…
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 😉 Joy. It’s another profoundly unscientific “consensus” study. At least one person thought that the 97% PR figure was not enough, and that magic 99.9% would sway the crowds. As if there was even one fence-sitter sitting, waiting, saying, “97% was too low…” For the herding type of human, “consensus” is magnetically convincing. Not so for the independent minds who have seen prediction after prediction fail. If a 97% consensus on a highly complex, immature science is difficult to believe, a 99.99% one is comic. More of the same unconvincing stuff will do nothing except set off the BS meter. This new study will sway no one. The supernatural purity of it will work against “The Cause”. A consensus is the one and only argument of the unskeptical, and they are doing it to death. One fan, James Powell, was so enthused he spent nine months reading titles and abstracts of 24,000 papers, and found only four scientists (4!) who didn’t agree with the consensus. Some 69,402 other scientists apparently endorse “the consensus” (whatever it is) because they used the terms “climate change”, or “global warming” and they didn’t also make a clear statement that it was false, or claim that something else explains the rise in temperatures better than CO2. I’m pretty sure the perfect 99.99% consensus includes Roy Spencer, William Braswell, Richard Lindzen, and pretty much any other publishing skeptic you can name bar The Special Four Skeptics: F. Gervais, S. Avakyan, Will Happer, and Heinz Hug. Here’s the news: The 97 Percent Scientific Consensus on Climate Change Is Wrong—It’s Even Higher [The consensus is 99.99%] …”according to James L. Powell, director of the National Physical Sciences Consortium, who reviewed more than 24,000 peer-reviewed scientific articles on climate change published between 2013 and 2014. Powell identified 69,406 authors named in the articles, four of which rejected climate change as being caused by human emissions. That’s one in every 17,352 scientists. “ Avoiding thousands of skeptical scientists is a minor achievement. Surveys of meteorologists, geologists and engineers, show half or more are skeptics. Likewise lists of thousands of named skeptics who endorsed a very skeptical statement far outnumber his “list” of unsurveyed believers-by-default. But his study may give us insight into the size and purity of the government-funded climate science industry, which apparently numbers around 70,000 scientists. Though it could be that he’s inadvertently measuring the odds of getting a paper published in the peer review press with both “climate change” and an actual definitive statement that something other than CO2 causes it — the odds are about 0.0058%. No wonder most professional scientists know to avoid those magic keyword combinations. Though in Powell’s study, if you discussed how the sun explained global warming in the conclusion or the press release (but not the abstract or title) you’d be listed as endorsing the “consensus”. Smile!  … Given the $7 billion in funding from the US government for the 2015 financial year, marked for climate science and clean energy, it is hardly surprising that there are a lot of papers about “climate change” and “global warming”. There are a lot of people studying how big the crisis might be, how to solve the crisis we might be having, and what the effects of this crisis might be (if we are having one). What there is not, are institutions of people specifically tasked to investigate how minor CO2 is, how beneficial it is, or to assess if the Sun controls most of our climate. Around the Western world there is no government funding specifically to audit or find problems with the man-made global warming theory. There are no programs with the sole purpose of finding natural causes to provide the counter arguments ($0). The purity is near complete. Skeptics mostly have to fund themselves. That’s a very high barrier to publication. How to ignore thousands of scientists:
A serious study of consensus would look only at papers aiming to assess the cause of global warming. Even papers on Arctic ice and Mt Kilimanjaro wouldn’t count. It would study the conclusions, not just the abstracts. It would still be profoundly unscientific — as any “consensus” study is — but it might at least raise it above the level of propaganda, having some sociological value. The Powell study is a parody. Ahem. But he is selling a book. A better study of a consensus would survey scientists themselves instead of guessing what they think, and it wouldn’t just survey “climate scientists” but all scientists. The Scientific Method is the same no matter what field of science it is applied to. Any study that claims there is a consensus among scientists is being dishonest if it limits its attention to a tiny subgrouping of science. (As if only a secret guild of approved members have received the magic training.) If climate scientists have overwhelming evidence, they’d have no trouble convincing nuclear physicists, materials engineers, industrial chemists, and geologists — yet they are failing dismally. A thousand holes in the theory is a 99.9% consensus?From James Powell’s methodology: 2. I looked for clear statements that AGW is false or that some other process better explains the rise in global temperature. I did not count articles that report some discrepancy, such as the growth in Antarctic sea ice for example, but do not use that discrepancy as the basis for claiming that AGW is false. Any theory has discrepancies, observations that the theory cannot yet explain. They provide the next set of research problems. One discrepancy does not falsify a theory. So one discrepancy does not falsify a theory? Einstein would disagree with that, but what would he know? “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” Albert Einstein July 12th, 2015 | Tags: Consensus, Peer Review, Satire & Parody | Category: Global Warming |  Print This Post | | That didn’t take long. The recent UK election means the conservative government has the power to get rid of some subsidies for “low carbon”, “green” electricity, and make it easier for oil and gas. Renewable energy companies are feeling the pain, and complaining bitterly. Of course, if they were competitive, they wouldn’t need the subsidies and the stock market would throw money at them. Such is the fear, that there is an emergency summit happening within the green energy sector. “Scottish Renewables has warned the move could put up to £3bn of investment in Scotland at risk.” So $3 billion dollars was placed on a bet that the subsidies would continue, that the voters would not get sick of paying too much, and their bets have failed. I have no sympathy. Anyone playing the subsidy market should have done their homework. With the science shot with holes, the subsidies were always built on vapor. GWPF has all the stories. The green tax target is goingTim Ross, The Telegraph: Green energy subsidies spiral out of control George Osborne to abolish coalition’s green tax target as customers face paying £1.5billion more through their bills to subsidise