JoNova

Mass carbon emissions, yet Australian sea levels rise at similar speed as 1920 – 1950

Australia is one of the most stable land masses on the planet, and has more gauges than anywhere else in the southern hemisphere, so it’s very useful for sea-level measurements. It also had a couple of rare continuous long records “… the two longest sea-level records in the southern hemisphere, Sydney Fort Denison from 1886 and Fremantle from 1897″ .

A new paper by White et al, concludes that Australian sea level rises are similar to global measurements (so not a bad proxy for the world), and that during times when CO2 levels were much lower — like before World War II, sea levels were rising at the same speed (or possibly faster) than they are today.

A generalized additive model of Australia’s two longest records (Fremantle and Sydney) reveals the presence of both linear and non-linear long-term sea-level trends, with both records showing larger rates of rise between 1920 and 1950, relatively stable mean sea levels between 1960 and 1990 and an increased rate of rise from the early 1990s.

Does a “larger rate of rise” mean larger than today, or larger than average — I think, given the error margins, that we could only be sure it was a similar rate. They do point out that the Australian sea level rise was slightly faster than the global rise from 1920-1950. But they did not say by how much (did I miss it?)

For example, Australian MSL rose slightly faster than the global average from 1920 to 1950, slower than the global average from about 1960 to 1990, and similar to the global average since about 1990.

Figure 2: (a) Overview of Australian sea-level data and comparison with global sea-level estimates, all expressed as OVMSL (section 2.3). The gauges flagged “TV” in column 10 of Table 1 are plotted in grey. The records flagged because of possible ground movement and credibility issues are plotted in cyan, but not used in calculating averages. The arithmetic mean of the tide gauges considered to be of reasonable quality is plotted as a heavy black line. The GMSL estimated from satellite altimeters (see Section 2.2) is plotted as a heavy red line, and the area-weighted mean from satellite altimeters along a line around the Australian coast is plotted in orange. The cyan trace that goes very high at the end is Wyndham, and the one that goes very low in the 2000s is Point Lonsdale. (b) As in (a) but after the signal correlated with the Southern Oscillation Index is removed (see Section 3). (c) The changing number of gauge stations available for use over time.

Figure 8 Figure 8: Upper panels show the fitted generalized additive models (GAMs) and approximate
pointwise 95% confidence intervals fitted to RMSL (adjusted for SOI and seasonality) at Fremantle and Sydney. Note the use of different RMSL scales. Lower panels show the nonconstant trends as instantaneous rates of change (first differences) and approximate pointwise 95% confidence intervals; dashed lines are the estimated long-term linear trend of 1.58 mm yr-1 for Fremantle and 0.65 mm yr-1 for Sydney.

They produce a model to try to sort out the factors that jostle sea levels up and down to find the long term underlying trend, and claim they can explain 69% of the variance, and most of it is due to ENSO.

Remember also that sea level rise started before Napoleon’s time, long before our evil CO2 emissions rose, so we can quibble over whether the pre WWII rise was faster around the world, or pretty much the same as today, but it’s all deck chairs on the Climatanic. We’ve increased our CO2 emissions dramatically in the last ten years and sea level rises have slowed. Over and over we get the message that CO2 is not the defining force of our climate, other things are changing it, and the models don’t know what they are.

This paper, though, ought to calm a few councils down. How much do we need to panic over Australian sea level rises that are the same now as they were when CO2 was ideal in the 1920’s and 1930s?

Another noteworthy point is that Australia is generally stable, but some places (like Hillarys, Port Adelaide and, potentially, Darwin) are sinking. I covered the bizarre difference between Hillarys and Fremantle here. The two spots are 20 km apart yet show vastly different rates of sea level rise. Panic-merchants prefer the shorter more exciting record from Hillarys.

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8.9 out of 10 based on 50 ratings

Obama tries to change the weather by burning US jobs

Bad news for the environment. Obama has a plan.

Obama’s power plant rule leaked: EPA seeks 30 percent reduction in emissions

The proposal will aim for a 30 percent cut in carbon emissions by 2030, according to the WSJ

The Obama administration is set to announce its draft proposal to cut carbon emissions from existing power plants at 10:30 am ET Monday morning, but the Wall Street Journal claims to have the early scoop on the basics.

The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking a 30 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 from existing power plants based on emission levels from 2005, “two people who have been briefed on the rule” told the WSJ. That’s considerably higher than the 20 percent cut that had been predicted – although, because CO2 emissions have already been on the decline in recent years, not as stringent as it would have been should the administration chosen 2010 or 2012 as a baseline. The EPA refused to comment before tomorrow’s release. [read more]

I’m sure China, Brazil and India are grateful…

Source UNEP

Source: UNEP

American ingenuity may yet win the day despite the pointless ball and chain.

