This is a rare unequivocal case of overreach.
Prof Matthew England proves he is either willing to stretch things beyond reason “for the cause”, or he doesn’t know what he is talking about, or both. Sarah Clark at the ABC didn’t do five minutes research on the story to check the facts or ask informed questions. This is not science, and it isn’t journalism either.
The Facts:
- The IPCC used the word “prediction” in 1990 and predicted a best estimate of 0.3°C with a range of 0.2°C – 0.5°C per decade
- Even with the most generous overestimate of current trends, the temperature trend has fallen below their lowest estimate, while CO2 emissions were higher than expected. The 1990 predictions can not be called “true”, “consistent” or to have “occurred” by any definition in any English dictionary.
The IPCC Prediction was Wrong
The quote from the first page of the Executive Summary of the Summary for Policy Makers, FAR 1990:1
“Based on current model results, we predict:
Under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A) emissions of greenhouse gases, a rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century of about 0.3C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2°C – 0.5°C)” [IPCC FAR summary]
The caption on Fig 8. IPCC FAR Summary makes it clear that the realized temperature is a prediction caused by Business-as-usual “emissions“. The predictions are linear from the year 2000.
The IPCC FAR report 1990.
Furthermore they say that even if emissions are stabilized at 1990 levels temperatures should rise by 0.2C per decade for the first few decades.
See the whole scanned IPCC page in context here
The outcome was 0.14°C – 0.18°C (about half of the best estimate)
Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 looked at five temperature series and calculated trends from 0.14°C to 0.18°C per decade, lower than the 0.2°C per decade trend which marks the absolute bottom of the IPCC prediction. They are sympathetic to the IPCC aims. These values are as good as it gets for the IPCC. They fail.
Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) confirmed in 2010 that the decadal trends for the last 150 years peak at 0.16°C per decade. In other words, what happened since 1990 was stock standard normal warming as per the last 150 years yet the IPCC could not even predict a continuation of a straight line. (An eight year old with a ruler would have been cheaper and more accurate.)
Remember, these predictions were based on business as usual (1990) CO2 emissions. But emissions have been much higher. If the models were right about CO2 the temperatures should be trending in the upper half, not below the lowest estimate.
UPDATE: The new corrected dataset of UAH has reduced the rates shown above so that the UAH rate is lower and even further from the IPCC 1990 estimates.
Is Prof Matthew England incompetent?
The IPCC made a wide prediction (0.2°C – 0.5°C per decade) and yet they were wrong. Matthew England not only hides this from the people who pay his salary, he describes this scientific failure as: “consistent with its original predictions”, “projections of that report have actually come true”, “warming has progressed at a rate consistent with those projections”, ” the projections have occurred”.
England calls us liars for quoting the IPCC documents that he apparently has not read:
“And so anybody out there lying that the IPCC projections are overstatements or that the observations haven’t kept pace with the projections is completely offline with this. The analysis is very clear that the IPCC projections are coming true.”
England called the 1990 IPCC report “very accurate” in April. I raised the error then, and he replied here, he had two excuses, the first was wrong, the second, irrelevant:
- He claims the IPCC don’t predict straight line warming and that it was supposed to be a lower rate now, and a higher rate later. Look at the graph above. Where is the “higher rate”?
- He claims I plotted a satellite record rather than the surface temperature, so it’s and oranges and apples comparison. But according to the models the troposphere is supposed to warm more than the surface, and the Hadcrut surface record doesn’t show a large enough trend in any case (see Forster and Rahmstorf).
I then explained exactly what these IPCC quotes were and why they were wrong. I also described why the un-SkepticalScience defence of the IPCC uses a trick to hide the IPCC failures. John Cook and dana1981 don’t quote the IPCC predictions, they changed the captions on the IPCC graphs, and talk about “radiative forcing” instead of emissions.
Sarah Clarke failed to do any critical research – the ABC acts as PR parrots for pet causes, not as journalists
Sarah Clarke is paid by taxpayers to investigate and inform them. Knowing she was about to interview Matthew England, all she had to do was spend ten minutes on the internet looking for information in order to ask him smart inquiring questions which would have exposed the complete untruth or irrelevance of what he was saying. She could have started with reading the IPCC summary for policy makers from FAR. But she didn’t need to even do that … others have already done the research for her.
Read this IPCC quote and then read what England and Clark make of the 1990 report. This below was the message the scientists wanted the world’s decision makers to read and remember (again from the first page of the Executive summary of the summary for policy maker:
“This will result in a likely increase in global mean temperature of about 1° C above the present value by 2025…”
Neither England nor Clarke mention that. Instead Clark helps England to propagate a misdirection:
SARAH CLARKE: So the forecast was of a predicted rise of 0.7 to 1.5 degrees, is that right?
MATT ENGLAND: That’s right, and it’s by 2030, so we’re halfway through this projected period. And the warming to date is consistent with that projection.
We are 22 years into a 35 year prediction of a 1C rise. We should have seen about a 0.6 rise, instead we’ve seen (at most) a 0.36C rise, and which is not accelerating, but flattening. There are complexities and caveats in the main body of the report, but ultimately, policy makers made decisions involving billions of dollars based on the summary.
The questions Sarah Clark would have asked if she was doing her job:
1. Prof England, isn’t it true that the IPCC best estimate prediction in 1990 was 0.3C per decade and yet the warming came in at about half that?
2. Isn’t it also true that their range of uncertainties was 0.2C – 0.5C, yet despite the wide range, they missed. Peer reviewed estimates of warming came in between 0.14 – 0.18C per decade.
3. To translate this into numbers people find easy to understand, if the IPCC effectively predicted a result of “60” with a range of “40 – 100”, how can you say that getting measurements of 28 – 36 is success? In any normal report in science, or economics, or in tests in primary school, this would be called failure. Is 36 consistent with 60?
4. The IPCC described the warming trend of the 20th Century as being “broadly consistent with climate models, but also of the same magnitude as natural climate variability”.2 They specifically pointed out that the observed increase up to then could be largely due to natural variation. Given that the rate of the warming trend since then is no higher than the rates they were talking about as “natural”, doesn’t that suggest the current warming could still be largely natural also?
5. Our emissions have been 58%* higher since 1990, yet the rate of the warming trend has not increased. Isn’t this “broadly consistent” with CO2 having only a small effect, or possibly no effect at all?
Vincent Gray has watched the IPCC process for 22 years
He points out the term “predictions” applies only to the year 1990 and disappeared thereafter.
As I have said many times the IPCC ceased making “predictions” altogether after this. The 1990 Report had a Chapter headed “Validation of climate models”. In the first draft of the next (1995) Report they also had such a Chapter. I commented that as no model had ever been validated and no effort to do so is made the term is inappropriate. So, the next draft changed the word “validate”to evaluate” no less than fifty times, and at the same time changed “predict”to “project” This current paper shows how desperate they are . They cannot claim that current IPCC practise is capable of :predicting: any future climate, so they grub around in the past to try and pretend it can be done, when their circumstances and conditions were quite different.
What’s surprising is that people like Matthew England bother to defend these early predictions. His reputation as a UNSW professor surely rests on an assumption that he is honest and well informed. His judgement in defending the indefensible for little gain is bizarre. Skeptics can point to direct quotes showing he is unequivocally wrong, so why not give up on a losing game and just hand-wave and say “models are better now” (which also isn’t right, but at least isn’t quite so easily disproved).
Right now, ABC listeners may think that the 1990 IPCC report was accurate
If it bothers you that your tax money is spent to support journalists who don’t do their research, or who promote inaccurate information that may support their personal world view or voting habits, then you can do something.
If it bothers you that one of our supposedly best universities does not train its staff to use accurate English, to understand that 3 is not 6, and that honest unbiased information is what we expect then, again, it’s time to say something.
We can be cynical that complaints to the ABC, and UNSW will be ignored, but if we do nothing, we let them get away with it. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Media is the problem. If the media were doing a good job, most of our most silly policies, and our most corrupt politicians would not be a national problem. But all too often skeptics think that there is no point in saying anything. That’s what those who live off the public purse want you to think. They pocket the taxpayer cash and have their way with us, because we don’t complain enough.
The links you need:
- The ABC complaints process (Information about how to lodge complaints and how the ABC handles them). [The ABC story this refers too]
- Matthew England (UNSW)
- UNSW Dean and top Academic staff can be contacted through the Faculty of Science. The Dean of Science is Professor Merlin Crossley. Alumni can report their dismay at the falling standards of science.
- Letters to editors: The Australian <[email protected]>
- Contacts for ABC around Australia
- Head office: Australian Broadcasting Corporation;
ABC Ultimo Centre;
700 Harris Street;
Ultimo NSW 2007;
GPO Box 9994;
Sydney NSW 2001;
Phone (02) 8333 1500;
TTY: 1800 627 854; (Deaf & hearing impaired)
Fax (02) 8333 5344;
Managing Director: Mark Scott
Chief Operating Officer: David Pendleton
- Head office: Australian Broadcasting Corporation;
Always, always, be polite. If you can’t be polite, don’t write. All we want is for people paid by the public to serve the public, for our scientists to put science first, use logic and reason and accurate English. Above all, we want journalists to seek the truth. They should do some research to make sure they present accurate unbiased information, and not use public funds to push their personal ideology. Both England and the ABC need to correct the record. The IPCC predictions were not correct. England needs to apologize for suggesting that the people who say the IPCC was overestimating the warming are lying.
We’re pretty sure the ABC has “the internet”. Why don’t they use it?
———————–
REFERENCES
Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) Global temperature evolution 1979–2010, Environ. Res. Lett. 6 044022 [Abstract]
1. Executive Summary, IPCC summary for Policy Makers , First Assessment Report, 1990. page xi.
2. Executive Summary, IPCC summary for Policy Makers, First Assessment Report, 1990. page xii.
* From Clark herself in the interview
———————-
UPDATE: Sceptical Sam gets a gold star for his helpful comment. December 12, 2012 at 1:13 am
What can be done to get a correction on the record at the ABC – in prime time?
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Fire [or snip] the whole lot, start from scratch with intelligent people?
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Aw, c’mon, you know you wanna!
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ALPBC
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hahaha oh nice cherry picking by Jo.
The models correctly estimated or underestimated the temperature increase. Note that JoAnne said temperature INcrease in her blog. It seems ONE study overestimated the temp increase (perhaps, will look into this myself.)
So one tiny overestimate and JoAnne beats it up into a blog of biblical proportions! Desperate much?
Of course, the other effect of our GHG emissions is absorption of CO2 by the oceans, forming the weak carbonic acid and acidifying the oceans (that means reducing the pH NOT that the oceans are acid now.)
The ocean is a long way from becoming acid. That doesn’t mean that chemical changes in oceans arising from increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 are not already being felt.
(If you are interested in organisms that need to calcify stuff, it is useful to understand the difference between dolomite and aragonite.) Pteropods, marine snails with “wings” that allow it to swim has more trouble building and keeping its shell
That aside, here are some beautiful images of pteropods.
http://microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html?http://microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artapr08/cg-pteropods3.html
Pteropods, plankton and krill are at the base of the marine food pyramid so we should be very concerned.
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Maxine – CO2 plumes bubbling through healthy Coral says your wrong.
So we should not be “very concerned” at all.
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Maxine, – you never reply to my comments…
Don’t you like me anymore???
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Tiny over estimate? Try it as a percentage Maxine. You have to be insane to think that is tiny.
And as for Biblical proportions… I was just musing to myself about the penalties for false prophets in the Talmud (I think I am correct). I have heard that false prophets were subsequently stoned. If the AGW took a leaf from that book… (or scroll)
But it seems that in the AGW religion that the prophets first get stoned and then make their prophecies. All the adherents have to remain in such a state perpetually in order to not notice that the prophet got it wrong.
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Speaking of AGW and religion…
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/15623145/holy-alliance-on-climate-change/
Not sure how to interpret this … maybe the churches are losing their flocks and they are thinking “if we can’t beat them*, then we’d better join them.”
* them being the new emergent Gaia religion, and the associated Climate Change Cult.
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At the other end of the spectrum you have these guys:
The Cornwall Alliance amongst whom are some pretty well respected theologians.
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Maxine, anytime you can find one actual IPCC quote or god-forbid, a real number to support your arguments, we might take you seriously.
til then… hahaha top marks for bluster
But thanks for turning up to show how *strong* your case is.
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It also helps if you can tell the difference between carbon(c) & carbon dioxide(cO2).
Here is a good place to start your education.
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I suggest she really meant calcite and aragonite, unless she’s referring to geological formations. There is no Mg pathway to make dolomite shells and diagenesis cannot happen for shells in the life time of the organism.
So, it looks to me like she has read a but about the subject but has no real knowledge of the biochemistry.
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The calcification argument is plain wrong at present pHs. You need a fall of 1 pH unit to affect simple organisms and 0.5 to affect higher organisms. that cannot occur from buring all the fossil fuels.
As for the models – 7 mistakes in the physics, 3 of which are so elementary as to be serious evidence or stupidity or fraud. Any process engineer like me, and we work with GHGs every day, sees the main errors, an amazing failure to understand that there can be no emission of any GHG band surface IR because thermal emission turns it off.
The ‘back radiation’ claim is serious stupidity because it’s a temperature signal, not a heat flux. Only net IR can do work. Read Poynting’s Theorem to find out why.
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Turnedoutnice, can you expand on your last paragraph a little?
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Put two pyrgeometers back to back in zero temperature gradient. The net signal is zero. Take one away and the signal jumps up to a measure of the temperature of the atmosphere convolved with emissivity, the S-B prediction of power for an isolated body in a vacuum.
This S-B analysis is what has fooled the meteorologists like Trenberth, also the dumb physicists like Houghton and Hansen who didn’t do their work properly, which was to go back to Maxwell’s Equations.
They imagine you can split the radiation flows in the atmosphere into two streams, each losing energy by the Planck function. this has misled Astronomy and Atmospheric Physics since 1906. Planck made an error when he thought of the abomination, the ‘photon’, which has led even dumber people to imagine that these radiation streams are strings of photons.
The fact is, the EM energy field between two emitters cannot transfer energy until the Poynting vectors make a vector sum at which time an energy quantum can be transferred from warmer to cooler body.
In short, the climate models’ prediction of high IR absorption and positive feedback is the artefact of incorrect physics. The real IR energy absorption is water vapour side bands indirectly at clouds [the Ramanathan idea of thermalisation by dribs and drabs is seriously dire science as any professional will tell you].
There can never be any CO2-AGW because its IR band is switched off at the surface. The real GHE is very different!
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Maxine on the previous thread wrote that…
Poor Maxine will be devastated to read the above post…
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Maxine doesn’t reply to any of my comments.
I’ve gone to all the trouble of giving Maxine’s words additional exposure above, even bolding a section to provide emphasis, and yet Maxine ignores this attention and never comments back.
What am I doing wrong?
Unhappy from ExWarmist Land.
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What you’re doing wrong is being right. I don’t think Maxine knows how to respond to that.
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Make a formal complaint to the ABC:
http://about.abc.net.au/talk-to-the-abc/lodge-a-complaint/
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Will it work?
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If you don’t you’ll never know.
If it doesn’t ramp it up.
Beware the anger of patient men and women
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Do it anyway. It’s all about making our voices heard.
I don’t think we’re alone, either. People are getting sick and tired of all the lies and the twisting and turning that goes on with the multitude of climate claims, up to and including “everything” being our fault. Whether they are following the blogs or not, or even interested, people are beginning to get angry with the hype and manipulation scare-tactics, not to mention the cheating, lying tax-raisers.
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I am stil waiting for a non-auto reply to my email to the ABC from a couple weeks ago. They aren’t interested AFAIK. The automated response looks like this:
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Jo you say “while CO2 emissions were 58%* higher than expected”
but then also say “Our emissions have been 58% higher since 1990”
So is it 58% higher than 1990, or 58% higher than expected? I’m not sure anyone expected us to be at 1990 levels?
