Tim Flannery says renewables will run the economy:
“What we can now see is the emerging inevitability that renewables are going to be running the economy…”
And I say: Prepare for economic armageddon. Picture an Australia where we all have jobs — jobs digging holes, mucking out the stables, and chopping those last few remaining trees down. We may lead the world installing chinese-made solar panels, but they won’t help us make anything that anyone else wants to buy. Anton gives us some numbers no one seems to have mentioned to Tim. Like, it takes 1,000 new wind towers to kinda equal one coal plant. – Jo
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Guest Post: Anton Lang
Get ready — this is how much the 25 most recent, powerful, high-tech wind plants generate. Not the red line — that’s how much electricity we used. Look at the expanse under the blue line — every bit of that (“bit” being the word) is all thanks to those brand spanking new wind turbines.
Courtesy of the National Electricity Market. (NEM)
The red line at the top shows total electricity demand for NSW, Vic, Qld, SA, and Tasmania over 2011. The blue line the total generation from the 25 most recently constructed Wind Plants in that same 5 State area.
Note how the total demand average is between 22,000 and 28,000MW. Wind power from those 25 new plants generates as much as 650MW (the blue line). That’s 2.6%. This is from a total Nameplate Capacity of 2072MW being generated from those 25 Wind Plants which are made up of 985 huge towers.
The killer here, however is not shown on this graph. That is the absolute 24 hour requirement for power, the baseload or 17,000 MW running day and night.
There have been suggestions that Jo Nova might be trying to hide or ignore the most recent boreholes graph from Huang et al. So here it is. This is the last 2,000 years according to 6000 boreholes, with the last 100 years also using the “instrumental record” which gives us that hockey-stick uptick at the end. Below I explain the pros and cons of this study and update my thoughts.
Huang and Pollack 2008: Their latest boreholes published study
A borehole sounds like a bit-of-a-stretch as a proxy. How could we tell if the world was warmer in 1066 by drilling a hole in the ground? Yes, fair point. But what makes boreholes useful is that they are global and there is a lot of data: specifically 6,000 holes all over the world.
I’ve been looking at boreholes in more detail, analyzing them in the light of newer proxies. When all the evidence is considered, boreholes turn out be not-much-use at giving us meaningful numbers in degrees C, and in my opinion, not-too-hot at telling us the “when” of an event either. Too much depends on assumptions.
But what are they good for is that, when combined with other proxies, they can help show whether a temperature swing was regional or global.
The basics of Boreholes
Heat from the surface slowly sinks deep into the Earth. Theoretically a hot decade will warm the rocks below and that wave of heat will travel slowly downwards. Rather annoyingly, heat from the boiling hot magma at the center of the Earth is moving up at the same time. As the wave of heat moves down from the top it gradually spreads and blends with cooler decades, information is lost and resolution fades. But if we dig holes down to 2,000m below the surface it’s possible to see signals that appear to be from the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, and the Holocene Optimum — going back 20,000 years.
“That is worse than anything Alan Jones said. ” Follow Graham Young on twitter.
A bad-taste joke by Alan Jones in October created a national storm. These comments in the “science” show were supposedly considered, deliberate and researched.
This morning on the “science” show Robyn Williams equates skeptics to pedophiles, people pushing asbestos, and drug pushers. Williams starts the show by framing republicans (and skeptics) as liars: “New Scientist complained about the “gross distortions” and “barefaced lying” politicians come out with…” He’s goes on to make the most blatant, baseless, and outrageous insults by equating skeptics to people who promote pedophilia, asbestos and drugs.
“What if I told you pedophilia is good for children, or that asbestos is an excellent inhalant for those with asthmatics, or that smoking crack is a normal part and a healthy one of teenage life, to be encouraged? You’d rightly find it outrageous, but there have been similar statements coming out of inexpert mouths, distorting the science.”
“These distortions of science are far from trivial, our neglect of what may be clear and urgent problems could be catastrophic and now a professor of psychology at UWA has shown what he says is the basis of this unrelenting debauchery of the facts…”
Stephan Lewandowsky goes on to defame
This is degradation and a malicious attack on skeptics with misinformation:
“They were rejecting the science not based on the science... but on other factors…
what we basically found was the driving motivating factor behind their attitudes was their ideology.
People who endorse an extreme version of free market fundamentalism …
They are also rejecting the link between smoking and lung cancer, and between HIV and AIDS…
Ladies and gentlemen it’s time to get serious. Both Williams and Lewandowsky are ignoring the scientific evidence, denigrating their opponents, destroying rational conversation and honest discussion before it can even start. We can’t let them get away with this.
They are paid public servants who use taxpayer funds to push their personal ideology. It has to stop.
Robyn Williams, what you do is not science. It’s crass tribal warfare.
Stephan Lewandowsky, skeptics base their arguments on evidence. You are in denial. We don’t deny AIDS or that smoking causes cancer, and we never have. Your tactic of deliberately seeking out a few nutters (or fakes) to interview, then besmirching the names of serious commentators is blatant, obvious and documented.
Name-calling in order to suppress debate
The class of people who use regulations to control others, rather than persuasion and voluntary competition, have resorted to name calling for years to suppress the free and fair debates that they cannot win. Now they are employing that technique in other areas.
What they road-tested on skeptics, they now use in the wider political debate against their political opponents — such as Tony Abbott and Alan Jones. With each success they are becoming more loud, aggressive, and obnoxious.
The mainstream media makes this cheap tactic successful. As long as they promote these anti-science, baseless smears as if they were serious commentary the media is the problem.
When are the MSM going to stop treating the names as serious content, because they are so transparently untrue and designed simply to smear opponents? Indeed, when are the MSM going to stop being complicit or even active partners in the name calling? Perhaps we could start with demonstrations at ABC offices…
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PS: PERTH people — come and meet David and me, and David Archibald tonight at the Floreat Athena Football club in Mt Hawthorn for a relaxed event with like-minded people. Use the code word Nova to get a $10 discount when booking. 7pm start
It is hard to believe, just at a moment of heightened sensitivity about offensive speech, and only a week or so after the commonwealth government announces a royal commission into the sexual abuse of children. Even harder to believe is that he specifically links former ABC Chair Maurice Newman into his comments and refers to his ideas on climate change as “drivel”.
