Recent Posts
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Sunday
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Saturday
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If only we’d built those offshore wind turbines, eaten more cricket-burgers, we could have stopped the floods, right?
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Friday
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If UK had never tried renewables, each person would be £3,000 richer
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Thursday
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New AI data centers will use the same electricity as 2 million homes
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Wednesday
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No one knows what caused the Blackout but Spain is using more gas and nukes and less solar…
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Tuesday
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Monday
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Sunday
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Half of Australia doesn’t want to pay a single cent on Net Zero targets
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Saturday
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Secret comms devices, radios, hidden in solar inverters from China. Would you like a Blackout with that?
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Friday
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LSE junk study says if men didn’t eat so much red meat we’d have nicer weather
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Thursday
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Now they tell us? Labor says new aggressive Net Zero policy they hid from voters “is popular”
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Wednesday
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British politics in turmoil after Reform’s wins — Greens Deputy even attacks Net Zero from the left
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Tuesday
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Monday
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Sunday
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Children of 2020 face unprecedented exposure to Extreme Climate Nonsense…
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Saturday
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60% are skeptics: Only 13% of UK voters say Net Zero is more important than cost of living
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Friday
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Climate change is causing South Africa to rise and sink at the same time
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Thursday
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Why is the renewables industry allowed to sponsor political advertising in schools and call it “education”?
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Wednesday
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In trying to be a small target, the Liberals accidentally disappeared
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Tuesday
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Monday
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The best thing about the Australian election was that Nigel Farage’s party won 30% in the UK
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Sunday
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Saturday — Election Day Australia
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Vote for freedom…
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Friday
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Bombshell: Sir Tony Blair says climate policies are unworkable, irrational, and everyone is afraid of being called a denier
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Thursday
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Blackout in Spain to cost 2-4 billion Euro, likely due to solar plants — blind and biased ABC says “cause is a mystery”
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Wednesday
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Days after Spain reaches 100% renewable, mass blackouts hit, due to mysterious “rare atmospheric phenomenon”
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Tuesday
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Help needed: Site under DDoS attack from hundreds of thousands of unique IPs this week — especially China and the USA
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Monday: Election Day Canada
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When the Labor Party talk about “The Science” the Opposition can easily outflank and outgun them with bigger, better science
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Saturday
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UK Gov spends £50 m to dim sun to create slightly less beach weather
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Friday
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Seems some fossils are cheaper than others, and the Big Oil guys are not happy that Asia is buying so much Big Coal. Apparently quite a few Big Oil companies have become predominantly more Big Gas companies, but they are struggling against cheaper coal and lower demand.
It’s just a coincidence that four big oil gas companies are also headed by guys who want to save the Earth (with gas):
June 5th, 2015: Shell, Total, BP Plc and other oil companies said … that they’re banding together to promote gas as more climate friendly than coal.
Here’s the head of French oil supermajor Total this week describing how coal is the competition:
Mr Pouyanne, who last year declared coal was “the enemy” of the gas industry, told the LNG18 conference in Perth that LNG demand was suffering just as a raft of new projects were coming on.
“We face a situation where we have more supply than demand, which has grown slower than expected because of competition between coal and gas,” he said.
“In Asian countries there is a shift from gas to coal because, the coal price has collapsed as well.”
Here’s another gas company head lamenting that the Paris agreement is not helping Big Oil enough, I mean, helping the planet:
Origin Energy managing director Grant King has joined the head of French oil supermajor Total in criticising nations that signed up to the Paris climate treaty but are increasing their use of coal at the expense of gas.
“The thing that is a big puzzle is that the world entered into a treaty to limit emissions to 2 degrees, yet many of the countries in that treaty are increasing coal consumption and it doesn’t square,” Mr King told The Australian on the sidelines of the LNG18 conference in Perth.
“Something’s got to give, you just can’t keep chasing lower emissions and adding higher intensity fuels into the mix.”
Big Oil-Gas CEO’s care about the climate, so they are worried when people are not switching to gas instead of coal, hence the need for the government to jump in and hobble the competition:
“We call for a carbon pricing mechanism because we think, and we observe today, that nothing is happening because of the differential in pricing between coal and gas,” he [Mr Pouyanne] said.
The Big-Oil guys will be more convincing when they offer to sell their gas as cheap as coal — “for the planet”.
Read more about the story in The Australian : Origin’s Grant King joins Total opposition to climate hypocrites
UPDATE: DavidS says I thought Big Oil was the funding source for sceptics. The reality is that big oil is the funding source for big Oil.
9.2 out of 10 based on 57 ratings
I call it Met Bureau Bingo. Ultimately there are so many hair-splitting quixotic variants of weather stats that a dedicated team can always find a record. Here are some other trends that didn’t make the media.
We all heard about the record heat in the Arctic, but we didn’t hear about the unusual cold in Antarctica where running twelve month averages are equal to the lowest recorded since satellites began in 1979.
So carbon dioxide causes a hot Arctic and a cold Antarctic, and both at the same time.* Where’s the global warming?
Ken Stewart looked at the UAH 6.0 version of all the major regions. The graph below is a 12 month running average of the Southern Polar area. The last low “dotpoint” covers the whole last year to March. Pretty cold.
 Error bars are 0.2C There’s a bit more error with satellites at the poles, so I won’t crack the second decimal and declare it a “record”. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe records are irrelevant worthless distractions. What’s 40 years out of 4 billion? Nitpicking.
Reader Phill suggests that the cold at the pole may be connect to the El Nino, see his interesting thoughts below. Scott of the Antarctic died in an El Nino year, caught in the coldest March. Curious.
Hot March in Australia, not hot year
We heard about how warm autumn nights made the hottest March in Australia, but we didn’t hear about the most ordinary year that the last 12 months was. Slightly cooler than average, if you care, but who would?
We’ve had 21 years of no warming downunder. We have to stop that. So fire up the windmills and put another $Billion on the barbie.