wind farms, solar panels and biomass plants. The cost of subsidising new wind farms is spiralling out of control, government sources have privately warned. Officials admitted that so-called “green” energy schemes will require a staggering £9 billion a year in subsidies – paid for by customers – by 2020. This is £1.5 billion more than the maximum limit the coalition had originally planned. The mounting costs will mean every household in the country is forced to pay an estimated £170 a year by the end of the decade to support the renewable electricity schemes that were promoted by the coalition. Tory ministers are said to be “angry” at the scale of the over-running costs. They are blaming the Liberal Democrats who ran the Department for Energy and Climate Change for the past five years for the spectacular failure to control renewable energy programmes. – How different is UK electricity to the Soviet system?The UK government apparently indirectly decides the price of electricity, and they decided that companies “could” charge consumers for their costs of developing green electricity. If electricity were a free market, companies could choose to sell and develop cheap electricity and consumers could choose to buy cheap electricity and not subsidize research they thought was pointless. I’d like to buy the 4c/ kWh coal type of electricity (that’s wholesale, but where is the retail version?). The Lib Dems put in contracts that can’t be changed — pay the patrons and the big-government cheer squad, but don’t let the public choose. How many UK would families would be happy if a man turned up at their door once a year demanding a cheque for £68 (soon to be £141), to develop expensive electricity generators in the hope of making the weather nicer for their great grandchildren? (And that’s only a part of the green bill.) Taxpayers would revolt. Under the coalition, ministers decided that investment in new renewable energy developments, such as wind turbines, solar panels and biomass schemes, would be paid for by energy companies, rather than through taxation. Energy firms were allowed to recover the cost of these subsidies from their customers by adding it to household bills. In order to limit the impact of the green schemes on customers, ministers set a strict cap on the total amount that could be spent in these consumer-funded subsidies for renewable energy. By 2020, the maximum amount to be spent through these subsidies was set at £7.6 billion a year. But new projections from DECC show this cap will be exceeded by a massive 20 per cent, or another £1.5 billion. Official figures showed that environmental levies added £68 to the average household bill last year. By 2020 this had been expected to rise to £141. But the latest DECC figures suggest the true figure will be closer to £170 as costs continue to mount. Government sources say there is little that Mr Osborne can do because the subsidies have already been agreed under long-term contracts signed by DECC while Liberal Democrat ministers were in charge. — The Telegraph (see link above) The British Government is also set to scrap the climate change levy exemption and stop money flowing from UK taxpayers to foreign renewable electricity generators. The levy was started in 2001 to try to improve energy efficiency, and the amount was estimated to be GBP 3.90 billion. I think making renewables pay on a level playing field is good, but why have a levy to change the climate at all? Thanks to the GWPF. See also Renewable Energy Trust Funds Tumble On Osborne Cuts. Green investment funds in the US are falling as well and asking for more subsidies
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Continent |
Fossil fuel emissions Mt C |
% of global total |
| South Africa |
138.0 |
1.60% |
| Australia |
100.4 |
1.16% |
| New Zealand |
8.7 |
0.10% |
| South America |
159.0 |
1.84% |
| Total |
406.1 |
4.71% |
Keep reading →
July 7th, 2015 | Tags: Emissions (CO2), Fires, Quirk (Tom) | Category: Fire, Global Warming | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | Gary Johns (former Labor Minister in the Keating Government) writes in The Australian that children are being dished up green speakers at school, asked to write letters about “their thoughts” to politicians, and taking letters home to parents seeking their permission to join the campaign which is run by a volunteer for The Greens. The children were offered sample activist letters to copy.
Greens infiltrate the classroom
I received a letter this week that had been sent to the parent of a 10-year-old schoolboy and signed by the deputy principal of Cottesloe Primary School, Perth. The letter requested her permission to send a letter, allegedly written by her son, to Julie Bishop regarding the UN climate talks.
The activist site is Curtin’s CASE: Climate Action for a Safe Environment. Curtin refers to the electorate (not the university). The site has sample letters to ask Julie Bishop to get climate action and change the weather. The speaker at schools was Dr Chilla Bullbeck, who was “chair of women’s studies at the University of Adelaide until 2008 but is now a full-time “volunteer” for the Greens in Western Australia.” She claims “Curtin’s CASE is not a political organisation, but admits “our project does appeal to Greens members and supporters”.
The letter to parents directs them to the campaign website where a standard letter is ready and waiting.
“Dear Julie Bishop,
My name is … and I am an average … student … please help this goal of mine (to stop global warming) become yours too because we can make a difference for Australia” (emphasis added).
Craft a persuasive letter using their thoughts, describing their goal? This is a deception. This is high-pressure propaganda and it is taking place in primary schools right now.
Johns has some very good questions:
A representative of a political party was allowed into the classroom to push the party’s agenda on young children and to use them to write letters to achieve the party’s goals. Were other voices heard?
Were children aware that if the world decides to cut the output of carbon dioxide emissions by denying cheap energy-dense sources they are condemning millions to an early death through poverty?
This exercise in high-pressure manipulation of 10-year-olds took place a few suburbs from the University of Western Australia where a posse of ignorant academics and students ran Bjorn Lomborg out of town.
Keep reading →
… Let it rip…
Christopher Monckton calculates below that even if we assume the IPCC and mainstream estimates are right, the warming from here to 2100 is likely to be a minor half a degree. (He doesn’t even bother to argue about whether this would be beneficial or not). Monckton just makes the point that for all the scare campaign about preventing a “two degree” apocalypse, what we are really talking about is a half degree in the next ninety years with some theoretical further warming in the centuries after that. The “two degrees” of fear is measured from the bottom of the Little Ice Age, as if that was the ideal “pre industrial” climate that we somehow want to return to.