..

Then again, Greens ought be very concerned at Obama’s new plan. In nearly every country where governments have tried to reduce CO2, the emissions have risen. Getting the government involved could spell the death-knell of US achievements in reducing CO2.

The US States may yet be able to limit the damage:

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9.1 out of 10 based on 79 ratings

Weekend Unthreaded

Litchfield National Park, Northern Territory, Australia | Photo Jo Nova

7.8 out of 10 based on 26 ratings

Cutting calories can stop cancer cells from spreading

Something different to discuss – for the medical-revolution cynics among us. Cells from a human triple-negative breast cancer were implanted in mice under their mammary fat pads. Triple negative breast cancer is a nastier form of breast cancer which is harder to treat because these cells don’t respond to the usual anti-estrogenic drugs.

The mice were then allowed to eat only 70% as many calories as they would normally freely choose to eat. This is a particularly interesting study because it shows that calorie restriction inhibited the expression of certain micro RNAs even from foreign (non mouse) implanted breast cancer cells, and this apparently kept the cancer from spreading. Notably fatalities from cancers don’t usually come from the initial solid tumor but from the metastasized version, so this is potentially very useful.

The mechanism involves strengthening the matrix around the cancer cells. When these cancer cells have metastasized they produce more of these particular micro RNA’s which in turn appear to stop production of proteins that strengthen the extracellular matrix. In other words, the cancer cells probably use the micro RNA’s to degrade the cellular matrix around them in order to spread. The implications of this are both that the micro RNA’s could be used as a target for future drug development, and also that it may help explain why people who gain weight are more likely to have a recurrence. A link between weight and breast cancer is already well established. Dieting may especially help people undergoing radiation therapy, and other trials on this with patients have already started.

For the rest of us, it’s a bit more incentive not to eat the other half of the block of chocolate (til tomorrow). Of course “cutting calories” means being careful to avoid vitamin and mineral deficiencies too.

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8 out of 10 based on 48 ratings

Earth creates tides in the rock that is the Moon

Earth from the Moon | NASA

Thanks to the Earth’s gravitational pull, the Moon is slightly egg shaped. The closest part bulges out by 51cm towards the Earth, and here’s the weirdest thing, the bulge moves. The same side of the Moon always faces Earth, but if you stood on the Moon, the Earth would appear to wobble around a particular patch of “moon-sky”. And like a tide of rock, the bulge in the surface, slowly rolls around on the Moon — following the pull from the Earth.

The ball of rock called the Moon is 3,474 km in diameter. I’m guessing the Man-on-the-Moon would not notice the tide much.

Though I imagine it will be a right headache for future Moonville Skyscrapers.

Despite the force required to deform a ball of rock that large, and from such a distance, climate models in their infinite wisdom know that the science is settled and the Moon has no significant effect on Earth.

You might recall that Ian Wilson has other ideas, and suggests lunar cycles set up atmospheric standing waves which may seed ENSO patterns.

And we wonder why those models don’t work?

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8.4 out of 10 based on 59 ratings

That West Antarctic melting couldn’t be caused by volcanoes could it?

We’re all doomed:

West Antarctic ice sheet collapse ‘unstoppable’ [ABC]

Irreversible Changes Now Affect Antarctica and the World [Live-science]

‘Nothing can stop retreat’ of West Antarctic glaciers [BBC, By Jonathan Amos]

West Antarctic ice collapse ‘could drown Middle East and Asia crops’ [The Guardian, Suzanne Goldenberg]

Antarctica’s ice collapse threatens metres of sea level rise within decades [The Ecologist]

Global warming: it’s a point of no return in West Antarctica. [The Guardian Eric Rignot]

“Last week saw a ‘holy shit’ moment in climate change science. A landmark report revealed that the collapse of a large part of Antarctica is now unstoppable”

What else is going on in West Antarctica? Oh. Look where those volcanoes are…

Guess which science correspondent mentioned the word “volcano”? None of the above. Did any of those responsible publicly funded climate scientists mentioned it in their press releases? (A gold star to anyone who can find one). Lucky Antarctic volcanoes are not hot.

Thanks especially to Janama, Jaypac, John, Sophocles and Tom. That is what comments are for!

Locations of volcanoes in Antarctica known to have been active since the peak of the last ice age (the Last Glacial Maximum)

Map Source: The Conversation. See also: Subglacial volcanoes

Despite the 95% certainty of doom, it’s not like we have all the data on heat sources in Antarctica either. Until November last year we didn’t even know one particular volcano was smoldering under a kilometer of ice in West Antarctica.