 … Some Pauses have stopped some have not, but it really doesn’t matter
Keep reading →
8.9 out of 10 based on 84 ratings
A new MIT report suggests a better way to use coal in power-stations and potentially cut CO2 emissions by 50%. The process involves gasifying coal and producing electricity in one process at the same site. The coal only has to be heated once, and the electricity comes from a fuel cell, not a fire — it’s a chemical reaction across a membrane. The output is potentially much more efficient, and makes no ash. The researchers argue we could get twice as much electricity for each ton of coal burned. Currently coal fired power pulls out 30% of the chemical energy in coal, but coupling these two processes might increase it to 55-60%.
This report is based on simulations, but the separate processes are already well developed and running. The next step would be a fully functioning pilot plant to put the two together and test the idea. If there was the political will it could be done in a few years. There probably won’t be.
The Greens of course will hate the idea because the Evil-Factor of coal is near 100%.
In the eco-collectivist-world, cutting “carbon” is important, but apparently not as important as propping up a dependent lobby group for big government (that’s the entire renewables industry) or crippling independent corporations which have power and money outside big-government control. There is also the reputational damage of admitting that windmills and solar were a fantasy that has wasted billions of our children’s money. On top of that, there’s the potential death of a Really Useful Scare. All up, the future of Life on Earth is at stake, but that probably won’t be enough for the Greens to lobby for this approach to get tested.
8.6 out of 10 based on 82 ratings
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8.2 out of 10 based on 26 ratings
 … Sigmar Gabriel, the German Economy Minister, has announced they’d like to amend the Renewable Energies Act (EEG) in the next few months or so. The plan is for the total amount of renewable energy on the grid to be capped at 40 – 45% by 2025. It was at 33% at the end of 2015 but was still climbing rapidly. Check out the eyewatering transition being planned now:
A study by consultants ERA on behalf of the Green Party’s parliamentary group concludes that under these provisions the development of wind energy will collapse fairly soon: A target of 45 percent would mean that only 1500 megawatts could be installed annually after 2018, according to the study. That’s less than half as the average of wind energy installed in the past five days.
Boom, meet Bust.
This would be such a turnaround, that not only would new wind turbines not be added, there would be less of them:
A 40% cap for wind energy completely stop the construction of new wind farms by of 2019, according to the ERA [consultants] study. Overall, this would reduce onshore wind power by almost 6000 megawatts compared to the end of 2015 – which would mean a massive slump in wind power generation by 18 terawatt hours.
The usual understated response from the Greens:
“The domestic market for many manufacturers collapses completely,” says Julia Verlinden, spokesperson for Energy Policy in the Green Party’s parliamentary group. “With their plan, the federal government is killing the wind companies.”
Is this “Peak Wind” or will the plans get watered down?
GWPF has the translation of the German news story.
Keep reading →
8.8 out of 10 based on 80 ratings
 … Here on the ball of magma called Earth, there’s a hot plume of rocks under Iceland that stretches right across under Greenland. Those hot rocks are melting the ice from below in a band 1,200 km long and 400 km wide.[1]
I don’t think solar panels are going to stop Greenland melting.
The main part of the plume has been progressing eastward over the last 120 million years, right under Greenland and now lies under Iceland.
Will the media take a million years to catch on?
Presumably, being world class journalists, from now on all ABC/BBC/CBC stories will not mention melting Greenland ice-sheets without also noting that geothermal heat may be causing it instead of your long hot showers.
But a similar study published in Nature Geoscience 3 years ago was the forerunner to this one with similar conclusions and the mainstream media don’t seem to have noticed yet.[2] No mention of magma, tectonics and hot rocks here: ABC — Antarctica’s melting ice alone could lift sea levels one metre by 2100, March 31st, 2016. Or here: ABC — Global warming melts last stable edge of Greenland’s Zachariae ice stream, March 17th, 2014. Or on the BBC – Ice sheet losses double, 2014. Or here — ABC: Antarctic ice shelf collapse “very likely”. October 2015.
There’s a hot blob under West Antarctica too
Likewise, soon the public broadcasters will let listeners know that West Antarctica lies over the southern edge of the Pacific Rim, and “might” have some geothermal heat from below too because there is giant blob of superheated rock there too. [3]
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8.8 out of 10 based on 115 ratings
About a third of the sunlight that hits Earth gets reflected back out to space mainly by clouds, ice or bare earth. A small change in this can make a big difference to the global energy balance. And the energy balance is kinda “everything” in the climate debate. So this new paper by Palle et al really ought to attract quite a bit of interest. But for lots of reasons real data was never going to provide much joy for most climate scientists.
The thing is, climate models predict that CO2 will cause warming, which will in turn cause ice to melt and the albedo to get smaller, which will cause more warming… it’s a positive feedback. So if albedo was shrinking during the last 2 decades, the Crisis Team could say the models were right about albedo, but then, golly, they were even more wrong about that warming that didn’t happen. On the other hand, if albedo was growing, they could add it to the list of excuses for The Pause and write headlines like: Global clouds increase — hiding the effect of CO2! But then skeptics could point out that if more CO2 causes more reflective clouds, the albedo may act as negative feedback — disaster averted.
But back to that data. One of the ways to measure albedo, can you believe, is to track Earthshine — the light that the Earth shines on the dark side of the moon. Obviously Earthshine is the lucky lotto-winning-light that reflects off Earth and hits the Moon, and then reflects back again to Earth again.
A new study by Palle puts together 16 years of data on this and finds there are big changes from year to year but overall there is no trend, which rather fits with The Pause.
Somehow, strangely, even though Life on Earth depends on calculating our Energy Balance, the golden river of climate gravy is not running through the land of Earthshine research. The researchers shifted from a meagre one telescope up to two in 2006. There’s a big gap in the global data in Figure 2 when that happened (see below). But even two telescopes are barely adequate. Palle et al estimate that with eight automatic robotic stations they could achieve 2 – 3 times the precision they have now. But while we can find funds to subsidize 225,000 wind towers, we can’t afford to do the proper basic research that might tell us whether we needed those 225,000 wind towers. Crony-renewables anyone?
If there is a crisis in our global energy balance, a lot of people don’t seem to be taking it seriously.