Indeed it is worse than that. The government, via the Australian Research Council is involved in suppressing dissent.
…
Heads must roll over this, including Williams’. But the problem is obviously more widespread and involves the University of Western Australia, where Lewandowsky holds his chair, the ARC, the ABC, and possibly even the government.
Firstly — there is the usual nonsense, the must-have-caveats, the litany, that allows a brave journalist to write something that’s pretty obvious, but political incorrect. So first we-the-reader apparently needs to know (again) that: 1/ CO2 has hit record highs, 2/ Some large government report tells us that is awful and 3/We’re not doing enough, and 4/ Sandy the big-storm is “widely cited” by some unnamed sources (which means activists, not scientists) as evidence of climate change will make storms worse.
Then, good news, the MSM can admit that things are not accelerating (or even rising) as planned:
[Graham Lloyd] “…the most recent global temperature record, released this week, shows the average global temperature fell last year for the second year.
In short, there is agreement that the rising trend has stalled.
Many scientists accept there are natural processes at work that are not properly factored into the global temperature models.
German environmentalist Fritz Vahrenholt, a former Social Democrat Party senator, founder of wind-energy company REpower and president of the German Wildlife Foundation, has been particularly outspoken.
“According to the IPCC climate models, there should be an increase in global temperature of 0.2C per decade,” he says.
“But if you look at the data series of satellite-based temperature measurements and the data from the British Hadley Centre (HadCRUT), you find that since 1998 there has been no warming; the temperature has remained at a plateau. We know how mainstream climate scientists would answer this question: 15 years is not a climate signal; it must happen for 30 years,” Vahrenholt says, “But there must be an explanation for the unexpected absence of warming.”
Vahrenholt’s answer is that the exclusion of solar activity and decadal oscillations from climate models leads to erroneous results. Vahrenholt’s point is not that climate change shouldn’t be addressed but that fear-driven energy policy works against the interests of nature, the poor and economic good sense. He says there is time to find solutions that work.
This is the background against which governments will meet in Doha…
Give Vahrenholt a medal.
PS: PERTH people — come and meet David and I, and David Archibald tonight at the Floreat Athena Football club in Mt Hawthorn for a relaxed event with like-minded people. Use the code word Nova to get a $10 discount when booking. 7pm start 🙂
Just one of the emails that crossed my desktop today. From Eric Fleay to corporate affairs @ the ABC, CC’d to myself, The Bunyip, Catallaxy, MichaelSmith, and Pickering. (Thank you Eric, such praise, for bloggers and commenters)
I would not have said things this way myself, but for all those who claim the ABC is not biased and shows no favors to the Labor Party, where is the ALP-green-voter-anger at the ABC? Do they complain that the taxpayer is forced to pay for a news service that does not cover environmental or green issues, or represent the voices of people who want more big-government hand-outs and regulation? Where are the calls from those who benefit from the gravy train to “purge” the ABC because it ignores them, denigrates, name-calls, and misinforms them with one-sided views and incompetent news? – Jo
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Dear Ms ABC,
I have long bypassed television, radio and newspapers in favour of the internet to stay abreast of what is happening in the wider world. What I find amazing is that surely the ‘quality’ journalists touted by the MSM here in this country must go on the net themselves. Surely? That they must, means that they are all, generally speaking, either stupid or corrupt, and if corrupt, either morally or venally so. I mean, how could anyone otherwise peddle the nonsense one gets on the ABC when they have access to real news?
Anyway, to get to the point; I have long realised that that same deficiency applies vis-a-vis affairs here in Oz, and so truly sickening the bias that infects the ABC, I have over the years maintained only a casual interest in national affairs. That is, until earlier this year when friends called my attention to the websites copied to this email.
My bedtime reading is now a joy, tootling off to pleasant dreams after perusing the truly astonishing number of articulate, funny, well informed and insightful fellow Australians who regularly fill the comments sections of these wonderful sites.
I am now certainly a part of that growing groundswell of ordinary citizens who would support, to the hilt, the most ruthless possible purging of the ABC by any new Prime Minister.
To paraphrase Lady C.:
I take no leave of you, Ms ABC. I send no compliments to your management. You deserve no such attention. I am most seriously displeased.
Our award-winning treasurer is forcing the nation to spend $8.9 billion on wind-turbines, to generate electricity which will be3- 4 times more expensive than coal powered electricity, probably won’t reduce CO2 at all, and which definitely won’t change the weather. Victoria’s windfarms have saved virtually no coal from being burnt. South Australian windfarms have saved 4% of their rated capacity in fossil fuels at a cost of $1,484 per ton.
MORE than $8.9 billion will be spent importing wind turbines because of the blowout in the Gillard government’s renewable energy target, providing few if any benefits to local industry, one of the nation’s biggest electricity generators warns.
The Australian can also reveal that a new Frontier Economics analysis commissioned by Macquarie Generation has found that the renewable energy target could slash the value of coal-fired power stations by between $11.3bn and $17.3bn – potentially having a greater impact than the carbon tax, which includes industry compensation.
In a new submission to the Climate Change Authority, Macquarie Generation said that 2500 wind turbines – costing $12.7bn – will be needed to comply with a scheme that is set to blow out the amount of renewable energy in the system to about 26 per cent by 2020, from the original 20 per cent.
Of this, more than 70 per cent of the cost would be to purchase overseas-manufactured turbines, the submission says.
PRIVATE hospitals are warning of nationwide cutbacks to chemotherapy services – and one of the nation’s largest regional cancer treatment centres faces closure – over a decision to slash federal government funding for chemotherapy drugs.
He said to recoup costs, private hospitals would have to charge patients about $100 extra a treatment. Some patients required several treatments a week.