Do volcanoes melt much ice? Could be…

“Eruptions at this site are unlikely to penetrate the 1.2 to 2-km-thick overlying ice, but would generate large volumes of melt water that could significantly affect ice stream flow.” Lough et al 2013

The fastest warming areas of Antarctica — the Peninsula and West Antarctica are part of the Pacific Rim of Fire. Not worth a mention in any “news” service? Not the right kind of propaganda…

Remember — if it’s broadcast on the ABC, BBC or CBC, the whole chain of one-sided-information is fully government funded. They have specialist science units trained not to ask hard questions.

Antarctic Doom in a nutshell:

The Cryosat study telling us melting was twice as fast as expected had only 3 whole years of data.
Longer studies (800 years) show that this has all happened before.
The same areas that are warming the fastest happen to be over areas of volcanic activity. (Compare the warming below to the volcano’s above).

Warming Trends in Antarctica NASA, Earth Observatory 1957 – 2006. In the same location as the volcanic chain above. Hm?

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9.4 out of 10 based on 119 ratings

Yale says “Global Warming” is a better misused-phrase for propaganda — dump “climate change”

What’s the point of language — especially in science? If you are naive, you might think it’s to communicate a fixed concept so everyone understands and can voice an opinion on the same thing. You would be wrong. The real purpose of scientific terms is to motivate the punters to behave differently (especially if that means “give us more money”). That’s why the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication has assigned 5 PhD’s and a guy called Feinberg to spend days, weeks and months analyzing surveys to find out which propaganda term is more “effective”. The simple answer is “global warming” ekes out more fear and pain among democrats than “climate change”; therefore expect to see its use rocket.

The Guardian

The survey sample of 1,657 people, compiled over a two-week period late last year, found a large swathe of Americans turned off by the words “climate change”.

“The use of the term climate change appears to actually reduce issue engagement by Democrats, Independents, liberals, and moderates, as well as a variety of subgroups within American society, including men, women, minorities, different generations, and across political and partisan lines,” the researchers said.

Americans in general were 13% more likely to say that global warming was a bad thing.

The average punter just doesn’t talk as much about climate change, and it isn’t as scary:

[Time] In a new report by the Yale Project on Climate Communications, researchers led by Anthony Leiserowitz surveyed Americans and found that “global warming” is used much more commonly than “climate change,” both in conversation and in Internet searches, and that “global warming” is significantly more engaging than “climate change.” That’s because global warming generated more alarming associations, causing survey respondents to think of disasters like melting ice, coastal flooding and extreme weather, while “climate change” generated more banal associations with generation weather patterns.

“Global warming” was also associated with:

Greater certainty that the phenomenon was happening
Greater understanding that human activities were the primary driver of warming, especially among political independents
A greater sense of personal threat, as well as more intense worry about the issue
A greater sense that people are being harmed right now by warming, and a greater sense of threat to future generations
Greater support for both large and small-scale actions by the U.S. (although “climate change” generates more support for medium-scale efforts, especially among Republicans.)

Among republicans the effect was curiously the opposite: some Republicans have apparently learned to hate “global warming”. But luckily they are irrelevant because they are mostly lost to the faith anyhow — they were never going to convert back. Phew:

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9.2 out of 10 based on 71 ratings

The remarkable rise of UKip — tiny fringe disappearing loony skeptics win popular vote eh?

It’s a “Political Earthquake” according to the French PM. The EU and British local Elections have been marked by the smashing rise of Euroskeptics, climate skeptics, and skeptics-of-politics in general. (Monckton dares anyone to suggest a more skeptical party than UKip). UKip got 16% last time round in the European elections of 2009, this time it’s looking at something like 28%. “We’re coming for YOU, Red Ed’: Nigel Farage boasts…

Mark Steyn

Sunday’s UK election results were the first since 1910 in which a party other than Conservative or Labour came out on top in a national vote. That’s to say, Nigel Farage did something nobody from outside the two-party system has done in over a century: he won.

“Try as I might, I cannot remember a time when Britain’s various elites were as united in fury as they are now over UKIP leader Nigel Farage.. The Right and Left of the Political Class Have United Against A Common Enemy: Us”

James Delingpole

Mark Steyn‘s advice to the non-UKIP parties (which they didn’t heed):

You can’t keep calling these guys “fringe” “extremists” when they get more votes than you. So instead of shrieking about “fruitcakes” and “loonies” why not try engaging on the issues?

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9.3 out of 10 based on 95 ratings

Antarctica, not warming but melting? Has the missing heat turned up in West Antarctica?