 Earthshine
Abstract
The Earth’s albedo is a fundamental climate parameter for understanding the radiation budget of the atmosphere. It has been traditionally measured from space platforms, but also from the ground for sixteen years from Big Bear Solar Observatory by observing the Moon. The photometric ratio of the dark (earthshine) to the bright (moonshine) sides of the Moon is used to determine nightly anomalies in the terrestrial albedo, with the aim is of quantifying sustained monthly, annual and/or decadal changes. We find two modest decadal scale cycles in the albedo, but with no significant net change over the sixteen years of accumulated data. Within the evolution of the two cycles, we find periods of sustained annual increases, followed by comparable sustained decreases in albedo. The evolution of the earthshine albedo is in remarkable agreement with that from the CERES instruments, although each method measures different slices of the Earth’s Bond albedo.
REFERENCES
Palle, E., et al. (2016), Earth’s albedo variations 1998-2014 as measured from ground-based earthshine observations, Geophys. Res. Lett., 43, doi:10.1002/2016GL068025.
Taking shots of the Moon? Bob King, of Sky and Telescope explains the finer details: To take your own photo like this, you need to get up just before dawn on April 6th (probably not possible now) to see the last tiny sliver of the moon. April 7th is a new moon. April 8th we’ll see a sliver of the waxing moon just after the sun sets. The post there counts the hours after the new moon occurs… Moongiant tracks the phases.
9.1 out of 10 based on 65 ratings
Kudos to Myles Allen. He might think CO2 is a problem, but at least he is being honest and slightly practical about dealing with it. That’s a big step up from those who urge us to panic about CO2, but then choose the most useless and expensive options to reduce it. Allen effectively gives Abbott’s Direct Action plan a big tick. Finally (indirectly) Tony Abbott gets some credit for out-greening the EU, and offering a more effective and cheaper way to achieve what the Greens said they want. Like I said, Abbott got reductions for $14 a ton, the Greens should have loved him.
Anyway, Myles Allen’s done a study, published in Nature Climate Change, suggesting that there is no point in a few western nations driving in their economies into the dust to reduce their emissions when the rest of the world isn’t. So here’s one of the IPCC team repeating an argument that skeptics have said so many times: if we make ourselves a third world nation, we won’t be able to afford to look after the environment. Our children will have to burn the environment for breakfast.
In the end though Allen thinks the answer is to remove the CO2 from the sky. So we are still talking of stuffing a perfectly good fertilizer down a deep hole. As far as carbon capture at power plants goes, remember you can just throw away 40% of the electricity the plant makes… “like the GFC of Engineering”.
Despite the small sign of common sense, the cynic in me wonders if this is just Big-Renewables versus Big-Sequestration: a bun fight over the spoils.
But it’s a good sign. The litany is breaking up…
Wind farms blowing us off course, scientist says
Spending billions on new nuclear power stations and offshore wind farms could make it harder to prevent dangerous climate change, a study has claimed.
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8.4 out of 10 based on 77 ratings
The Reef took 6000 years to form. Suddenly it is bleached white, but the media are not putting it on page one. Oh the gnashing of teeth!
Peter Hartcher Sydney Morning Herald –– Tony Abbotts Harmful Legacy
‘…the news of its most severe bleaching didn’t even rate in the top five news topics.
‘Why? “It’s only a hypothesis, but I think there’s been a peaking of interest or concern” in matters related to climate change [says iSentia’s Patrick Baume.]
Peak Climate? Yes, please…
“It’s seen as something a bit from the past, as if getting rid of the carbon tax meant we’d got rid of climate change. It’s a funny one.”
Or maybe people are bored of climate ghost stories? Maybe people realized climate change is always here.
The reef survived the Holocene Horrible Warming Period. (Formerly called The Holocene Optimum 😉 ). Things were even hotter then and seas around Queensland were 1 – 2 whole meters higher. Apocalyptic stuff, yet somehow the reef made it without a single carbon trading scheme.
 The last 8000 years of sea levels off Queensland Source: S Lewis et al Quaternary Science Reviews 2012.
Now tide gauges show seas are rising at 1mm a year. (See this sea level study too — 1mm). There’s only 1000 years to go to get back to the sea levels the Great Barrier Reef already knew for thousands of years.
There are no ice cores available in Queensland, but there are in Greenland and we can see the weather did a lot of changing. These are the same years the Great Barrier Reef formed and thrived in its current incarnation. Current temps might be similar to the Medieval spike. Not unprecedented.
 This is what the temperature in Greenland was doing while the Great Barrier Reef formed. Who gets the credit for this outbreak of climate-calmness?
This is partly an achievement of Tony Abbott and the climate change sceptics and deniers who were among his most fervent supporters.
We all say thank you :- )
Australia had a bipartisan consensus on climate change under John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull. The consensus was that climate change was real and that pricing carbon through an emissions trading scheme was the best way for Australia to respond.
Bollocks. “Australia” never had a consensus. The academic-eco-elite had a consensus:
Abbott shattered the consensus. He rode to power a conservative reaction against climate change action. He used it to destroy Turnbull’s leadership and then Rudd’s and, finally, Julia Gillard’s.
Exactly — the voters choose the man who offered them what they wanted — quote, Hartcher: “a reaction against climate change action.”
Together with his footsoldiers in politics and the media, he succeeded in muddying the public’s understanding of climate change in the process. The conservative reaction intimidated some scientists, news editors and commentators.
Yes the ABC is quaking in their boots, interviewing skeptics every day, week, once a year. And the commentators bravely arguing for the exact same position as the small oppressed groups called the UN, World Bank, and EU are so intimidated they stopped calling people petty names — denier… oh wait.
Which part of the public’s understanding got muddier, exactly?
REFERENCE:
Lewis, S.E., et al., Post-glacial sea-level changes around the Australian margin: a review, Quaternary Science
Reviews (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2012.09.006 [abstract] (paywalled).
9 out of 10 based on 91 ratings
No matter which way we slice and dice it, China is The-CO2-Player that matters. India is forecast for a larger percentage-wise increase, but it’s starting from a small base. By 2030 even after doubling its output, it will still be barely a quarter of China’s total mega-ton production. The Congo and Indonesia are among countries forecast to ramp up production of CO2 massively, yet both of them are but a spec. The hard numbers show that if CO2 actually mattered, and the eco-greens really cared about it, they be talking about “The China Problem”.