“In the majority of cases, private hospitals won’t be able to pass those on to private patients because our contracts with health funds prevent that,” Mr Roff said.
He said the outcome would vary from hospital to hospital depending on how they were supplied. “Some hospitals will be able to continue providing service,” he said. “Some have indicated they will limit the types of services that are provided. Some have indicated they are looking at capping the number of treatments they provide to minimise the hospital’s financial exposure. And some have indicated that they have no option but to cease providing chemotherapy services altogether.”
A well managed, smart country balances priorities to maximize the health and well-being of it’s people. Throwing effort and money at frivolous, unsupported whimsies ultimately kills people. We may never be able to say exactly whose death could have been avoided, and there are valid questions about the effectiveness of some cancer treatments as well. But nothing about either of these decisions is based on a cost-benefit analysis and empirical evidence. That is the grand shame of it all. The same people who tell us we need insurance for the planet don’t realize that the “insurance” comes at a cost. The precautionary principle cuts both ways.
Me, if I was PM I’d be putting MRI’s into every town and city to find those cancers early while they are still cheap to treat.
The ABC tv program Catalyst was quite special last Thursday. Was that a science report, or an advertorial?
Brisbane was recording temperatures with modern Stevenson Screens in 1890, as were some other stations, but the BOM often ignores these long records.
Forget gloom and doom it’s “kinder” climate now
The ABC team have shifted gear. They heard they should stop being all gloom and doom (it’s climate fatigue you know) and make it simple. So they did, and everything was delivered in a cheesy canter, like an episode of Playschool. Smile everyone! Floods will increase, but we won’t hammer you with ominous music, instead we’ll show Jonica-the-presenter cleaning the floor of her very own home, joking about the pesky trickle in the living room (To paraphrase: It’s flooded again — can you believe?).
Dr Jonica Newby reckons things have changed since she bought her house. It’s simply unthinkable that the climate now is not exactly the same at her house as it was when she first moved in — way back in the historic year of… 2000. (Gosh, eh? I wonder why the BOM don’t publish a paper on it?) Now our national debate is reduced to presenters, not presenting evidence, but just telling us what they reckon. She has lived there for twelve long years after all, and in just another 18 years it’ll be a whole climate data point. Need I say more?
With this kind of mindless anecdotery, it’s fair to ask: is Catalyst still a science show?
If a skeptic said the weather hadn’t changed at their house for 12 years, wouldn’t Catalyst accuse them of mindless cherry picking, ignoring the big picture, and being unscientific?
Speaking of cherry picking: what about the endless droughts that were predicted, or the dams that would not ever fill again, or the four expensive desalination plants in Australia that are not being used? Doesn’t that tell us something about the state of climate science?
How about some statistical chicanery?
Newby tells us that we’ve had … 330 months of above average temperatures (from this NOAA report). It sounds awfully scarey. What are the odds of that? Dr Mark Howden tells us that there is only (gasp) a 1 in 100,000 chance of that happening in “the absence of human influence”.
So where does the 1 in 100,000 estimate come from?
According to the production notes, the number comes from Kokic et al 2012 (submitted). So it’s unpublished. Without seeing the paper it’s impossible to know, and there is no pre-print I can find. But even without the calculations we know that to calculate any probability at all, they would have to start with assumptions we know are wrong.
Nonsense assumptions: either temperatures are flat, or climate models can predict the natural part of the current warming trend.
The temperature of the world is not and has never been “flat”. Obviously, see this graph, or this graph, there is no “flatness” nor a meaningful global average temperature — there is only change. Moreso, things have been warming since the depths of the Little Ice Age in 1680, so centuries before our CO2 became significant some warming factor kicked in (90% of our emissions are post-1945). Their models don’t know what that factor was. Since the world has been warming for 300 years, above-average months are hardly unusual, instead they are expected. (Unless of course, you used the average temperature of the Holocene, but that’s another story).
As it happens, most of the warming in the last 50 years probably comes from one step change in 1977. Of course, averages after that step up would be higher than those before, and it has nothing to do with CO2.
Howden and Newby don’t even try to name any evidence that man-made emissions cause significant warming. They just assert this is the case. I asked for any observational evidence in support of catastrophic warming 34 months ago. If the observations were overwhelming, it is odd that no one seems to have found the mystery paper yet, though the Earth apparently depends on it?
Then there is the thing about our short records. The climate rolls in a 60 year cycle where temperatures warm for 30 years then cool for thirty years, so getting 27 years of above average temperatures would be — not unusual. Climate scientists tell us that 30 years makes a “trend” but in these Kokic et al calculations, it appears every month pretends to have significance. As Ken Stewart points out, the Australian share index has also been “above average” for 330 months or more. Is that evidence of “unnatural forces”?
If we start with the wrong assumptions, there are all kinds of ways to get 330 meaningless “highs” in a row.
The real meaning of heat deaths and “harvesting”
Talking about Black Saturday, Newby points out that during that heatwave, it wasn’t just the fires that killed, ” it turned out an extra 370 people died during that week than you’d expect. Essentially, it means that they were tipped over the edge by heat stress. There’s a rather confronting in-house term that’s used for this. They call it ‘premature harvesting’.”
What Newby doesn’t realize is that it’s called “harvesting” because it’s often those who are close to death who succumb to the heat. It’s well known that after the heat wave and the spike in mortality, there is often a fall in deaths for the next few weeks [for example see here and here]. It’s also called the “mortality displacement effect “. In other words, sometimes a heat wave only shortens a life by a few weeks. That is not the same in a cold snap, where there is no reduction in mortality afterwards. (See Kysely et al 2009 and CO2 science. )
Catalyst warned us of the recent record temperatures: “Melbourne hit 46.5 degrees. Hopetoun hit 48.8.”
Dr David Jones
We broke the Victorian record by 1.6 degrees. You know, these are records going back over 50 years. You know, you’re not breaking ’em by… by, you know, a few tenths of a degree – you’re breaking ’em by whole degrees or more.