As usual, everything about the Great Global Warming Scare falls apart under the most cursory glance, yet the billion dollar PR truck rolls on. The climate sensitivity of the IPCC dropped in Assessment Report 5 to about 2.2 C as it slowly is dragged toward a more realistic number. The data coming in tells us that the climate feedback factors are likely net negative, so climate sensitivity is below 1°C. Hence even a “half a degree” due to CO2 is an overestimate.
— Jo
—————————————————–
Guest Post by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
2 C° or not 2 C°?
In 2009 the Copenhagen climate summit asserted, on little evidence, that global warming of 2 C° compared with pre-industrial temperature [equivalent to 1.1 C° above today] would be dangerous. The UK Climate Change Committee said in 2015: “If we make no efforts to cut global use of fossil fuels, global warming is likely to reach between 2-7°C this century with further warming beyond.” A Science editorial in July 2015 said: “Let’s act now, to save the next generations from the consequences of the beyond-two-degree inferno.”
Equilibrium climate sensitivity ΔT to a CO2 doubling is given by
ΔT = λ0 ΔF (1 – λ0 f ) –1
where the Planck sensitivity parameter λ0 = 0.3125 K W–1 m2 (IPCC AR4, p. 631 fn.); the CO2 forcing ΔF is generally taken as 5.35 ln 2 W m–2 (Myhre et al, 1998; IPCC TAR); and uncertainty in constraining ΔT arises chiefly from the feedback sum f, for which IPCC’s estimates (best estimates are in bold face) were cut from 1.95 [1.55, 2.35] W m–2 K–1 in AR4 to 1.55 [1.00, 2.25] Wm–2 K–1 in AR5 (Fig. 9.43(a), detail): The mainstream climate sensitivity estimates to a CO2 doubling, at 1-8 below, reveal a monotonic decline from SAR to AR5, which readopts the interval in FAR (cf. Charney (1979, p. 4), though AR5 states no central estimate, which should, however, have been given as 2.2 K where f = 1.55 Wm–2 K–1 (8 below).
| Est. | Source / basis | Sensitivity |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1995 IPCC SAR (17 models: AR4, p. 798, box 10.2) | 3.8 [3.0, 4.6] K |
| 2 | 2001 IPCC TAR (15 models: AR4, p. 798, box 10.2) | 3.5 [2.6, 4.4] K |
| 3 | 2007 IPCC AR4 (18 models: AR4, p. 798, box 10.2) | 3.3 [2.6, 4.0] K |
| 4 | IPCC AR4 stated interval | 3.0 [2.0, 4.5] K |
| 5 | IPCC AR4 implicit interval from (1), where f falls on 1.95[1.55, 2.35] | 3.0 [2.2, 4.4] K |
| 6 | IPCC FAR stated interval (cf. Charney, 1979, p. 4) | 3.0 [1.5, 4.5] K |
| 7 | 2013 IPCC AR5 stated interval | [1.5, 4.5] K |
| 8 | IPCC AR5 implicit interval from (1), where f falls on 1.55[1.00, 2.25] | 2.2 [1.7, 3.9] K |
| Warming to 2100 | ||
| 9 | Only half of equilibrium warming will arise in the century after a forcing | 1.1 [0.9, 2.0] K |
| 10 | Forcings rise linearly so that ~50% of warming will occur by 2100 | 0.6 [0.4, 1.0] K |
IPCC 21st-century warming estimates indicate that it assumes, in line with Roe (2009), that only half of equilibrium warming will occur in the first 100 years after a forcing (9 above). Furthermore, forcing does not arrive as a single pulse but increases over the century, halving the in-century warming (10) and putting the remainder in the following century, by which time fossil fuels will approach exhaustion. Remaining warming to equilibrium at 2.2 K above today would be spread over the subsequent 1000-3000 years (Solomon et al., 2009), allowing plenty of time for adaptation.
Conclusion:
No warming has yet arisen this century. Warming may be 0.6 K by 2100, could be as low as 0.4° K and will not exceed 1° K. Allowing for negative aerosol forcings in SAR to AR5, or for net-negative temperature feedbacks (Lindzen & Choi, 2011; Spencer & Braswell, 2011; Monckton of Brenchley, 2015), warming may well not reach these values, but is most unlikely to exceed them.
Keep reading →
July 5th, 2015 | Tags: 5AR (Fifth Assessment Rep), Climate Sensitivity, IPCC, Monckton (Christopher) | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | There is some major messing with data going on.
What would you say if you knew that the official Perth thermometer was accurate at recording minimums for most of time in October in the eighties, but 0.7°C too warm all of December, and 1.2°C too cool in January? Bizarrely that same thermometer was back to being too warm in February! Try to imagine what situation could affect that thermometer, and require post hoc corrections of this “monthly” nature. Then imagine what could make that same pattern happen year after year. All those weather reports we listened to in Perth in 1984 were wrong (apparently). And this bizarre calendar of corrections is turning up all over Australia.
Bob Fernley-Jones has looked closely at all the adjustments done to achieve the wonderful homogenized ACORN data, as compared to the theoretically “raw” records listed in Climate Data Online (CDO) on the BOM website. He can’t know what the BOM did (since they won’t tell anyone), but he knows the outcome of their homogenization. He was shocked when he noticed a strange square-wave pattern repeating year after year; he was astonished that there were corrections calendar month by calendar month, up and down, switching wildly back and forth.
