Camouflage illusions in the matrix: same mysterious temperature, same day, year after year

Wait til you see what Lance Pidgeon has found. He was looking at the BOM website temperature archive maps of Australia for early last century (using AWAP data). He was wondering how the Bureau of Meteorology could possibly create maps this detailed for specific days that long ago. He was especially curious about the remote, vast areas where there were no thermometers, yet there were wiggly jiggly temperature lines on the map, shaded as if they had meaning. I’ve heard that more people have visited the South pole, than have stood at the point in central Australia where the three large western and central states meet.

Then he noticed something positively strange — April 14th in 1915 and one year later in 1916 looked almost identical, as did the same day in 1917. The more he looked, the weirder things got. He plodded, year after year, all the way from 1911 to 1917, then through Jan, Feb, March, and so on. Worse, he tells me he could keep going right through to 1956 without seeing much change (though there are interesting exceptions). After that, temperatures of the area start to vary from year to year, like the “weather” we’d expect if we had multiple thermometers in the site with the black square, which we still don’t have. Even in the modern era there are only two sites.

It is not just “April 14ths” each year that are suspiciously similar, it’s pretty much all days of the same month. In this blockbuster graph below, he looks at one spot in central Australia, about the size of Tasmania (which is 65,000 km²), and tracks the temperature profile of that same area, on the same day, year after year. The BOM tells us they have good temperature records. They tell us the AWAP analyses are based on “in situ” surface observations, and they make much about AWAP trends being “unadjusted“. Yet here in an AWAP Map, presumably derived from the same data as those “unadjusted trends” there’s an area with no thermometers before 1940 (when Warburton opened) and we see detailed temperature lines that are identical year after year.

Do AWAP maps and AWAP data matter?

AWAP maps are used in press releases and in the news. The detailed wiggles send a message to the world that “we have very accurate data”. But when the BOM tells us we set an “area averaged” record across the whole of Australia since 1910, they don’t mention that it’s compared to “calculations” of estimated wiggles over hundreds of thousands of kilometers where there are barely any roads, let alone thermometers. Nor do they mention that suspiciously, magically, in the early part of the AWAP record the temperatures in remote central Australia appear to be the same year after year — or at least they are in the maps*.

Significantly, the BOM use trendlines from the AWAP data as justification that their all-homogenized ACORN data is virtually the same as the “unadjusted” data. It’s their excuse for why their massive adjustments in the ACORN set look neutral (when other analysis of ACORN shows the adjustments that warm the trend are much more common). The AWAP maps are created from this data too (but obviously the maps themselves aren’t “raw” because they must have an area weighting algorithm run over the data, plus elevations, plus who knows what else?). The question then is what is the state of the AWAP “unadjusted” data? The maps generated from it suggest quality control is awful, weekly data disagrees with daily data, and the program used to do area-weighting and to generate the maps is not producing results that look credible. How “unadjusted” are the trendlines that are called “unadjusted”?

Below Lance Pidgeon has graphed the squares that fit in the black box in central Australia (shown in the map below this) from Jan 14th each year, then Feb 14th, then March 14th… you get the picture. Astonishing. Thank citizen science for telling you what the BOM doesn’t mention.

Australian temperatures, central Australia, AWAP, 20th Century, Bureau of Meteorology

Year after year on the same day of the year, the temperature patterns are identical?

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Guest Post by Lance Pidgeon

Building the past — BoM style

To produce an area averaged temperature for Australia a fine matrix of squares on a map can be used. Just add the values in the squares and divide by the total after correcting for latitude. Anomalies and trends can be produced over time. Simple right?

The BoM “Australian Water Availability Project” (AWAP) maps have a fine lat-long grid over many years of daily data. But in parts of Australia thermometer sites are hundreds of kilometers apart, especially in the first half of last century. To make a complete picture gaps need to be filled — but with what exactly? Between thermometers MUST be derived values. Does the fill come from raw data, estimates and future averages or a desired outcome? Is the gridded data that was used to generate this map called “raw” data by the BOM?

In the map below, we’ll take a close look at the area marked by the black square. Horizontal lines drawn from the same island in W.A. shows two mapping methods.

Bureau of Meteorology, Grid line 1, map, Australia

…

Pasted squares in the graph pictures have been chosen to show a problem that would effect the whole map to some degree. Tasmania is about the same size as Ireland, Switzerland or the state of West Virginia in the USA.

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New Science 3: The Conventional Basic Climate Model — In Full

Read the post to see it properly.

A feast. A feast! For those who want the meat, the math and the diagrams (don’t miss the diagrams). As far as we know, this is the first time the architecture of the basic climate model has been laid out in one place on the Net. This is the most math heavy post this series, but it has to be done, and properly. This is where the 1.2 °C direct effect of doubling CO2 gets amplified to 2.5 °C with fairly basic physics. If the equations are not your forte, look at the “the Establishment Case” below the equations to get some idea why establishment scientists find it mind-bendingly hard to imagine how climate sensitivity could possibly be much different.

For commenters who know there are problems with this model (don’t we all), one of the points of doing this is to get through to the establishment leaders — to speak their language instead of having separate conversations. Of course, for some minds it will not matter what skeptical scientists say, but for other, key people, it will. We would expect seeing the flaws laid out so clearly will undercut the implacable confidence of leaders, though they may not say so.

Again, this ties for Most Uncontroversial Post on this blog. Everything here, the IPCC would agree with (except maybe the last sentence).

Do admire the diagram –Figure 2. It’s no accident it is similar to an electrical circuit diagram. Modeling and feedbacks have been tested to the nth by thousands of electrical engineers around the world building things we use every day. Thinking of the climate model this way is a useful technique to figure out where it goes wrong.

In a sense this is where silicon chip wisdom starts to scrutinize the climate maze.

— Jo

3. The Conventional Basic Climate Model — In Full

Dr David Evans, 24 September 2015, David Evans’ Basic Climate Models Home, Intro, Previous, Next, Nomenclature.