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As the * notes, quoting Sarah Clark: “we’re 58 per cent above the 1990 levels,”
Since predictions were made on “business as usual” meaning a continuation of 1990 emissions levels, it’s fair to say 58% above expected — but it’s not a point worth debating, so I took out the first one. Thanks for the proof reading 🙂
Jo
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I don’t agree as that would assume 1990 was an average year. Look it does no effect the slope ie trend, but it does produce a misleading graph. If 1990 had been an unusually cool year you’d be crying foul too.
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Whoops sorry that reply was for cohers below. Anyway Bau does not meat continuation of 1990 levels. BAU means emissions being as predicted based on similar energy intensity with predicted growth. It is true that emissions may have been higher, but most definitely not 58% above Bau. It is pretty crystal clear you should know better jo. Are you letting looper mods ghostwrite?
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I think regardless of the level of emissions – whether they were 58% higher than predicted – or whether that 58% increase was BAU- the fact remains (and I think you are trying to dodge this on Matt) THE IPCC GOT IT WRONG. MATTHEW ENGLAND GOT IT WRONG. The models got it wrong. The policy makers have got it wrong. The overstatement of temperature increases cast doubt on:
– the actual impact of CO2 emission
– the veracity of models.
Matt you should not continue to distract and acknowledge reality.
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The 1990 projections were revised in what 1992? To me it is useless parading around the 1990 projections and claiming thy were wrong. I tend to agree that anyone saying they were right is a bit nuts as clearly even science had moved on very quickly. They were useful, and they were not absurdly wrong. If you read the old England thread I said the same then. From the excerpts jo provides in this article it it not clear englandeven means 1990.
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The point mattb is that they were called predictions, not projections and that England is commenting on the 1990 date in his claims in the interview. You are moving the argument away from what Jo is arguing about.
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Pray tell how I am doing that Gee aye. I’ve directly commented on wording used by Jo, and she’s actually updated the article in light of that? “predictions not projections” and I’m changing the subject?
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Mattb, If it’s useless parading the failure of the 1990 projections, isn’t it more useless to parade their non-existent success? Dear Matt, Matthew England brought it up and he very much means “1990”.
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Jo I think I just said exactly that in another post (then saw this). That’s why my comments were based on some of your article’s arguments.
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Mattb,
you say here in Comment 4:
The original Kyoto Protocol under the overarching UNFCCC selected 1990 as the benchmark year when that Kyoto Protocol was agreed to in 1997.
That Protocol specifically stated that the Annex 1 Developed Countries were required to get their GHG emissions back to a level 5% lower than what they were in 1990, so quite obviously that was indeed the expectation.
The fact that no Country has achieved this has led to that original requirement being (considerably) watered down.
So yes, it was indeed an expectation, not only that, but an actual requirement for the signatories to that Protocol.
1990 is the Base Year.
Tony.
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But those goals were NOT BAU! If they were then what was the point… A global effort to ensure that emissions do exactly what they would have done anyway? Someone mentioned above that I distract… But it is these small points that say a lot about you guys… Complete lack of discretion in willingness to swallow bait cast by skeptics.
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Also that graph seems shonky as it takes the 1st temp reading as “zero” and imposes a trend? Who is to say year zero was the average temp at the time?
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Come off it matt; the year 1990 is the date of the IPCC report, when they made their predictions which England referred to; what year do you want the trend to begin from!?
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Stop the press cohers…the graph has been changed. Cheers mods/jo. You can genuinely rely on me to call a spade a spade on some basics:). If I was on you side of the fence it would be considered constructive editing.
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Matt have you read the paper which England bases his egregious comments on? It’s by
David J. Frame and Dáithí A. Stone.
You do not have to go past their Figure 1 which ‘shows’ the consistency of temperature with IPCC’s 1990 predictions. The problem is, while they use 1990 as the 0 point they do not use temperature data, raw or adjusted; they use anomalies based on the 1990 temperature. The temperature trend line from 1990 is a trend of anomalies based on the 1990 temperature.
We know that temperature rose from 1990, it was a +ve PDO period so that is natural, so all the anomaly trend shows is the natural temperature increase during that period.
But using 1990 as a base and then plotting the anomaly trend after 1990 exaggerates the trend compared to a trend using data, raw or normalised as Clive Best shows.
So matt, your complaints about using 1990 as year 0 are very much complaints you should level against the IPCC and England.
Moderators/Jo: perhaps Jo can put up Figure 1 from the Frame and Stone paper which really shows the sleight of hand being done here?
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Cohers, as I think I’ve explained in the previous England thread(s), we kinda know that the 1990 models were flawed… they’ve been improved on (let’s not debate if they are still very flawed just now). To me we know they were flawed, so there is no point comparing what they said may happen with what happened, as even if they were “accurate” well it is pretty much a bit of a fluke. So in that way I disagree with England. To me it would be more interesting to say “hey those predictions were correct, but we know the model was wrong… why would that be?” Or the alternative “hey all these improvements we’ve made to the model… were they really improvements as the old one is more accurate?”
In a AGW warming trend natural variations will sometimes warm a bit, and sometimes cool a bit. To me the temp record shows such an increase, and right now other things are cooling a bit. 2010 we were above mean “projection” and and 1998 was higher than the max.
Look for sure next time there is a 1998 some scientists and journos will use the graphs to say “it’s worse than we thought”… but the value is in the trend not the particular year.
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Matt; England, a person who presents himself as an authority, has misrepresented his own evidence.
That is wrong.
The evidence is also demonstrably wrong.
Therefore England is not to be trusted and there remains no evidence to sustain AGW and more importantly the vast resources being spent on it.
So, we have the experts promoting AGW being wrong, the evidence being wrong and a large section of the MSM, particularly the publically funded ABC, being aquiescent in this.
Isn’t that wonderful.
Anyway thanks for trying; but consider this; if the ‘early’ models were ‘flawed’ then there is no sufficiently long AGW science period to base any conclusions on; so what then is AGW based on?
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well they were flawed in the same way a 1990 car was flawed. New ones are just better.
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Nah, just more expensive. Anyway, England doesn’t think so.
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What graph changed? I didn’t change it? – Jo
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I can’t rule out that I may have gone completely mad? but I swear there was a graph 1st that had the projection lines starting about 0.3C higher on the lhs scale, so that even the low looked well above observations.
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MattB,
Those are not temperature readings, they are temperature statistics, and its the trend of statistics that people seem to be bedwetting over.
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It is not only Sarah Clarke who is misleading the public. Recently Fran Kelly on Radio National made completely biased and unfounded statements about climate change and global warming. Over the last couple of years I have endeavoured to submit comments to the ABC Environment Web site but only some were reproduced. Sarah Phillips writes blatant warmists articles for the site without any attempt at balance. The ABC journalists do not seem to be able to read/find even the most popular of skeptic sites such as WUWT or JoNova.
I have tried submitting a complaint to the ABC but to no avail.
For a while I used to have success submitting comments to The Drum Web page but lately they have also been censored. Clearly the ABC practises political censorship, ensuring mainly politically correct comments are displayed as there is no shortage of them. I have pretty much given up on looking at their Web site and am inclined to give up listening to their radio propaganda as well. I suspect that they have their spam filter set to reject my email address.
Now I am just waiting for the Earth to freeze over to show what a scam it all is.
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Ha ha ha ha, that’s funny Bevan! You don’t seriously expect any competent journalist to read the junk science of Watts and Nova and take it seriously? They’ve never published anything, right? That really would be misleading. Presumably when the ABC wants to report something they talk to the experts in the field not some busted-ass blogger.
PS I’m not surprised the ABC reject your comments.
(I notice that while you insult Jo Nova’s blog you can’t address her post about the IPCC being wrong about their statements made in 1990 that means you have wasted time making your baseless comment and failed to make a credible counterclaim against Jo’s post) CTS
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Is there any point to publishing this person’s comments? He/she/it is never on topic and merely insults in a tedious fashion.
The only thing remotely interesting about it’s rubbish is speculating what emotional issues are taking place in it’s life.
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…his ceiling mirror broke.
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I agree but prefer that Jo turn (back) on the “hidden due to low feedback thumbs”. This way we have a say not just a moderator call.
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JFC – Could you please define Intellectual Gravitas?
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His response: ‘Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh……………….’
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JFC appears to have missed my question about the definition of Intellectual Gravitas.
Look JFC, – I’ll give you more time to formulate an answer, OK!?
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“You don’t seriously expect any competent journalist…………….. ”
Ahh. I see that you are NOT talking about the ABC or Fairfax !
A competant journalsist does research, doesn’t just requote government lies.
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Fran “frantic” Kelly of “RN”
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You mean Fran “I’m an activist” Kelly?
h/t to Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch Dog
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Why does this word keep springing to mind?
MERCENARY: serving merely for pay or sordid advantage: venal; also : greedy. Synonyms: acquisitive, avaricious, avid, coveting , covetous, grabby, grasping, greedy, moneygrubbing, rapacious.
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Jo, I heard this fellow on the ABC a few days ago talking about how reliable the IPCC predictions were and my comment to my wife was: Is he on the same planet as us?!
He certainly does not use very polite language either for a supposedly educated person. I don’t think he is a very nice person
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Partisan political players do not need to understand the science, if they did there would be no High Church of Climate Change division of UN Socialism.
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Look, England is [snip – over the top]. I’ve never heard him say anything scientific. We know his type.
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[comment about snipped] but by writing him off as such you down-play what he is all about; influencing the masses, even with untruths. While these people can get away with sprouting rubbish, completely unchallenged, they will continue to do so. That is how this whole dangerous man-made global warming shebang got going in the first place, and is why we now have so many brainwashed people in need of deprogramming. The health of our democracy lies in engaging and challenging, not dismissing these people [with insults], with a wave of the hand.
The ABC will be the last bastion of catastropharianism, but the tide is turning in other mainstream media. Seriously, did you read the comments in the Australian today? Erwin Jackson got hammered! I’m pretty sure not one warmist got a look in. I remember, it was only about 18 months ago and it was almost impossible to get sceptical comments published. Now The Australian, in their editorials, is openly acknowledging the lack of global warming and having a go at the rampant alarmism in other mainstream media.
A lot of people have gone out on an apocalyptic limb on this issue, and for face-saving reasons are now trying to edge their way back to a more neutral position, in the very least.
We each play a part for taking the likes of England or Jackson to task on unfounded assertions and misrepresentations. The days of alarmists getting away with saying whatever they like, without consequence, are over.
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I think you are spot on Imwd.
We might all recall that the ABC ignored the Julia Gillard/AWU/Slush fund fraud for weeks, if not months and years. However, as a result of constant pressure it eventually realized that it was demonstrating how out of touch it was; the viewers were going elsewhere (see the growth in The Bolt Report numbers of a Sunday compared to the Insiders program); and its bias was becoming so obvious that it had to do something about it. And it did.
The same will happen if we keep the pressure on. The ABC has a complaints system and it also has a Board of Directors. The new Chairman is Mr Jim Spigelman AC, QC. He seems to be a breath of fresh air. I suggest we lodge complaints – not just one-offs – but consistently over time and every complaint should also be forwarded to each ABC Board Member with a polite covering letter for their for information. Make sure you get the spelling of their names right and any honours and awards that they may have. It all helps.
The current membership is:
The Hon James Spigelman AC QC
Mr Steven Skala AO
Mr Mark Scott AO
Dr Julianne Schultz AM
Ms Cheryl Bart AO
Professor Fiona Stanley AC
Ms Jane Bennett
Board members can be contacted through the ABC Secretariat, GPO Box 9994, Sydney NSW 2001, or email: [email protected]
According to the Act (ABC Act(1983)) the Board is responsible for the ABC’s operations.
The duty of the Board is to ensure that the functions of the Corporation are performed efficiently with maximum benefit to the people of Australia, and to maintain the independence and integrity of the Corporation.
The Board is also responsible for ensuring that the gathering and presentation of news and information is accurate and impartial, according to recognised standards of journalism, and that the ABC complies with legislative and legal requirements.
These are the power words:
“maximum benefit for the people of Australia”
“Independence”
“Integrity”
“Accurate and impartial”
“Recognised standards of journalism”
Go to it.
210
There is much more documentary evidence published at Michael Smith News website regarding the AWU Scandal, Michael was one of the journalists for whom the prime minister arranged dismissal when they dared to question her integrity, he is a former Army man and former detective. Police is at least three states have been investigating the Scandal for months.
172
More [SNIP]
[Do not ever make such a claim without providing evidence to back it] ED
024
Maxine there is documentary evidence now published, a considerable amount of it, witnesses have made statement, a partipant has admitted his involvement and has now given statements to police in Victoria and Western Australia, a former law firm partner has released information as to why a certain person was subjected to a recorded interview by him after which she tendered her resignation and also stopped practising law. The AWU Scandal took place 17 years ago but there is much more to discover that stems from it, as in a statutory declaration signed in Perth being witnessed days later by a solicitor in Melbourne who was also apparently involved in overseeing conveyancing on a property purchased by her boyfriend but put in the name of a friend who was also saddled with a mortgage he knew nothing about that subsequently cost him dearly. These matters will soon be in the news again and the protectors and their code of silence will be revealed.
152
Hi Dennis, Maxine
WRT the apparently fraudulent Power of Attorney document, the document in question appears to have been drafted and witnessed by the lawyer in question, without the person “giving” the power of Attorney being present – this is a grave offense with a jail term of up to 10 years. The POA was allegedly later signed by the person giving the power of attorney in Perth at a later date.
Read about it here
61
Oh garbage, why play with mud? Surely more uplifting ways to spend your time?
125
There is much more gossip and slander at the Smith gossip site. Sensible people eschew visiting rubbish sites like that.
125
Newspoll Maxine.
Scoreboard!!!
It must be eating you up to know, deep in your heart, that Abbott will be the next PM, and your precious ALP will be gooooone!!!!
Bwahahahahahahah.
111
Maxine,
Michael Smith is an ex copper – and he knows how to build a brief that will be sustained in a court of law.
The posts on his site extensively draw on and present original documentation.
It is only your ideological blinkers that stop you from seeing what Michael Smith is posting for what it is – a genuine attempt to build a legally valid case against those people involved in the AWU WRA fraud.
111
Ummm, maybe not so much, although i am sure he would like people to think so.
But hey, he knows Julie Bishop well enough to call her and put his incredibly credible mate Ralph on the phone!! 🙂
Surely that speaks well of him?? Remember, after this Julie pulled the smoking whoopie cushion trick in parliament that went down so well.
09
I hate to be contrary but Maxine, you might profit greatly by being interested in such goings on.
Sensible people keep up with what looks like corruption in high places so they aren’t mislead and suddenly find themselves too far down the garden path to get back home again.
You’ll fall in a hole or run into something by walking around blindfolded. 🙁
30
Brilliant! Thank you for that information. 🙂
60
Dont worry too much about the ABC SS, they are fairly quick off the mark reporting the Ashby/LNP fail now that Justice Rares has handed down his verdict. 🙂 That’s probably just a touch more important and relevant that something for which there is little or no substantive evidence, and that happened nearly 20 years ago before any of the principles were actually in parliament.
I for one, as a voter concerned about the proper operation of our democracy, look forward to the judicial inquiry. 🙂 There are perhaps some members of the Liberal leadership group who wont be.
LoL exWarm!! Is he better at it than George Brandis SC??
19
Time will tell.
60
For an informed view of the Gillard ‘issue’ see here.
21
And if you write to MS Jane Bennett, remind her of her methane producing heard of diary cows. If her ABC gets their way they will try to take away her cows, her cheese, her business all in the name of global wealth distribution
20
Prof Matthew England should be congratulated. Congratulated for turning me into a sceptic in 2006 when he was interviewed by Philip Clark on Sydney radio. Until that interview I assumed humans were dangerously warming the planet and we should do something about it. Until that interview I’d never heard a “scientist” use words like “Naysayer” or “Denier” to describe those who do not agree with his views. I’d also never heard of Joanne Nova. Thanks Matthew, I’ve seen the light and I since discovered Joanne Nova who have further entrenched my scepticism.
Unfortunately it seems Matthew has not changed since 2006. Hardly surprising when your entire working career is dependant on a continuing healthy flow of government grants to promote his brand of science at the expense of cancer research, food production and so on. A healthy flow of government grants I might add that would continue as long as we have the likes of our current elected government in power.