Newby knows that the BOM have records going back 100 years (and more) but didn’t think to ask why Jones says “50 years”. What happened to all the thermometers before 1962? The truth is that the BOM has far hotter records, like these astonishing ones of 50C temperatures in 1896, and an amazing 53.9C recorded by none other than Charles Sturt in 1828. The independent volunteers on the BOM audit team have found dozens of examples of warmer temperatures in Australia, and seemingly, longer more widespread heatwaves. They also found examples of bird deaths en masse from the heat.
And the “other Presidential contest”, the Chinese leadership transition is taking place today. In 2015, China should take its pilot emissions trading scheme national.
In total around sixty per cent of the world’s GDP is either subject to a carbon price today, or has one legislated or planned for implementation in the two or three years ahead.
International carbon markets will cover billions of consumers this decade. Ask the bankers at your table whether they want Australia to clip that ticket. We’re going to help them get their share.
So that’s the work of coming years, that’s what preoccupies my thoughts as I think through the agenda for this country.
I skimmed this line on Andrew Bolts blog, but it didn’t really register until a friend from Europe emailed it to me. (Thanks Stefan). Surely it was a slip, but then she follows it by saying “that’s what preoccupies my thoughts”.
So this is the new-ALP- out goes the workers-party, in comes the bankers-party? Ho Ho Ho
How this for a hypothetical test? What if she knew of poor workers funds going missing, say, being misused through union corruption, would she launch an investigation immediately to recover the funds? Would she leave no stone unturned to make sure that unions were staying within the law and doing the right thing for those working families? Or could she be too busy making sure that all workers across Australia were coerced into paying a tithe to bankers and bureaucrats in a scheme to change the weather?
It’s purely hypothetical of course. Julia denies everything.
How many images have we seen of drought-stricken cracked land, or been told this is the future? How many headlines have suggested that global warming causes droughts?
Since the end of World War II humans have produced some 85% of all their CO2 emissions, but here is a new study showing that for all those emissions, and for all that warming, droughts back then were just as bad globally as they are today.
Essentially, researchers thought that the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) was the way to measure global drought levels, and they thought that warming would increase global drought conditions. But the PDSI considers only temperature, not humidity, sunlight and wind. This paper shows that when these factors are included, worldwide drought is about the same now as it was in 1950.
Researchers are finally accounting for the fact that a warmer world usually means more evaporation (especially from the ocean) and thus more rain. It’s good to see that someone has crunched those complex numbers on a global scale. Credit to Sheffield, Wood & Roderick.
Figure 1 | Global average time series of the PDSI and area in drought. a, PDSI_Th (blue line) and PDSI_PM (red line). b, Area in drought (PDSI ,23.0) for the PDSI_Th (blue line) and PDSI_PM (red line). The shading represents the range derived fromuncertainties in precipitation (PDSI_Th and PDSI_PM) and net radiation (PDSI_PM only). Uncertainty in precipitation is estimated by forcing the PDSI_Th and PDSI_PM by four alternative global precipitation data sets. Uncertainty from net radiation is estimated by forcing the PDSI_PM with a hybrid empirical–satellite data set31 and an empirical estimate. The other near-surface meteorological data are from a hybrid reanalysis–observational data set(31). The thick lines are the mean values of the different PDSI data sets. The time series are averaged over global land areas excluding Greenland, Antarctica and desert regions with a mean annual precipitation of less than 0.5mm d-1.
The paper notes AR4 was wrong about this too:
“The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) summarized the evidence in the following terms: ‘‘More intense and longer droughts have been observed over wider areas since the 1970s, particularly in the tropics and subtropics. Increased drying linked with higher temperatures and decreased precipitation has contributed to changes in drought’’.
…
Figure 2 | Trends in the PDSI and PE. a, c, e,Non-parametric trends for 1950–2008 in annual average PDSI (averaged over the results using the four precipitation data sets and, for the PDSI_PM, also over the two net radiation data sets) fromthe PDSI_Th (a)andthePDSI_PM(c), and their difference (e).b,d, f,Non-parametric trends for 1950–2008 in annual average PE from the Thornthwaite equation (b) and the PM equations (d), and their difference (f). Values are not shown for Greenland, Antarctica and desert regions with amean annual precipitation of less than 0.5mmd21. Statistically significant trends at the 95% level are indicated by hatching. The difference in trends in e and f and its statistical significance are calculated from the time series of differences between the two data sets.
It’s good to see this being reported on The Conversation, ScienceNews, and NewScientist. Naturally, this dangerous information could be misinterpreted (unlike most previous drought studies eh?) so caveats are rampant on The Conversation. The caveats take the usual meaningless and vague catch-all approach:” this paper should not be misconstrued as evidence that climate change is not happening” type of warning. Where were these caveat-writers when all the photos of cracked plains were showing on the evening news?
Now we find that “Drought has not been an effective way of measuring climate change over the past 60 years,” he said. [Michael Roderick, The Conversation]
Perhaps that’s because things were a bit circular in drought science?
Roger Pielke Jr of the University of Colorado in Boulder says that since the PDSI uses a formula that assumes higher temperatures cause more droughts, it was hardly surprising that it finds a link. [ NewScientist]
Kevin Trenberth doesn’t think this new method is right:
Simon Brown of the UK Met Office in Exeter says Sheffield’s analysis is probably right. “There has been a growing acknowledgement that the PDSI should not be trusted when doing climate change studies,” he says. But one of the lead authors of parts of the 2007 IPCC report, Kevin Trenberth of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, is sceptical. He backs work by Aiguo Dai of the State University of New York, Albany, who reported last year that using the Penman-Monteith equation “only slightly reduces the drying trend”. [ NewScientist]
There are other scientists who are not convinced either:
The finding comes in stark opposition to the results of several recent studies. “It presented a somewhat different view of the drying trend for the last 60 years,” says Aiguo Dai, an atmospheric scientist at the State University of New York at Albany, whose own research suggests that the two equations yield very little difference in drought estimates. Dai says the new study fails to consider trends in soil moisture and other variables. He also claims that the new study relies on outdated weather records and questionable radiation data. However, Sheffield and colleagues attribute the disagreement to inconsistencies in the weather data used by Dai and others.[ScienceNews,]
But if it’s right, the new results may have wider implications:
Sheffield’s findings raise important questions, says Steve Running at the University of Montana in Missoula. “If global drought is not increasing, if warmer temperatures are accompanied by more rainfall and lower evaporation rates, then a warmer wetter world would [mean] a more benign climate.” [ NewScientist]
Actually Fred Pearce at NewScientist has done a respectable job of canvassing opinions from all sides. It’s good to see.