Australia is irrelevant, except in some symbolic sacrificial way. The 28% massive reduction, at great cost, will amount to nothing globally (assuming it can even be achieved). Though Tasmania may win the global race for the fastest transition from first to third world. (North Korea here we come).
In the end, the real drivers of global CO2 may or may not be things like forest and peat fires, ocean currents, phytoplankton in any case. Won’t it be a great day when we figure exactly where all that CO2 is coming from and going to?
— Jo
COP21 Pledges for greenhouse gas emissions
Guest Post by Tom Quirk
189 countries submitted pledges to the COP21 meeting in Paris at the end of 2015. These have been sorted and summarised in a very useful website Carbon Brief[1]. The following analysis is based on the top 12 countries for greenhouse gas emissions. This covers 72% of the world total but ignores forest and peat fires. The pledges cover broadly defined greenhouse gas emissions. For instance Brazil has land use emissions that are estimated at 4 times the sum of their other contributions.
The total greenhouse gas emissions for 2012 were 10.85 Gt C in CO2-eqivalent while total CO2 emissions were estimated to be 9.68 Gt C in CO2. (Source Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center CDIAC[2])
The pledges have been standardized to be from 2012 to 2030 as countries have chosen various starting points to indicate their plans. The most important and most uncertain pledge is the target for China. The 75% increase indicated below is a “best estimate”.
 Evil countries planning to give cheap electricity to their citizens are marked in red. …
 Global emissions are about China and some also-rans not worth mentioning.
For greenhouse gas emissions the pledges would see an increase from 7.83 Gt C to 9.59 Gt C for the 72% fraction analysed. This is a 23% increase. It is clear that China is both the major contributor to the increase and the source of the greatest uncertainty.
USA performance for CO2
Keep reading →
8.8 out of 10 based on 66 ratings
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7.4 out of 10 based on 23 ratings
It’s another month of BOM Bingo. The ABC and BOM are trumpeting a “hottest” ever headline yet again, and Warwick Hughes is onto them already.
Conveniently the ABC forgets to mention that March Maximum Temps have been hotter before many times and with a pattern that has nothing to do with CO2. How many in the ABC audience would know that?
March temperatures sets record as hottest ever, Bureau of Meteorology says
“You could be forgiven for not noticing the end of summer — March was a hot one.” says Sara Phillips. But actually, if you are human, you could be forgiven for thinking this was just another hot March like so many before. For SE Australia where most humans live, the hottest March, and wildly so, was in 1940. Across the whole of Australia these kinds of maximum temperatures in March have been occurring for decades and 1986 was much much hotter. See the BOM graph below.
Hands up who can spot the horrid effect of CO2 in this graph?
Stick with the logic. Must be CO2 that caused the cold spike in 2011 (and 1967, 1942 and 1913). This is witchcraft.
You could be forgiven for thinking the aim of the ABC is not to inform Australians about the weather that matters, but to score headlines involving the word “hottest”. When the coldest maximum March temperatures were set in March 2011, where was the ABC?
Do humans even notice “mean” temperatures?
Too tricky for words, the weather bureau was talking about hottest ever mean and minimum temperatures. Mean temperatures are almost never mentioned (not on the six o’clock news and weather) because we want to know the coldest and hottest temperatures each day, not the average of them. Nor are we too concerned with minimums in a middling month. It’s not about frosts or heat stroke.
In March the minimums really did hit a record. Effectively the Bureau of Meteorology (with a little help from the ABC) are marketing warm autumn nights as a form of extreme weather.
 … The mysterious hot spot that is Walungurru (Kintore) Airport
 Location of Giles and Walungurru stations. Warwick Hughes has spotted an oddity when comparing Giles to Walungurru which are 220km apart. Note the normal “pale yellow” minimums recorded at Giles near the border of WA-SA-NT. Giles is a specialist meteorology station and has been there since 1956. It is the only staffed weather station within an area of about 2,500,000 square kilometres (970,000 sq mi).
Contrast that with the big red blob on the border of WA and the NT at Walungurru “Airport”, which has only been recording since 2002 — admire the sparse graph of total monthly data there which shows how small this dataset is. Warwick Hughes notes that for most of its life that spot has recorded strange nightly hot temperatures which don’t match the thousands of square kilometers all around — see his post on the persistent night time error anomaly map. This is a vast desert plain. It shouldn’t have a climate all of its own here showing 3C warmer at night for entire whole years than the thermometers “nearby”.
How much of Australia’s “average” temperature depends on this one likely flawed station?
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8.2 out of 10 based on 64 ratings
April 1. A new anthropology paper looks at the Academic Ape and the way it guards its territory and resources, not surprisingly rejecting unpaid contributions from outside academia as a threat to their perceived status and income. The hypothesis predicts that the more qualified and erudite the outsider is, the more vicious the response will be, especially if the highly qualified outsider gives their labor freely.
The Academic Ape: Instinctive aggression and boundary enforcing behaviour in academia
Published on Amazon in Kindle version.
Two areas of territorial aggression are offered as examples — archaeology and climate (you couldn’t see that coming). This new paper looks at how the academic boundary enforcement compares to things like union disputes, and patterns of ape behaviour (See Table 1). An interesting paper.
The climate debate is so hostile people don’t even speak English — “denier”
There is no accurate definition of “denier” in English in a climate science debate, yet professors use it, and importantly other professors in virtually every other field don’t seem to mind. A survey of 5,000 skeptics shows almost all agree with most mainstream statements used in the climate debate — i.e. that CO2 is increasing, that it is a greenhouse gas, and the climate is warming.
 Click to enlarge “Denier” is obviously just a way to badger people into submitting to an idea that can’t be justified with rational discussion. It’s common use shows how far from scientific the academic world of “climate science” is.
Vitriolic attacks are like “union demarcation disputes”:
… issues such as climate, where outsiders have suffered vitriolic attacks from academics (e.g. Lewandowsky, Gleick, Mann, etc.) and where these attacks have been widely supported from academia, may have very little to do with the actual subject material or the relative state of knowledge or experience of the parties. Instead it is suggested that they can be likened to union “demarcation disputes” between the “academic union” on the one side and the outsider who is treated as “blacklegs” or “scabs”.