Thanks Jo for your exposure of England’s attempts to defend the indefensible.
500
Interesting story Cookster. I had a similar experience.
Between 2005 and 2009 I was in the back blocks of Nigeria and not really in touch with what was going on in the world. The first thing that made me prick up my ears to the whole climate change industry was when I noticed the venom and the vilification aimed at Lomborg. I had no idea of the pro’s and con’s of the debate or even who Lomborg was at that stage but I knew that something was amiss when Lomborg put forward what sounded like a reasonable case (for adaption rather than prevention) and was shouted down and smeared in a way that I had never seen before ever. The ‘argument’ against him as all ad hom and in no way addressed his points. That was the first clue that the was no longer a scientific debate. The more I researched the more obvious the skulduggery became.
120
I thought the science was about the relationship between time and atmospheric CO2 concentrations and how it effects “global temperature” over time and not directly about emissions. That emissions instead of that measure has been slipped in is just a not too subtle propaganda distraction to frighten the gullible.
If the ABC interviewer were to ask what percentage of annual anthropogenic emissions contribute to the annual increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, the only measure that the science deals with, even the warmist sheep might begin to see that the ocean/biosphere part of our climate system is a little more robust and less sensitive to our emissions than science distorters like England and his mate Andrew Pitman claim.
Further there are other factors like land use that may affect atmospheric CO2 concentrations. But that may distract the mostly not too bright warmist fellow travelers too much.
Like Hansen, who wants to close down coal production in the States these public servants are activists first and scientists only in so far as it suits their activist agenda
210
Oh please you are not trying to say that volcanoes emit more GHGs than we do? Industrial man not only emits increasing amounts of GHGs and at the same time destroys forest that could absorb these or part of these GHGs!
Farmers are now working on increasing their soil carbon, leaving the stubble of the previous crop in place, practicing crop rotation etc. THEY know of the damage from AGW is doing NOW to their properties!
225
Maxine, you are writing beyond your weight again. The soil sequestration process that you describe is limited in Nature, both chemically by oxygen and biologically by numerous paths. There is a natural limit to the maximum amount of carbon that a soil will store. If you take samples from all over the world, you will find that this is a couple of percent C depending on the type of soil and other local conditions like moisture availability. I know of no agricultural place on Earth where there are significant volumes of soil with (dead) carbon content exceeding 10% by dry weight. If you do, I’d appreciate a reference, but one without coal or peat to bolster the case.
Farmers have long tried to increase C content of their soils, because (for one reason) this enhances the retention and availability of some esssential growth nutrients. But, when you grow a lush crop on a soil you have made into high-carbon, you remove some of the carbon with the harvest and eventually end up around the couple of percent global average.
120
Retaining the stubble enhances soil carbon and soil moisture. I never said the soil would be 100% carbon! LOL! But it means higher soil carbon than burning the stubble would.
015
Wow ! Aren’t you the little light weight Libor blogger now !
60
No, Maxine. The stubble might stay buried for a few seasons, but all of the time it is decaying to produce CO2. To argue the absurd case, if theis dicay did not happen, we would have a gloge of soils that were almst pure carcon and its breakdown products.
We do not have such an Earth. You have to shit your tinking from annual growth processes to more dynamic, long-enduring processes of hundreds of years at least. Otherwise, your legacy to future generations will be a mess of chemical instabilities sustained at great cost and effort.
60
Maxine seems to have forgotten that the normal farming practice of ploughing in the stubble is now being undermined by the push for using the stubble as ‘bio-fuel’.
50
“Farmers are now ….”
roflmao..
You seriously were born only yesterday, and your childlike mentality reflects this!
Hint:
Rotating crops has been done for milleniums.
Ploughing stubble into the ground increases organic matter, give aeration and food for worms. Farmers have been doing this from year dot.
Now go back your latte, lttle person.
90
I can remember when stubble was burned off or plowed under.
Farmers are the first to see the damage AGW does and they are seeing it now.
Time now to reduce emissions and start mitigation and adaptation to AGW.
020
“and they are seeing it now” roflmao.. again with the idiocy !!!
As they gradually recover from the all natural flooding over the past year or two.
There is NOTHING untoward or unnatural happening to the Australia climate..
If there is, then PROVE IT !!!
Real DATA.. not SkS manipulated or manufactured crap.
111
By the 11th century, three field crop rotation was well established in Europe.
Maxine – is there anything that you actually do know?
110
So what damage are they seeing, Maxine? You make claims but you never provide the detail to back it up. Exactly what damage does the Australian farmer see right now?
I’ll bet it’s BS restrictions imposed by all levels of government rather than GHG anything.
70
I think it should be pointed out that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are quite beneficial for most terrestrial plants that exist on the planet, including crop species cultivated for human consumption. Plants grown in elevated levels of carbon dioxide have shown increases in biomass, water use efficiency (i.e. more drought tolerant) and crop yield, see here, here and here.
Plants become more efficient in elevated levels of CO2 because they are able to reduce the size of their stomata resulting in less loss of water through transpiration in the leaves, thus conserving water within the soil. Additionally the key enzyme, Rubisco, used in the in the first step of photosynthesis for the conversion of CO2 into carbohydrates that plants can use, has dual catalytic properties for both O2 and CO2; as the levels of CO2 increase Rubisco becomes more saturated and its ability to bind CO2 increases resulting in increased levels of photosynthesis and a reduction in photorespiration.
It surprises me that the benefits of increased levels of CO2 on plant growth are nearly always overlooked and never mentioned.
110
Even farmers know????
What?????
Excuse me? ????
Maxine I am a farmer.
What do you do?
WTF do you ‘even’ know?
80
Interesting new study shows an increase in the Greenland ice sheet since the end of the LIA.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00373.1
Here is the abstract from the study, 1840 to 1996. That’s a 12% or 86 Gt per year increase. That’s 30% higher than the 1600 to 2009 period suggesting an accelerating trend in ice accumulation.
Rather stuffs up a lot of theories. How much more ice do these ratbags want?
Abstract
Ice core data are combined with RACMO2 regional climate model (RCM) output (1958-2010) to develop a reconstruction of the Greenland ice sheet net snow accumulation rate (Ât(G)) spanning years 1600-2009. Regression parameters from RCM output regressed on 86 ice cores are used with available cores in a given year resulting in the reconstructed values. Each core site’s residual variance is used to inversely weight the cores’ respective contributions. The interannual amplitude of the reconstructed accumulation rate is damped by the regressions and is thus calibrated to match that of the RCM data. Uncertainty and significance of changes is measured using statistical models.
We find a 12% or 86 Gt y-1 increase in ice sheet accumulation rate from the end of the Little Ice Age in ~1840 to the last decade of the reconstruction. This 1840-1996 trend is 30% higher than that of 1600-2009, suggesting an accelerating accumulation rate. The correlation of Ât(G) with the average surface air temperature in the Northern Hemisphere(SATNHt) remains positive through time, while the correlation of Ât(G) with local near-surface air temperatures or North Atlantic sea surface temperatures is inconsistent, suggesting a hemispheric-scale climate connection. We find an annual sensitivity of Ât(G) to SATNHt of 6.8% K-1 or 51 Gt K-1.
The reconstuction, Ât(G), correlates consistently highly with the North Atlantic Oscillation index. Yet, at the 11-year time scale, the sign of this correlation flips four times in the 1870-2005 period.
Corresponding author address: [email protected]
© 2012 American
191
Morning Neville!
Just to cover all the bases, have they come out with any of the other parts of this paper yet? (The Abstract is for ‘Part 1’) There are some who claim it will still say ‘things are worse than we thought,’ though I would like to see that for myself.
50
I’m puzzled. Greenland is losing ice. Yet this paper says there is an accelerating trend in ice accumulation. The only way I can reconcile these two things is that more snow is falling and turning into ice (an accelerating trend in ice accumulation), but that this ice is flowing out to sea or melting faster, so that the total amount of ice on Greenland is falling.
Can someone explain?
224
Its’ called a Cycle.
110
Yes John, it’s well documented (video mind you) that the Greenland ice sheet is melting at the moment. Or at least part of it is. What is not at all understood is why.
It’s an interesting question which so far goes unanswered. If you can shed some light on it we would all like to know. But it does not signal much globally, since the phenomenon isn’t even close to being global.
Then there’s still the problem that none of this has ever been linked by empirical evidence to CO2. And therein is (and has always been) the real problem. Go back to Joanne’s Skeptics Handbook, Volume 1 and take a long look at her argument. The problem is framed right there. The actual “evidence” that carbon dioxide is doing anything at all is 99.9% assumption based on untested and unproven theory. Given a foundation like that to stand on I would make sure my life insurance is paid up.
I don’t give you thumbs down on you comment. I don’t know how to reconcile it either. What I think is wrong is to make a completely untested assumption and then try to make public policy based on it. Yes, there has been some past warming. No one worth paying attention to will deny it. But it cannot be laid at the feet of the poor old longsuffering CO2 molecule without something better than a wild theory. There is simply too much accumulating evidence that CO2 is not the driving force, even if it does have some ability to “warm” the planet.
200
So it doesn’t cover 1996–2012? Greenland is LOSING ice at an accelerating rate. Antarctica is losing net ice now.
Bite back reckons the phenomenon of ice sheet melting is not global. BS! Every glacier bar a few in a position to benefit from increased atmospheric moisture are RETREATING! Antarctica is LOSING net ice. That makes it global and so must be due to global warming! More moisture so maybe increased snowfall in Greenland but an accelerating net ice loss.
126
Maxine,
Looks like any retreat will be due to natural causes in Norway.
Is Norway part of this world? Why isn’t it being affected by Man Made Global Warming?
80
“Antarctica is losing net ice now.”
DOH ! its the southern hemisphere SUMMER !!
and guess what…. the Arctic is gaining ice !
71
Seriously, Maxine. Every time you post, you come across as a low IQ 15 year old boy. Ignorance personified !!!
102
AndyG55 – sadly – you are correct?
30
Maxine,
I will give you thumbs down. You ignore the very large elephant in the middle of the debate and my main point.
Others have addressed the issue of approaching summer in the southern hemisphere.
And…get ready…there’s another factor almost no one pushing catastrophe ever mentions. It matters whether you’re talking about ice over water or ice over land. The Antarctic ice shelf, floating on water, can be warmed by water from below. The Arctic ice is likewise vulnerable. The Antarctic ice mass resting on the continent (or is it subcontinent?) can only be affected by air temperature or absorbed solar radiation.
I would really like to see you, Maxine, or John Brookes, JFC, KR or anyone calling skeptics wrong adequately address this little distinction. But of course, instead you run around like Al Gore complaining that the Mount Kilimanjaro ice cap is melting without looking into whether the temperature up there ever gets above freezing or not. He was ultimately made a fool of over that. Now it’s your turn to show us whether you know your stuff or not.
70
Maxine,
I have a second “question” for you. What would you say if it turns out that the things you now think are manmade are in reality just natural changes that we can’t stop?
40
John I’m not sure what this means either but I’ll throw in a couple of other problems. Greenland temps were highest in the 1930s and 1940s with highest year being 1941.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/greenland/vintheretal2006.pdf This was in 2006 and possibly warmed closer to 1940s since. Briffa and Jones were part of this study.
Next temps today are much lower in Greenland than the earlier holocene. Here is Alley’s graph from wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Greenland_Gisp2_Temperature.svg This graph ends in 1950 and seems lower temp compared to the earlier holocene but was still warmer than 2006.
Remember Greenland cooled after 1950 and didn’t start to warm again until the late 1980s.
60
John here’s another puzzle about Greenland ice loss.
I linked to this at Jennifer’s blog a few days ago.
The story of the finding and recovery of “Glacier Girl” is very interesting. After being left in 1942 on a glacier the P38 was then covered by 250 feet of ice.
I wonder has anyone explained this enigma? Just asking.
http://www.p38assn.org/glacier-girl.htm
110
Puzzled is no doubt a permanent state for you john…but keep on laying down the astroturf.
71
Hi Brooksy,
Not only that, but according to this peer reviewed science there is no man made global warming in Norway.
40
JB, I have found the most logical and succinct explanation for you:
Multi-Year Stupidity
You’ll be pleased to know that you’re in ‘excellent’ company … the warmista Taliban spruikers also don’t know.
10
I guess that goes to prove there are some real climate scientists out there, who are not card carrying members of the Global Warming Cult.
I have no doubt its contents are true, so that blows a huge hole below the waterlines of SS Rising Seas and SS Arctic Ice Disappearance.
Almost every day the concept of ‘The science is settled’ is made to look increasingly more stupid.
212
What does “SS Arctic Ice Disappearance” have to do with “Greenland is losing ice”. Your not conflating arctic sea ice trends and glacier changes are you?
014
?
The Arctic is defined as the area north of 66.33 degreees N. Around 75% of Greenland is in the Arctic.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Topographic_map_of_Greenland_bedrock.jpg/461px-Topographic_map_of_Greenland_bedrock.jpg
Fluctuations in the Arctic ice cap are essentially meaningless in respect to changes in sea level, but if Greenland’s ice started to seriously melt – which it hasn’t – that would be another matter altogether.
141
EM Smith (Chiefio) is relevant to the basis of the non-science.
Excerpt: (Read the whole thing)
To which I can add:
190
The average temperature has always been a scientifically stupid metric.
60
And air temperature is almost entirely irrelevant.
The surface (water and soil) temperature defines the bulk of radiative energy losses to space. Altering the surface changes albedo and emissivity. Sometimes in opposite directions. Anthrprogenic changes to land use are likely to significant climate changers; though very much second-place to natural variations which result from changes in incident energy intensities, the resulting thermodynamic and fluid-mechanical changes; and the responses of the planet’s biology.
Atmospheric cycles tend to store energy. It’s only the liquid water in the atmosphere that has any substantial radiative power; and that probably 3 orders of magnitude below the surface’s.
40
Agreed.
Chop down a forest, or build a city or farmlands and the climate local to the change is directly impacted.
10
Matthew England was the source of the ABC headline eight days ago that a “war” scale effort is “needed” to stop global warming.
“Scientists call for a war on global warming following bleak new predictions.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-03/un-talks-warn-of-hotter-earth/4405840 [6 minute video]
Although unidentified “scientists” were said to be the source of the “war scale” assessment, the only person who actually made or repeated this suggestion in the video was Dr England.
My previous comment lampooned the whole story, which was a sickening Pravda propaganda effort from go to woe.
They lost on the outgoing LWIR response to clouds, they haven’t won the OA scares, they failed to eradicate the MWP, they couldn’t find their warming hotspot with both hands, they lost on peer review integrity, and they lost on sea level rise too. Yet still the show goes on.
Well Dr England was right about one thing. There IS war scale effort on global warming, and truth is the first casualty of war.
320
Andrew,
They’re running out of hyperboles. I remember Paul Ehrlich extolling a ‘wartime effort’ some 10 years ago when Robyn Williams had him as a regular pet, along David Suzuki on the science show. I also seem to remember he said the water levels would “reach the 9th floor of the empire state building” – among other absurdities.
161
One thing that annoys me about “carbon pollution” is that 30-40 years ago developed nations including Australia created Environmental Pollution Acts engineered to target polluters. The Carbon Cate pro carbon tax con television advertisement showed a dirty smoke power station in the background, that was decommissioned decades ago in England. Here similar design power stations were replaced, many in suburbs of Sydney were closed and cleaner new ones constructed in lower population areas. in the 1990s Suzuki again visited Australia and was full of praise for the reduction in pollution here and he withdrew his 1970s prediction about the demise of life because of pollution and was full of praise for the changes.
Manufacturing and other businesses are required to have consultants inspect their premises and prepare a report on environmental pollution, if they find a breach of the Act the business is required to carry out repairs and/or clean up. This can even include a solvent and oil solution used to wash down machinery in a yard that stained the surface of the soil. That soil must either be replaced and the contaminated soil dumped at an approved site or the soil is left in the sun and turned regularly until it is free of the contamination.
So the ridiculous rhetoric of our government about “carbon” and “pollution” are deceptive conduct and completely ignore about 40 years of tackling pollution.
180
.