This graph below shows how the adjustments changed the original record in Perth from December 1983 to Nov 1984 (summer-autumn-winter-spring). This is ACORN temperatures minus the original CDO. A negative number means the adjusted “new” result is lower (cooler) than the original, a positive number shows how much warmer the adjusted result is. If we believe the adjustments, for the whole month of December 1983, each morning, the Perth thermometer was reading the minima too high by about 0.7°C. Then from January 1 to January 31 the thermometers switched to reading too low by a massive 1.2°C. That’s an eye-watering swing of almost 2 degrees. Come February 1st, and those thermometers switched again, to being too warm. It’s lucky, don’t you think, that the modern BOM is so knowledgeable they can compensate for the bizarre misbehaviour and moods of thermometers? It’s almost like astrology for temperature sensors. The thing is, if thermometers are this fickle, how can the BOM honestly tell the Australian public that they know the nation is warming, and to a tenth of a degree? The “equipment” is so bad, how do we know anything for sure?
This strange pattern of corrections appears year after year in Perth in the 1980s
Chris Gillham took Bob’s method and graphed Perth corrections for all years from 1910-2014. Averaged over the whole period, in January mornings the thermometers apparently read far too cool, but the same thermometers in February read too warm. The flip from December to January is a whopper 1.6°C difference between the corrections “needed” on the same thermometer on Dec 31st compared to New Years Day. That must have been some party, year after year.
…
Disconcertingly, all those weather reports I heard in Perth as a child were wrong. All those times the weather bureau said it was a 15°C night in Perth in the eighties, they really meant 16°C (if it were January) but 14°C (if it were December or March). Night after night, the bureau was getting it wrong. A degree here, a degree there, a thousand days of mistakes in every city. Don’t the Australian people need to know this? Isn’t there something just a little false about announcing “the hottest” month when the headline depends on adjustments that rewrite the past?
Thermometers are a 400 year old technology. If thermometers were so bad in 1984, aren’t they still unreliable? How do we know that the current records will not be corrected and erased in 2036?
The message here is that the data adjustments, which the BOM won’t explain, are massive. They can pretend it doesn’t affect the overall national trend by more than a fraction of a degree, but it rewrites the history of Australian weather and it suggests that any national trend is wildly uncertain — the instruments are far too fickle. Some of the trends, and many of the records and headlines, are a product of the adjustments more than the weather. Why won’t the BOM be honest about the scale of the fiddling? If climate change matters, why won’t the BOM answer questions?
This is wholesale rewriting of Australian history, and it’s a scandal. Read all the details and see all the graphs below.
— Jo
——————————————————————————————————–
GUEST POST by Bob Fernley-Jones
Corrupted Australian Surface Temperature Records. (Part 2)
Illogical Algorithms 3/July/2015
Introduction:
This is a summary of part of a study involving some 50 Mb of data that was prompted by various controversies over the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s (BoM) ‘homogenization’ of temperature records. The Bureau have made ‘corrections’ for nominal changes in site conditions over which criticisms have included that it has resulted in exaggeration of the reported warming trend, such as by excluding hotter data from before 1910; the starting point of their homogenisation.
Keep reading →
July 4th, 2015 | Tags: Adjustments to data, Australian temperatures, BOM, Fernley-Jones (Bob) | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | It’s a disaster for fish and chip shops. Children won’t know what a sea-food restaurant is.
Our oceans are warming by 0.005 °C per year (if you believe a thermometer system with a 0.5 °C error). But fish that cope with five degrees of natural variation will apparently be devastated by an average rise of five thousands of a degree per year. Who knew?
Earth’s oceans vary from 0 – 30° C. Warm and cold currents wander, eddy currents swirl. Very little of the ocean’s surface is actually at the exact “average” temperature. In any one spot, temperatures can be a full five degrees above or below average (as in this NOAA graph, below).
The sea surface temperature varies by up to five degrees from average every day
Humans may well be changing global fish stocks, but why toss in the unscientific advertising for “climate change”? As for the acidification scare, ocean pH changes on a daily basis, and hundreds of studies show that marine life might even benefit from a slight increase in “acidification”.
Seafood supply altered by climate change
The global supply of seafood is set to change substantially and many people will not be able to enjoy the same quantity and dishes in the future due to climate change and ocean acidification, according to UBC scientists.
These findings were released today in Japan by the Nereus program, an international research team led by UBC scientists and supported by the Nippon Foundation. The Nereus program was formed to study the future of the world’s oceans and seafood resources. Today it released a summary of the first phase of its research in a report titled ‘Predicting Future Ocean.’ Researchers say that the future supply of seafood will be substantially altered by climate change, overfishing and other human activities.
“The types of fish that we will have on our dinner table will be very different in the future,” said William Cheung, UBC associate professor and the co-director of the Nereus program. “Fisheries will be catching more warm-water species, with smaller size, and that will affect fish supply through our domestic and oversea fisheries as well as imports.”
Keep reading →
July 3rd, 2015 | Tags: Blame CO2, Fish, Food, Oceans | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | Cyclones down the memory hole?
July 1935, Click to enlarge | Trove
A weak tropical cyclone has formed off the Solomon Islands, and the BOM is reporting that there has never before been a July cyclone in the Queensland region. But Warwick Hughes has already posted up details showing that there have been quite a few cyclones in July. The cyclone is hardly extraordinary, and certainly not “historic”, but what about the BOM?
Forecaster David Grant on the ABC:
“We’ve never had a July tropical cyclone in the Queensland region before.
Australia has only had one other officially declared July cyclone, which formed off Western Australia in 1996.
The official tropical cyclone season runs from November 1 to April 30.”
