% full, the state has just suffered major flooding. The Water Minister Lisa Neville promised on Friday that the 50 gigalitres of water (about a tenth of Sydney Harbour’s capacity) that is contractually due to be delivered by June 30 will still arrive on time.” — The Age.
I bet Victorians are relieved to know that the water they don’t need won’t be late.
The costs of the climate panic are still coming:
The order of 50 billion litres will see yearly household water bills rise by $12.
“Daniel Andrews sat around the cabinet table when the decision was made to waste $24 billion on a desal plant we do not need and now does not work,” said Shadow Minister for Water Peter Walsh.
Apparently a good scientist is not supposed to answer all of the questions from congress. In late 2014,Dr Noelle Metting was the only scientist DOE provided to help congress figure out what mattered, but DOE management had already told Dr Noelle Metting not to answer queries outside of a certain zone they marked out. Alas, she was too helpful to congress though, and got the sack within a month. According to the report, emails within DOE reveal that her sacking was retaliatory, and the reason for her “removal from federal service was her failure to confine the discussion at the briefing to pre-approved talking points.”
Message to scientists — obey the bureaucrat masters, not the elected ones.
By censoring information to congress, the DOE was doing a form of lobbying. Her testimony related to low dose radiation and risks of exposure during terrorist attacks. DOE allegedly wanted to kill off this line of research so they could do more climate research instead. Just out to save the world but kill democracy.
The report additionally discovered efforts by the Obama administration to censor the information given to Congress, interfering with the body’s ability to perform critical oversight work.
“Instead of providing the type of scientific information needed by Congress to legislate effectively, senior departmental officials sought to hide information, lobbied against legislation, and retaliated against a scientist for being forthcoming,” Smith said in a statement. “In this staff report based on lengthy record before the committee, much has been revealed about how senior level agency officials under the Obama administration retaliated against a scientist who did not follow the party line.”
During an October 2014 briefing with senior DoE staff on the matter, lawmakers heard testimony from Dr. Noelle Metting, the radiation research program’s manager.
Less than a month later, lawmakers discovered that Obama administration officials had “removed Dr. Metting from federal service for allegedly providing too much information in response to questions posed by” Congress during the briefing, the report states.
Sometimes it’s the politicians doing the scientific strangling. But this time, it’s the bureaucrats with the choke hold.
UPDATE: Peter C comments that this may be driven more by anti-nuclear desires than by pro-carbon-fears. The low dose radiation studies suggest that low levels of radiation are not so bad, or may even be beneficial which undermines the Anti-nuc excuse that “there is no safe level of radiation”.
In molecular biology we learnt that our nuclear DNA (which is most of our genes), there is a sophisticated repair system which, of course, uses the back up copy of our DNA that we all have to detect errors and repair damage. Our mitochondrial DNA doesn’t have this: that’s the remnant loop of ancient bacterial DNA which only has a few genes, but is copied 1-2000 times in each of our cells. But most of what we call our DNA has a good repair system that can fix single strand errors. It’s the double strand mistakes that cause irreparable damage.
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The top five years in the 38 year satellite record
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