Here is the conventional basic climate model, in full. It builds on the previous post in the series, which explained how the model worked in the case of no feedbacks and only a CO2 input. This post uses the same terminology, notation, and ideas, without necessarily explaining them again. This is “heaviest” post in the series.

Readers who don’t want to see details of the mathematical modeling might want to skip straight to the diagram and the calculation of ECS at the end — a general understanding of the previous post and of the model diagram below is sufficient to make sense of the ensuing posts in this series.

The Set-Up: Multiple Influences and Multiple Feedbacks

Consider the hypothetical situation where only the only things that can change are:

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Rent-seekers reveal awful truth: Abbott wanted to investigate BOM data, Hunt opposed “due diligence”

Imagine the crime of trying to audit the BOM?

Last year, Graham Lloyd wrote in The Australian about how the BOM had made whopping two degree adjustments to data which turned cooling trends to warming trends and instead of improving the data, it created discontinuities. The BOM’s eventual explanation lamely exclaimed that the stations “might” have moved. (And they might not, too. Who knows, but remember this is what 95% certainty looks like.) Lloyd wrote about how historical records of extreme heat at Bourke had effectively been thrown in the trash. Who cares about historical records?

In response to the embarrassment and revealing questions, Tony Abbott wanted an investigation. But Greg Hunt, and The Dept of Environment opposed the investigation and opposed doing “due diligence”. What are they afraid of? Instead, Hunt helped the BOM set up a one-day-wonder investigation with hand-picked statisticians that wasted another nine months before admitting that the BOM methods would never be publicly available or able to be replicated. If it can’t be replicated, it isn’t science.

The BOM’s defense is always that their mystery method is considered “best practice” by other agencies around the world — who share the same incentives to exaggerate warming, and who also use unscientific and undisclosed (though different) adjustments.

It’s clear Greg Hunt doesn’t want good environmental data. Nor does the ABC, which is already talking about how they hope to get money from the Turnbull government.

4 Sept: Guardian: Daniel Hurst:

Abbott considered investigation into ‘exaggerated’ Bureau of Meteorology temperature data
Documents show former PM was briefed on setting up a taskforce into whether the Bureau of Meteorology exaggerated records – as claimed in the Australian

But the environment minister, Greg Hunt, pushed for the then prime minister to drop the idea.

The documents, obtained by the ABC under freedom of information laws, show the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) prepared a brief for Abbott in September 2014 noting that recent articles published by the Australian had “accused [the bureau] of altering its temperature data records to exaggerate estimates of global warming”.

The brief said the bureau’s climate records were “recognised internationally as among the best in the world” and used “a scientific approach that has been peer-reviewed”. “Nevertheless, the public need confidence information on Australia’s, and the world’s, climate is reliable and based on the best available science,” the then secretary of PM&C, Ian Watt, wrote…

PM&C subsequently prepared a new brief for Abbott suggesting he agree to amending the terms of reference for the taskforce so that it would merely provide “coordination and advice” on “quality assured climate and emissions data for Australia”. The brief said Bishop had “agreed to the removal of reference” to the bureau…

ABC’s Jake Sturmer reports on Greg Hunt:

One Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet bureaucrat described a Department of Environment official as being “on a campaign” to get the references to BoM removed from the taskforce’s responsibilities.

Further documents appear to show Mr Hunt convinced senior cabinet members to remove any references of “due diligence” or “quality assurance”.

Sturmer doesn’t seem to think that actively avoiding due diligence was important enough to warrant getting opinions from people who did want due diligence. Nor does he notice that the one-day forum was never going to look for evidence that the BOM adjustments were unjustified. Like most ABC journalists, he gullibly accepts that a lack of evidence from a non-investigation, is worth something, and he doesn’t contact skeptical scientists to get a different view:

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New Science 2: The Conventional Basic Climate Model — the engine of “certain” warming

This is the most uncontroversial post ever put on this blog — it’s everything the IPCC would agree with and the key to their unshakable confidence.

This post is for the independent thinkers, the brains that want to know exactly where the famous, core, 1.2 °C figure comes from. That’s the number of degrees that a doubling of CO2 would bring, and it’s a figure that underlies decades of research and the figure that the big models are built around. Here, as far as we know, is the simplest, accurate reference to that reasoning and their maths. We have always assumed the 1.2 °C figure is correct, and focused on questioning the feedbacks that are assumed to drive that base figure up to 3°C (or 6°C or molten-Venus-here-we-come!)
Radiation balance of Earth's climate, diagram, IPCC, NOAA model.

We are not criticizing the estimate here, but this is so key and central to the whole climate-clean-green industry, and the models, it has to be laid out. This is the source of “implacable confidence” among the leading thinkers of establishment climate science. It is long past time that skeptical scientists put these details — warts and all — out in public. Dr David Evans is laying out the foundation for a complete and systematic analysis. The heaviest stuff is here and in the next post. The exciting stuff starts after that. For those who want to follow the unfolding science pay attention to the acronym table (and diagrams) below. The notations like ASR and OLR are the language we need to speak.

For those who are not number-heads, stay tuned, I will be spacing other news and stories among the serious science posts, often doing more than one post a day. It’s going to be very busy as I feed in the cutting edge research to the usual mix of politics, citizen science, quirky news and satire. — Jo

2. The Conventional Basic Climate Model — Simple

Dr David Evans, 23 September 2015, David Evans’ Basic Climate Models Home, Intro, Next, Nomenclature.

The conventional basic climate model is moderately complicated when all the bits and pieces are included, so we are going to present it over two blog posts. In this post we’ll just consider the simplest case, direct warming, where the only input is the change in carbon dioxide level, and there are no feedbacks.

Introduction

For those not accustomed to mathematical modelling, this post might seem complicated. To others it may appear rudimentary and insubstantial—“surely there is more to it”. It is ruthlessly logical, squeezing as much information as possible from clues and relationships, but be aware as you read through it of the vast number of climate factors that are ignored.

I’ve tried to make it easier to follow by supplementing many equations with explanations, aiming for a broader audience than just STEM people. With enough diligence and patience (yes, it does take time to think about it), most readers will be able to at least get the general idea.