UPDATE: A newer post on Antarctica points out that there is a volcanic chain running under or near the parts of Antarctica that are warming or melting. The scientists and media forgot to mention…

The new-old scare is Antarctica and what a messy situation it is. Only two weeks ago Matthew England was saying that Ocean winds were keeping Antarctica cool, and that Antarctica was stealing Australian rain.

Now a new Cryosat study by Malcolm McMillan et al is generating headlines saying that Antarctic ice is “disappearing at twice the rate predicted”.^[1] (Can someone calculate the date it will be all gone?)

Well, at least it’s worse now than it was all of three years ago when the new Cryosat data first started.

Now they finally can record “near continuous 96% coverage of the continent”, with “a fivefold increase in the sampling of coastal regions where the vast majority of all ice losses occur.” It’s good that we have better data, but these are very short trends. Who’s leaping to hit the panic button? If there is message here it’s that ice loss is a complicated beast; it isn’t just about temperature, but also about precipitation, ablation, and wind which vary a lot. Other studies that are 791 years longer suggest the Antarctic action lately is nothing unusual.

Cryosat shows (probably) that West Antarctica is losing ice at a rate of −134 ± 27 Gt per year. But East Antarctica is somehow showing no signs of melting, despite record Chinese emissions, “losing ice” at −3 ± 36 Gt per year (that’s somewhere between a loss of 39Gt a year or a gain of 33Gt a year). The Antarctic Peninsula, which was warming ten times faster than the rest of the world, is melting somewhat: at −23 ± 18 Gt per year. I see The Guardian says the ice loss applies to all of Antarctica. They never were that good with numbers.

McMillan go on to conclude that the melting Antarctic is causing a sea level rise since 2010, of0.45 ± 0.14 mm per year. Here’s a strange implication though. McMillan doesn’t mention the missing heat, but by definition if Antarctica is causing more sea level rise, then the missing heat in the deep abyss is doing less. Has it all gone to West Antarctica?

The material thing here is that the predictions may have changed, but the seas are not rising any faster than they were before the press release. What has changed (possibly) is our knowledge of the cause of the rise. West Antarctica might well be losing ice and raising sea levels, but since sea levels have sea-levels have decelerated since 2004, this begs the question (even more than it was already being begged) of where the missing heat in the ocean went that was supposed to be causing thermal sea level rise? This would mean there is even less sea level rise due to the so-called missing heat? As I warned two weeks ago: “…attributing sea level changes 2 kilometers down to “missing heat” from a trace gas 10 kilometers up is “not obvious”. Occams razor on Vodka.”

When trends are so short the claims that it’s “twice as fast” as they thought are pure hype. Why don’t they also mention that sea levels are not rising as fast as they thought? Where are those headlines, like “Missing Ocean Heat Causes Much Lower Sea-level Rise than Predicted!”. “Scientists Fears on Ocean Warming

The mystery of ice, ice sheets, melting and no-warming

As we see in these latest graphs below, somehow there is more sea ice around Antarctica, and temperatures are not warming over most of Antarctica either. Yet the missing heat has apparently gone to the West Antarctic sheet.

Paul Homewood has some nice alternate graphs on this. This covers quite a lot of Antarctica. Damn sneaky heat. There is pretty much no warming trend, though a slight recovery to former temperatures might be melting some ice that formed in the early 1980s. How significant is a trend that starts in 2005?

…

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8.9 out of 10 based on 35 ratings

Newton, Einstein, Watson and Crick, were not peer reviewed

Sir Isaac Newton

Peer review by anonymous unpaid reviewers is not a part of the Scientific Method.

Once upon a time the fate of a scientific paper was dependent on an Editor whose reputation depended on making sound decisions about what to publish. Modern science shifted responsibility from a single identifiable editor to an anonymous “committee”. What could possibly go wrong?

From Zocalo Public Square

Melinda Baldwin looked at the history of peer review:

I was incredibly surprised to learn that Nature published some papers without peer review up until 1973. In fact, many of the most influential texts in the history of science were never put through the peer review process, including Isaac Newton’s 1687 Principia Mathematica, Albert Einstein’s 1905 paper on relativity, and James Watson and Francis Crick’s 1953 Nature paper on the structure of DNA.

A revolution in science happened without formal “peer review”. Who would have thought?

Crucially, journals without refereeing processes were not seen as inferior or less “scientific” than those that used referees. Few scientists thought that two anonymous readers would better judge a paper than, say, the great physicist Max Planck (who was on the editorial board of the prominent German journal Annalen der Physik). Scientists unaccustomed to refereeing did not see it as an obviously superior system.