The July cyclone “first” scores headlines in both The Australian and The Courier Mail. “Queensland weather forecasters record first cyclone in July “. But it’s wrong. Commenter Siliggy on Warwick Hughes site found a HardenUp link listing cyclones and storms in Queensland. Some of the older July cyclones listed below may not qualify as “cyclones” under the new scale, but some clearly did — and rather than being far to the north near the Solomons, cyclonic winds of 70 knots were recorded as far south as Tweed Heads in July 1962. The BoM is supposed to give Australians the full picture of our climate, not mislead people into thinking that our climate is changing when it has always been highly variable.
It is deceptive of the BOM not to let Australian’s know about our real climate history:
From the HardenUp link listing cyclones and storms in Queensland.
17-19 Jul 1889
Cyclone near Rockhampton 17th, Brisbane 18th then moved east. Gales and heavy seas on north and Central coasts of NSW. Vessels lost Fraser Island to Coffs Harbour.
28 Jul 1919
Cyclone passed southwards between New Caledonia and Queensland. Ships driven on Barrier Reef southeast of Mackay.
22-24 July 1921
Cyclone from NE struck northern NSW coast causing gales and shipping disruptions before recurving to SE. Disastrous floods SE Qld and northern NSW. Goondiwindi, Warwick and Roma flooded. Several houses washed away and 2 men drowned at Texas. A man drowned at Inglewood. Heavy stock and crop losses and damage to roads and bridges.
29-30 Jun 1929
Cyclone recurved to SE just to NE of Cape Moreton with gales and heavy rain. Much damage at Sandgate. Flooding in Pine and Nerang Rivers.
7 July 1931
Cyclone developed SE Qld and moved towards the SE. High winds Brisbane.
10-11 Jul 1933
Cyclone recurved over Broadsound and Rockhampton towards southeast. Floods Central Q.
7-10 July 1935
Cyclone recurved over Shoalwater Bay and moved towards SE. Gales. SS Maheno driven ashore. Heavy rain Central Q. (See other Trove newspaper reports). “Waves 30 feet high“. Boats were caught in a “harrowing” experience.
Complex cyclonic system crossed coast near Bundaberg and then recurved towards SE. Winds to hurricane force left a trail of damage along the coast south from Bundaberg. Woman killed at Nambour Houses when shed was lifted by wind and hurled into her . House, shops , jetties and boats were badly damaged. 200 people were left homeless, hundreds of small craft were wrecked. Many houses unroofed including 50 at Caloundra. Hurricane force winds in Moreton Bay with widespread property and boat damage at Redcliffe, Sandgate and Wynnum. The Redcliffe jetty was badly damaged by large waves with most of the decking forced upwards and ripped off. The Dutch naval sloop Snellius reported waves to 21 metres off the South Coast.
9-11 Jul 1962
Cyclone developed NE of Fraser Island and moved past Gold Coast. 60 to 70 knot winds reported from Tweed Heads to Yamba in the 24 hours to 9am 11th. Local Flash floods Brisbane to Gold Coast. Fruit trees damaged buildings flattened Sunnybank. Small boats wrecked, buildings flattened, extensive beach erosion and roads damaged Gold Coast. Radio Mast wrecked Lytton. Widespread flooding Nerang, Albert and Logan Rivers.
In NSW Small craft lost or damaged at North Coast harbours. Bad floods Murwillumbah, Lismore, Bellingen and Grafton with many evacuations and people drowned. At 1pm 9th 2 waterspouts came ashore at Port Macquarie and left a trail of destruction. 3 men were killed when a 2 story building they were building was wrecked. 30 house were damaged. Largest 24 hr rain totals 265mm Springbrook and 227mm Lismore.
Keep reading →
Too much panic is never enough. Fran Kelly asks Stephen O’Brien, lawyer and UN official, about that the effects of climate change which are “already being felt”. She does not blink when his answer includes more frequent and more severe tsunamis. His qualifier… It’s not a question of “if”, but “when”.
Yes, yes, this is “best and brightest” ideas from around the world, apparently.
Fran Kelly: “Give us a sense of the effects [of climate change] which are already being felt in our region and discussed at this conference.” (at 1 minute)
Stephen O’Brien: “The Pacific Region, and particularly the Pacific Island countries whose land, as you rightly say, are the ones just above sea-level, are the ones that really do have the greatest challenge when it comes to climate change effects on humanitarian need, with the regularity of cyclones, tropical storms, and tsunamis coming through [at 1.30 minutes]. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. And we see that [these] effects of climate change seem to be exacerbated so that they are more frequent and even at times more severe…”
ABC gives free advertising for “the cause”
ABC staff are happy to ask loaded and leading Dorothy-dixer-type* science questions to people who have no scientific background, while pretending they are real journalists, then accept everything the interviewee says with dutiful nods. So O’Brien gets time to do his advertising, but if he gets “caught” mixing up his science, he’ll just say he’s not a scientist. No loss. Free marketing for “the cause”.
It’s not just poor journalism, it’s pravda-downunder. Lawyers-of-a-left-leaning get free gushing space, but when does the ABC ask any questions of actual prize winning NASA scientists, Nobel prize winners, geologists or meteorologists who hold differing views? The problem is not that O’Brien is not a scientist, it’s the one-sided blind tilt — the ABiasC. Fran Kelly is her own climate expert, she “knows” what the climate will do, and she won’t ask people who disagree with her views who are far more qualified than her or O’Brien. It’s easy questions for “friends”, and the Cloak of Invisibility for enemies.
If there is a trend in South Pacific Cyclones, it’s down.
All across the South Pacific, the trends for cyclones are flat.
Looks like CO2 helps prevent cyclones. Burn more oil, eh? 😉
Number and intensity of Cyclones in the South Pacific | Source: Met Service Blog
It doesn’t matter what his qualifications are, anyone who pretends solar panels can stop tsunamis ought to be grilled.