In any case, it might satisfy your curiosity about how models are made and why some people believe in the carbon dioxide theory despite all the contrary evidence.

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New Science 1: Pushing the edge of climate research. Back to the new-old way of doing science

For those of you who are die-hard puzzle solvers here to spar about cutting edge research: good news, here’s where we begin the long awaited update to Dr David Evans’ climate research. There are a few surprises, sacred cows, we did not expect we would need to challenge, like the idea of “forcings”.

Government science is stuck in a rut, strangled – trying to capture the creative genius of discovery and force it through a bureaucratic formula, like it can work to a deadline or be judged by the number of papers, or pages, or citations, or by b-grade officials. Blogs are new, but this form of independent scientific research, done for the thrill of discovery, outside institutions and funded by philanthropists, is the way science was mainly done before WWII.

For the first time we are going to explain the architecture of the inner core of the climate models, the small model at the center that the big GCM’s are built around. It is mostly a physics model, and it’s mostly “basic” and mostly right. It’s the reason for the implacable confidence of the establishment in the climate debate. But there are a couple of big problems… and we’ll get to them. Mathematical analysis found the problem but once we explain it, it will seem obvious even without any maths. There will be a moment when people will say “Wow, they really did that?”

Evans takes his experience as a heavyweight expert modeler, Fourier maths PhD, and goes down through the basics, the key papers, to expose this flaw in climate model architecture. It will turn this debate upside down. There are now some things I used to say that I need to say differently. Some points we used to concede, that we now question.

To build a solar climate model David had to unpack the current CO2 driven model. As far as we know, this is the first time an independent modeling expert has gone through the climate architecture, looking at the key equations, assumptions, and structure.

What follows is a big shift forward, for us personally, as well as for the debate. We have always criticized the big spaghetti GCMs and their feedbacks. But within the big model there is a core basic physics model. That core is the foundation of the idea that CO2 causes 1.2C of warming. Think Hansen 1984, the Charney Report 1979, then think Arrhenius 1896. (No, this is not about disputing whether the “Greenhouse effect” is real or the second law — we have outspokenly disagreed with such disputation, and still do.)

What was curious last time was the way skeptics led the debate. Fans of the establishment came up with no criticism themselves (bar the usual namecalling), but were left to copy skeptical lines. Disappointingly some skeptics resorted to personal attacks, which we expect from alarmists. We have less patience for that timewasting now.

In the end we are all on the same team, we’d rather work together.

Thanks to the supporters and philanthropists (largely readers of this blog) who make it possible. After seven years of blogging here, and three years of David working full time unpaid, these offices, this household, is entirely dependent on donations. It’s a strange, hard path. Exciting, but full of potholes. We are determined to improve climate research, for the sake of farmers, for families and for the environment. A talent finds an outlet, somehow. A gift must be used. Thanks to all those who have faith that research for its own sake is a pursuit worth pursuing.

Come on a journey with us…

1. Introducing a Series of Blog Posts on Climate Science

Dr David Evans, 22 September 2015. David Evans’ Basic Climate Models Home, Next post.

Breaking the Intellectual Standoff

There is an intellectual standoff in climate change. Skeptics point to empirical evidence that disagrees with the climate models. Yet the climate scientists insist that their calculations showing a high sensitivity to carbon dioxide are correct — because they use well-established physics, such as spectroscopy, radiation physics, and adiabatic lapse rates.

How can well-accepted physics produce the wrong answer? We mapped out the architecture of their climate models and discovered that while the physics appears to be correct, the climate scientists applied it wrongly. Most of the projected warming comes from two specific mistakes.

Given all the empirical evidence against the carbon dioxide theory, there had to be problems in the basic sensitivity calculation. Now we’ve found them.

Series of Blog Posts

We are going to explain this and more in a series of blog posts. To build a better model, we had to understand the conventional basic climate model, the core model used to compute the high sensitivity to carbon dioxide. We unpack it, show the errors, then fix it. We calculate the sensitivity to carbon dioxide using this alternative model — which shows that the sensitivity to carbon dioxide is much lower.

If carbon dioxide didn’t cause much of the recent global warming, what did? The series continues with the revamped notch-delay solar theory (the previous problem concerning causality of notch filters has been resolved). This finds evidence that albedo modulation involving the Sun is the likely cause of global warming, and produces a falsifiable prediction for the climate of the next decade.

In its complete form this work has evolved into two scientific papers, one about the modelling and mathematical errors in the conventional basic climate model and fixing them (carbon dioxide isn’t the culprit), and another for the revamped notch-delay solar theory (it’s the Sun). Both are currently undergoing peer review. These posts are useful in airing the ideas for comments, and testing the papers for errors.

The Basic Model is Crucial to Climate Alarmism

Our understanding of the effect of carbon dioxide rests on the conventional basic climate model.

That model is used to calculate the sensitivity of surface temperature to the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Dating back to 1896 with Arrhenius, it was updated in the 1960s and 1970s. The model is presented as the first argument in the Charney Report of 1979, the seminal document that ushered in the current era of concern about carbon dioxide ^[1]. It is the cornerstone of the carbon dioxide theory of global warming. Predating computer simulations, it is often referred to as “basic physics” (though somewhat inaccurately — the basic model is actually the application of basic physics to the climate).

Despite the numerous mismatches between theory and climate observations to date, many climate scientists remain firm in their belief in the danger of carbon dioxide essentially because of this model, rather than because of huge opaque computer models. The basic model ignited concern about carbon dioxide; without it we probably wouldn’t be too worried.

There is no empirical evidence that rising levels of carbon dioxide will raise the temperature of the Earth’s surface as fast as the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts. The predictions are entirely based on models and calculations.

Modern climate science is imbued with the ideas of the basic model. For instance, it is from this model that we get the notion that the effect of a climate influence can be encapsulated by the radiation imbalance or “forcing” it causes.

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Turnbull is already saying climate policies are “not set in stone”. Beware the emissions trading scheme.