Sorry Jo, but in all honesty your article above is, in its own way, every bit as false and misleading as the one you are complaining about. Peddling false hope to the desperate is really not much different to telling outright lies as in the quoted article.
For as long as publicly-funded bodies like the ABC and the UNSW feel they are safe from government scrutiny, they know they have absolutely nothing to fear from the tax-paying public. So feel free to bitch and complain all you like. It will make no difference.
These people have nothing to fear from the incumbent Labor government, and currently have no reason to believe anything much will change under an incoming Liberal-National Coalition.
The ONLY course of action available is as follows:
1) – Complain to the Opposition Spokesman for the relevant department. Forget emails. Write a letter and post it, registered post. Make copies. Mail a registered post copy of your complaint to the Leader of the Opposition, and another copy to your local Liberal/National member or candidate. State in no uncertain terms that if they are not prepared to address the issues, then you see no point in voting for them.
2) – Prepare yourself for disappointment, for I assure you, apart from meaningless party-line spin platitudes, NOTHING will happen.
3) – Accept that, if you want political change, YOU are going to have to get involved politically. That means forming a new political movement.
.
Sorry, but that IS the reality.
1010
Settle down MV – You are missing the point (missing several points actually). Cynical attitudes like yours mean skeptics miss gift opportunities. Hello?
The process starts with ABC and UNSW complaints. There is much more to this than naively thinking someone at either institution will pick the easy and correct path and leap up to right the wrong. The lack of that action is its own gift…
I shall send you an email. Give us your constructive wisdom, but keep the burnt-out pessimist in his box right?
Skeptics need to start taking action. Enough is enough.
400
Jo? I think the whole world is beginning to wake up and think enough is enough, whether they are following the politics or not, and it is wonderful to see. Thank you so much for being who you are and for doing all you do. You’ve made a huge difference.
180
Jo,
This seems to be a sample of the Frame and Stone paper to which they were referring. Take a look at the graphic. I would love to know what the rationale is for offsetting the observation starting measurements by between 0.1 an 0.15 degrees C.
http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/nclimate1763
[I do recall reading in an interview somewhere that they had “normalised” for unusual events, such as Mt Pinatubo, so perhaps that is the source of the initial fudge factor.]
80
just going offline when i checked jo’s new thread. excellent jo, but the MSM is immune to criticism via the complaints system.
what we need is something like “OCCUPY MSM”, where a few individuals is all that is quited to make an impact – therefore not requiring big turnouts. take turns with friends standing out front of MSM offices, hold up placards listing websites to go to for info in VERY LARGE LETTERS (btw the MSM already knows them), or LARGE graphs/facts/studies/cartoons etc – e.g. 16 years of no significant warming.
if such protestsers were persistent, the MSM would eventually have to acknowledge their existence. protesters could also hand out flyers etc to media personnel exiting or entering the building or passersby. and, of course, protesters can video and upload encounters with MSM individuals on youtube, or on jo’s site, whatever.
i have often felt the Occupy movement missed an opportunity by not permanently occupying the MSM when they had the numbers. i think they occasionally went to some MSM office & made a noise, but didn’t concentrate protesters there.
the MSM is not only mis- and dis-informing people on CAGW. their credibility is disappearing worldwide.
100
.
Sorry Pat, but this is absolute crud.
For the last two weeks much of the northern hemisphere has been experiencing the worst, coldest, wettest, and heaviest snowfall, December on record. Hundreds of thousands remain without power, stranded people in their thousands have had to be rescued, and scores have died. And it’s not even officially winter yet.
Not one word of it has appeared in the Australian MSM.
.
And you honestly believe a few cardboard signs will change this ??????
153
MV … I normally enjoy your scribbling but detect increasing cynicism in your tone lately. Your reality is not the same as mine or anybody else’s and it seems to be drifting from general consensus of our reality . What do you propose, general insurrection against the status quo ? Another political party would be just so ho-hum.
51
You are right Streetcred, MV is mourning the transformation of the party he has supported most of his life (he was a union official) into something he cannot identify with. Despite that, he still hates the “tories” and can’t accept the logic that the LibNats will end the CAGW scam in Australia, as they have promised. Instead he has specifically espoused the formation of a new party in his own likeness, reprising the defunct Democrats, that will “keep the bastards honest” in the Senate. I can think of nothing worse! He seems to have no inkling that he is sorely deluded. The best way of restoring rationality on climate in this country is to give Lab/Green an electoral shock they will never forget.
30
.
Actually, Chris M and Streetcred, I have NEVER been a supporter of any of the major political parties, least of all the Labor Party. I was, for a while, the National Policy Coordinator of the Advance Australia Party, before John Siddons destroyed it, back in the Eighties.
Yes, for a time I was a union rep, but only on the basis of trying to reform the particular union to represent the interests its members, instead of the interests of the Labor Party. I was young and naive – a bit like JuLIAR I guess – and I gave it away when I realised I was banging my head against a brick wall.
I could say a lot more, but Jo has asked me very nicely (well, perhaps not so nicely, but asked me anyway), to stop bagging the Coalition, the notion of email complaints, and a few other things, and since it’s her blog, I will.
For a while.
.
Expect me to revisit the subject again, however, twelve months after the next election, when you wake up to the fact that you STILL have a department of Climate Change (albeit with a new name), you STILL have an ETS, you STILL have an RET, you STILL have solar and wind power subsidies, you STILL have soaring electricity bills, you STILL have an ARC ignoring real scientific research in favour of funding Lewandowsky and his ilk and their quasi-cultist gobbdledy gook, and you STILL have children and grandchildren who can’t read or write, but nonetheless have seen “An Inconvenient Truth” at least three times over the preceding year.
.
Then maybe you’ll understand the folly of this statement:
You see, Chris M, the thing you don’t understand about Australia’s party political system is that one side’s “electoral shock” is the other side’s “overwhelming mandate” to do stuff they never even mentioned prior to the election.
.
I have sad news for all of you. “Climate Change” is now a dead issue politically. What was meant to be accomplished, has been accomplished, and all the political players have now moved on. It won’t crack hardly a mention in the next election, which will probably revolve around union corruption and political lies, with a goodly dose of KRudd back-stabbing thrown in for a bit of variety.
The election after that will be fought on the GST. One side will offer the choice of 12-1/2% on everything, including fresh food and medical, the other side will be offering 15%, but with the exemptions as they stand now. Whichever side wins, you will ultimately get 15% on everything.
.
I will now quietly bide my time, limit my posts to bagging trolls and their pseudo-science, and await my “I told you so” moment in about two year’s time.
82
Hi MV
A good piece that has relevance.
Politicians of all stripes have access to legalized theft from tax payers.
We need a way of minimizing this aspect of politics and make them accountable for actions against the public good.
I was disturbed by one of your earlier comments to learn that the Howard governments changes to work place laws enabled employers to terminate workers and withhold payouts on accrued entitlements and neutralise their obligations? I was aware of Howards brother having left a workforce without entitlements in Maitland and that later the federal Government came to the rescue?
KK
10
MV – I did not ask you to stop bagging the coalition. Bag away. Your cynical synopsis of our year to come is depressingly believeable. I just don’t believe in sitting back and waiting for it.
(Did you get my email?)
80
KK (sorry if OT) I think the Libs have long recognized that their post-2004 IR legislation was a case of hubristic overreach, symptomatic of Howard’s inability to let go of the reins and hand over to Costello; his political stance, while sincere, became overly ideological and less pragmatic. The Libs learned their lesson in 2007. It is old news now and is best left in the past (where the Howard years now reside), although no doubt the unions will try to drag it out again before the next election.
I have worked several times in the Hunter over the years and have been disheartened by the dinosaur-like mentality of a large proportion of the denizens, particularly the fierce and grasping sense of entitlement in matters like workers compensation: “We’re the workers mate!” Now that the steelworks and Sulphide are long gone, and effective scrubbing is in place on the Hunter Valley power station stacks (they used to burn the highest ash content coal and export the good stuff), Newcastle has at long last close to pristine air quality and is an attractive place to live.
It will take a long time for the demographic legacy of BHP dominance of the city to dilute, as shown by the WD-40 resistant rusted-on swathe of Labor seats extending west from Wallsend through Holmesville and out to Cessnock, but things will slowly change. Most of these people are social conservatives and Labor’s “progressivism” has become less and less in tune with their own values over the years. I doubt that many of these people ever watch the ABC, to get back on topic a little, so at least that is one source of propaganda they’re not exposed to.
20
Good comment Chris.
Few Novocastrians and Hunter voters seem to get that the “Loyalty” they give to the bruvvers and
pollies locally is not respected or repaid.
20
So you think the blizzards and snowfall disprove AGW? Not so. It is the change in circum polar winds, in the Arctic Ocean dipole that sends masses of cold air south where they get blocked by high pressure systems and so cause the blizzards and snow.
Hint: have a look at Russian summer temperatures.
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“So you think the blizzards and snowfall disprove AGW? Not so.”
Exactly what would disprove AGW?
100
You’ll have to wait until Maxine ducks over to SkS to get the official sanctioned response to your question.
61
Hi RoHa,
Unfortunately Maxine is unable to formulate falsification criteria, for him the phrase “Man Made Global Warming is Refuted” is Inconceivable
So in a most likely futile attempt to assist in Maxines recovery from his delusion, I have prepared a statement on falsification (with examples) here.
On another topic that may interest all given this post on UN IPCC Predictions NOAA says that Sea Level rise has slowed right down below the UN IPCC predictions.
50
Heywood, I suspect you are right..
NO ONE PERSON could have the collective ignorance shown by Maxine..
It must becoming from SkS.
72
Aha I get it now. Maxine is a typing dog. Very clever. Nice photo. Woof, Woof. Just got it on the tip of my tongue… no… can’t be that. Anyway what is the polite expression for a female dog?
41
Was searching for a MV comment (must be in moderation whos a naughty boy) when i stumbled across this. Actually i agree with Max (great name by the way) this does not disprove AGW, what it does prove is that there is a negative feed back at work so it does disprove all the models.
00
I thought December WAS officially winter MV?
07
.
Only here in Australia do we mark the beginning and end of the seasons on the first and last of the month, MattyB.
For most of the rest of the civilised world, winter starts on the winter equinox, and ends on the day before the summer equinox.
This year, for the NH countries I was writing about, “winter” officially starts on December 21 and ends on March 19 next year.
90
Hmm I don’t recall that being the case growing up in England. It would be very strange to observe Midwinters Day, the shortest day of the year, to be the start of winter?
hmm it seems wikipedia agrees with me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter
“In the UK, meteorologists consider winter to be the three coldest months of December, January and February.[8] In Scandinavia, winter traditionally begins on 14 October and ends on the last day of February.”
“In Celtic nations such as Ireland (using the Irish calendar) and in Scandinavia, the winter solstice is traditionally considered as midwinter, with the winter season beginning 1 November, on All Hallows, or Samhain. Winter ends and spring begins on Imbolc, or Candlemas, which is 1 or 2 February”
“In Chinese astronomy and other East Asian calendars, winter is taken to commence on or around 7 November, with the Jiéqì (known as 立冬 lì dōng—literally, “establishment of winter”).”
“many mainland European countries tend to recognize Martinmas or St. Martin’s Day (11 November), as the first calendar day of winter”
Do you have a source for “For most of the rest of the civilised world, winter starts on the winter equinox, and ends on the day before the summer equinox.” (I assume you mean winter solstice btw). there doesn;t seem to be much of the world left after all the places I’ve listed above?
16
Virtually every calendar printed for US use has the first day of winter as December 21 the winter solstice, ending on the first day of spring vernal equinox, March 21. Summer commences on June 21 the summer equinox and ends on the autumnal equinox September 21
A simple calendar search produced this:
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Ok you can put your faith in the Americans. HTat source is clearly wrong when it says “and the rest of the northern hemisphere”
05
I see your “calendar” and raise you http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/summer-solstice.html
“In the USA and some other areas in the northern hemisphere, the summer solstice marks the first day of summer. However, the official date for the first day of summer varies depending on the country’s climate.”
Look I’m english and lived there for the 1st half of my life, and I can tell you that when I’m there my June 24 birthday is in the middle of, an usually disappointing, summer.
05
well ok not quite the middle. But September is not in summer that’s for sure.
05
MV
The change from using the actual start of seasons to the “first of month” system has been made necessary by the reduced performance of Australian students , many of whom can barely read at the age of 12 on entry to high school.
better teachers, smarter teachers, super teachers is the all encompassing solution to this problem.
At least that is the political solution.
The real solution is to have students in class who are able to sit still and actually participate in lessons.
This concept is foreign to modern Australian students as a result of the removal from our society of the concept of self control as a necessary part of being human.
As JFC would say:
” Think not what you can do for your country.
But ask, What can your country do for you”.
KK
50
MattB
If you cared to expand your quest for knowledge farther than Wikipedia, or, in fact just read ALL of the article you quoted, and a few of the embedded links, you would discover that the concept of winter being marked by the shortest day of the year predates the construction of Stonehenge.
Your problem, MattB, is you don’t keep up with your own side’s propaganda. Yes, for a long time in the UK and the USA scientific organisations like the MeT used the start of the month as the start date for the seasons, disregarding tradition. That would have been the period when you were growing up (and I use the term loosely).
Then around the mid 2000’s they started pushing bunkum like “spring starting two weeks earlier – a sure sign of global warming”. Unfortunately, by 2008 that insignificant, minor, and temporary trend had already started to reverse itself.
So the “climate scientists” (and I use that term loosely too) in the UK started moving the “official” start dates for seasons around to make the data match their predictions, taking advantage of the old traditions. Which, of course, is how “climate science” is done. The USA and other countries followed suit.
.
Now you, and they, are stuck with it. “Officially” in the UK and elsewhere in the NH, winter now does not start until the soltice. So, to go back to my original comment, large parts of Europe are currently buried in snow, and it’s not even officially winter yet.
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what does that garbage even mean MV? it is winter now in England… suck it up and live with it.
06
MV – I am all confused too. In my 50 years experience of NZ our seasons have always been:
Summer: start of December to end of Feb
Autumn: Start March to end May
Winter: Start June to end August
spring: Start Sept to end Nov
I had understood that racehorses we all aged on 1 September that being the 1st day of spring.
Maybe that’s not the traditional view but it seems the pervading view in NZ.
10
Well Jo since you took the trouble to write the article I have taken the trouble to whine to the ABC.
I don’t expect much will happen but at least they will know that their lies are not going unnoticed.
—-
Thank you 🙂 — Jo
200
Professor England would be referring to this paper in Nature Climate Change. All the warmists are rallying around it saying we are headed for 3C or higher!!
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1763.html
60
The Conversation is onto it also
50
woops – link didn’t work
http://theconversation.edu.au/20-years-on-climate-change-projections-have-come-true-11245
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I graduated from UNSW, but because of the statements of England, am not particularly proud to admit it. The promotion of student initiatives to combat global warming features regularly in the alumni magazine.
Manama, the paper is behind a pay wall. I assume it references GISSTEMP records. Thanks to all the “adjustments”, I think that’s the only temperature record that shows a rise. It’s giving the warmists something to cling to as they seem to have turned their backs on HADCRUT and RSS.
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Nothing’s “unequivocal” once the Left/Green get their hands on it.
“The future’s definite — only the past is uncertain.”
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The extreme Greens of Australia and their puppet circus alliance government.
50
Need to have a pet lawyer Jo and formally pursue individual leftist journalists via the Press Council,…. The AGW catastrophists are doing it to Andrew Bolt… So do it back. It needs to be done by a professional in a formal way, otherwise the Communists in the Press council will ignore it too.
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An excellent point.
20
Just to repeat. In case it gets overlooked under Imwd’s post @9.1:
We might all recall that the ABC ignored the Julia Gillard/AWU/Slush fund fraud for weeks, if not months and years. However, as a result of constant pressure they eventually realised that it was demonstrating how out of touch it was, the viewers were going elsewhere (see the growth in The Bolt report numbers of a Sunday compared with the Insiders program) and its bias was becoming so obvious that they had to do something about it. And they did.