In 1936, Albert Einstein—who was used to people like Planck making decisions about his papers without outside opinions—was incensed when the American journal Physical Review sent his submission to another physicist for evaluation. In a terse note to the editor, Einstein wrote:

“I see no reason to address the—in any case erroneous—comments of your anonymous expert. On the basis of this incident I prefer to publish the paper elsewhere.”

Watson and Crick’s paper might never have been published:

Nature’s former editor John Maddox was fond of saying that the groundbreaking 1953 DNA paper would never have made it past modern peer review because it was too speculative.

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9.2 out of 10 based on 84 ratings

Weekend Unthreaded

Photo by Geoff Sherrington

8.9 out of 10 based on 32 ratings

A first: one patient’s widespread cancer treated with an engineered virus

Myeloma Cells | Wikimedia

This is another example of why I’m so passionate about getting research money out of dead-end efforts to change the weather and into medical research. The extraordinary news broke last week that the Mayo Clinic had used a genetically modified virus to ~~cure~~ treat one woman of metastasized and widely spread cancer – specifically myeloma. There are a lot of caveats, this research is quite risky, and it doesn’t apply to most people or most cancers, it is a proof of principle.

The potential for transformative medical breakthroughs is spectacular right now. Medicine is, after all, just an information game. The information is expensive but the material resources are dirt cheap — all the answers to the holy grail of the fountain of health are found in rearrangements of common elements — like the kind found in the dirt of a pot-plant. For the first time humanity has the tools to hunt and hammer out the information. If people knew what glittering marvels were within reach, they surely would want to channel our best and brightest and all our spare resources.

The main caveat here (a pretty big one) is that the trial had only two people, and it didn’t help the other person very much. Another caveat is that both people didn’t have antibodies to the measles virus used — and most people would. Other problems with viral treatments are that our immune systems attack the viruses, sometimes before the viruses can act, sometimes the viruses just wash away from the site, then there’s the risk that viruses can mutate. Live viruses can also potentially set up chronic low grade infections in unexpected places. Indeed we are playing with fire. Jesse Gelsinger was 18 when he took part in a medical trial in 1999, and was injected with a “safe” viral vector, he suffered a massive immune response and major organ failure leading to his very premature death four days later. This shocked the research world.

On the other hand, cancer is one of the top two killers in the Western World. The weapons we throw at it are awfully blunt. But theoretically even late stage cancer could be cleared within weeks from a body if the immune system (or a virus) could target just the cancer cells.

I find the possibilities tantalizing. It’s why I studied molecular biology and genetic engineering. One day people will visit their doctor to hear they have aggressive disseminated bowel cancer, say, but they will only need to take an injection and spend a week in hospital with ongoing monitoring. Why aren’t we moving mountains to make this happen?

From the Washington Post ( hyped and lacking in details that I would like to see):

Her name is Stacy Erholtz. For years, the 50-year-old mom from Pequot Lakes, Minn., battled myeloma, a blood cancer that affects bone marrow. She had few options left.

She had been through chemotherapy treatments and two stem cell transplants. But it wasn’t enough. Soon, scans showed she had tumors growing all over her body.

Five minutes into the hour-long process, Erholtz got a terrible headache. Two hours later, she started shaking and vomiting. Her temperature hit 105 degrees… Over the next several weeks, the tumor on her forehead disappeared completely and, over time, the other tumors in her body did, too.

From the Mayo Clinic: Taming Measles Virus to Create an Effective Cancer Therapeutic

May 13, 2014: In this issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Russell et al⁴ from Mayo Clinic report, for the first time, the use of a cytolytic replicating MV to completely eliminate widespread tumors in a patient with advanced incurable myeloma.

This is not a cure yet

The Cancer Research UK blog tells us that that Stacy Erholtz forehead tumor disappeared for nine months, which they describe as “an incredible outcome” but it has returned and is being managed by radiotherapy. Which all seems rather important, and ought to be mentioned in all the stories you would think. For those who want more info, the Cancer Research UK post seems to be the most balanced and informed.

Why the measles virus was chosen:

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9.2 out of 10 based on 43 ratings

Only 3% of Americans name “environment” as top issue.

The Gallup poll results for May show the environment is not the most important issue for 97% of Americans. Golly, but those naming the environment as the top concern tripled from 1% – 3% from April to May. It’s a blip up in a long term trend that’s falling. H/t to Brietbart.com.

How many times do people need to tell politicians that being a skeptic isn’t the vote killer that some commentators would like you to believe? Even people who believe in man-made global warming just aren’t as concerned about the environment as they are about jobs, corruption, and the economy.