Keep reading →
In a shocking discovery, the largest lake on Earth, covering 360,000km2 in central Africa, dried up to a dust bowl during times when CO2 levels were perfect. Climate change was abrupt, savage, and climate modelers have absolutely no idea what caused it.
Apparently, the dust now blows across the Atlantic and fertilizes the Amazon. So while Climate modelers in Chad circa 2000BC were dismayed and blamed Sahelian traders, Amazonian tribesman sang and danced for the last 1000 years.
[ScienceDaily] Largest freshwater lake on Earth was reduced to desert dunes in just a few hundred years
Researchers from Royal Holloway, Birkbeck and Kings College, University of London used satellite images to map abandoned shore lines around Palaeolake Mega-Chad, and analysed sediments to calculate the age of these shore lines, producing a lake level history spanning the last 15,000 years.
At its peak around 6,000 years ago, Palaeolake Mega-Chad was the largest freshwater lake on Earth, with an area of 360,000 km2. Now today’s Lake Chad is reduced to a fraction of that size, at only 355 km2. The drying of Lake Mega-Chad reveals a story of dramatic climate change in the southern Sahara, with a rapid change from a giant lake to desert dunes and dust, due to changes in rainfall from the West African Monsoon. The research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences confirms earlier suggestions that the climate change was abrupt, with the southern Sahara drying in just a few hundred years.
Keep reading →
Michael Harris, Senior Fellow in the School of Economics at University of Sydney, has the impossible job of defending the monstrously ineffective carbon tax against the pointless-but-efficient “Direct Action” program. The carbon tax cost $15b, and cut emissions by 12 million tonnes. The Direct Action plan cost $660m, and is projected to save 47 million tonnes.
Having no numbers remotely on his side, Harris goes quantum semantic. Watch the leap. A tax is not a cost, only a transfer. That makes your tax bill so much easier to pay:
There is also a difference between costs to the economy, and transfers within it. The amount of revenue raised through any tax is not a cost; it is simply a transfer from one “pocket” to “another”. The money has not been destroyed, and it remains available to be spent on something.
Now it seems to me that if I buy a beer, it’s a transfer from one “pocket” to another pocket and if that money is destroyed in the process, that would be the end of the bottle shop. The world of economics rather depends on that money not being vaporised and being available for the shop owner to spend. Adam Smith and all.
But is the real problem just which pocket the money ends up in? It would seem that as long as it’s not given to the pocket that earned it, that’s OK.
It has distributional consequences, obviously, as the “pocket” where that money sits has changed, but total spending power within the economy remains undiminished. (Moreover, Australians received compensation via the tax system after the carbon tax was introduced.)
So why do we have private business at all? If the government owned the lot, nothing would cost anything. Everyone could buy everything, and be compensated for it! (All hail the USSA. Is this the best “economics” from Sydney Uni? “Experts” would be in control of everything… central planning is optimal, Comrade.)
By contrast, the cost of a tax is what the economy – not an individual person or business enterprise – has lost as a result of the existence of the tax. Lower labour supply, fewer goods and services produced – these are the things we would typically count when assessing the burden imposed on an economy from any tax instrument. Hunt hasn’t provided credible estimates of these kinds of impacts.
Do the numbers — $15 billion dollars was redirected away from where it would otherwise have gone in the free economy. Even Harris admits most businesses can’t reduce carbon emissions for less than $23/ton, so they couldn’t do anything “useful”, and most of that $15billion achieved nothing carbon-wise. It was just an extra cost. Somebody paid. Across the economy, thousands of businesses faced smaller margins or passed the costs on to consumers. Those who took smaller margins made less profit, or employed less people or invested less in upgrades. Those who passed on the costs, lost customers, lost sales to foreigners or just sold slightly less product. Either that or the customers who paid more had to make do with less — no weekend in Noosa — and a job was destroyed somewhere else.
Have cake, eat cake, make bridge with cake
Magic pie economics:
First, ongoing revenue from the carbon tax can be used to fund, for example, public infrastructure investments, or to allow cuts to other more economically harmful taxes.
Keep reading →
June 30th, 2015 | Tags: Carbon Tax, Economics, Universities | Category: Academia, Big-Government, Economics, Global Warming, Monetary History | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | Thanks to the Hockeyschtick for pointing us at a new study of Greenland ice cores[1]. For the first time, 12 ice cores drilled in the northern section of Greenland have been “stacked” and published. Curiously, these 12 ice cores were drilled from 1993 to 1995, so this is not new data– but it’s the first time that all 12 oxygen isotope records, which are a proxy for temperature, have been published together. The area represents about 10% of Greenland, and seems to behave differently to the southern part. The warm event in 1420 is described as a local effect. The researchers acknowledge that solar activity is important and solar activity correlates with temperatures. It must be growing more and more obvious to climate researchers that their models have to include the long term solar cycles.
The take-home messages for me are: 1/ Natural variability is big and unpredictable. 2/ When we get this kind of detail from all the continents and regions of the ocean we’ll definitely be in a position to start getting the big Global Climate Models to work. 3/ Until we figure out how the Sun causes climate change, the current models are useless.
… Click to see the original graph and caption.
The purple line here shows summer Arctic sea ice extent, which I thought was perfect and stable before we developed coal fired electricity plants.
Click to see the original graph and caption.
They don’t find a good correlation with volcanoes or the NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation).
“We find a pronounced warm period from 850 to 1100AD, which has its maximum between 900 and 1000 AD. This is about 100 years earlier than the described MCA in Mann et al. (2009)”
The researchers don’t mention it, but the peak around 950 AD does match the timing in Ljundvist and Christiansen studies for the whole of the Northern Hemisphere.[2][3]
Here they admit the sun has got something to do with the climate — especially the long term shifts.