The same will happen if we keep the pressure on. The ABC has a complaints system and it also has a Board of Directors. The new Chairman is Mr Jim Spigelman AC, QC. He seems to be a breath of fresh air. I suggest we lodge complaints – not just one-offs – but consistently over time and every complaint should also be forwarded to each ABC Board Member with a polite covering letter for their for information. Make sure you get the spelling of their names right and any honours and awards that they may have. It all helps.
The current membership is:
The Hon James Spigelman AC QC
Mr Steven Skala AO
Mr Mark Scott AO
Dr Julianne Schultz AM
Ms Cheryl Bart AO
Professor Fiona Stanley AC
Ms Jane Bennett
Board members can be contacted through the ABC Secretariat, GPO Box 9994, Sydney NSW 2001, or email: [email protected]
The Board is responsible for the ABC’s operations.
The duty of the Board is to ensure that the functions of the Corporation are performed efficiently with maximum benefit to the people of Australia, and to maintain the independence and integrity of the Corporation.
The Board is also responsible for ensuring that the gathering and presentation of news and information is accurate and impartial, according to recognised standards of journalism, and that the ABC complies with legislative and legal requirements.
These are the power words:
“maximum benefit for the people of Australia”
“Independence”
“Integrity”
“Accurate and impartial”
“Recognised standards of journalism”
180
How can something ACTUALLY BE both accurate and impartial at the same time? If something is truly accurate, chances are that it is going to accurately support one particular point of view, and accurately refute the opposing point of view, thereby eliminating any possibility of “impartiality”. Either that, or the attempt at true impartiality is going to make it impossible to report anything with any actual ACCURACY whatsoever….
Just MHO….
41
Impartial means that you don’t take sides – you tell the truth, consequences be damned.
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Ex Warmist:
I think that the species known as “impartial reporter” may well be extinct according to your definition (which I like very much, by the way).
The new standards of journalism seem to be “report whatever supports your agenda, the actual truth be damned!”
30
I have received this message about “the IPCC projections coming true” aka “the deniers once again proven wrong” from several colleagues in higher positions of authority, over the last 24 hours… no doubt keen to remind their flock they have to toe the party line. When I tried to argue back, I received three alternative replies (tricks) meant to show that I was wrong:
— Trick 1: start the projected lines not from (1990, 0.0) but from (1990, -0.1) or even (1990, -0.2). If you do so, you end up in the yellow zone today and you can claim it’s a good fit.
— Trick 2: end the graph in 2010 rather than 2012, because “it’s the mid-point of the projection period”. Again, this way you end up well into the yellow zone. When I complained about this trick, I was told that adding two extra years doesn’t matter because natural fluctuations dominate over climate trends over such a short interval.
— Trick 3: claim that we should stop showing raw temperatures… apparently it’s an evil habit of the deniers to do so, to mislead the public. A well educated scientist should only present to the public the “corrected temperatures”, from which a whole range of negative factors have been taken out according to ad hoc models (aerosol cooling, solar cooling, la nina cooling, ocean cooling) leaving a nice steep rise “as predicted”.
The underlying problem [perhaps I should work with Jo on a post about that 😉 ] is that despite what many people (including many scientists themselves!) think, scientists are NOT trained to test theories by comparing them to the data. This is just a fairytale description of the job. Our job, the task we are funded for, is to select a combination of existing theories, combine them as required, and find the right parameter range to explain the observed data. (This is a subtle difference Karl Popper never understood but Thomas Kuhn, who was trained as a physicist, did well.) When the data are apparently in total contrast with model predictions, our job is not to dump or even doubt the theory but to select a range of previously unforeseen side effects that reconcile the data with the theory, as much as possible. Very rarely are we funded to “test a theory”; 99% of the time our job is to mix, match and stretch existing theories to explain the data.
The problem begins when some of us convince themselves (and want to convince the public) that they are “testing” theories or models and “proving them right”, like in the case discussed here. They are not. They are simply assuming the “consensus model” as correct and stretching every possible ad hoc parameter to cover the data within 3 sigma. That is in no way a “proof” of the model, it is simply a proof of how much you can stretch it. Shame the public is misled this way. Only perhaps once in a generation or once in a century, do data become so, so discrepant that even the most ad hoc stretching of the theory can no longer cover them. We are no longer at this stage with AGW, unfortunately, because it is a very rubbery theory. I believe we can have another 16 years of no warming and the ARC-funded climatologists will still go on the ABC in 2028 saying that temperatures are rising exactly as predicted once we correct them for the cooling effect of aerosols, ocean currents, cosmic rays, la nina, heat sinking in the ocean, tonyabbott’s breath, etc.
260
Robbo says…
Very well said Robbo.
We are waiting for the Kuhnian paradigm shift. A shift that will be endlessly delayed by Monopsony funding of the current paradigm.
Personally I’m a fan of Popper, however I also contend that falsificationism is rejected within the current governing process framework – which contention you have backed up by relating your own experience. Yes, the typical process is to look for proof, to explain, rather than to refute. It is psychologically difficult to consistently take a stance for refuting activities, there is blow back, and consensus does operate within science and people need a career.
60
Really?
Given the definition of the scientific method per se, see AIG News Issue 87 lead article for example, then is it fair to then suggest that the majority of “scientists” employed by the state in its institutions are instead highly skilled technicians and not scientists?
70
trick 1 is not a trick.. it is what should happen (as long as the startig point is the statistical average temp of years leading up to 1990 not just some made up number)
012
You must be joking MattB?
Maybe you need to re read and then seriously consider rewording that comment?
50
Perhaps you should consult E.M. Smith’s website (The Chiefio). He has an excellent article posted which has musings on whether or not it is even statistically valid to attempt to compute such a thing as “statistical average temperature”.
He makes some pretty good arguments that “statistical average temperature” may well be completely meaningless.
60
fine… but then you can’t use the above graph to argue against AGW as it graphs statistical average temps.
06
Oh, I agree. If the computation of global average temperature is actually statistically meaningless, then arguing over whether it is A or B is also meaningless.
My main argument is that the primary assumption on which all climate models seem to be based is a faulty assumption, so the models are necessarily faulty.
The climate models seem to be based upon the idea that “all other things being equal, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere acts as a control knob for the earth’s average temperature.”
First of all, as we have discussed, it is possible that computation of an average temperature for the earth may possibly be statistically meaningless.
Secondly, the rest of the assumption doesn’t seem to work very well either. Solar cycles and hydrological cycles seem to be far more important in “controlling” the climate than anything else.
70
Any time you hear someone saying “the data prove this model to be right” that person has automatically disqualified themselves as a scientist.
There is NO WAY that ANY model can be “proven correct”. At best, ALL you can say is that “the model does (or does not) give a reasonable approximation of what is happening in reality.
If you have to use fudge-factors, adjustments, and “tricks” to make ACTUAL OBSERVED DATA fit your model predictions, then your model is utter garbage and should be extensively revamped, or thrown into the trash heap of quasi-scientific refuse.
Modeling of coupled, non-linear, chaotic systems (e.g. climate) is damn near impossible, especially if:
1. You don’t know what all of the variables even are in the system being modeled.
2. You don’t have a very good understanding of which variables are dominant in the system and which are relatively insignificant.
3. You don’t have a very good idea of how all of the variables interact with each other.
4. You don’t have very good data to input into your model in order to test it.
For me, all of the climate models I have seen are extremely faulty from factor 1 all the way on down to factor 4 in my above list.
The models can only be even VAGUELY accurate IFF (if and only if) their primary assumption is accurate. Since their primary assumption is that CO2 is THE PRIMARY DOMINANT DRIVING FORCE controlling the entire climate of the planet, the models AUTOMATICALLY FAIL.
There is simply no way whatsoever (if you know any physics at all) that CO2 is THE #1 absolute most important factor controlling climate.
For example, I can easily think of 2 factors that are SO dominant, that probably 95% of all climate COULD be explained by them if we really had a good understanding of them.
1. The sun (primary energy input of the entire climate system).
2. H2O (oceans, other surface water, evaporation, cloud formation, precipitation, etc.)
Basically, one has to completely ignore FAR MORE IMPORTANT variables in order to even convince themselves that CO2 is more than a bit-player in the climate system.
340
Very well put, PeterB.
You have highlighted a hallmark of the faux climate ‘scientist’ with its use of “prove”.
Their ilk don’t want to acknowledge that a model is another form of a hypothesis, otherwise most simply written in the “If [one variable].., then [predicted result]..” form.
The reliance of models on unsupported hypotheses and hence, as you mention, variables that have not been supported by results, is where the modellers come unstuck. The fun of bending models in order to thrash them into “proving” this or that buries the falsity of the unsupported variable being used.
The thrashing is where the corruption starts to appear in all its various guises. The best known of these is cherry picking, followed by data enhancement and “correction” (eg, think Hong Kong Harbour and sea level!). Yes, we’ll make that damn data fit the prediction no matter what.
81
“If you have to use fudge-factors, adjustments, and “tricks” to make ACTUAL OBSERVED DATA fit your model predictions, then your model is utter garbage and should be extensively revamped, or thrown into the trash heap of quasi-scientific refuse.”
Not true. adjustments are completely legit as long as they are based on statistical reality rather than trying to force a fit.
220
Please define “statistical reality”. Statistics are not real, they are merely another way to model an amalgamation of data. Certainly, there are statistical operations that can be said to be “valid” under certain known circumstances, and statistical operations that are clearly “invalid” under certain known circumstances.
My biggest problem with the “climate scientists” is that they seem to be VERY FOGGY when it comes to knowing this critical difference. After all, almost none of them have decent training in statistics beyond a very basic level.
90
Which process is more scientifically valid:
1. Making adjustments to your model so that it better fits the actual measured observations of real data…
or
2. Making adjustments to the actual measured observations of real data so that it better fits your model.
In my opinion as an actual scientist, #1 is always a more valid operation than #2.
70
Right with you, PeterB. Sorry MattB, this is wrong – ‘adjustments are completely legit as long as they are based on statistical reality rather than trying to force a fit.’
You need correct only one word, from ‘statistical reality’ to ‘reality’.
One of the very common modelling errors is to assume that you know the finer details of the adjustment that your statistics seem to support. One a bad day, it is possible to programme a single statistical correction to get a better fit, while on a good day (or year, or career) you get to find out that you are not dealing with a single corrective effect but an extremely complicated series of interactions that can take years to unravel – if you succeed at all. If it was as easy as you say, then we would long ago have had an agreed figure for CO2 climate sensitivity doubling or whatever you want to call it. We might even know if positive or negative feedbacks are most important, and feedbacks acting on what?
Good scientists do not talk about scientific truth. All we can do is explain observations in ways that other people can repeat with confidence – and even then some slip through the net.
30
Interesting comment and it would explain why many scientific “enthusiasms” have run off the rails. The case of N Rays would fit your description very well. Readers will recall that Professor Blondlot claimed to have discovered a new invisible radiation which he called N-rays, and approximately 120 other scientists agreed with him in 300 published articles claiming to be able to detect N-rays emanating from most substances (except green wood).
The “discovery” excited international interest and many physicists worked to replicate the effects. However, a number of physicists failed to do so. One went to Blondlot’s laboratory where the professor was able to detect the spectrum despite the visitor surreptitiously removing the ‘essential’ aluminium prism.
By 1905, no one outside of Nancy believed in N-rays, but Blondlot himself is reported to have still been convinced of their existence in 1926.
So perhaps we should refer to these ‘scientific’ believers as BlondLots?
And those reporters who don’t do elementary checking as Gullible Gerties (or Georges)?
70
Healthy skepticism is the nature of science. Unquestioned faith is the nature of religious fanaticism.
As such, ask yourself, who are the true “deniers” when it comes to climate?
170
> Gullible Gerties
and let’s not forget also the (very well funded) Gullible Gergis.
70
As of 06 November 2012,those of us living on the other side of the Big Pond determined the existance of a new member of Homo sapiens: the ‘Low Information Voter’.
Seems to adequately describe Mr. England, Mr. Jones, Ms. Clarke, Mattb, Brooksie, Tristan, Maxine, SillyPhil, ad infinitum ad nauseum … … … …
130
Zombieocracy.
Rule by, and for Zombies.
Net Value Consumers Rule OK.
00
I should add a /sarc on the last line above…
00
Kings used to claim to rule by Divine Right (God gave them the right to rule over everyone else).
Now, Technocrats claim to rule by Divine Consensus.
Both of those claims are equally garbage.
100
The Facts:
1.The IPCC used the word “prediction” in 1990 and predicted a best estimate of 0.3°C with a range of 0.2°C – 0.5°C per decade
2.Even with the most generous overestimate of current trends, the temperature trend has fallen below their lowest estimate, while CO2 emissions were higher than expected. The 1990 predictions can not be called “true”, “consistent” or to have “occurred” by any definition in any English dictionary.
The IPCC Prediction was Wrong
Sorta says it all right there. 🙂
180
Yep!
Read BB’s comment MattB.
30
Hmm not really. The predictions are made relating to AGW influence on the climate. We have no real way of predicting 15 years hence what stage of the PDO we are in for example. The fact the individual year is off the low end “today” is no more relevant than 1998 being off the scale at the high end. As recently as 2010 it was above the middle orange line, but I don’t recall this blog championing that they were 100% on target back then?
there will ALWAYS be other factors that nudge us a bit higher or a bit lower than any AGW based prediction/projection (semantic pedantry)
04
More of the same?
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/2012/12/12/02/00/climate-science-lost-in-translation
“National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility” report.
” … decision-makers … delaying taking action … until the uncertainties in climate change information are reduced or disappear altogether.”
Manifestly untrue unfortunately.
“Dr Kiem was among University of Newcastle researchers who found a chasm between the way scientists and policy buffs think about climate science.”
Wow – ground-breaking revelation.
/sarc
40
Re England.
It is time that universities started restoring their tattered reputations by removing badly performed academics.
111
Removal? Depends on what you mean by “badly performing”. As long as it’s because they’ve demonstrably and repeatedly broken some University code of behaviour and ethics that has been around for over 40 years.
We can’t burn academics at the stake just because they say stuff that’s unpopular with us. That would be a rather bad precedent to set. It’s only ever the right of unpopular speech that needs protection. And if the mob can do it to Dr England, they can do it to you too.
It’s not because we don’t like him, it’s not even because he says things that have taxation consequences, it’s because he says stuff calculated to scare people beyond what is supportable by scientific evidence, and because he’s now a serial offender at doing it.
The policy response is logical if such exaggerations are believed. It’s the government who uses these claims to shepherd taxpayer money into activities which have low efficacy and ROI. That’s almost a separate issue.
Can we can think of any better target? Prof England is hardly a bigwig in the climate scare. What’s the best strategy here? To go after the low hanging fruit or to hit the kingpins first?
And how many messengers do we have to shoot before realising the biased manipulation of data at its source in the scientific literature has misled everyone else down the line?
Perhaps this is the point at which “enough is enough” and the first hapless stooge that wanders into the mob’s firing range will be the first head on a spike, mainly out of wider symbolism and rage rather than actual personal degree of wrongdoing.
I suggest using stainless steel spikes as they are easier to clean off and recycle.
50
A nuanced assessment.
Well done, however…
Has not yet been reached. Note that Greece & Spain have 56% and 55% unemployment for under 25s, and they haven’t reached the breaking point yet.
To break – people will have to believe that Government is working actively against their survival – that hasn’t happened yet.
Australia is no where near that point, (but could also become Greece or Spain).
20
Ah yes ZH. Tyler Durden for president!
I was being metaphorical about the whole head-on-a-spike thing. I meant sacked not actually beheaded.
Several European nations have already exceeded the metaphorical head-on-a-spike that I intended.
They’ve been rioting in the streets in Italy and France already during the last 12 months.
Spain is just a bit slow to react. The fact they expect the government to help them is part of the problem.
10
Oh…Got it.
Cheers ExWarmist
10
Andrew says:
No, I was thinking of something more modern. Financial advantage via deception, charge them and make them pay back 2 decades of funding.
20
We should at least give them a second chance.
I’m thinking an event like “The Running Man”.
Or from the same movie perhaps “Climbing for Cash”, since they’ve had so much practice at it already. 😉
00
Joanne you’re a legend.