There are three conditions that generate aggressive boundary disputes:
This threat response appears to be heightened when three conditions exists. First against altruistic outsiders who give their labour freely and so not only threaten the academics perceived territory, but also undermine the economic value of academia. Second, outsiders who have a high level of qualification and wider experience than academia are seen as more of a potential threat. And thirdly, when outsiders formulate their contributions in the style, language and format suggestive of academic work, this in itself signals an incursion into the academic territory.
Thus, whilst academics often reject external work as being of poor quality, perversely, far from eliciting the expected intellectual response expected, work of the highest calibre, by those most qualified, and freely given, is most likely to be treated as a direct threat and stimulate the most hostile response from the “academic ape”.
Gatekeeping in peer review publishing is like scent marking to demark territory:
The system of peer review appears to be a form of gate-keeping mechanism. Thus suggestions that outsiders should have their work “peer reviewed” are disingenuous, particularly as in areas like climate peer review has not been the supposed hallmark of quality it is claimed. Instead it is suggested peer review should be seen as similar to behaviour like “scent marking”: used to demark the boundary, claim ownership of territory and attempt to establish authority.
The hypocrisy of qualifications
While academic insiders without any qualifications relevant to climate science are encouraged to speak out, and even to launch irrational personal attacks, outsiders who are more qualified than these same people are attacked as not-qualified-enough. The only explanation for this must be sociological in nature argue the authors (ahem, or economic thinks Jo):
Ad Hominem Attacks
One of the main areas of study resulting in the findings presented in this paper was carried out in an attempt to understand the appalling behaviour that led to the frequent use by academics of term “denier” which from this quote was clearly intended to portray sceptics as Holocaust camp detainees
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8.8 out of 10 based on 76 ratings
This is your brain on government funding (pace Mark Steyn). The government of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) gave $18k to a theatre group to put on a play called “Kill the Deniers”. Now, lucky us, we can read the e-book. Because the climate debate really needs more guns, hostages, brute force, and threats right?
Well, it does if you don’t have any evidence.
 “Kill the Deniers” — All the wit and wisdom of government funded “arts”. Can’t persuade the voters? Shoot their representatives. The Kill the Deniers e-book is coming:
…writer and theatre-maker whose work sits at the intersection of art and science, [David] Finnigan said Kill Climate Deniers grew out of discussions with Aspen Island Theatre Company’s Julian Hobba.
‘We got really interested in talking about the climate debate, and we were wondering why it was that in Australia the debate had stalled so badly; what is it about this country? And then we moved on to asking what would it take to shift the debate forward again – what would it actually take to generate real political change?’ said Finnigan.
Why did the debate stall? They could have done some research and asked skeptics. Instead…
The answer they came up with (‘though not one that I feel comfortable or very positive about,’ he stressed) was guns.
Subsequently, Finnigan wrote an action movie-style drama in which Parliament House is invaded by gun-toting eco-terrorists. With the Government held hostage, and facing the threat of imminent execution unless she ends global warming immediately, the embattled Environment Minister has no choice but to defend her ideals – one bullet at a time.
Because terrorism is fun, right?
‘It’s a really fun, really action-packed, really over the top hostage drama, and action film genre piece; and hanging from that are some really important questions about the climate debate,’ Finnigan said.
And the play inspires important questions
Questions like, why are Arty types so dysfunctional that they miss the obvious solution to solve their angst, and why are taxpayers forced to pay to amplify that dysfunction?
Here’s the lesson they missed in kindergarten. When the grown ups are discussing a problem, and a point of view is presented in full through TV, documentaries, drama, news, and two-week global junkets with forty thousand people, and yet despite all that more than half the grown ups are still not persuaded — perhaps the message is stupid? Perhaps windfarms don’t slow cyclones, and solar panels won’t stop droughts?
Heretical thoughts for the tribal brain…
Here’s another heretical thought: perhaps emotional artistes are being played by big-money? Let’s explore that idea. What if Big Money was using the fools-for-tools tactic — the smart players are making cashola from carbon trading and renewables, respectively $176b and $300b industries. The Green vested interests are now a $1.5 trillion industrial complex. The clever self-serving players can push predictable fear-buttons in people who are not-good-with-big-numbers, who respond by feeling real angst, frustration and dismay. Those panicking pawns then convert that into shallow expressions of anger and fantasies of control through brute force. When will the government fund this expose?
The fact that their combined intellectual wit thinks “guns” might solve a problem in a science debate, says a lot about their combined intellectual wit.
Aren’t the Arts supposed to ask hard questions?
Instead of fantasizing about killing the people who aren’t persuaded, maybe the Arts could ask hard questions, or even easy ones? It’s called introspection — either the message is not explained well enough, or the message is wrong. Here, instead of higher order creativity and inquiry, the government is funding groups who amplify base instincts of primitive unthinking anger and frustration. Some people might call it “art”, but others know it’s a flashed up sooky of a three-year-old.
Where are the real artists speaking up about this kind of fantasy terrorist trash? If the Arts community can’t condemn government funding for unresearched, low base, violent wet dreams about science policy, it’s time to kill off all government funding for Arts. Let ’em earn their money in the free market, and best of luck to Finnigan selling a hissy-spit as high art.
In my last post on “Kill the Deniers”, I satirized the satirist and mock-admired David Finningan’s uber-deep satirical approach — where the play is not “art”, his whole life is. Readers might prefer to imagine Finnigan as the skeptic playing a sick-small-minded artiste, who stays in character for years while he uses government funds to mock the entire Arts community and all government funded art. His statements admiring Chenchen terrorists really take the cake… (laugh til you cry). So if you prefer that approach, check out Kill the Climate Deniers — taxes fund new “living satire” where writer plays paranoid believer admiring terrorists.
Let’s face it, if I had to satirize the utter indulgence and intellectual vacuum that is modern art, I couldn’t do it better than Finnigan.
8.9 out of 10 based on 81 ratings
 Everything is a gender equity issue. Who knew the climate was sexist?
“…women have good reason to be worried, given that climate change will affect women around the world the most. Climate change is often framed as an ecological disaster, less frequently as a key crisis for global gender equality.”
In the current climate men have shorter lifespans and higher suicide rates. The very caring women at “Women’s Agenda” don’t seem to care about that. Nevermind.