If the paper stands up to scrutiny lets hope the information reaches a wider crowd. If they are right there is 20 years of propaganda to undo.
Little change in global drought over the past 60 years
Justin Sheffield1, Eric F.Wood1 & Michael L. Roderick2
ABSTRACT
Drought is expected to increase in frequency and severity in the future as a result of climate change, mainly as a consequence of decreases in regional precipitation but also because of increasing evaporation driven by global warming1–3. Previous assessments of historic changes in drought over the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries indicate that this may already be happening globally. In particular, calculations of the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) show a decrease in moisture globally since the 1970s with a commensurate increase in the area in drought that is attributed, in part, to global warming4,5. The simplicity of the PDSI, which is calculated from a simple water-balance model forced by monthly precipitation and temperature data, makes it an attractive tool in large-scale drought assessments, but may give biased results in the context of climate change6. Here we show that the previously reported increase in global drought is overestimated because the PDSI uses a simplified model of potential evaporation7 that responds only to changes in temperature and thus responds incorrectly to global warming in recent decades. More realistic calculations, based on the underlying physical principles8 that take into account changes in available energy, humidity and wind speed, suggest that there has been little change in drought over the past 60 years. The results have implications for how we interpret the impact of global warming on the hydrological cycle and its extremes, and may help to explain why palaeoclimate drought reconstructions based on tree-ring data diverge from the PDSI based drought record in recent years9,10.
REFERENCE
Sheffield, Wood & Roderick (2012) Little change in global drought over the past 60 years, Letter Nature, vol 491, 437
Oh the irony. The BBC, supposedly the public owned broadcaster, had a meeting with 28 climate experts in Jan 2006 where it decided on its policies on climate coverage. It led to the extraordinary move of the BBC abandoning any semblance of impartiality (a principle that’s so important it’s written into its charter). In the meantime, the BBC did everything it could to hide those influential experts names. It’s been nearly seven years since the seminar, but now we know why their names were top secret. No one is even pretending this was about “the science”. The BBC has become a PR wing of Greenpeace.
In mid 2007 Tony Newbery of Harmless Sky started asking who was at the seminar, but the BBC wouldn’t give up the names. In fact the BBC thought the names were so significant that when Newbery sent them an FOI, they not only refused to hand over the list, but they used six lawyers against him (see The Secret 28 Who Made BBC ‘Green’ Will Not Be Named). The BBC, improbably, argued they weren’t “public” and even more improbably, they won the case. Who knew? The BBC could be considered a “private organisation”. Where are the shareholders?
Having spent many thousands defending their secret meeting with such elaborate wordsmithing and lawyering, presumably, the irony is sweet that when Maurizio Morabito (omnologos) hunted online, he found the sacred list published in full. (Thanks to the wayback machine.)
The BBC is a tax funded organization with a charter to be impartial. So which climate experts were allowed to help decide what the British public should see and pay for?
These ones: Blake Lee-Harwood, and Li Moxuan, Greenpeace; Andy Atkins, Advocacy Director, and Tadesse Dadi, Tearfund (Charity); Trevor Evans, US Embassy; Iain Wright, BP International; Joe Smith, The Open University; Saleemul Huq, IIED (Int. Inst. for Environment Development); Mark Galloway, Director, IBT (International Broadcasting Trust); Tessa Tennant, Chair, AsRia; Andrew Dlugolecki, Insurance industry consultant; Anita Neville, E3G; and more… (see below)
How many unskeptical climate scientists were there? Three. How many skeptical scientists? Zero.
Most of the list of “climate experts” advising the BBC were activists, advocacy directors, charities, or were involved in sustainable (green) investments. Big Oil even had a seat at that table. Do they care for polar bears or was it because they were involved in the giant CO2 Capture Research Project? (As it happens, they gave up on those plans in May 2007.) h/t davidmhoffer (WUWT)
So now the BBC has yet another big problem on it’s hands. It turns out it has lied to the public who pay for it about the makeup of the group which has determined it’s climate reporting policy. This is no small matter considering the billions of pounds involved in the Green energy industry. Additional carbon taxation has directly led to fuel poverty for hundreds of thousands. The excess cold related deaths in the UK have shot up in the last few years. We hear stories of pensioners buying secondhand books by the yard and burning them to keep warm.
The BBC sent four low level representatives: Peter Rippon, Steve Mitchell, Helen Boaden, George Enwistle. All have since risen to power.
Amazingly, those are also the exact four who have thus far resigned this week over the false paedophilia accusations against Lord McAlpine. (h/t Bruce Hoult in a Bishop Hill comment)
Here’s how important the seminar of Jan 2006 was:
“The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus [on anthropogenic climate change].”
So basically, the BBC made out this was its own mini IPCC conference, where they got experts from both sides, thrashed out the science, decided on the most honest way to convey all the risks, costs and benefits to their paying public — in the impartial manner mandated by their charter. A “clear summary” of the state of knowledge?
Let’s all cheer a private BBC!
Which private organization is allowed to forcible charge the public fees? Answer: If there is one, it makes a mockery of British corporate law.