Which politician will make cleaning out corruption their trademark policy?

…

Where’s the balance?

According to some the media doesn’t report on climate often enough. But where’s the “balance” — if 97% of the public are more concerned about something else, perhaps the message should be something else?

For those all-knowing super intelligent beings who protest that the public won’t worry about the right things if you don’t tell them, we can only ask if 20 years of non-stop campaigns, reports, advertising, documentaries, and Nobel Prize winning (flawed) documentaries are enough?

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9.7 out of 10 based on 70 ratings

The University of Queensland’s diabolical dilemma

Rud Istvan has taken it upon himself to point out the diabolical dilemma the University of Queensland is facing. They have now claimed ownership of the work for the 97% Consensus paper (Cook et al 2013). In which case, UQ may have published a paper which breaches its own ethical principles (and is now threatening Brandon Shollenberger with legal action if he does what they themselves have already done). Alternately, if there was no ethical approval they are misrepresenting the situation with “grossly invalid grounds” and there is no reason to withhold data and threaten Shollenberger and the said data ought be released immediately.

The paper should be retracted or the data should be released to Richard Tol and Brandon Shollenberger. I would think an apology to Brandon, or to those named in the paper would also be a bare minimum requirement.

PS: As I said, the question of the participants names is a strawman. The real issue is the other data — like timestamps. Why are UQ risking their reputation to hide the other data (or lack thereof?)

——————————————–

	.
Prof. Alistair McEwan Acting-Pro-Vice Chancellor University of QueenslandMr. Graham Lloyd Environmental Editor www.theaustralian.com.au	………………………………………..	Ms. Jane Malloch, Esq. Head Research Legal University of QueenslandProf. Richard Tol University of Sussex

Prof. McEwan:

On May 20, 2014, you issued a formal statement concerning the
controversy published by The Australian on 5/17/14 surrounding Cook et. al,
2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 024024, ‘Quantifying the Consensus’, hereinafter
QtC. That statement presents the University of Queensland (UQ) with an ethical
and legal dilemma. I call your attention to it expecting UQ will do the right thing.
Your statement makes it quite clear that UQ considers QtC was done
under the sponsorship of and with support from UQ. This is indisputable. The
solicitation for volunteer raters for the analysis that became QtC was:
survey.gci.uq.edu.au/survey.php?c=5RL8LWWT2YO7. UQ released a statement
about the importance of QtC in the UQ News on January 16, 2014 headlined,
“UQ climate change paper has the whole world talking.”

Your 5/20/14 statement said in part:

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9.3 out of 10 based on 114 ratings

Free Forum with David Archibald and Cliff Ollier in Perth Monday next week

The Climate Debate Continues!

Professor Cliff Ollier, UWA and David Archibald, Author of “Twilight of Abundance”

Jo says: two Perth councils are drafting policies to cope with sea level rise right this minute. Cliff Ollier can set them straight with Rising sea Level Forecast: Fact or Fiction? Archibald’s book is subtitled: “Why Life in the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short”. It’s excellent and fascinating. This man does not mince words. What else do you need to know?

Monday 26th May 7pm, Royal Perth Yacht Club, Australia II Drive, Crawley, Perth, more details below.

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8.2 out of 10 based on 41 ratings

Australian deserts are controlling global CO2 levels?

Does the world owe Australia bezillions of dollars in carbon credits? With years of La Nina rainfall on arid outback Australia, “we” (or rather the citizen plants of Australia) have apparently been sucking down the CO2 at a phenomenal rate: “almost 60 per cent of carbon uptake attributed to Australian ecosystems.” But, sigh, call me unconvinced. I think what this paper demonstrates is that consensus and simulations are not worth much, and that we don’t know where global CO2 is going.

And anyway, the Australian outback vegetation explosion is ephemeral. While there may have been a lot of carbon sucked out of the atmosphere in 2011, as noted in the paper, it quickly gets oxidized and goes back into the atmosphere over the next year or two when the grasses and flowers die. So maybe hold off on those bezillions of dollars of carbon credits.

Global carbon markets turnover $50-180 billion a year with the aim of changing global carbon dioxide levels. (Yes, that’s what they say these markets are for.) But the brutal truth is that we are still guessing where exactly our carbon emissions end up. The consensus was that probably tropical forests were doing extra global sucking and were the mystery sink. A few weeks ago it was Indian wetlands. Today, this new study suggests it is really the arid lands of Australia. There goes the consensus on land sinks of CO2.

Apparently the sinks are not doing too badly at keeping up with the sources. Those annual rises and falls in both don’t seem to have a lot to do with human civilization.