“In general, higher solar activity causes higher temperatures (as during the MCA) whereas cold periods (e.g. LIA) are dominated by lower solar activity (Ammann et al., 2007). Based on some of the NGT records (B16, B18, B21 and B29), Fischer et al. (1998c) explained most of the long-term variation in northern Greenland by changes in solar activity.”
Keep reading →
June 28th, 2015 | Tags: Arctic, Greenland | Category: Cryosphere, Global Warming | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | …
The hot desert border of Western and South Australia
Lance Pidgeon has drawn my attention to the mysteriously detailed weather maps of the Australian BOM, with their mass of contradictions. The intricate squiggles of air temperature profiles suggests an awesome array of data — especially remarkable in places like “Cook”, which is a railway station with a population of four. Eucla, the megopolis in the map, has a population of 368. The shared border in the map (right) is 674km long top to bottom.
Thankfully, after 80 years of modern technology, the weather at Eucla and in the Great Victorian Desert is much more bearable than anyone would have expected. The BOM ACORN data set works better than airconditioning. In places near Eucla, where old newspapers record 43C, the BOM tells us the highest maximum that month was “under 27C”. Far to the north of there, the highest maximum stayed under 36C, but the average for that same whole month was above 36C. Go figure. It’s a new kind of maths… [or maybe the miracle of reverse cycle a/c?]
There are a half million square kilometers in this map here and almost no thermometers, but plenty of lizards. It is so empty that every railway station and even a single house will earn a “dot” and a label. The point where WA meets SA and the NT is so remote that more people have been to the South Pole. Despite that, the BOM can draw maps of daily air temperature variation separating sand dunes and salt lakes where no man probably walked in a whole year. Marvelous what computers and assumptions can do.
Jokes aside. The state of the BOM database is not so funny.
Jo
Time for a game of Spot the Contradiction.
Guest Post by Lance Pidgeon
There are a multitude of ways you get the BoM opinion of what the temperature was in December 1931. If for example you were interested in the maximum temperature around the Great Victoria Desert, along the border of South Australia and Western Australia, you could look at the CDO online data of raw recorded temperatures. Sadly there is no daily data available but after clicking on monthly climate data online, we find the average for the month of December 1931 was 23.9C in Eucla. (Not too hot for summer near the desert).
…
Alternatively you could look at the AWAP map of average temperature and see the yellow colour for the range 24 to 27 degrees C here. That’s OK.
…
But look north of Eucla to the “red fingers” area overlapping the S.A. / W.A. border above this. (Follow the big red arrow). In the red zone the average maximum for the whole month was a scorching hot maximum temperature between 36 and 39 degrees C. How hot were the hottest days that month? You might be surprised to know that the highest maximum for that month in the same spot was only between 33 and 36 degrees C here.
[It’s a pretty cool form of meteorological maths where there were no days above 36C, but the average was 36 or more… – Jo]
Keep reading →
June 26th, 2015 | Tags: Australian temperatures, BOM, Pidgeon (Lance) | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | Is this the way the Great Global Warming Scare fades out?
The UK newspapers are full of “Maunder Freeze Coming” as forecast by Ineson et al.[1] Rest assured, the solar-driven-cold is only a local effect, only 0.1C, and only a vague short 20 to 40 winters to come. The Sun, which has been ruled out as a major cause of global warming, is still not a cause of global warming — it’s just a minor technical issue called UV from a local star, which will be affecting an ocean current. Then the Big 6.6 degrees of heatstroke will land upon us.
Britain could be on the verge of a mini Ice Age as the Sun enters a cooler phase, the Met Office warned yesterday.
The last big chill was felt hundreds of years ago when Frost Fairs were held on the frozen River Thames.
However the Met Office said the new freeze will not be enough to cancel out the effects of global warming.
We’ve seen this all before, but not on this scale. If there was a volatility index — like a VIX for climate-PR — it would be setting records. The contradictions are head-snapping. Climate Change will shrink bread, make babies small, ruin coffee, and generally cause the extinction of everything, but in the meantime, there’s a Mini-Ice Age in the kitchen that will hit before your 90th Birthday. What to do? Keep sending those cheques for the carbon reduction, and scratch the snow off the solar panel, right?
If the UK gets “weather”, the UK Met Office was “right”.
The forecast cooling is described in ominous, awesome language, but stay calm, it’s only 0.1C of cooling, practically nothing. If an ice-age arrives, the UK Met Office will be lauded as stars, but if winters stay the same, they are still 100% accurate; and don’t change the scoreboard if January heatwaves arrive instead. If the UK gets “weather”, the UK Met Office was “right”.
A few years ago there were endless mild winters on-the-way, now we’re talking of “Frost Fairs” and “Maunder Minimums” but nobody is issuing headlines of “UK MET OFFICE BACKFLIPS”. There’s no admission here that their 95%-certain-models missed this ice age in all 3,000 runs over the last 20 years, or that if the Sun can bring future cold, it might have had a role in past warmth, eh?
A Maunder type phase of the sun,
Could put climate-change hype on the run,
When predictions would crumble,
And temperatures tumble,
As a Mini Ice Age had begun.
— Ruairi
There’s no sign that if UV changes the Northern Atlantic, maybe it has an effect on the South Pacific or the Eastern Indian too? Not to mention that it’s been a tenet of climate modeling that the models don’t do the regional predictions, just the the global type.
There’s also no mention that this is what a lot of skeptics have been saying, and some for years. The rabid Deniers of East Anti-Science beat the Met Office?