It’s only been a week, and already the door is open to the emissions trading monster. The Nationals may have got Turnbull to agree in writing last Tuesday that he would not change the Abbott policies, but writing things on paper is not enough, apparently it needs to be carved in stone.

If the member for Goldman Sachs still wants the fake “free” market solution — the one he threw away his leadership for in 2009 — he can keep the current coalition plan but use foreign credits to meet the targets. The global carbon market is the $2 Trillion dollar scheme to enrich financial houses, crooks and bureaucrats. It’s a whole fiat currency, ready-to-corrupt. The vested interests in this are knocking at every door. They’d be mad not too. But what kind of world do we want to live in? We don’t have to reward the do-nothing unproductive sector and the corrupt.

A carbon tax is a pointless waste, and the worst kind of carbon tax is a global trading scheme.

If Australians don’t want to be sold out in Paris, they need to protest now. I suggest writing to The Nationals, Libs, Nick Xenophon and media outlets.

Six reasons a carbon trading tax is worse than a direct tax:

It’s not a free market but a sick imitation. A free market cannot be based on a ubiquitous molecule produced by all life on Earth, the oceans, and a lot of its rocks. It breaks all the rules of free markets. Most of the players can’t pay, and their behavior won’t change. The government alone sets the supply and the demand; their market is built on loopholes, exemptions, and special rules from the start. Dark green crony capitalism. The Abbott Direct Action plan is much more a true free market.
Fake markets feed corruption, bureaucrats, and bankers. Do we really need more of them? An ETS draws productivity out of the real economy and feeds parasites and cheats.
We lose sovereign control. The price of the EU market is set by bureaucrats in Brussels. How many carbon credits will they give away to friends this year, and which pandering group qualifies to sell them? If we buy or sell EU carbon credits we give sovereign control over the cost of our energy (and economy) to people we have no say in electing, who are not accountable in any way, and do not have our best interests at heart.
It’s forever. We create “property rights” worth billions. Most taxes can be voted out. A trading scheme tax can’t be unwound without paying massive dollars in compensation. See point 2.
It’s not efficient. It has an overwhelming auditing burden. A global market based on items we can’t “see” or really want needs constant overbearing auditing to stop cheats (e.g .See corruption in Russia and Ukraine, August 2015). Corruption is already rife in the EU carbon market, what chance does it have in the third world? Countries without rule of law, democracy, transparency and a free press are riddled with corruption and just not ready or capable to maintain a fake free market. Hands up who wants to make the corrupt even wealthier and more powerful in those places? It’s yet another force working against honest businessmen in the third world. Say No for the sake of the poor.
Money goes overseas for nothing. There is no useful product sent back to Australia in return. At least if we sequester carbon in our soils and plants we get something, even if it’s terrible value for money.

If we want solar panels and wind panels to work, just fund the damn research ourselves. Then we own it, and might be able to sell something useful one day.

Here’s Turnbull testing the waters to see how much liberals, nationals and voters protest

Turnbull suggests changes to climate policy are possible

Turnbull, who has also sought to allay concerns from the Nationals and conservative members of the Liberal party that he would overturn the Coalition’s existing climate policies, repeated his support for the government’s post-2020 emissions reduction targets and the other measures Hunt had assembled “with great care”.

But he also kept the door open to tweaking the policies if, as many observers predict, they will be inadequate in the longer term. “There will be changes to policies if they don’t work as well as we think, or we think others can work better. None of this is written in stone, but I don’t have any plan to change those policies because everything we see at the moment suggests they’re working very well.”

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How many children died because peer reviewed data was buried and results cherry-picked?

This example below shows the dangers of cherry picked and buried data. It shows how great news and joy can be reported from rancid results, and the only protection against this is open access. When the taxpayer funds research that is not fully and transparently public, and immediately available, the people are funding PR rather than science. “Peer review” does little to stop this, little to clean up the mess after it happens, and the truth can take years to be set free.

Ten percent of teenagers taking an anti-depressant harmed themselves or attempted suicide. This was ten times the rate of the teens on the placebo. The results of this clinical trial were published in 2001, but those alarming statistics were not reported. The drug went on to be widely used. A new reanalysis of the data, reported in the BMJ, revealed the dark and hidden dangers. The company that funded the research, Glaxo Smith Kline, has already faced record fines of $4.2 billion. The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry won’t retract the paper.

There are many ways to hide data. In this case, the results of the trial include 80,000 records which were provided in a form that could only be accessed one at a time.

There are many branches of science, and psycho-science where the data is partially withheld, or unavailable, or provided in a difficult-to-use form. David Jones of the Australian BOM was caught in the climate gate emails saying “we have a policy of providing any complainer with every single station observation when they question our data (this usually snows them).” Stefan Lewandowsky did a survey and held back a quarter of the results. John Cook and the University of Queensland threatened to sue people making their data public.

All publicly funded data must be made available upon publication; the public shouldn’t need to ask for it. If they have to FOI, the government funded system of “science” has already failed.

Data from a peer-reviewed antidepressant trial misleading:

An Australian-led study of a popular antidepressant has shown that it can tip young people into suicide.

In a rare re-analysis of a controversial clinical trial, the researchers found that the drug paroxetine — touted in 2001 as safe and effective for teenagers — was neither.

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Weekend Unthreaded

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8.4 out of 10 based on 20 ratings

Climate Scientists give up on science, talk tobacco, want to jail skeptics

Poor climate scientists know they can’t win the science debate against the engineers, geologists, chemists and physicists who are better scientists, better informed, mostly unfunded and unleashed all over the Internet.

To avoid coughing up the “overwhelming evidence” the climate experts say they have, but can’t seem to find, they are pulling out the Panzers, resorting to pleas for RICO investigations. Treat the skeptical scientists like Racketeers, they say! And what’s their evidence for this conspiracy of corruption… oh lordy, these people are scientists, they must have emails, cheques, tapes and photos. Surely? But no, their evidence are pop-smear-books where the deepest darkest evidence is the common use of “tobacco tactics”! But every activist group under the sun, including honest groups, uses at least some of the exact same tactics. How does anyone point out flaws without “seeding doubt” about them? Either the flaws are real or they’re not, and that’s what a scientist discusses, not “motives”.