I say “Yes” to a private BBC. Let’s make BBC payments voluntary. (After all, the hallmark of the marketplace are voluntary transactions, while coercion is the hallmark of government.) And if anyone anywhere doesn’t like being fed rehashed activist spiel disguised as “investigative” journalism, they don’t need to complain, they can just stop paying. (These clever wordsmithing journalists like “free markets”, remember?) How about a tick-box on the annual UK tax-return? Check this square to fund the BBC, or leave it unchecked to send the equivalent amount to the GWPF instead.
What happened at That seminar?
The Seminar was entitled ‘Climate Change – the Challenge to Broadcasting’ , January 2006. Andrew Montford has written a guide to the FOI battle: you can buy the ebook format here for ~75 cents.
The full background is summed up in “Conspiracy In Green” which Montford and Newbery worked together on over several years.
‘I found the seminar frankly shocking, The BBC crew (senior executives from every branch of the Corporation) were matched by a equal number of specialists, almost all (and maybe all) of whom could be said to have come from the ‘we must support Kyoto’ school of climate change activists… I was frankly appalled by the level of ignorance of the issue which the BBC people showed.,I mean that I heard nothing which made me think any of them read any broadsheet newspaper coverage of the topic (except maybe the Guardian and that lazily).
‘Though they purported to be aware that this was an immensely important topic, it seemed to me that none of them had shown even a modicum of professional curiosity on the subject … I spent the day discussing the subject and I don’t recall anyone showing any sign of having read anything serious at all. I argued at the seminar that I thought most broadcasting coverage on climate change was awful. But I also said there was no need for them to become self-conscious about it. This was because, although the issues were scientifically, politically and economically difficult, the BBC’s reporting of the thing would improve as soon as their audience was asked to vote or pay for climate change policy.’
(not the same Richard North of EU referendum)
Watts Up of course covered it all, sending his heartiest congratulations to Maurizo, and commenters are having a great time.
Barry Woods tells me Andrew Orlowski at The Register, has reported all this VERY accurately, he was reporting the FOI tribunal last week:
New Zealand signed up for an emissions trading scheme in November 2009, fully expecting Australia to sign in an ETS the next week. Thanks to one vote and an Abbot win, Australia didn’t sign up then, but will get one (unless things change) in 2015.
Kyoto 1 ends in December 31, 2012, and not a moment too soon. Last week Australia signed up for Kyoto 2, but this time New Zealand didn’t.
[Reuters] Neighbouring New Zealand said it would not sign up for the next phase and would instead join a separate convention, including large greenhouse gas emitters such as the United States and China.
Kyoto 2 will only include 15% of emissions. The New Zealanders didn’t want “in” with such a small ineffectual crowd, and will wait for the US and China.
[Reuters] Australia in July introduced a A$23 ($24) per tonne carbon tax on top polluters, which will move into an emissions trading scheme from mid 2015. Australia and the European Union have agreed to link their trading schemes by 2018.
New Zealand’s abandonment of Kyoto 2 followed changes to its emissions trading scheme (ETS), which allowed unlimited use of carbon credits to meet targets at near-record low carbon prices.
The changes also kept out the agriculture sector, which accounts for around half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions, from the ETS.
It’s good to know some people just can’t be bought and Chris Tangey is one of them. He refuses to allow any part of his work to be used to “decieve” people.
Al Gore or someone in his team, really wanted the firestorm footage for his 24 hour televised special coming up this week (which Watts Up is matching hour for hour). One arm of his team (the Office of the Honorable Al Gore) asked Chris Tangey of Alice Springs Film & TV for permission to use the spectacular footage in late September, and Tangey said “No” it would be “deliberately deceptive”, which caused media stories around the world. Now another arm, The Climate Reality Project has quietly tried dressing up in their nonprofit-documentary-group-cloak and again offering money to secure the rights.
The full recent email exchange is below. The Gore team mean “no disrespect” but their representative Andrea Smith was still happy to insult people with names, and was perplexed, writing that ” the US is the only country in the world that has an active Climate Denier movement – every other country in the world has accepted this as a fact.” We can see how well informed Al’s team are about the skeptics.
Tangey doesn’t buy it for a moment: “Apparently “climate deniers” are people with a different viewpoint to yours, so are fair game to be labelled , put in a box and publicly pilloried. I would have though the correct scientific response would be to simply convince them of your argument.”
It’s not hard to see why someone who wants to scare people out of their dollars would find this footage appealing.
It would have been something to see. Apparently it was originally a man-made fire that had burned for ten days. The firestorm occurred on a cloudless day without a breeze… So nothing to do with man-made emissions, and not even a natural fire.
Hi Chris! Wasn’t sure if this is the same Chris who shot the fire tornado? But I was curious if Alice Springs Television still controlled the rights to the footage? I’m a producer working on some documentary pieces for a nonprofit organization doing an internet broadcast,and was wondering how much it would be to license some of the footage?Thank you so much for your help and time!Best wishes,
Quaas, below, is redefining the art of aging gracefully.
…
…
Johanna Quaas, an 86-year-old who has just entered the record books as the world’s oldest gymnast.
Displaying astonishing balance, strength and flexibility, she performed routines on the floor and parallel bars that would put someone decades younger to shame.
Steve Goreham, author of “Climatism” and his latest “The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism” has compiled an handy set of quotes — ordered and sorted, just for that moment when you need something related to, say, ocean acidification, health effects, biofuels, Al Gore, carbon taxes, overpopulation, the UN, the IPCC, and more.
Steve holds an MS in EE and lives in Illinois. I have his first book on my desk: extremely well researched, well written, well laid out. Polished and professional. He is across so many aspects of both science and politics, like few others. An organized mind. I like it!