Why do women care more? They’re more obedient, less willing to take risks
Even the writers and editors of a “liberated” emancipated women’s magazine reveal more than they realize about their own belief. They’ve been told last year was the hottest year on record, and parts of the Great Barrier Reef are bleached. These things would happen no matter what caused climate change, but Annika Blau is an obedient woman and she believes that our power stations and cars cause the bleaching. Indeed she is so well trained, she is even convinced her position is “logical” and says so, without providing any logical reason that events which probably occurred hundreds of times before are proof of anything. (It’s been hotter for thousands of years of the Holocene, and the Great Barrier Reef survived. Wild climate swings are the norm, not evidence your car controls the climate.)
Women may well be more concerned about man-made climate-change. (But on a different study I suspect men might be more concerned about our civilization, our freedom and our quality of life, but who has asked that?).
“Do women care more than men about climate change?
According to the Garnaut Review of Australian attitudes to climate change, numerous studies show that women are more concerned about climate change than men. This is mirrored in the US.
Woman are more convinced than men that climate change is real, already happening, and caused by human activity.”
It’s not a sign that they “care more than men”. It’s a sign that they are less willing to take risks and speak against the current predominant meme. Who wants to be called a “denier”? As I’ve been pointing out for years, the reason there are not more women on the skeptical sensible side of the climate debate is because the belief is maintained with social pressure, not logic and reason. Where is the open debate and polite discussion that would allow women to be more involved in the decisions? Manners everyone — they were invented for a reason.
Climate care is coerced via namecalling and bullying
No wonder women are less willing to speak out. In an aggressive cultural climate, where universities train people to toss insults, those who don’t “believe” are exiled, sacked, abandoned, vilified, kicked out of institutes and risk their career. Sometimes their children are targeted too. Artistes raise funds to do fantasy videos of blowing up skeptical school children. Bullying is a fact of life in Western civilization and it works — even on female surgeons, surely the top of the pecking order. Friends and sometimes even family ostracize those who hold the less obedient opinion. What woman wouldn’t want to be compared to ISIS?
Contrast that with the saints who convince us to waste billions of dollars on Desal plants and windmills. Hello “Australian of the Year”. How about a Nobel Peace Prize?
Here’s a big clue:
“… women report less confidence in their understanding of climate science than men.”
Is that a good thing, or a bad thing? Women’s agenda doesn’t say and there is no suggestion that we should we help women to understand this issue, or get more confident. Presumably it’s better if they stay obediently in the dark?
Climate change is just basic physics, remember, so it’s no wonder that women “get it” faster than men. (‘Cos women are much more likely to be in a physics based career? O’yeah.)
Skeptics on the other hand are slow to “get” the physics because they are more likely to be engineers and geologists. Oh. See this survey of the most outspoken skeptics online — highly qualified in the hard sciences. But what skeptics are less likely to have, are degrees in psychology and gender equity studies. Check out the qualifications of readers at joannenova.com.au — that’s 400 people who can do maths.
Belief in the Climate Scare is not about science, it’s about politics and gender
Women are obedient:
Women are also more likely to support action on climate change, and adopt carbon-friendly behaviours themselves.
In the Garnaut Review, gender and political beliefs were the only two factors found to significantly influence attitudes (data on age, location and education level was inconclusive).
This is so lame. Even Women’s Agenda and the researchers say that women care more because they are taught too. Where the heck are the “feminists”. What an incredible put-down of women’s ability to think (and men too):
So why do women care more about climate change than men?
We can’t say for certain why women are more worried about climate change than men. But the researchers suggest it could be because women are socialised to be more empathetic and caring. In contrast, “boys learn that masculinity emphasises detachment, control and mastery”, which could be why men are more sceptical about climate change, more confident in their own opinions, and less alarmed.
As I said in 2009: Why don’t women want to face global bullies? I can’t imagine…
Most of the “blog war” is a testosterone driven point-scoring game. It’s not about figuring out whether the planet will warm, it’s about winning points in a mental rugby match where there are few gentlemen. Women prefer to achieve their aims through other mechanisms than a stand-up fight.
If the women writing “Women’s Agenda” had been socialized to understand logic and reason, they’d be fighting to make this debate more inclusive, to get women involved in the decision making, and to help women be more confident and informed on important issues worth billions of dollars.
8.3 out of 10 based on 67 ratings
Looking back to Feb 7th, check that vision:
Because guns should be carbon neutral right?
When we kill people we still care about the footprint.
[Washington Post]
The Pentagon is ordering the top brass to incorporate climate change into virtually everything they do, from testing weapons to training troops to war planning to joint exercises with allies.
A new directive’s theme: The U.S. Armed Forces must show “resilience” and beat back the threat based on “actionable science.”
Yes, previously the Armed Forces only had to be resilient across a 90 degree range. Now it could be 91.
The answer is a new layer of bureaucrats (it’s always a new layer of bureaucrats):
It says the military will not be able to maintain effectiveness unless the directive is followed. It orders the establishment of a new layer of bureaucracy — a wide array of “climate change boards, councils and working groups” to infuse climate change into “programs, plans and policies.
Perhaps bureaucrats make a better layer of insulation.
Though not all military types were enthused:
Dakota Wood, a retired Marine Corps officer and U.S. Central Command planner, said the Pentagon is introducing climate change, right down to military tactics level.
Is this taking “climate change” just a tad too far…
“The climate does change over great periods of time, typically measured in millennia, though sometimes in centuries,” he said. “But the document mentions accounting for such down to the level of changes in ‘tactics, techniques and procedures’ as if reviewing how a squad conducts a patrol should be accorded the same level of importance and attention as determining whether the naval base at Norfolk, Virginia, might have to be relocated as sea levels rise over the next 100 years.”
Should recon patrols: a/ use the shortest path, b/ buy local food or c/ wait for public transport?
Send in the electric tanks I say.
PS: Commenters please remember we have *free speech* in Australia as long as you only say things that everyone will like. if you think you might possibly offend anyone of a different race, or the same race, or no fixed race, give yourself the old [SNIP 18C] and save the mods the trouble. Thanks for being understanding.
h/t David
8.9 out of 10 based on 71 ratings
 What is Force x? The Sun could influence Earths climate through magnetic fields, solar particle flows, or spectral changes. | Image: ESA
What’s going on with the Sun?