Figure 1a | Interannual variability of NEE and FPAR anomalies. a, Annual NEE, where positive values represent carbon uptake, blue is LPJ, red is MACCII, and the residual land sink is in grey. The standard deviations are 60.58 PgCyr21 for LPJ, 60.4 PgCyr21 for the inversion, and 60.8 PgCyr21 for the residual (see Methods).

Anyone think its a bad idea to launch global markets based on a ubiquitous molecule produced and used by every bit of Life On Earth, which has a cycle we haven’t figured out yet. Anyone? No mention of this in Nature.

Daniel Metcalf, Nature :

Of the roughly 10 billion tonnes of carbon emitted each year from human activity, only around half remains in the atmosphere, with the rest being absorbed by the oceans and by plants on land. This CO2 sink has been growing steadily, but the situation could change as shifts in climate and human land use intensify.

…the land sinks seems to be highly sensitive to variations in temperature and rainfall over yearly timescales.

Where was that land sink? Don’t tell me the “simulations” were wrong?

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8.9 out of 10 based on 34 ratings

Public are terminally bored with climate. Anderegg denies devastating Climategate damage

The big news from this new study is no news — the public are more bored with climate change than ever, and the trend is down. The fever peaked in 2007, and the last great spike of interest was in late 2009 when ClimateGate finished it off. Though that’s not the way Anderegg sees it.

Anderegg infamously published the blacklist of scientists in PNAS, so we know he struggles with the scientific method. Here, flawed assumptions render the conclusions a wishful fantasy. Anderegg argues that ClimateGate was not a big deal, didn’t affect opinions much, and (yawn) climate scientists need to do better communication. He’s wrong. His study misses the major damage — by assuming that the public are a uniform block his research could never uncover that the real effects of ClimateGate were devastating and irreversible. The scandal changed the opinions that matter — those of the smart engaged thinkers and leaders. I noted at the time that ClimateGate had put a rocket under the layer of influential busy achievers like never before. Suddenly people who hadn’t taken much interest in the debate were fired into action by the fraud. The nodes of influence shifted — as I said in The ClimateGate Virus at the time: “Behind the scenes, well connected businessmen in California, surgeons in Sydney, lawyers in the UK, and top ranking physicists are emailing and linking up.” My site traffic rose like never before and now is even higher. Climategate brought in a new caliber of players. Recent survey’s back me up: the highest proportion of skeptics are in the upper middle class. The unskilled workers, the unemployed and pensioners are more likely to believe in “climate change” (whatever that means).

What followed in the next four years was that the money shifted out of the game, politicians lost their nerve (think of Kevin Rudd), people paid lip-service, but in reality, the faith was sliding as the opinion leaders melted away. By mid 2011 even the media abandoned the meme.

Princeton University and University of Oxford researchers found that negative media reports seem to have only a passing effect on public opinion, but that positive stories don’t appear to possess much staying power, either. Measured by how often people worldwide scour the Internet for information related to climate change, overall public interest in the topic has steadily waned since 2007. To gauge public interest, the researchers used Google Trends to document the Internet search-engine activity for “global warming” (blue line) and “climate change” (red line) from 2004 to 2013. They examined activity both globally (top) and in the United States (bottom). The numbers on the left indicate how often people looked up each term based on its percentage of the maximum search volume at any given point in time. (Image courtesy of William Anderegg)

I point out the assumptions and holes below:

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9.1 out of 10 based on 92 ratings

Uni Queensland defends legal threats over “climate” data they want to keep secret

This is about data they don’t own, that wasn’t secure, is supposedly available, but they want to keep secret.

More bad news for the University of Queensland. The Australian discussed the issue of the bizarre threatening letter that UQ sent to Brandon Shollenberger when he contacted them to let them know he’d found some data one of their employees carelessly left unprotected lying around on the web. Now the acting Pro-Vice-Chancellor is trying to do damage-control by releasing a media statement, but he’s missed the chance to say the legal threat was a parody — with that easy escape gone, he’s defending the indefendable. Brandon has already responded on his site, arguing that the VC is “highly misleading”: the names of the surveyers are not important (and are also mostly known already), but time stamps, and missing papers are still unpublished, and UQ has not explained why they ought be concealed.

The UQ Statement (quoted below) also misses the point and in so many ways.

“The following is a statement from UQ acting Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research and International) Professor Alastair McEwan.

“Recent media coverage (The Australian, 17 March 2013) has stated that The University of Queensland is trying to block climate research by stopping the release of data used in a paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

The data for John Cook’s paper has nothing at all to do with climate research. Cook did a sociological study on key words used in short summaries of papers published about the climate. It tells us nothing about Earth’s climate but possibly gives some insight into the biased, one-sided nature of bureaucratized climate research.