90
Jo nailed it. Now it’s time for the rest of us to nail England and the ABC.
When’s that election?
50
Hmmm, the second diagram is quite misleading. And initially I was misled by it. Based on my eyeball, first diagram’s estimates are linear after 2000, but second diagram’s estimate are linear from the onset.
I suspect if you plotted temp data against actual estimate curves, it could well be that warming is indeed at this point in time tracking against those original estimates. A new more accurate plot is required. A line fit from 2000, based on my eyeball, I would guess would come out supporting best estimate, whereas a plot from 2002 would come out well below low estimate. The data is still very much end point sensitive, and I think we are still years away from being able to draw confident conclusions from such plots; one way or the other.
05
Andrew, the FAR 1990 report says (as I quoted above) that there would be a minimum of 0.2C per decade in the next few decades, if, IF, emissions were stabilized (which they weren’t). The rise should have been more than 0.2C/decade. Therefore I think it’s fair to draw the lowest estimate as a 0.2/decade trend from 1990.
I’ve looked closely at the first IPCC graph, and it is inaccurate enough that the numbers read off it don’t match the text in any case. I think it was hand drawn. The best case doesn’t rise a full 1C from 1990-2025.
100
Thanks for the clarification. Was also skimming over links for some of consensus claims others posted here, trying to rationalise how two different people looking at the same data arrive at opposing conclusions. Need to look more carefully.
20
To clarify, I need to look more carefully.
20
Because they really aren’t bright enough.
51
ALPBC prefer to obtain instructions from the government’s media management department.
61
I heard that the NBN hadn’t come by their door yet !
20
She was, apparently. Her job is only to gain favour for the gubberment by acting as go-between interpreter to the obfuscated facts, using leading questions to England who’s posing as a scientist.
Ever noticed when you have a press release interview on TV, the Parliamentarian speaking has at least 2 “nodders” in the background? Pretty much what Sarah was doing. However, I’d still call her a Trojan Horse.
Had she actually asked the honest questions, I doubt whether the interview would have made the slot or, she might have suddenly disappeared off air entirely..
80
The Senior Executive Service of the Australian Federal Government is the local power.
They set the agenda and own their Ministers.
It is not a conspiracy, it is a powerful clique that seek to progress their own personal and collective agendas driven by the need to preserve and grow their own power and express their collective ideology (Socialism).
20
What? I’ve never heard of this “Senior Executive Service” before.
You believe “it is a powerful clique that seek to progress their own personal and collective agendas driven by the need to preserve and grow their own power and express their collective ideology of Socialism” and yet this purpose does not seem to appear on any publicly-available description of the SES that I have found.
You mean this group of people are secretly planning together to do something you believe to be bad? 😉
Your attempts to redefine the word “conspiracy” to exclude your beliefs and thereby cushion your ego against self-hate are getting more amusing every week. One day you are just going to have to come out of the conspiracy closet.
Conspiracies, small and large, have happened, are happening, and will happen for as long as humans are human. If there really is a conspiracy then you have to be able to call a spade a spade.
As to the SES branch of the APSC,
…the fact that it started under Bob Hawke’s prime ministership is hardly encouraging, Hawke being an admitted Fabian socialist. To then discover these people have as part of their charter to “provide professional expertise, policy advice, and/or management at a high level” while at the same time being unanswerable to the electorate (or “freedom from political interference in appointment” in their terms) also raises question marks.
To further discover that “An essential element in the 1984 concept of the SES was the more centralised management and development of the senior leadership group”, and that 40% of SES officers “definitely see themselves as part of an APS-wide leadership cadre rather than as leaders only of their [assigned] agency” and that this percentage is considered not high enough, does begin to veer vaguely and half-heartedly in the direction of an unelected shadow government.
The fact they were launched in the infamous year of 1984 and also had “One APS – One SES” as the slogan of their last major report is just adding spooky co-incidental insult to perceived democratic injury. Ein Volk, ein Reich, and eventually… ein Führer? Well that’s going a bit too far, so I have to ask, do you actually have any dirt on this mob or is it just idle suspicion?
Because in spite of the sinister picture that can be cherry-picked they still sound overall like common and garden variety bureaucrats.
00
Good news from an unexpected source: Nature (11 Dec 2012) acknowledges lack of public support for two government “settled science” dogmas:
1. AGW Campaign Will Vanish on 1 Jan 2013:
“On 1 January 2013, the world can go back to emitting greenhouse gases with abandon. The pollution-reduction commitments that nations made as part of the Kyoto Protocol will expire, leaving the planet without any international climate regulation and uncertain prospects for a future treaty. Nature explores the options for limiting — and living with — global warming.” http://tinyurl.com/amzrgyv
2. Chinese Officials Fired for Promoting Genetically Modified Rice:
“China has sacked three officials for breaching Chinese laws and ethical regulations during a trial in which children were fed genetically modified rice.” http://tinyurl.com/ahue2e6
The good news: East and West, the public is fed up with tyrannical, irrational government dogma parading as “settled science.”
31
I have no problem with eating golden rice – where can I get some?
10
Golden rice…..????
Not if it comes from cooking in yellow water !!
00
Complaint filed today with ABC.
Look forward to their non-response.
50
We can add that snivelling hack Mungo McCallum to the parade of spinners and climate shriekers. He wrote a typically disgraceful article on the Drum recently.
” The world is warming precisely as forecast, and there is plenty more to come, meaning that the weather will continue to get more extreme and less predictable, with consequences that can only be dire.”
Mungo churns this stuff out on cue. John Swinton, a great journalist In New York in the nineteenth century when asked to toast the journalism “profession” said:
” There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print.
I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. . . .
Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
Mungo still working that corner.
70
Mungo says “As the scientists confirmed this week in a diligently-researched article in the authoritative journal Nature, their figures are right on track.”
Wrong! it was published in the magazine “Nature Climate Change” different magazine, same publisher.
10
ABC is not big with the truth, unless it is the truth that suits them.
30
11 Dec: Australian: AAP: Climate change concerns youth more
YOUNG Australians are more concerned about climate change than older people but are least likely to limit their electricity use.
And while three in five 18- to 24-year-olds say they’re concerned about climate change, fewer in the same age group are concerned by environmental problems or water shortages than their elders.
Concern about the environment and water shortages peaks among those aged 55 to 64, according to data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday.
Overall, the level of concern about environmental problems has dropped from four years ago.
In 2008 about four in five said they were concerned about the environment but this year that’s dropped to three in five.
The survey found similar results in the number of people saying they were concerned about climate change…
A Mission Australia survey released last week found financial stress had overtaken the environment as the top issue worrying young Australians.
It said almost a third of people aged 15 to 19 thought “the economy and financial matters” was the most important issue the country faced.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/climate-change-concerns-youth-more/story-fn3dxiwe-1226534800634
jo, u linked to Sarah in the AM, here she is in the PM:
11 Dec: ABC PM: Investment funds fail to plan for climate change
Sarah Clarke reported this story on Tuesday, December 11, 2012
MARK COLVIN: The first global survey of the world’s biggest 1,000 major investment funds has shown a huge number haven’t factored in the risks of climate change.
The survey revealed that many of the retirement, insurance and wealth funds didn’t have policies identifying the increasing risk, and weren’t prepared.
These global assets funds are worth more than $60-trillion. The report’s author says it’s irresponsible and they’re failing their investors.
But Australia’s faired(sic) well. The executive director of the Asset Owners Disclosure, Julian Poulter, spoke to environment reporter Sarah Clarke…
SARAH CLARKE: So basically what you’re saying is that these funds have an obligation to not only invest in climate policies but certainly look at climate risk; that’s their financial responsibility?
JULIAN POULTER (executive director of the Asset Owners Disclosure): Absolutely. You and I as members of these funds, we don’t have customer relationships. We have fiduciary relationships. So they are obliged to look after long-term interests and consider the uncertainties over a very long period of time.
And whilst everybody has their eye on things like the Doha and the carbon tax and so forth, actually it’s the obligation of the big asset owners, the superannuation funds and so forth to look way beyond that and say well what is the risk that at some time say in the 2020s the world has to act very, very quickly on climate change and what does that mean for some of the companies that we hold in our portfolios?…
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2012/s3652374.htm
Watch your Super.
00
and if Smart Meters are rolled out? oh dear…
11 Dec: ABC AM: Customers left in the dark as power companies get tough
Power companies are accused of using disconnection as a debt collection tool, instead of offering alternative payment options for customers. The number of disconnections in Victoria has jumped 33 per cent in one year…
TONY EASTLEY: Power companies are being urged to do more to support struggling customers instead of disconnecting them when they fail to pay their bills.
A report by the Essential Services Commission shows that a big increase in the number of Victorian customers who’ve been disconnected in the last year and it’s happening in other states as well, as Simon Lauder reports.
SIMON LAUDER: The Essential Services Commission annual review of energy retailers shows a 50 per cent jump in the number of Victorians who had their gas disconnected last year.
About 24,000 electricity customers were disconnected – that’s a 33 per cent increase…
SIMON LAUDER: In the last four years energy prices have increased between 30 and 80 per cent across Australia. So the rise in disconnections is not exclusive to Victoria.
Late last month, the New South Wales Energy Ombudsman raised concerns about the high number of customers who had their power cut off over the last year.
GAVIN DUFTY: And those figures released by the Essential Services Commission actually mirror similar sorts of increases to disconnections through ombudsman schemes and other regulators in South Australia and New South Wales and Queensland…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-11/customers-left-in-the-dark-as-power-companies-get/4420458?section=vic
20
Jo Nova says
But Jo, this assumes that climatologists are part of the real world, where reputation is built up with success. For example:-
– Mohammed Ali’s reputation as a boxer was built on not just winning, but in his predictions on how many rounds it would take him to win.
– A lawyer’s reputation based on winning difficult cases.
– A weather forecaster’s ability to predict extreme events.
– A physicist’s ability to make novel predictions, for which failure would falsify
Climatologists are on a higher plane. Real climate scientists are the only one’s who can truly interpret the climate models, which contain the ultimate truth. If the imperfect data does not show that truth then it is the data that is at fault. Climate scientists have been working extremely hard to correct the imperfections in reality, such as changes from HADCRUT3 to HADCRUT4. I now realize that when I have doubted the minders of these great climatologists, I was doing so as an inferior being. When I have doubted Stephan Lewandowsky’s abilities as a psychologist; or as a data analyst that far exceeds that of a mere (slightly) manic beancounter; or as a pollster whose abilities exceed those of the grubby practitioners; or as modern-day Keynes who uses his intellectual supremacy to bamboozle lesser beings so that they accept what is in their true best interests. He has been revealed the ultimate TRUTH and I have not.
Similarly I have doubted the great John Cook, whose abilities in the English Language exceed those of the finest etymologists, and has similar superiority over lesser beings such as beancounters, economists, psychologists.
Oh woe is me! why have I deviated so far from the path of truth?
On the other hand, I may merely have lost something in translation. 🙂
60
Manic … I’d be happy if a weather forecaster could just get tomorrow’s weather right; which the BoM is not capable of doing.
00
Santer’s gift to Sceptics this Xmas:
“The multimodel average tropospheric temperature trends are outside the 5–95 percentile range of RSS results at most latitudes.” reports their paper in PNAS. Moreover, it is not known why they are failing.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/11/28/1210514109.full.pdf
30
bad news – global cooling is deadly.
But – I take your point.
10
“Moreover, it is not known why they are failing.”
FCS.. then get away from the computer models and look outside..
Now, see that big round yellow thing up there…… its SLEEPY !!!
20
Here is my contribution.
To: The Hon James Spigelman AC QC, Mr Steven Skala AO, Mr Mark Scott AO, Dr Julianne Schultz AM, Ms Cheryl Bart AO, Professor Fiona Stanley AC and Ms Jane Bennett:
I am an Australian taxpayer, who has a dodgy DVD/tuner. We just lost all ABC channels and I have not thought to repair it, because I thought it better to quit throwing newly laundered and paired socks at the television during ABC shows, even though it IS easy to hit, being 42” from corner to corner.
I will promise to repair the DVD/tuner if you repair the ABC, and make efforts to ensure that you abide by the charter.
1. I am sick to death of being lied to about “Global Warming”. Climate changes. Ask any primary producer. Go here for a picture of Australia’s drought and rain cycle since 1890. That is RIGHT. 1890! Published by the Queensland Government. You can email [email protected] to get a copy for yourself so that you can see that natural cycles can result in serious droughts and floods. Best of all, these posters are paid for by Queensland taxpayers, and are free to all Australians. Maybe order a few and hang them up around the place.
2. I have given up on Insiders. I would tune in again to see shows where all commentators are ‘conservative’ and then another where all are ‘progressive’. Maybe once in awhile you could spice it up and get two conservatives for two progressives.
3. I am not a kiddy fiddler. Robyn Williams compared skeptics to rock spiders on the science show 24th Nov 12. I think it is fair to say that most right thinking people would take offence to this disgraceful, divisive and possibly Marxist technique, no matter what their political leanings (well, ok everyone but the dark Greens).
4. I want the government to respect journalists – maybe even be a bit afraid of what your hard working staff will ask them next. No free people have a media that fears the government. Consider helping your journalists stretch outside their comfort zone and ask a few hard questions to government officials who are happy to put their hands in the pockets of the yet to be born. Tell them to check their pockets after interviewing cabinet Ministers.
5. Oh, never mind.
I am only one of the many thousands of interested people who is a proud Australian.
Think about it. Do you want the ABC to be just another mouthpiece for the Labor/Greens alliance, or do you want to show some of that digger spirit by recognising the enemies of freedom who have placed themselves right there in your offices?
Thank you.
Regards
210
Would be nice if the ABC stuck to its charter, alas not anymore. It is now just a Murdoch–lite organisation with right wing bias and crap shows.
But it reports official information. As a government owned media organisation that is its job.
030
Are you watching the same ABC as the rest of us?
“It is now just a Murdoch–lite organisation with right wing bias and crap shows”
You are a deluded fool if you believe that the ABC has a right wing bias.
190
Anything, even Stalin and Kim-Jng Il, is “right wing” compared to Maxine’s ideology.. far left loopy looney regressive green non-environmentalists..
So yes, a deluded fool.
111
Here is a lovely bit of North Korean theme music just for Maxine.
60
Hey Maxine – have you had your two minute hate today?
40
Hey Maxine, don’t be shy about telling us what you have been indoctrinated into thinking, we all would like to know where you stand.
BTW: A good place to escape the great man made carbon doom is here, so why don’t you pack your bags and get going, while the going is good.
70
Hey Maxine – Germany is going big on Coal – where will you run too now???
80
So its job is to be the mouthpiece for the administration in Canberra? My mistake! I thought a journalist might, just might, almost, sometimes, ask a couple of probing questions about the “official information”. Hopefully just a little question or two, maybe?
No?
You really need to throw out the garbage now and then Maxine. Instead you eat it.
I don’t get it.
40
Ask England if Skeptical Science are wrong too.
30
Skeptical Science is never wrong. They act like they really dig deep and question things but then, like this,
they end up trying to convince you that tha scam is real. Yes folks, the IPCC is right after all and so is Hansen, except that he didn’t know quite the right fudge factor (the poor baby).
10
Unless the same “prediction” is made in AR5, what was said in 1990 doesn’t matter to anyone who does not realise that the fundamentals of 2013 IPCC are the same as those of 1990 IPCC.
The IPCC, Hansen et al, move the goalposts while claiming that the goalposts – as the science is settled, and the outcome, certain – are fixed. The public expects the science to change as more data comes in. The IPCC have found a way to have their cake and eat it, too: reset the egg-timer each time you realise it isn’t yet cooked.
Passive-aggressive, manipulative, solipsistic people are never wrong. When faced with undeniable criticism, they stonewall into silence, but, if forced to reply, deny, deny, deny. Is that what the world is dealing with? A series of high-profile, barely empathic solipisists? Are Mann, Hansen, Gore and others really people who are so enamoured of their own rightness that, in a profit-making small business, they would have not just bankrupted themselves but sold their wives and children down the river as a “short-term operation until conditions settled down”?