These people are called “progressives” (See Energy, other)
“If you ask me, it’d be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it.” —Amory Lovins, environmentalist, Mother Earth News, Nov.-Dec. 1977
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” —Dr. Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich, and Dr. John Holdren, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, 1970, p. 323
“The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.” —Jeremy Rifkin, environmentalist, Los Angeles Times, Apr. 19, 1989
On Money:
“He [Al Gore] impressed us all at Deutsche Bank Asset Management. We invited him to an internal meeting in April 2007 during which we discussed the issue of climate change extensively. A few months later, he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his commitment. We then created a fund that invests in companies that position themselves as climate-neutral. Within two months almost 10 billion dollars flowed into this fund. Can you imagine? 10 billion! There has never been such an overwhelming success.” —Kevin Parker, Director of Global Asset Management, Deutsche Bank, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Nov. 15, 2010
Looking at the current round of successful grants. How do you beat four out of five candidates for funding? Here’s one successful method:
Step One: Use statistically insignificant results obtained by dubious techniques to generate a paper with conclusions that grab headlines.
Step Two: Make sure these “results” support contentious Labor Party policies, and actively promote the spurious conclusions in the media prior to publication.
Step Three (optional): Possibly go on to publish the paper, then again, maybe not.
Step Four: Apply for more money.
Apparently the ALP need to find budget savings from the science program to deliver their promised “surplus”. They are thinking of a grants freeze — which is a good way to create uncertainty and encourage the best researchers to leave the country. Here’s another idea, they could stop funding inept activists and just use science grants for scientists.
The man ultimately responsible for the use or misuse of taxpayer dollars through the Australian Research Council is The Hon Chris Evans. It is time he explained how research by scientists who break laws of reason, and have a record of producing unscientific, illogical, and incompetent research get funding, when most researchers miss out and when the ALP is supposedly cutting wasteful spending.
Could ARC grants sometimes be used as a soft form of government advertising, disguised as research?
Case I: Define scientists who oppose a government policy as “pseudoscientists”, research ways to discredit them
Information seeking, cognition, and individual differences
$138,000 for 2013
$100,000 for 2014
$100,000 for 2015
Total $338,000.00
The public now has access to vast amounts of scientific knowledge and information on the internet and in other new media. Paradoxically, this increasing availability of knowledge has been accompanied by the increasing traction of pseudoscientific misinformation. This project explores the reasons underlying those trends and seeks solutions.
Define pseudoscience: Is it the unscientific pronouncements of activists who think that computer models and internet polls are scientific “evidence” about our atmosphere? Is pseudoscience the practice of claiming that there is overwhelming evidence, but being unable to name any? Is it science to call other scientists names? Can Lewandowsky define his use of the word “denier” in any scientific sense, and with accurate English?
Case II: Provide good marketing opportunities for government policies
How do you beat four out of five applicants for funding? Is it by announcing results loudly in press releases which promote government policies, but which turn out to be based on a tiny sample, with non-statistically significant results, using a technique that was not as described and embarrassingly having to withdraw the paper? Is your work of such a high standard that unfunded volunteers took only three weeks to spot holes in it, holes that $300,000 and three years of study by expert peer review didn’t notice? Tick, Yes.
DE130100668 Gergis, Dr Joelle
The University of Melbourne
The further back we look, the further forward we can see: 1,000 years of past climate to help predict future climate change in Australia.
Reconstructing 1,000 years of Australia’s past climate will greatly extend our understanding of natural climate variability currently estimated from weather observations. For the first time, Australian climate variations over the last millennium will be used to assess the accuracy of climate model simulations for our region.
2013 $118,785.00
2014 $115,920.00
2015 $117,100.00 Total $351,805.00
Thanks to Roberto Soria for heads up and help.
I repeat: The man ultimately responsible for the use or misuse of taxpayer dollars through the Australian Research Council is The Hon Chris Evans. Will the Coalition produce a science policy that aims for rigorous science, and prevents any dubious use of highly contested research funds? Is it possible to FOI the reasons these projects were selected over so many others? Someone, somewhere is responsible.
Good news for climate bloggers (why aren’t I “excited”?)
The topic no one was going to mention in the election campaign, just got a mention. And in less than 24 hours, it’s already being revived from oblivion. Banking group HSBC tells us that:
Barack Obama may consider introducing a tax on carbon emissions to help cut the U.S. budget deficit after winning a second term as president, according to HSBC Holdings Plc.
A tax starting at $20 a metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent and rising at about 6 percent a year could raise $154 billion by 2021, Nick Robins, an analyst at the bank in London, said today in an e-mailed research note, citing Congressional Research Service estimates. “Applied to the Congressional Budget Office’s 2012 baseline, this would halve the fiscal deficit by 2022,” Robins said.
There is no guaranteed path of course, the Republicans control the House. But how telling that the Zombie Ghost of Cap N Trade popped up its head so fast once the votes were in.
‘Congratulations to President Obama. Now that Obama will never have to face voters again, he may attempt to make global warming a key part of his legacy. Watch for the heavy hand of the EPA, which is poised to implement the climate regulations that Congress refused to pass. Obama’s vision of an EPA bureaucracy shutting down carbon based energy in the name of controlling the climate, will be massively opposed and exposed’
With a pledge to cut oil imports by half by 2020, Obama advocated during the campaign for what he called an “all of the above” approach to developing a range of domestic energy sources. He said, however, that he would roll back subsidies for oil companies and reduce the nation’s reliance on oil by mandating production of more fuel-efficient vehicles.
Those gathered on 26 March 2009 to hear from key members of Obama’s green dream team — Carol Browner, then energy and climate adviser, Nancy Sutley, chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, and Van Jones, then green jobs adviser, believed it would be a pivotal year. The White House and both houses of Congress were controlled by Democrats, world leaders were due to gather in Copenhagen in December to finalise a global climate change treaty. But the economy was in meltdown. The White House, after studying polling and focus groups, concluded it was best to frame climate change as an economic opportunity, a chance for job creation and economic growth, rather than an urgent environmental problem. “My most vivid memory of that meeting is this idea that you can’t talk about climate change,” said Jessy Tolkan…
Campaign groups agree Obama continued to push the climate agenda, even if he did so below the radar, through the Environmental Protection Agency regulations and other branches of the government.
The economic recovery plan included some $90bn for green-ish measures, such as high speed rail and public transport, and weather-proofing low-income homes.