No one is talking either of Australian rivers freezing over, but I wonder whether every Western nation will end up with its own private ice age? Remember, warming is a global phenomenon, but cooling just happens locally everywhere, and where warming is forever, cooling is temporary. The missing heat hides everywhere outside of large population centers and big tax bases (and very very far from actual thermometers).
We haven’t had the appearance of the Big 6.6C “worst case” scenario for years. It’s like something from the 1990s.
The public surely can’t keep swallowing the line that we have to prepare for the heatwaves between ice-ages?
Tell me again what the Wind Turbines are for?
ADDENDUM: This study is similar to one a few weeks ago which, for very different reasons, forecast that the AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation) had just started a downturn which would cool the UK and Europe by 0.5C. It looks like quite a few scientists are waking up to the possibility that the natural cycles that drove temperatures on Earth for 4.5 billion years might still be in the drivers seat.
h/t GWPF
Keep reading →
June 26th, 2015 | Tags: Cooling & cold snaps, Europe, Ice Age Scare, Little Ice Age, UK, UK Met Office | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | In The Age this week, Stephen Sherwood explains how misleading skeptics have been for repeating obvious, incontestable results from millions of weather balloons. See, all along, Sherwood knew the weather balloons were wrong, and if only skeptics had his psychic powers, or connection to God, they would have too. Naughty skeptics,eh?
The article in The Age gives away a lot more than either Steven Sherwood (or Peter Hannam, the Fairfax journalist) probably meant to reveal. Sherwood’s still spruiking his latest study, which repeatedly adjusted and blended the weather balloon data and finally “found” the hot spot so effectively it even shows up in years when it’s not supposed to occur. I’m not talking about his technique, but about his slip of the tongue. Spot the conflicting messages. (As usual, the gullible Peter Hannam let him step right in it, by failing to ask the obvious questions.)
Stephen Sherwood effectively tells four points. Figure out how they can all be true at the same time:
- The hot spot is vital to the models, indeed to the current scientific understanding of our climate!
- This is the first time they have finally resolved the missing hot spot.
- Sherwood always knew the hot spot was there (some kind of “special” knowledge?)
- Skeptics were misleading, exploiting, and distorting things for saying that the hotspot was missing (despite point 2!).
If the hot spot is important and “was” missing and Sherwood has only just supposedly found it, that means he has hidden that failure from the paying public for years until now. He didn’t tell anyone it was missing, except in obscure paragraphs in papers announcing it was “found”. Isn’t that kinda deceptive and distorting in a debate where billions of dollars are at stake? Isn’t it a bit odd that a scientist could be “95% certain” that we were headed for a disaster, when the single most important feedback in climate models, a factor as large as the CO2 forcing itself, was known to be wrong?
Sherwood may argue that he has always believed the hot spot was there — but that’s my point. When the data shows otherwise, what kind of scientist “believes” — only an unskeptical one. What does that say about his scientific work? He’s been ignoring the data that doesn’t fit his preconceived belief and has never approached this research with an open mind. Homogenisation is a process that starts with assumptions, and Sherwood is effectively admitting he “knew” what the results of his research were going to turn up.
Is there any experiment Stephen Sherwood could do that would not “finally” find the hot spot?
…
The hot spot matters
Sherwood outlays what a disaster it would be if the 28 million radiosondes are correct and the hot spot is missing:
“The models predict that if, and only if, man is the cause of warming, the tropical upper air, six miles above the ground, should warm up to thrice as fast as the surface, but this tropical upper troposphere “hot spot” has not been observed in 50 years of measurement,” Christopher Monckton, a prominent British sceptic, wrote in 2010.
That the upper troposphere hadn’t warmed compared with the surface would be a major surprise for science, Professor Sherwood said.
Surface temperatures have been rising at about 0.15 degrees per decade. As air rises over the tropics, a lot of water vapour condenses, releasing latent heat, that warms up the air.
“It would have been truly astonishing if the temperatures in the upper troposphere hadn’t been going up faster than at the surface,” Professor Sherwood said.
“If it didn’t appear, it would have nothing to do with whether humans are causing climate change, but it would mean there is something about the way air mixes in the atmosphere that we didn’t know,” he said. “And the ramifications for climate change could go either way.”
Follow the reasoning. Sherwood says the hot spot must be there because if it wasn’t, it would mean they didn’t know something. The consensus is always right?
Sherwood, who knew what the result of his methods would be before he did them, thinks skeptics are the ones who “believe”?
Sceptics’ interest in “hot spots” they believed weren’t there and the fact they couldn’t account for the additional heat being trapped by the Earth from its increased greenhouse gases, pointed to a contrast in approaches, he said.
Hmm. Could it be Sherwood projecting his own flaws?
“They’re not aiming for a self-consistent and reasonably comprehensive description of the world. What they are aiming at is to discredit something,” he said.
Apart from skeptics who don’t. (Some are working to make an alternate climate model).
But then Peter Hannam is interviewing a man whose expertise on the subject of climate skeptics is summed up in the same interview:
“Professor Sherwood said he hadn’t bothered to follow how sceptics had responded to his paper”
Yes, we have different approaches to Stephen Sherwood. We follow the data, he “knows” what the data is supposed to say beforehand. He also knows what skeptics are saying without hearing them.
When scientists break all the rules,
Using dubious methods as tools,
To find as required,
The result they desired,
Then skeptics must take them for fools.
— Ruairi
15 years of hunting the hot spot
Keep reading →
June 24th, 2015 | Tags: Missing Hot Spot, Sherwood (Steven), The Age | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | 
Jo appreciates your support to help her keep doing what she does. This blog is funded by donations. Thanks!
Follow Jo's Tweets
Copyright © 2025 JoNova - All Rights Reserved
Site by Openwire
Powered by WordPress & Atahualpa
Recent Comments