There is no law of science called “tobacco-tactics”. If man-made global warming is a dire threat, the evidence comes from instruments that measure the climate, not from smear-o-rama by association.

Indeed, the Team-Tobacco of climate are the believers not the skeptics

I looked up Tobacco Tactics for the first time:

A long-standing tactic of the tobacco industry and its supporters is to try to marginalise and denigrate its critics.

You mean like calling them “deniers”, denigrating their qualifications, printing fantasies about their funding, attacking their religious beliefs, and inventing spurious links to … wait, something as black as the tobacco industry, or the holocaust? How about stranding skeptics at airports, canceling their tickets, sacking them, removing climate skeptics titles and canceling email accounts. What about using students to protest emotionally at universities to stop the research even starting (see Lomborg, Bjorn, UWA)?

The Tobacco industry influenced scientists by commissioning research, and funding scientists, which is similar to the one-sided government funding that pours money at climate models we know are failing, yet doesn’t fund models built on solar factors and natural cycles. Then there is Ghost Writing, like say where Greenpeace writes a document for the IPCC, or where Greenpeace and WWF set the BBC journalistic policy?

In arguments and reasoning the tobacco groups “shift the debate away from the health issues”, just as climate scientists shift the debate away from the science and towards the pitiful tiny funding available to a few skeptics. Climate experts don’t want to talk about the missing hotspot, the uncertainties of ocean heat content measurements, the wild variations of past climates, or the way models fail dismally at predicting the last 18 years.

Legal strategies of Big Tobacco include FOI requests, which both skeptics and unskeptics use. Skeptics want the scientific data, that they shouldn’t even have to FOI. Climate unskeptics want the funding details of skeptical scientists so they can smear them by association and scare off potential donors.

We can build on this theme: please readers — fish for inspiration through the Tobacco Tactics files, and suggest away.

The letter calling for a RICO investigation into skeptical scientists:

Dear President Obama, Attorney General Lynch, and OSTP Director Holdren,

As you know, an overwhelming majority of climate scientists are convinced about the potentially serious adverse effects of human-induced climate change on human health, agriculture, and biodiversity. We applaud your efforts to regulate emissions and the other steps you are taking. Nonetheless, as climate scientists we are exceedingly concerned that America’s response to climate change – indeed, the world’s response to climate change – is insufficient. The risks posed by climate change, including increasing extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and increasing ocean acidity – and potential strategies for addressing them – are detailed in the Third National Climate Assessment (2014), Climate Change Impacts in the United States. The stability of the Earth’s climate over the past ten thousand years contributed to the growth of agriculture and therefore, a thriving human civilization. We are now at high risk of seriously destabilizing the Earth’s climate and irreparably harming people around the world, especially the world’s poorest people.

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Scandal Part 3: Bureau of Meteorology homogenized-the-heck out of rural sites too

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology have been struck by the most incredible bad luck. The fickle thermometers of Australia have been ruining climate records for 150 years, and the BOM have done a masterful job of recreating our “correct” climate trends, despite the data. Bob Fernley-Jones decided to help show the world how clever the BOM are. (Call them the Bureau of Magic).

Firstly there were the Horoscope-thermometers — which need adjustments that are different for each calendar month of the year — up in December, down in January, up in February… These thermometers flip on Jan 1 each year from reading nearly 1°C too warm all of December, to being more than 1°C too cold for all of January . Then come February 1, they flip again. Somehow the BOM managed to unravel this bizarre pattern (cue X-files music) and figure out exactly what anti-horoscope-adjustments to use (and they were different in every city). Modestly the BOM did not explain to the public how clever their adjustments were; despite their $300m budget, it took volunteer Bob Fernley-Jones to reverse out the Special Horoscope Cure, and find the square wave algorithm that repaired our damaged climate records. Lucky for the BOM it’s all laid out below. 😉

Fernley-Jones had a theory that the best thermometers were in our biggest, richest capital cities. Instead he found fickle unreliable thermometers everywhere. Adjustments didn’t line up with the times the stations had moved. Sometimes the maxima step changed, but not the minima. It was as if the Bermuda Triangle rolled through the data. I asked Bob to tell me the best stations (the BOM would want to know). He laughed. Below he continues his exhaustive, diligent analysis of rural stations and finds the same old mess as he saw in the capital cities.

And on it goes. Hours of work. Bob Fernley-Jones does a special kind of graph which packs in 30,000 data points, looks a bit scary, but don’t be put off, the natural noise is easy to tell apart from those sharp man-made step changes. In a normal world there would be just as many step-downs as step-ups as adjustments went both ways, there would also be reasons for the steps (pah!). In a warming world where an ocean of concrete and bricks had been built near thermometers, the adjustments would step down to compensate, as those lines tracked from left to right across the page (but they don’t seem to).

We owe a big thank you to the tireless work of Bob and others who are holding our public “servants” to account. The message in here is that the rural stations are just as bad as the city ones, and that bizarre inexplicable adjustments are everywhere. See Bob’s table at the end for the meanings of the notes on the graphs. — Jo

——————————————–

Guest Post by Bob Fernley-Jones.

Corrupted Australian Surface Temperature Records.

Part 3; Temperature Anomalies at BoM Rural Weather Stations

Introduction:

This is Part 3 of a series of studies that investigates the credibility of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) homogenizes surface temperature records. Before this, Part 1 covered six State or Territory capital cities in the expectation that those stations had the best resources and robustness in long-term record keeping. Unfortunately, even these iconics were not found to meet the institutional claim of “World’s Best Practice”.

That aside, it is now time for a wider look and comparison with some long-record rural sites where the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, as it is well recognised in big cities, is generally not a complication. To avoid any suggestions of cherry-picking, a greater number of twenty-four rural sites are herewith exposed. Also briefly considered within the total 112 ACORN sites are those with relatively recent start-up dates. (17% are short-record sites with an average of only about 59 years timespan through 2014, not the proper full 104-years that the Bureau claims to cover since 1910).