In the last post in the climate research series we described David’s major finding that changes in total sunlight lead Earth’s temperature by one sunspot cycle. But what’s going on with the Sun — what is the mechanism? In this post David lays out four puzzling clues about solar influence on our global temperature, then puts forward a hypothesis. What force (or forces) are required to resolve all these odd points?
To recap: Both his Fourier analysis and many independent papers suggest there is a delay between total solar irradiation (TSI) and global temperature. David reasoned that the delay is a true delay, not just a smoothing effect while increased heat propagates around the planet. Because the timing is so tied to solar cycles, the trigger for the delay must start on the Sun, not on the Earth. This is not just a case of our oceans slowly absorbing the extra energy from the Sun — and there simply isn’t enough, in any case. Something quite different is going on. Something on the sun changes, in sync with the variation in sunlight, but the corresponding changes following about 11 years later and change the way the Earth responds to incoming energy. It modulates the Earth’s albedo, controlling the Earth’s temperature like a tap controls the flow of water through a pipe.
For the moment we’ll call this mysterious phenomenon Force X (think X-rays, or Planet X). Candidates include solar magnetic fluxes, solar wind changes, and shifts in the solar spectrum (during each solar cycle, the energy shifts from more UV to more infra red and back). Something going on in the sun changes things like clouds, aerosols or jet streams on planet Earth, and through these secondary changes the Sun apparently controls a lot of the variation in temperatures on Earth.
The clues — the four phenomena that emerged from Evans’ work:
1. The Notch. In the short run, extra sunlight does no warming. Over the last century about 10% of the warming on Earth is because the direct heating effect of the Sun shining a little more brightly. However, while there are small peaks and falls in sunlight as part of the eleven year sunspot cycle, mysteriously there are no corresponding rises and falls in global temperature. This is the “notch effect”, where the extra energy from the Sun doesn’t produce a spike of warmth (even a small one, which would be detectable easily with Fourier maths). So some effect (but what!?) is occurring at the same time as a peak in sunlight, which changes the way the Earth responds to the extra light.
2. Changes in albedo (presumably clouds) are more important than the direct heating effect of changes in sunlight. David looked at the data on albedo and the amount of sunlight arriving on Earth, and calculated that the effect of changes in externally driven albedo (EDA) on global temperature is at least two times greater than the direct heating effect of changes in TSI, and possibly much more. Clouds blanket 60% of the Earth, they are the gatekeepers of sunlight into our climate system. Yet no major model includes the influence of EDA.
3. The delay, of one sunspot cycle. There is a delay of one sunspot cycle (about 11 years, or one half of a full solar cycle of about 22 years) between a change in TSI and a change in temperature on Earth. Something other than the direct heating effect of TSI is driving that — there must also be an indirect effect of TSI, that is delayed. The delay originates on the Sun, not on Earth, because it is synced to the solar cycle. What is it about the Sun that changes one sunspot cycle after the sunlight (or TSI) peaks and falls?
4. In the long run extra sunlight does too much warming. For periods longer than 20 years, the Sun controls temperatures on Earth in a fairly predictable, linear way (this is the flat section of that Fig 2 in post 21). The low pass filter shows that over any long time period, and in every dataset, the “warming effect” is much the same. David calculated that the effect of a change in sunlight carries 14 times the influence of the actual change in energy itself. So bizarrely, the effect of the suns light is amplified somehow — which is consistent with albedo modulation (and really, it is hard to see what else it could be).
All these clues tell us that something much bigger and more important than mere fluctuations in the Joules of sunlight is controlling our climate. Solar TSI is an indicator, but not the agent. So figure that something coming off the Sun that isn’t sunlight is causing Earth to warm and cool, quite possibly through controlling clouds. But, under a single-agent hypothesis, whatever it is also stops Earth warming in the short period that sunlight peaks each cycle. Strangely the thing that seems to amplify the effect of sunlight is also delayed by a sunspot cycle, but in the long run a more active sun means a warmer Earth.
In this post David considers whether all four of the unexplained climate phenomenon can be wrapped into one hypothesis, one force, called “force X” for now. If there are moments when you read this single hypothesis and wonder if this is not an easy or ideal fit, rest assured, in the next post in this series he splits Force X into two separate processes, replacing the Force X hypothesis with the Force ND hypothesis. Two forces fit better, but are more complicated — Occam’s razor and all that. That’s up soon. — Jo
__________________________________________
23. The Force-X Hypothesis
Dr David Evans, 31 March 2016, Project home, Intro, Previous, Next.
This post pieces together numerous clues about strong influences on surface warming into a working hypothesis about a single strong warming influence, called “force X”.
Discussion
We have now identified four “strong” manifestations of one or more climate influences not included in conventional climate models, where “strong” means to have at least as much effect on surface temperature as the direct heating effect of changes in total solar irradiance (TSI):
- Externally driven albedo (EDA) is causing albedo modulation. Post 10.
- The notch implies a countervailing influence during TSI peaks. Post 21.
- The empirical transfer function implies an indirect solar sensitivity (ISS). Post 21.
- The delay implies an influence that lags TSI by ~11 years. Post 22.
The EDA and notch are new pieces of the puzzle; the ISS and delay have long been known but not necessarily connected. This theory is presumably original in combining all four.
It is well known that variations in direct heating by TSI are too small to explain global warming: the 11-year-smoothed TSI (at 1 AU) at rose ~0.7 W m−2 from 1900 to 2000, but that only caused ~0.08 [0.05, 0.25] °C (Eq. (1) of post 21) of the observed 0.8 °C of observed surface warming, or ~10%.
How many independent strong influences can there be? AR5, Table TS.6, lists only greenhouse gases, aerosols, and albedo changes due to land-use change as long-term strong influences, and volcanoes can be strong but are transitory; yet the four manifestations listed above are none of these.
The simplest explanation is that the four items above are not manifestations of four separate and previously unknown influences, but of one. Here we will be guided by Occam’s razor.
Keep reading →
8.8 out of 10 based on 74 ratings
Wishing a Happy Easter to everyone.