We think that individual makeup doesn’t count unless we are dealing with a Stalin, a Hitler, a McCarthy, a Lay or a Bundy. Perhaps we are wrong. Perhaps the people we appeal to as “experts” are just a more technically-oriented group of the same, and deserve the same skepticism and distrust as those who lead us into war or economic calamity.
110
thanks for this Jo – I was waiting for it. I was nearly ill when I heard this live the other morning. It just goes to show if you call white black often enough some people will believe you. It was all over the news updates around the programme and I think Fran Kelly just about saw Jesus. But of course when the rebuttals come out it is no use the jury have already heard the message. I’ve noticed a pattern of this with RN just put the AGW message out there quickly, loudly and often.
I put in a complaint but I reckon they may say 1.8 is in the IPPC’s range of 0.2 to 0.5 given 1 significant figure.
Really sometimes one just wants to give up fighting – but we cannot.
80
Bias on the ABC? Surely not. The ABC marches in step – Left, Left, Left, Right, Left!
40
NO!, right foot firmly planted in the mire: left, left , left , left………. left, left
round and round in circles, ever diminishing.. LOOPY !!!
50
Or just hop, hop, hop…
40
It is totally beyond a joke. The ABC’s idea of a balanced panel is to have one Laborite, one Green, someone from GetUp or similar and a Lib/Nat patsy to cop all the flak, including from the Labor-mate moderator. Not to mention an audience stacked with inner-city “progressives”. Or we have Barrie Cassidy (ex-Hawke press secretary), an aggressive feminist “We’ll get Abbott” journo, an inner-city “progressive” whose hatred of the Libs is his main motivation in life, and someone like Gerard Henderson as the object of their scorn. Some balance!
Really and truly, these people have identified themselves as so narrowly partisan that they don’t deserve a job on the public purse. A huge cleanout after the next election is the only logical course of action.
60
NOAA 2012 report finds sea levels rising at less than half the rate claimed by the IPCC 🙂
well, DOH !!!
30
Just like temperatures. levelling off..Both soon to go downwards
Hopefully the temps won’t drop too far .
Pity really 🙁
A bit of warming in the upper latitudes would have been really good for the world.
But ironically, even a 1-2C degree drop would not persuade the brainwashed AGW bletheren that CO2 has ZERO effect on temperatures.
40
Even when you point out that CO2 increase and temperature increase have only been coincident for less than 20 of the past 50 years.. they still hang on like grim death !!
20
Sort of like 2 people driving , one Newcastle to Liverpool, and the other Gosford to Sydney. Their journeys may coincide for some of the trip, they may even be driving next to each other.
But the destinations are in NO WAY linked !!!
30
What about the ARC? After all, with their support (our taxes), England and those of like scruples, er competence, suck up salaries of about $250,000 pa, plus another $22 M over 7 years. And that doesn’t even include the high-brow work of Lewandowsky and Flannery. Just like feeding a stray cat.
70
Germany’s First Climate shuts sales and trading arm
LONDON, Dec 11 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Carbon asset management firm First Climate has closed its sales and trading department, citing low carbon prices and a lack of government ambition to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the German-based company said on Tuesday…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2096908?&ref=searchlist
Backloading to cost new EU members 2 bln euros: Poland
LONDON, Dec 11 (Reuters Point Carbon) – A European Commission proposal to prop up EU carbon prices would reduce CO2 permit sale revenues for seven countries by 2.1 billion euros, an analysis by Poland’s emissions trading authority showed…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2097207?&ref=searchlist
World’s top funds failing on climate investment: survey
BEIJING, Dec 11 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Major funds are ignoring climate change when making investment decisions, a report found on Tuesday, adding that just two of the world’s biggest 1,000 money managers are doing enough to help thwart global warming..
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2096287?&ref=searchlist
00
And the main host bank in Europe for playing with climate change and carbon credits gets a mention. Not a very positive one.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18908879
20
Belarus negotiator hints at Kyoto exit, says others could follow
DOHA/LONDON, Dec 10 (Reuters) – Belarus, one of three fossil-fuel reliant states outmanoeuvred at Kyoto pact talks by small island states endangered by climate change, said it may consider quitting the process and Ukraine and Kazakhstan may do the same..
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/reutersnews/1.2095767?&ref=searchlist
Doha deal may weaken climate action: analysts, officials
LONDON, Dec 11 (Reuters Point Carbon) – U.N. climate talks designed to get countries to commit to deeper emissions cuts may have the opposite effect after it may ban several nations from using U.N. issued carbon credits to meet voluntary goals…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2097121?&ref=searchlist
20
Jo
’nuff said AFAIC
And as for Mr England – I saw a good glimpse of his tribal views in that ABC thing “I can change your mind about the climate” or whatever it was, when he hid behind a technicality with Nick Minchin regrading there being “no warming over the last 10 years” statement – he cained Nick saying it was false because nick didn’t use the word “Significant”.
It was a deliberate manipulation of the truth which the ABC never thought to correct. In fact they seem to talk to Mr england as if he’s an oracle of truth or something.
40
Don’t you hate it when they are wrong and won’t admit it – Boreholes, Idso, OHC.
As for the models, Rahmstorf, Foster, and Cazenave 2012 do a more detailed analysis and find the models are doing ok, even in the recent decade.
A comparison of models vs skeptics provides an interesting insight.
34
O/T I know But
In all the gnashing of teeth and ringing of hands that marked the end of this years climate festival(COP18)I missed where next years festivities are to be held.Is there in truth in the rumour they are looking for a nice phone box somewhere. 🙂
10
(COP) 19 in Warsaw from November 11-22 2013
Joy. There will be another one.
60
Shall we start some sort of pool predicting what the weather in Warsaw will be like in late November, 2013?
I am thinking average highs around 1 C, average lows around -8 C, and moderate to heavy snowfall with nasty cold damp wind for the first few days, followed by a “cold snap” with average highs around -4 C and average lows around -14 C for the rest of the time the “delegates” are there.
If Al Gore shows up, drop my averages by at least 5 C.
20
I just wish any one of the useless jobsworth so-called ‘journalists’ at the BBC had the professional integrity to ask the kind of questions Jo posits here. Oh yes, rest assured the BBC are at least as bad, if not worse, as your Australian broadcasters at spreading the propaganda for CAGW whenever they can, as often as they can – and they’re getting increasingly subtle at it. Channel 4 (not unrelated to the BBC) are also at it – try this for an outrageous pack of half-truths and deceptions…
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/is-our-weather-getting-worse/4od
I’m not sure if my Australian friends will able to watch it, but if you can you will see a catalogue of deliberate, calculated misdirection, designed to hype fears about ‘man-made’ climate change and sensationalise a few recent ‘extreme weather’ events. This is the current state of ‘debate’ about CAGW in the UK on the part oif our mainstream broadcasters. Truly depressing.
40
In reality, there is not really any such thing as “extreme weather”. There is only “weather”.
Saying that there is “extreme weather” is basically like saying “There was an EXTREME SUNRISE this morning!”
81
On the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio show this morning (12 December), a spokesperson for insurance companies claimed that with the “increase in extreme weather” they are seeing increases in hailstorm claims. Didn’t say if the claims were normalized for inflation, level of coverage or area of coverage or type of coverage. Just increase in claims.
“Extreme weather” is a Newspeak term to pull physical action and socio-political values together. It is definable if you chose to do so, but not defined, so there is the sense of technical legitimacy without the inconvenience of being falsifiable. “Extreme” weather is like calling you opponent “Red”: you don’t have to explain anything because your listener has already pulled your meaning that something bad someone else caused or supports is happening.
Might as well call it “baby-killing” weather: with just a word you have secured your goal of demonizing anyone who either says the weather is not his fault, or, worse, that it is not significant.
20
Crops East of Calgary looked pretty darned good in Sept – bumper for sure. Did rates go down?
20
I guess that would be true if extreme didn’t mean what it means, which is “of a character or kind farthest removed from the ordinary or average: extreme measures.”
25
Hey MattyB
Just read another article on the “Beast from the East” storms in Europe. You know, the storms that are currently burying Europe and the UK in several feet of that white “thing of the past” stuff called snow, and which simply aren’t happening according the Australian MSM and the ABC.
Well, according to the Health authorities there’s an estimated 270 people a day dying in the UK alone as a direct result of the cold snap. Lots more in other countries.
.
Pity all those dead people didn’t take your sage advice and just wear an extra jumper, eh Matty?
72
Hmmmm.
I’ll be in Europe this January…
Better rug up.
20
Would have been good advice no?
04
The IPCC was wrong because it is still obvious that the 13-month running average in Roy Spencer’s November plot has been declining since 1998. This is totally as would be expected due to a roughly sinusoidal superimposed 60 year natural cycle, for which there is now compelling evidence. See for example, the linked references to such in my current paper about planetary surface temperatures, which is on the PROM* system at PSI for a month or so.
When you remove the effect of the 60 year cycle (with, for example, a trend for a 60 year running average) you get down to analysing the underlying long term trend which has periodicity of about 1,000 years, maybe a bit longer. This was the cause of fairly regular warming periods observed for at least the last 7,000 years, the most recent being the Roman and the Medieval W.P. which have both now been confirmed to have been worldwide and at similar temperatures to the present.
There is however still a slight incline in this long term natural cycle. About 100 years ago the mean rate of increase was around 0.06 C/decade, whereas in recent times it has declined, but only to about 0.05 C/decade. If it is also roughly sinusoidal we should see a maximum in about 200 years, probably less than 0.8 degree above the current trend. But of course, after that there would be 500 to 600 years of long term cooling, even though the superimposed 60 year cycle will continue to cause some alarm each time it rises for 30 years, as happened from around 1970.
Again, there is now compelling evidence that these natural cycles are the only “forcing” for our climate. There are links to evidence in my paper, and even to some evidence that the cycles are in some way controlled by planetary orbits, which makes sense because such orbits are the only “timing mechanisms” of such long duration in our solar system.
The reasons why carbon dioxide has no effect are explained in a radically new way in my paper. Nowhere else have I seen the hypothesis which brings together evidence from different sources into what I consider a cogent argument for a completely different explanation of planetary surface temperatures, not to be found elsewhere to the best of my knowledge. Yes, parts of the explanation are elsewhere, but it has not hitherto been coordinated to give an explanation based on correct physics.
For example, I contend that there is no other valid explanation for the surface temperature on the planet Venus. That surface receives less than 10% of the amount of Solar radiation which we receive on Earth’s surface. It’s not correct to assume that the CO2 atmosphere caused a massive GHE, because the surface could not have been heated in the first place to over 700K with so little energy being received through the thick and dense atmosphere. Nor was it heated by radiation from what is still an atmosphere that is at much lower temperatures, less than 230K at an altitude of 50Km, for example.
Until people come to grips with what I believe to be the correct physical mechanism which produced (and maintains) the temperature of the Venus surface, they will never correctly understand what is the same process working on Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – all the planets in our solar system with qualifying atmospheres.
As I have said, the paper is up for worldwide open review on the PROM* system at Principia Scientific International. It has already been reviewed by several of our 150 members, but if you wish to submit any comments, criticism, rebuttal or support, you may do so through our CEO John O’Sullivan or our Chairman, Dr Timothy Ball, a retired professor of climatology. You may also contact me via the email address on my website which opens when you click my name above.
However, I will only respond to those who have clearly read and understood the whole paper, whether or not they agree with the conclusions reached.
(*Peer Review in Open Media.)
70
There seems to be some argument about the 58% CO2 increase since 1990. From the AGW camp please read the following.
“The international Global Carbon Project consortium has announced that global carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere will reach a record high of 35.6 billion tons in 2012 (“The challenge to keep global warming below 2°C”). The main reasons for the rise is the increase in carbon emissions caused by the combustion of fossil fuels. Scientists estimate that emissions from this source have increased by 2.6 percent compared to the previous year. The emissions thus exceed 1990 levels by almost 60 percent; 1990 is the base year for the Kyoto Protocol. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached a new high in 2011 when levels reached 391 parts per million.”
Read more: http://www.nanowerk.com/news2/green/newsid=28010.php#ixzz2Esdpx6eZ
Follow us: @nanowerk on Twitter | nanowerk on Facebook
01
Hi Rob
You have to take exception at “scientists” using figures for atmospheric CO2 levels at precisely “391”.
This extra 1 implies an accuracy that does not exist with these figures.
I’m fairly certain ( to 90% accuracy, or at least as accurate as the UNIPCC reports) that CO2 levels in that range could be found in the 1850s.
What has happened to real science.
KK 🙂
30
It’s still there KK, you just have to dig through all the climastrology crap to find it.
http://www.spacex.com/
50
Breaking News
500 police and authorities raid Deutsche Bank HQ in Frankfurt over carbon credit scam.
Well, at least now we know why they have been such keen supporters of a carbon credit “market”.
90
Interesting – people are stealing from us.
60
.
Be interesting to see if ASIC takes this latest news into account when assessing Deutsche Bank’s recent application to trade carbon credits here.
http://www.theage.com.au/business/carbon-economy/deutsche-bank-joins-carbon-fray-20121202-2aoyo.html
Still no word of this scandal on Aunty ABC. But then, the “Beast from the East” storms in Europe have been raging for over two weeks now, and they haven’t yet reported a word of it.
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Please, to those readers who have not yet submitted a complaint, I repeat Jo’s request for your assistance.
Thank you Jo. It’s time to fight back!
20
.
Just lodged the following, with copies to the Minister, Stephen Conroy, and Opposition Spokesman Malcolm Turnbull, inviting comments:
.
COMPLAINT – CENSORSHIP BY OMISSION
.
ONE
Yesterday, over 24 hours ago Australian time, the HQ of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt Germany was raided by 500 armed police and other authorities, in relation to an alleged massive scam centred around carbon credit trading.
Given that Deutsche Bank has just lodged an application with ASIC to trade carbon credits here in Australia it is reprehensible that not one of the many taxpayer-funded ABC’s Online News Services has even mentioned this.
.
TWO
For nearly two weeks now, most of Northern Europe, including the UK, Russia, and the Scandinavian countries, plus Japan, much of Alaska and areas of China, have been suffering the worst storms in a hundred years.
Thousands of people have been trapped, thousands more have been without electricity, and hundreds have died. In the UK alone, Health Authorities estimate 270 people a day are dying as a direct result of these storms, dubbed in Europe “The Beast from the East”.
And yet, once again, not a word about any of this from the ABC’s Online News Services.
By comparison, a week ago Brisbane had two warmish days. Just the ABC’s “Justin” section managed to wring an anthology of stories out of this minor weather event, repeatedly misleadingly described as a “heatwave”.
We, the long-suffering taxpaying public got fed over-hyped blathering on everything from hospital emergency wards gearing up for the expected major influx of heatstroke victims, to dire warnings of impending massive bushfires and firestorms.
Meanwhile, some of the worst storms in a century, and a major fraud involving a company that has applied to carry on the same business here in Australia, go unreported simply because they don’t fit the ABC’s Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming driven ideology.
You people have become a totally irrelevant, very expensive joke.
Peter Sawyer
140
Thanks MV, that’s great.
I’m reminded of an old song, maybe you’ll remember it.
“You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and they won’t take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re both faggots and they won’t take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walkin’ in singin’ a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out? They may think it’s an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin’ a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out? And friends they may think it’s a movement!” – Arlo Guthrie 1967.
They may ignore one or two complaints, but can you imagine fifty a day?
🙂
30
.
Obie looked at the seeing eye dog, and then at the
twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows
and a paragraph on the back of each one, and looked at the seeing eye dog.
And then at twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles
and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one and began to cry . .
Probably the best protest song ever written.
40
You all heard it here first on JoanneNova.com.au! Beating the ABC at their own game by 24hrs, 25hrs, 26hrs…
This doesn’t (unfortunately) prove that carbon trading was designed as a scam, but that there are opportunistic scammers dodging regulations which were around long before carbon trading. For one thing the total amount of missing tax revenue is only 1 billion euro, which is chump change to the likes of JP and GS. The news station Bild described it as:
You can run a VAT scam on any kind of goods, but a notional certificate in a database makes it all much easier. Given two of the suspects in the case are the CEO and the CFO, it only adds credence to the idea that banks got involved in carbon trading for far less noble reasons than saving the planet.