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8.9 out of 10 based on 89 ratings

India and China don’t want to cut carbon, but do object to “doublespeak”

India organised a little shindig for the last couple of days with like minded developing countries (called LMDCs), like China, and announced they did not want any obligatory stuff from the UN about cutting carbon emissions.

I quite like the Indian environment minister’s way of phrasing it:

“All countries have decided to take action, but that action is voluntary and nationally determined, not internationally determined,” India’s environment and forests minister Prakash Javadekar said addressing the negotiators this afternoon.

“Paris can become a festival if the world accepts this scenario – all countries take action, whatever is possible with their resources,” Javadekar said.

“If we welcome everybody’s nationally-determined actions, without criticising each other and without entering into a blame game, Paris will be successful.”

But they do want more money:

The LMDCs have also asked the developed countries to provide “additional, predictable, and sustainable climate finance” to help developing countries enhance their climate actions to cover the period up to 2020 and beyond.

I think this translates to: We’re very committed. We’ll do a lot. Don’t check up on us, just pay us.

Spot the UN double speak

The plain speaking Indian Environment minister rather sees through the UN gambit on “storms”:

Javadekar expressed his unhappiness with what he said was “double-speak” by the developed countries.

“In loss and damage, there is double speak,” he said. “When a hurricane happens, they see the gravity of climate change, when some country asks for loss and damage on that account, they come out with the logic that one has to prove whether it is climate change event or a natural event – when compensation is to be paid, it is a natural event, when there is no claim then it becomes a climate change event.”

Storms are really income-generating-UN-events. Which storms are man-made: the ones that increase the UN bank accounts.

h.t GWPF

9.4 out of 10 based on 74 ratings

Once again, voters don’t want climate action but end up with a believer Prime Minister

The pattern continues. Do voters matter? Obama hardly mentioned Climate Change in the 2012 election campaign, but climate zombie suddenly appeared in the victory speech. Major climate regulations get delayed til after elections. Days after the 2014 midterms, Obama announced “big deals” on climate change with China. We all know why he didn’t announce them before.

In Australia, Julia Gillard said there would be no carbon tax, barely won, and burned her political capital to bring in a carbon tax she didn’t need to bring in.

Tony Abbott won on a “blood promise” to get rid of the carbon tax, and yet here we are again with a PM who believes the whole kit and caboodle, and in 2009 he wanted to bring in a bigger more poisonous version of the carbon tax. Voters obviously don’t want carbon action anymore or Democrats and Labor parties would take it openly to elections. When they get the choice, like they did in Australia in 2013, voters vote to axe the tax.

If Turnbull signs us up to carbon trading in Paris, those 54 Liberal MPs and Senators who elected him will have totally sold out the voters. It’s up to the Liberal Party to constrain the member for Goldman Sachs. Global carbon markets could be worth $2 Trillion a year — bigger than coal, bigger than oil, the largest “commodity” traded. (Marvel — it’s not even a commodity.) Financial houses around the world have been salivating for a decade at the prospect of brokering deals on a new forced, fixed market made from thin air. It’s as if a whole giant currency might wink into existence.

Meanwhile, in the media, it’s all bread and circuses. While Big-oil gets painted as the monster controlling this debate, the largest vested interests in the room are a magnitude bigger, silent, and their entire market is 100% dependent on punters believing that we can change the weather, that carbon is pollution, and that “there is no debate”. It’s probably the largest market in human history based on bullying and namecalling. If people listen to the lepers, it’s all over. (Don’t let the deniers speak.)

Turnbull will poll well in the honeymoon, but many in the heart and soul of the Liberal Party feel betrayed. The most active and passionate supporters are angry beyond words — calling for a split or a new party. They’d rather lose the next election and get a real alternative than campaign to get Labor-lite.

UPDATE: Turnbull has said “he is sticking with the Government’s policies on climate change.” Does that mean he will not allow carbon credits to be purchased from overseas? He needs to specifically rule that out (as Abbott did). It’s only a small step to “stick with the current target” of 26% by 2030 but allow companies to buy foreign carbon credits. Pretty soon we’re buying, selling and holding EU carbon credits and dependent on rulings made in Brussels over which we have no control. Money and control will flow out of the nation. Carbon markets feed bureaucracies, bankers and corruption.

Fake markets are not free markets.

9.3 out of 10 based on 124 ratings

New PM in Australia — Malcolm Turnbull

Despite the resounding win a mere two years ago, and achieving his main promises, Abbott has been ousted in his first term. Politics is dirtier than ever.

He was elected with a big win, but lasted just two years in office. Gillard barely made a government, needing help from two turncoats, and her legacy legislation burnt her solemn promise — yet she held office even longer than Abbott did.

The anti Abbott, Abbott, Abbott campaign in the media has been relentless and successful.

Turnbull has said he will stick with Australia’s carbon emissions cuts (26% by 2030) but this means nothing. Firstly, the target is obscenely high, and secondly, there are so many possible ways to waste more money and give up more sovereign rights in Paris. He can sell us out to the financial houses that want carbon trading, and waste additional billions on renewable energy.

Labor, Liberal, what’s the difference?

Joy. Great news for climate bloggers in Australia. : – (

8.9 out of 10 based on 117 ratings

Abbott, Turnbull spill on again — Send in your emails

UPDATE: Turnbull elected 54:44. Bishop as Deputy.

With the most appalling timing and pure self-interest, Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop have asked Tony Abbott for a leadership vote tomorrow. Why do this four days before a by-election?

If he becomes leader Turnbull will sell Australia to the global bankers and the UN come December. He could have stayed leader of the opposition in 2009 if he only agreed to wait for Australians to start an emissions trading scheme after the rest of the world committed. He chose not to. He staked his position on the climate schemes then, and paid the price, and has never given the slightest indication he would do anything differently.

If Labor-lite Turnbull wins, it will be the seed to split the Liberal party.