Jo
8.6 out of 10 based on 26 ratings
Click to enlarge
We can always rely on Peter Hannam of the Sydney Morning Herald to accidentally advertise the unscientific stars of the Climate Church.
“Spike in global temperature fuels climate change fears”
It used to be that science was symmetrical — the laws of physics worked every day. You know, thou shalt not create nor destroy energy, it’s one of those unarguable things. But UNSW has a new “special” kind of science where the global temperature can pause for years and billions of quadrillions of joules of energy can disappear and who cares? In politically correct science this is noise. But one hot month, caused by an El Nino and strap yourself in, glue on the Armageddon-helmet. Panic-now, Panic-later, Fear and Hellfire. The Mystical Sign has cometh!
Prof Rahmstorf seems a bit confused about what’s “noise” and what’s “signal”:
“It’s important to take this hot spike as a reminder that this is a really urgent problem” said Professor Rahmstorf, who until last week was also a visiting professorial fellow at the University of NSW. “We are running out of time to avoid a 2-degree world.”
Try and imagine him saying this:
“It’s important to take this cold spike as a reminder that this is a really not an urgent problem” said Professor Rahmstorf, who until last week was also a visiting professorial fellow at the University of NSW. “We have lots of time to avoid a 2-degree world.”
Does the Prof’s reasoning work every month or just on “special” ones? Looks like the new “special” science to me.
And here is the Yale grad, and UNSW Prof Stephen Sherwood (the man who changed color scales to make “zero” look red-hot).
Officially he’s a Climate Prof, but this sounds like a Climate-Prophesy.
He has the special gift, a personal crystal ball:
Slowdown is over
Stephen Sherwood, an atmospheric scientist at UNSW-based ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, said the recent surge in warming indicates the slowdown in surface temperature increases of the past 10-15 years is over.
So sayth the man who “predicted” one hot month in two decades and finally got lucky? Now, despite the models being wrong for 18 years, in a flicker they are “right”. Three years from now if the pause still exists will he give up his job and pay back the salary?
“We knew that was never going to last,” Professor Sherwood said, referring to what had been dubbed a “warming hiatus”. “We’re back on track to where the models were predicting.”
So climate models got one month right out of 18 years? Err, “Congrats”.
My prediction is that if the world cools by 2023, Sherwood and Rahmsdorf will still not have the honesty to admit they were wrong.
Despite facing “an emergency in slow motion,” political leaders have largely failed to take major steps to start cutting emissions, he [Sherwood] said. “We’re not even fighting the battle, so of course we’re losing”
This is an emergency in slow motion, but Sherwood is a case study. Our top universities are employing UnScientists and calling them Professors. They break the most baby basic rules of logic and only people who are free of the university-system and other vested interests, can point out the bleeding obvious. What kind of scientist doesn’t understand signal from noise?
So called “journalists” who are supposed to spot this sort of failure are trained by the same universities to be blinded by the starring glow of a title that meant something 30 years ago. No wonder no one wants to pay for the poor reasoning of the Fairfax SMH, they get this sort of fallacy from the ABC for “Free”.
The government is strangling science.
____________________
Australian abbreviations:
ABC — Australian Broadcasting Corp. (Publicly funded like BBC, CBC.)
ARC – Australian Research Council (Hands out the grants.)
SMH – Sydney Morning Herald (owned by Fairfax)
USyd – University of Sydney, NSW, Aust.
UNSW – University of NSW, Australia.
UWA – University of Western Australia.
Image: adapted from wikimedia Daderot
9 out of 10 based on 91 ratings
Welcome to the cult of climate control where it’s responsible to spend $10 billion of Taxpayer dollars to change the weather with windfarms and such, but it’s irresponsible to spend $3.3 million to check if that harms anyone.
I hear that in houses kilometers away from a wind tower, the water in a glass can ripple, along with the water in the toilet bowl. Obviously since humans have no water molecules it couldn’t possibly …
Is it news that this research will finally be done? Not according to the ABC where the headline is about how much money is being wasted.
Millions in funding for research into wind farm illness criticized
IMOGEN BRENNAN: Sheep farmer Donald Thomas has lived near Waubra in Victoria for more than 50 years.
Since wind turbines were erected nearby about seven years ago, he says he and his family have had headaches, pressure in their ears and many sleepless nights.
DONALD THOMAS: It’s extremely frustrating. But the thing is, what the point they’re missing is the fact that yes, it is affecting us and it’s extremely unpleasant and so many of my neighbours have actually had to leave. It’s destroyed the community as we knew it.
IMOGEN BRENNAN: The University of Sydney’s Emeritus Professor Simon Chapman regularly reviews research for international papers about wind farms and public health issues.
IMOGEN BRENNAN: Professor Chapman says the new research funding is irresponsible.
Here comes the ad hom:
SIMON CHAPMAN: There are people who are anxious and worried about all manner of extremely low or non-existent risks and agencies like the NHMRC don’t quarantine money for that. I mean they don’t put money aside for people who believe that UFOs are landing people and are going to infect us. I mean these sorts of issues have their adherence as well, but the NHMRC does of course not quarantine money for that.
It’s that kind of reasoning that gets you a position as a professor at Sydney Uni these days.
SIMON CHAPMAN: There are something like 53 wind farms around Australia, and one of my research papers looked at the history of health and noise complaints about those wind farms. A minority of wind farms have received any complaints at all.
So because no one has spent much irresponsible money looking at this, they haven’t found much, and if some wind farms are OK, then all wind farms are.
Remember human life depends on installing inefficient bird killing fans because we have to keep the climate as constant as it has never been.
Where is the real research?
This field is so under-researched that a tiny study of a few households by Steven Cooper was the first to suggest that some people recorded symptoms when the wind towers were on in situations where they could not know if the towers were operating. Previous studies had not looked at narrow band infrasound. He found the more power a wind tower produced the higher the external dB(A), and that when studied with this better resolution there was no natural background noise with this type of pattern. For more information see the preliminary findings on wind turbine noise.
As I said then, there are more than 225,000 wind turbines operating around the world. So the real question is why has it taken so long to do an eight week study on six people in three houses looking at the effects of very low frequency ultrasound?
INFO: The NHMRC press release on funding for research into wind farms.
h/t Pat
9.5 out of 10 based on 80 ratings
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