“There was a really big emphasis on talking about what I call the sub-narratives – that there were other ways to speak about the opportunity and the challenge of climate change rather than calling it that,” said Maggie Fox, the chief executive of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project. “There was a whole suite of sub-narratives: national security, clean energy future, diversification of energy, health, future generations … “
Voting is now underway in all states of the US including Hawaii and Alaska.
Something very strange is going on with money. Normally bets are a decent indicator, but in the US right now as people roll out to vote, polls are largely at 50:50, but betting odds of 2-9.
The bet-takers own website explains that Obama’s odds of victory fell to a low of 2-9, with 75 percent of the action coming in for the incumbent Obama. CSM explains that given the odds, bettors were only taking in 20 cents for every euro wagered, plus the original stake, meaning Paddy Power wasn’t paying out a longshot. On the flip side, unpaid Romney bets held odds of 7-2.
Putting a fine point on it: Gallup and Rassmussen are saying Romney 49: Obama 48. (For more poll results than you could want see the BBC. They can’t all be right.)
What really matters in the land of non-compulsory voting, is who will turn up.
In 2008 Democrats had a feverish enthusiasm for hope and change, and we know how well that worked out. American citizens were so impressed they launched a whole new party to take the Obama-plan and do the opposite.
With so much enthusiasm on the not-Obama side of the debate, those betting numbers don’t add up, indeed the mismatch is so large, it appears to be a rare chance of arbitrage. Could it be the strange end-point of media group-think and confirmation-bias?
Post by: Lance Pidgeon with assistance from Chris Gillham and others.
It is as if history is being erased. For all that we hear about recent record-breaking climate extremes, records that are equally extreme, and sometimes even more so, are ignored.
In January 1896 a savage blast “like a furnace” stretched across Australia from east to west and lasted for weeks. The death toll reached 437 people in the eastern states. Newspaper reports showed that in Bourke the heat approached 120°F (48.9°C) on three days (1)(2)(3). The maximumun at or above 102 degrees F (38.9°C) for 24 days straight.
By Tuesday Jan 14, people were reported falling dead in the streets. Unable to sleep, people in Brewarrina walked the streets at night for hours, the thermometer recording 109F at midnight. Overnight, the temperature did not fall below 103°F. On Jan 18 in Wilcannia, five deaths were recorded in one day, the hospitals were overcrowded and reports said that “more deaths are hourly expected”. By January 24, in Bourke, many businesses had shut down (almost everything bar the hotels). Panic stricken Australians were fleeing to the hills in climate refugee trains. As reported at the time, the government felt the situation was so serious that to save lives and ease the suffering of its citizens they added cheaper train services:
“The Commissioner of Railways promised a deputation of members of Parliament to run a special train every Friday at holiday excursion rates for the next month to enable settlers resident in the Western part of the colony to reach the mountains to escape the great heat prevailing.” (Source)
It got hotter and hotter and the crowded trains ran on more days of the week. The area of exodus was extended to allow not only refugees from western NSW to flee to the Blue Mountains but also people to escape via train from the Riverina to the Snowy Mountains. The stories are heartbreaking. “A child sent to the mountains to escape the city heat died at the moment the train arrived.” “Six infants have died at Goulburn since January 1 through the excessive heat.” Towns were losing their esteemed, lamenting the loss of the good reverend, or of their well known miners. Children were orphaned.
“A woman has been brought to the Bulli Hospital in a demented condition, suffering from sunstroke. She was tramping the roads, with her husband, two days before, when she was prostrated by a sunstroke. Her husband carried her through all the sweltering heat to Bulli, taking two days over the journey.” (Source).
In 1896 the heat was causing people to faint, become demented and was even blamed for driving people mad. “Several women fainted in the streets. A little girl, while walking along Surrey Hills, suddenly became demented through the heat.” In Bendigo “a young man named Edward Swift, hairdresser, was so overcome by the heat that he was unable to work, and in despair shot himself, in the breast. It is a hopeless case.” Longreach“police authorities at Longreach received information that a man who was insane was about fourteen miles out of the town.” “The bodies of people who die of sunstroke decompose very quickly”. An axe wielding man in Bourke cut down three telegraph poles before he was “secured” by police. Presumably the real cause of the madness was something else, but the heat was the last straw. “Birregurra was stirred from its wanted sleepiness on Saturday evening last by the appearance in the streets of a mad man who caused no small consternation.” It could be that nuttiness was equally common on other months, or other years. But at the time, people blamed the heat.
Thermometers were non-standardized in 1896. Some of the extraordinary temperatures come from thermometers with descriptions like (“under passion tree vine.”) There it got to 123 in Ultimo in Sydney on January 14. Though some thought the vine thermometer was actually more accurate ” namely, that what is known as the true shade is the shade afforded at the Observatory by one of the loveliest little summer-houses, almost buried in foliage, but with lattice-work all round, so that the breeze may play upon the thermometers, but where the sun’s rays can by no means be admitted.”.
Was the 2009 heatwave really worse than 1896?
The Victorian heatwave of 2009 was sold as the worst heat wave in southern Australia for 150 years. But it does not appear to be as widespread, as long, or as hot. (Though caveats of comparing different thermometer placements apply — the old ones were in odd places, but the new ones are not necessarily well placed either, with some near airports, buildings and walls). What the newspaper records of 1896 show is that modern extreme heatwaves may not be at all unprecedented in temperature, severity and certainly not worse in terms of suffering.
“These events are unprecedented,” Victoria’s energy and resources minister Peter Batchelor said on Saturday. “In some respects, they are not unlike a natural disaster, impacting on a community like a flood or tornado.” (2009)
The Victorian heatwave began on Jan 25 2009 and broke on Jan 30. Deaths in Victoria were estimated at between 200 – 374. The population of Victoria in 2009 was about 5 million, about four times larger than the population of NSW at the turn of the century. Death-rates are not a good indicator to compare the severity of heatwaves, as deaths in 1896 would have been less if air conditioners and modern hospitals had been available then.
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