Vote on the Seven-news-poll. Currently Abbott 57%, Turnbull 37%

As I said during the leadership challenge in February. Don’t give in to apathy. Speak up. There is only one choice for a real skeptic.

Malcolm Turnbull is the leader that the ABC wants for the party that most in the ABC won’t vote for. If you follow the ABC and Fairfax and feel despondent about our national debate, don’t give in to apathy. That’s exactly what the “consensus” crowd wants — your submissive acquiescence. The same people who tell us a carbon trading scheme is inevitable are the now ones calling the government dysfunctional, even though it achieved its three largest goals in the first twelve months. Tell the government and the media what you think.

Andrew Bolt:

Malcolm Turnbull is a wrecker. He has sabotaged the Liberal campaign in Canning, which the latest two polls show would have been won comfortably by a great candidate.

Second, Turnbull claims he is a better communicator than Abbott. Nothing in his record as Opposition Leader of Communications Minister backs up that boast.

Third, he risks splitting the Liberals with his stands on gay marriage and global warming, to name just two issues. He would not have stopped the boats or scrapped the carbon tax, and I doubt he would have pushed as remorsely as Tony Abbott from the free trade deal with China that he cited as his big economic agenda.

Turnbull is stealing the job he could not have won, using policy weapons he could not have designed and boasting of a communication ability he does not have to head a party he cannot unite.

Australian Members of Parliament (Coalition) 2015

The Australian Parliament official page for contacting Senators and Members.

[email protected]

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8.4 out of 10 based on 41 ratings

Sea level hyperbole: CSIRO, BOM, ABC and Kiribati President should apologize for wasting our time

Minister Peter Dutton made a joke about Pacific Islander time. The Offendotrons howled and called for him to be sacked. But the real problem here is not the small 1mm rise in sea-levels, it’s the the national media end up discussing global “offense” levels rather than sea levels. The scientific data shows there is no issue. Australian taxpayers pay the ABC, the CSIRO and the BOM to inform the Australian public, yet none of them explained that the real sea level rise recorded in Kiribati is less than 1 mm a year. Why not? The ABC does not clear the fog for Australians, it generates it. Dutton apologized, but he shouldn’t have. It feeds the offendotrons. They didn’t accept it, won’t stop referring to his comment, nor start talking about real problems. Apologizing only extends the time our national conversation is wasted on mindless things.

Yet again, the unfunded bloggers report the scientific data and not the institutes we pay to do that?

Noting that today’s meeting to discuss the resettlement of refugees was running late, Mr Dutton quipped that it was running to “Cape York time”, to which the Prime Minister replied: “We had a bit of that up in Port Moresby.”

Mr Dutton riposted: “Time doesn’t mean anything when you’re about to have water lapping at your door.”

The president of Kiribati has since called the joke “vulgar” and “quite unbecoming of leadership”.

The president of Kiribati has lashed out at Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, labelling him morally irresponsible for making a “vulgar” joke about rising sea levels in the Pacific.

Responding more in “sadness” than anger, Anote Tong said Mr Dutton has “got to search his own soul”.

“What kind of a person is he? As long as there is this kind of attitude, this kind of arrogance in any position of leadership, we will continue to have a lot of tension,” he said.

But what’s unbecoming of a leader is panicking his own people about a 1mm sea level rise, which appears to have little to do with CO2. What’s vulgar is people demanding money for a threat that barely exists. The people who need to “search their souls” are the scientists at the CSIRO and BOM, who are supposed to serve the Australian public and their elected leaders and who know the tide gauges don’t support the scare — but these scientists say nothing.

Australian foreign aid to Kiribati is $27 million for 2015/16 (which is equivalent to 15% of nominal GDP, for its population of 103,000 people). Are they grateful?

Did the Pacific Islanders who were late apologize?

Sea levels are rising at a very unscary 1mm a year

According to 1000 tide gauges, globally, sea levels are rising slowly at around 1mm a year. The rise started long before human CO2 output increased, and there is no sign of acceleration with rapidly increasing human emissions of CO2. Careful analysis of 60 beaches in Northern Europe to find one of the most stable gauges in the world agrees. The Topex/Poseidon satellite sea-level data set also showed similar rates until they were adjusted up to fit climate models (or one sinking gauge in Hong Kong). Likewise the Envisat sea-level satellite data was also adjusted up. Vincent Gray graphed sea level around many South Pacific Islands. There is no CO2 induced disaster.

According to Kiribati long term sea level rise data is available from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level. Eyes On Browne, has graphed the five original datasets from Kiribati tide gauges going back to 1949 showing a long term trend of 0.8mm, which is similar to the global sea level rise shown by all the other gauges.

Kiribati Sea Level, Tide gauges, South Pacific, 1949 – 2014. | Click to enlarge

The NOAA mean sea levels of Kanton Island Kiribati shows 0.6mm/ year rise from 1949 -2007 (PSMSL).

The Australian government cut its foreign aid budget recently and funneled more money to the UN climate program instead. The Pacific Islanders would probably get more from Australia if the money came direct from our government, rather than being filtered through more layers of bureaucrats.

REFERENCES

PSMLS: Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level

South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project [Bureau of Meteorology]

Michael Beenstock, Daniel Felsenstein,*Eyal Frank & Yaniv Reingewertz, (2014) Tide gauge location and the measurement of global sea level rise, Environmental and Ecological Statistics, May 2014

Weekend Unthreaded

Sunset, Perth Hills

8.6 out of 10 based on 25 ratings

Cost of bad climate models — $10 billion wasted, and $1 billion a year for Desal plants no one uses in Australia

If only climate models worked. Until then, the insurance bills are “eyewatering” with ten billion dollars poured into Australian Desal plants that aren’t used, and which cost another billion each year to keep being not used.

Imagine if one of these states had spent a hundredth as much on research as they did on building white elephants. They could have brought in top maths-heads, engineers, physicists and modelers and developed independent climate models that used solar factors, cosmic rays, lunar factors and even neural nets. The productivity growth could be flat-out fantastic — with the right information farmers could pick the right crops, plant at the right times, and destock or restock, and not waste seed on dry ground. Town planners could manage dams, floods and droughts without turning taxpayer dollars into mushroom clouds. The CSIRO Budget is $1.2 billion (of which the taxpayer pays $780m) and BOM $360 million (taxpayer: $212m) but the real cost of strangled government science is far more.