“This is not the case [that UQ is trying to block climate research].

Actually it is. UQ employs John Cook whose main job appears to be to call climate scientists petty names and generally besmirch the reputation of any climate researchers who get results he doesn’t approve of. “Christy’s Crocks” anyone? Cook has a badge for that, and a whole book about “deniers” — just get him to explain the term scientifically? Even he agrees it is inaccurate — but that doesn’t stop him using it. Cook’s main goal with the Consensus Project seems to be to promote the fallacy that science is done by consensus and that a meaningful one exists. If only he had evidence to back him up instead? The infatuation with Argument from Authority is all profoundly unscientific. The University of Queensland science faculty ought be cringing in embarrassment. If the good scientists there are not now, they will be soon.

Then there is a very odd admission — doesn’t UQ know that SkepticalScience is John Cook’s personal site, and the survey participants were volunteers? Do they “own” this research (with all its flaws) now too? Please tell me yes.

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9.4 out of 10 based on 89 ratings

Death by a thousand cuts: how the machinery of academia enforces conformity

The strange case of the Greenpeace FOIA of David Legates (Hydroclimatology prof, and skeptic) at the University of Delaware (US)

The Delaware State Law says FOIAs only apply to things supported by state funding and David Legates didn’t receive any. That should make this story incredibly short, except that, as Jan Bilt explains: “For reasons administrators have declined to explain, a small portion of Legates’ teaching salary was, curiously, placed on the list of state-funded activity shortly before Greenpeace filed its FOIA request in 2009.” In the end a heavyweight, Lawrence White, at the Uni of Delaware leaned heavily on Legates to provide not just everything Greenpeace asked for, but virtually everything he’d ever done — his teaching notes, emails, even ones written on his own time, and on his personal computer. At the same time the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) filed FOIAs against three other people at the Uni of Delaware who had worked on IPCC reports. The same Lawrence White said simply “No” to those requests. When is a law a law, and when is it merely a tool to fulfill the personal wishes of those in high places? Apparently when it’s on a university campus.

Compare Legates fate with Michael Mann. The State of Delaware is quite “tight” on FOIA, limiting its use, compared to the State of Virginia where Mann used to work. In Virginia all UVA faculty members are subject to FOIA requests. But there the heavyweights pulled out artillery, not against Mann, but against the FOIA — they took the request to court to stop Mann from having to release documents, emails and data related to his research. They argued it would have a chilling effect on research. (As if hiding emails and data somehow frees up scientific discovery?)

David Legates

In other words, an FOIA is Freedom of Information if you have friends in high places, but selective enforcement means the chilling effect of FOI requests can be put to good use for those who do politically incorrect research. The hypocritical excuses are laid bare below… But who will report this? The old media are on academia’s side, though. Through a very curious turn of events, journalists appear to have realized that they stand to lose their precious FOI tool itself if Mann gets away with his court excuses. After years of defending Mann, just weeks ago they flipped and now want those government funded emails. What an ugly precedent it would set if Mann can hide from FOI?

Now imagine we had an independent free media, and it went after White, demanding he explain why skeptics have to respond (and then some) to an FOIA, while IPCC believers can just say “No”. This could all be resolved so quickly. In a month the CEI could have all the answers they were looking for, and White would not look like a hypocrite. Of course the IPCC researchers have nothing to hide… Ladies and Gentlemen, the Media IS the problem.

— Jo

PS: For what its worth, White investigated everything Legates provided and obviously found nothing of any use to Greenpeace. The material was never provided to Greenpeace, and they stopped asking. It’s almost like the UD staff were doing Greenpeace research. Just another way big-government lobbyists help big-government activists.

——————————————–
Guest essay by Jan H. Blits

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9.5 out of 10 based on 73 ratings

Solar panels: warm your house or burn it down? Bankrupt your company?

A little too much solar success perhaps?

Solar panels in Queensland and NSW in Australia have been providing some householders with energy in a more concentrated form than they bargained for. At least 70 houses with rooftop solar panel arrays have had solar driven burnouts. The fire risk means that nearly 30,000 faulty solar power isolators have been recalled. The company that imported them went bust on Friday. (Ain’t that the way?)

Remember if your house burns down, it is the price we pay to save the planet. It will, unfortunately, blow your personal carbon footprint through the roof. (A point that will, no doubt, grieve you as you sift through the smouldering ruins.)

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8.6 out of 10 based on 102 ratings

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The strange case of the Greenpeace FOIA of David Legates (Hydroclimatology prof, and skeptic) at the University of Delaware (US)

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