UPDATE: The Tungun plant in QLD may be revived for 6 weeks (at great cost) soon, and theoretically “might” be used permanently from 2020.

Idle desalination plants built by Labor cost $1bn

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8.9 out of 10 based on 94 ratings

Southern Ocean back in business as a carbon sink (models were wrong)

The Southern Ocean absorbs 40% of the global oceanic uptake in CO2. For most of the last ten years researchers thought it was weaker, or at “saturation” point and not able to absorb more CO2. Instead, it looks like it has been absorbing more again and by the year 2010 was back up to full power. This means there was a lot more natural variation than scientists (and their models) thought.The GCM’s are meant to be able to predict the oceans.

Back in 2007, New Scientist broadcast that the slowdown has “far reaching implications”, things were worse than the IPCC’s projections. Things were 20 years ahead of the IPCC’s schedule and it was “scary”. Instead the IPCC was 20 years behind real life, and the models were as bad as the skeptic projected. Will New Scientist tell the world?

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9.1 out of 10 based on 69 ratings

Your air conditioner is causing Syrians to emigrate

Your air conditioner is causing people to emigrate — possibly because they want one too. But other researchers see the chain like this: Air conditioners, cars and heaters increase global CO2 emissions by 4%, which makes no difference to the Global Drought Severity Index in the last 60 years, nor to global temperatures in the last 18 years, but may possibly, maybe, have made one drought a bit drier (while making others a bit wetter). People living in a country where other people want to burn them alive, crucify them and cut their heads off, decide that they can live with the medieval barbarity, but not with the water shortage. Meanwhile other unrelated people in other countries get urges to throw away passports and join in the rush.

Oddly, the countries people most want to get to are the ones that produce the most CO2.

Time Magazine

Even as Europe wrestles over how to absorb the migrant tide, experts warn that the flood is likely to get worse as climate change becomes a driving factor.

More than 10,000 migrants and refugees traveled to Western Europe via Hungary over the weekend, fleeing conflict-ravaged and impoverished homelands in the hope of finding a more secure life abroad. Even as Europe wrestles over how to absorb the new arrivals, human rights activists and migration experts warn that the movement is not likely to slow anytime soon. Intractable wars, terror and poverty in the Middle East and beyond will continue to drive the surge. One additional factor, say scientists, is likely to make it even worse: climate change.

From 2006 to 2011, large swaths of Syria suffered an extreme drought that, according to climatologists, was exacerbated by climate change.

There are people reading tea-leaves who can achieve the same level of cause and effect correlation for a lot less money. Modern science would be a lot cheaper if we just employed them.

Where are the Global Worriers who say “No, thanks” to using human suffering, and baseless reasoning for their own political gain?

Commenters usual guidelines apply. This is not about religion but about the shameless way some people will milk any topic for PR.

9 out of 10 based on 79 ratings

Flashback: IPCC official admits UN climate meetings redistribute wealth in one of the “largest economic conferences since WWII”

Time to revisit the revealing quote from Ottmar Edenhoffer, IPCC leader in November 2010. He candidly said that climate policy was about redistributing wealth and has almost nothing to do with the environment. He also admitted countries who don’t sign up will be better off (so much for all the talk about creating green jobs). To give some sense of the scale of wealth transfer he described the up and coming UNFCCC Cancun meeting as “not a climate conference” but “one of the largest economic conferences since WWII”.

In 2010, ten thousand people went to Cancun. On November 30th, 50,000 people are expected to attend Paris COP21.

h/t to Egor the one. Image assembled by Cyrus Manz.

UN, climate change, redistributing wealth, quote

h/t to Egor the one. The creator: Cyrus Manz.

Ottmar Edenhofer is co-chair of the IPCC Working Group III. He did this interview in German in the lead up to Cancun, 2010 and GWPF translated it.

“Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. Why? Because we have 11,000 gigatons of carbon in the coal reserves in the soil under our feet – and we must emit only 400 gigatons in the atmosphere if we want to keep the 2-degree target. 11 000 to 400 – there is no getting around the fact that most of the fossil reserves must remain in the soil.

De facto, this means an expropriation of the countries with natural resources. This leads to a very different development from that which has been triggered by development policy.

First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.

Remember how carbon trading is going to make us rich, provide jobs and grow the economy? Edenhoffer, economic advisor to the UN, admits the problem is that countries will be better off if they don’t sign up for the UN climate deals, and that’s why they need “penalties and incentives”.

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9.6 out of 10 based on 90 ratings

Recent Posts

Do AWAP maps and AWAP data matter?

Guest Post by Lance Pidgeon

Building the past — BoM style

3. The Conventional Basic Climate Model — In Full

The Set-Up: Multiple Influences and Multiple Feedbacks

Imagine the crime of trying to audit the BOM?

It’s clear Greg Hunt doesn’t want good environmental data. Nor does the ABC, which is already talking about how they hope to get money from the Turnbull government.

2. The Conventional Basic Climate Model — Simple

Introduction

1. Introducing a Series of Blog Posts on Climate Science

The Basic Model is Crucial to Climate Alarmism

Six reasons a carbon trading tax is worse than a direct tax:

Here’s Turnbull testing the waters to see how much liberals, nationals and voters protest

Indeed, the Team-Tobacco of climate are the believers not the skeptics

The letter calling for a RICO investigation into skeptical scientists:

Corrupted Australian Surface Temperature Records.

Part 3; Temperature Anomalies at BoM Rural Weather Stations

Spot the UN double speak

Australian Members of Parliament (Coalition) 2015

Sea levels are rising at a very unscary 1mm a year

REFERENCES

Related Posts on Sea level:

Idle desalination plants built by Labor cost $1bn

Even as Europe wrestles over how to absorb the migrant tide, experts warn that the flood is likely to get worse as climate change becomes a driving factor.

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