Of 170 people under investigation only 7 are at Deutsche Bank, so which other banks are involved… and are powerful enough to prevent their name being mentioned in the media?
What I find most laughable about this case is that the EU States believe that carbon emissions permits are subject to a Value-Added Tax. If emitting carbon is such a value-adding activity why are they trying to stop people from doing it?!
There should be more carbon emission! We’ll be creating more value! 😀
Oh… is that why the German government is getting back into coal power….hmmm….
50
Not alone, Andrew McRae. $1.2 billion fine for HSBC, mention of others caught with hand in cookie jar.
http://news.sky.com/story/1023602/hsbc-to-pay-1-2bn-in-money-laundering-case
I’m trying to conceptualise a method of Government whereby governments propose an idea (let’s say pink batts for roof insulation). Before this becomes done, there should be a vote, an informal mini-referendum, of the people – they are given a choice to opt in to or out of such radical new ideas.
There is no way that I want to pay the immense costs of alternative energy in Australia, yet I was given no choice. It’s not beyond the wit of administrators to have parallel streams, those charged at the high rate for going green and those charged at past rates for staying conservative.
There’s no way I want to see Australia build more non-nuclear submarines. I want a choice to opt out and pay for nuclear.
There’s no way I want a pension fund investing in green waste. I seek a choice to have one that invests in bricks and mortar in the traditional sense.
I don’t want health fund premiums with extras containing a compulsory set of aromatherapy, iridology, acupuncture, wellness, pyramid sitting-under. I want to be able to opt for my needs.
The picture is clear, I think.
There are many cases where a binary solution presents itself, be in or be out and pay the separate costs accordingly.
It’s another angle on setting up another political party.
40
That is a clear picture, Sherro, and much like elections if this mini referendum was compulsory it would force people to think about the issues on offer, or at the very least adopt the opinion of someone they trust.
My earliest attempt at a carbon tax post mortem tried to address the problem at the other end – to prevent issues that aren’t even real problems from being seized upon as opportunities for government solutions. Unfortunately I used the word “technocrat” to describe the brains trusts that would perform the filtering process, which has all sorts of pitfalls attached in both name and execution.
I think your approach is more similar to “crowdsourcing” the policy response, which is democratic but does it fall prey to public ignorance and populism? I guess that is just the price of democracy. The citizens must have their feet firmly on the ground or else they’ll get the government they deserve.
I find I am liking your proposal better than my original one, because it is more in line with the political philosophy of choice and personal responsibility in voluntary contracts.
10
They did report Canberra’s coldest December day though.
05
Maybe so Matt but it was said without the addition of “caused by rising carbon pollution”.
To Geoff,
Building nuke subs would defeat the purpose of why we have them, it would be just “another” waste of money.
Cheers
Crakar
20
I don’t follow what you are saying Crakar.
The Yanks have already offered to sell us ready to go nuclear hunter killer attack subs for less than half of the original “guesstimate” price of the diesel-powered WWII relics we are intending to build ourselves.
We all know just how accurate initial Defence “guesstimates” are. Besides, we already tried our hand at building subs, and look how well that turned out. Four failures, one crippled, and one that at least works some of the time as long as you don’t actually submerge it.
00
MV,
I agree with what you say but we need to understand why, firstly the reason why the subs are junk is because we dont have enough money to maintain them correctly/sufficiently. Why do we not have the money? Well thats because they ran out of cash building them (poor planning as you say above) so they took the maintenance/training money so now they have no money for maintenance and training. Therefore no matter what subs we get they will be a peice of junk in quick time.
You say
We dont have subs so we can go hunting and killing, you cannot sneak around the ocean in a noisy nuke therefore defeating the purpose of why you want one. You can only do that with battery powered.
Cheers
00
ABC journalists today are totally dependent on Twitter. If a story doesn’t show in their news feed (it’s popularly retweeted) then it didn’t happen! 21st century journalism *sigh*
30
doesn’t this make u feel all warm & fuzzy:
13 Dec: SMH: Peter Hannam: Australia takes a shine to solar energy research
The Gillard government will step up its investment in joint solar energy research with the US, using additional funds from its new $2.2 billion renewable energy agency.
Martin Ferguson, Minister for Resources and Energy, will today announce more than $83 million for research as part of the United States-Australia Solar Energy Collaboration (USASEC) launched in 2010.
The funding taps into money not yet spent from the $50 million Australian contribution to USASEC, managed by Newcastle-based Australian Solar Institute (ASI).
In addition, the new Australian Renewable Energy Agency will contribute about $38 million in funds to the research…
About $33 million will go to the US-Australia Institute for Advanced Photovoltaics to develop the next generation of PV technologies and spur increases in performance and lower costs. The University of New South Wales will lead the research, supported by other universities in Australia and the
US, and commercial partners including BlueScope Steel and Suntech R&D Australia.
The other major research focus, the Australian Solar Thermal Research Initiative (ASTRI), will receive $35 million aimed at making Australia a global leader in so-called Concentrating Solar Power technologies. The effort will be led by the CSIRO and mostly involve Australian and US universities, and Sandia Corp.
An additional $15.5 million will be allocated to collaborative research projects under the Open Funding Round of the USASEC, the statement said.
Projects range from developing an Australian Solar Energy Forecasting System – a venture the CSIRO had sought funding for – that will improve the integration of solar energy generation, to a solar device that simplifies incorporation of solar energy into hybrid fossil fuel applications.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/australia-takes-a-shine-to-solar-energy-research-20121212-2bajc.html
13 Dec: News Ltd: AAP: Nick Perry: More cash to drive down solar costs
THE federal government has announced the biggest investment in solar technology research in Australia’s history, as it seeks cheaper ways to produce clean energy…
The new funding would lead to world-first technological advances in solar energy and pave the way to commercialising the industry in Australia, Mr Ferguson said…
US Ambassador to Australia Jeffrey Bleich said energy demand in the Asia-Pacific region was set to explode, with more electricity needed for the growing middle classes than ever before.
“We can’t produce it using traditional fossil fuels alone, and if we did we would have such terrible externalities that we would be punished in other ways,” he said…
Through proper investment, solar power had the potential to become just as cheap and competitive – yet far more clean – than other energy sources, he added.
More than $95 million has been invested through USASEC to date, drawing together 40 leading research institutes and industries in Australia and the US.
From next year, ASI and its projects will be merged with the government’s Australian Renewable Energy Agency.
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/national/more-cash-to-drive-down-solar-costs/story-e6frfku9-1226536167936
20
.
The Prof Matthew England AWARD for
“Willing to stretch things beyond reason, or he doesn’t know what he is talking about, or both” AWARD.
This week it goes to Maxine – with the catch cry of “it’s melting, it’s melting, it’s all Fuc%ing melting”.
Here are some of the stupid quotes from just the last four days
1. Greenland icesheets melting at ever–accelerating rates
2. Arctic having lost so much ice and consequently the Arctic ocean warming up
3. Antractica losing net ice—you reckon the oceans haven’t risen?
4. I never ever said melting Arctic ocean ice would contribute to sea level rising
5. I said the radical melts that now occur every NH summer warms the Arctic Ocean.
6. sunlight now hits lots of dark ocean and is absorbed, warming the water
7. Previously, white ice and snow bounced the light straight back into space.
8. You do realise AGW means atmospheric moisture content is higher
9. while AGW is causing glacier retreat all over the place some glaciers favorably placed in relation to prevailing winds are increasing.
10.So the moisture content of the atmosphere is going to change weather patterns
11.The methane clathrates under the Arctic ocean and the melting tundra—global warming is accelerating!
12.Actually, the extra CO2 in the atmosphere is not beneficial to broad range plants not bred in hothouses.
13.I mean plants growing outside “on the range”
14.CO2 is plant food—at higher levels it reduces moisture and nitrogen uptake with consequent reduction in protein levels.
15.The world is warming and it is our fault. Now we have to deal with it.
16.Arctic ice extent and volume were at record low levels this NH summer
17.Did you read just how hot the NH summer was
18.Summary—less nitrogen in the plants which means less protein. CO2 emissions need to be curbed
19.GHG emissions is absorption of CO2 by the oceans, forming the weak carbonic acid and acidifying the oceans
20.If you are interested in organisms that need to calcify stuff, it is useful to understand the difference between dolomite and aragonite
21.Pteropods, marine snails with “wings” that allow it to swim has more trouble building and keeping its shell
22.That aside, here are some beautiful images of pteropods
23.More [SNIP]
24.Industrial man not only emits increasing amounts of GHGs and at the same time destroys forest that could absorb these or part of these GHGs!
25.Farmers are now working on increasing their soil carbon, leaving the stubble of the previous crop in place, practicing crop rotation etc. THEY know of the damage from AGW is doing NOW to their properties!
26.Retaining the stubble enhances soil carbon and soil moisture
27.I never said the soil would be 100% carbon!
28.But it means higher soil carbon than burning the stubble would.
29.I can remember when stubble was burned off or plowed under.
30.Farmers are the first to see the damage AGW does and they are seeing it now
31.Time now to reduce emissions and start mitigation and adaptation to AGW
32.Greenland is LOSING ice at an accelerating rate.
33.Antarctica is losing net ice now.
34.Every glacier bar a few in a position to benefit from increased atmospheric moisture are RETREATING!
35.Antarctica is LOSING net ice.
36.That makes it global and so must be due to global warming.
37.More moisture so maybe increased snowfall in Greenland but an accelerating net ice loss
38.you think the blizzards and snowfall disprove AGW? Not so.
39.It is the change in circum polar winds, in the Arctic Ocean dipole that sends masses of cold air south where they get blocked by high pressure systems and so cause the blizzards and snow.
40.Hint: have a look at Russian summer temperatures
41.The ABC is now just a Murdoch–lite organisation with right wing bias and crap shows.
42.But (ABC) it reports official information. As a government owned media organisation that is its job.
That’s it 42 little stupid quotes by Maxine and one pretty picture to back it up. It equates to the sum knowledge of Sandy the ABC reporter also. Repeat, Repeat and Repeat.
In future Maxine can now just use a number instead of typing the same old crap.
EG: It’s 41. and look 40. and 35. etc. Maxine
110
In other news
UAH v5.5 Global Temperature Update for November 2012: +0.28 deg. C
10
Dave, and others,
the entity known as Maxine at this site runs his own blog, and in some of his Posts at that site, he proudly proclaims that he comes here just to stir things up.
At his site, he is the Admin etc etc, and also the most prolific Commenter, close on 60%+ of all Posts at that site.
A guide as to his thinking is his use of the avatar he uses at that site.
From someone who so vociferously proclaimed that certain elements gave the Prime Minister a hard time at some rallies, note specifically the avatar he uses himself.
At his site, for Admin purposes, he uses the handle Jovial Monk, with the same doggy head he uses as his avatar here, but where he Posts, he uses the name HBS Guy.
At the link scroll down and note that HBS Guy avatar.
This is Maxine
I actually hate linking into his site, because that means his site gets visitors.
Tony.
40
Well done Tony. So he’s not only cortically sub-illuminated (a dimwit) but also a cross dresser. My oh my.
30
I’ve been using “it”.
Seems I was right.
Not really a human entity at all, just an “it”.
20
.
It’s and IT for sure.
Here’s a photo of Maxine the DAG.
10
sort of ? that not that long ago would have been in a mental institution, getting electro-therapy.
although seems to have already had the lobotomy.
20
.
Thanks Tony,
This Maxine, HBS Guy, Jovial Guy or what ever is a dag.
Can’t believe they’ve got 46 members – probably 45 are Jovial. What a flop of a forum.
The whole site is a mess, crude and boring. I showed my 20 year old son – he said:
“LAME” – I asked what he meant by that? He said – “BORING in your language” – Ok Thanks.
So the appeal of this person and his webpage is ZERO.
His only aim is to disrupt other sites, and he does that. There’s no activity on his site so he may as well come here.
He’s chosen a forum host site called https://www.phpbb.com/ and look at this:
•Over 5 million visits per month.
•Over 25,000 unique visitors daily with over 8000 downloads of our software.
•Thriving community with over 400,000 registered users.
•A very targeted audience of males between 16 and 45 years of age who are interested in technology, hosting, development and other web-related topics.
This is worldwide?
I think Maxine is on a big downhill spiral from here on.
I only have to quote:
Maxine Number 7.
Maybe a lettuce leaf short of a sandwich? Poor
thingdogidiotdagfoolMaxine.50
ABN for the registrant is valid but no longer (since 2010) registered for GST.
Also, it looks like Tom has trouble brewing. 😉
You might recognize one of his personae on Piers Ackerman’s blog by one of the business names (still) associated with the ABN. Those darned sockpuppets will give eventually a (wo)man away.
30
It has very hairy forearms and has always felt closer to dogs and females than the rest of us..
10
quick question – has Woodfortrees.org gone down or has the UAE internet filter filtered it out for me here in Dubai?
20
From Adelaide i get something about Apache Tomcat/5.0.27 nothing to do with woodfortrees
it says
If you’re seeing this page via a web browser, it means you’ve setup Tomcat successfully. Congratulations!
As you may have guessed by now, this is the default Tomcat home page. It can be found on the local filesystem at:
Does this help?
20
Thanks – that’s what I’m getting.
10
.
Rumour on the net is that it was hit with a DNS attack – just like Jo was a couple of months ago.
Apparently us plebs are not meant to have easy access to the data.
20
Why? so on one can log in, create a chart using RSS and UHA from 1997, add a trend and see a flat line!
who’s the deniers!
30
An aside: Offshore wind found under-performing (Reuters)
I told you so.
Also, the losses are a “few percentage points” overall, but they are a big chunk larger than what was expected. To e.g. go from 14.7% to 23% is a 56% increase.
Anybody who’s studied fluid mechanics (and has done a bit of Engineering design taking wind loading into account) knows that downstream turbulence persists substantially for at least 10 “characteristic diameters”, preferably 20. As a rule of thumb, for an enclosed flow, it’s the smallest transverse dimension and for open flow, it’s the maximum transverse dimension of the perturbation. A windmill with a diameter of 100 metres will have substantial effects for at least 1000 metres downwind, for any useful wind speed. Yet general industry practice is 5 to 10 diameters.
And they’ll keep building them at that “standard” spacing, even when their own industry research says it’s not enough, because they get paid regardless of what they actually generate. Just another dirty “secret”.
20
Can we now hold a wake for wind power? It’s on life support and not expected to survive. I need a great big party with all the trappings after the November election. This should be a big moral boost.
Oops! Sorry, I forgot the old axiom that says, “Nothing stays around longer than a bad idea.”** My mistake. 🙁
** I first heard that said back in 1983 about the audio equipment of a certain manufacturer you would probably recognize if I named them. They’re still going strong today. And they’re still living up to the standard that prompted the comment in ’83.
That statement unfortunately describes far too many things, doesn’t it?
00
Hey Jo! I’m beginning to think you need an award of some kind for the most frequently mentioned name in each thread. You could determine it for each thread after a week or two when comments have died out. An email message to the winner with the image of a gold star or blue ribbon might be nice. Everyone likes recognition.
You could put the results in your sidebar for all to see.
I think the record for this thread might well be Maxine with 59 total references to that name, not counting this one.
He/she is a prolific writer to say the least. And so-o-o-o-o informative too. 😉
00
a good one to go with one i posted earlier – News Ltd: AAP: Nick Perry: More cash to drive down solar costs. we have to stop the govt wasting taxpayer money:
13 Dec: CBS: Tax dollars backing some “risky” energy projects
The government’s risky investment strategy didn’t stop there, as a CBS News investigation has uncovered a pattern of cases of the government pouring your tax dollars into clean energy.
Take Beacon Power — a green energy storage company. We were surprised to learn exactly what the Energy Department knew before committing $43 million of your tax dollars.
Documents obtained by CBS News show Standard and Poor’s had confidentially given the project a dismal outlook of “CCC-plus.”
Read the documents
Asked whether he’d put his personal money into Beacon, economist Peter Morici replied, “Not on purpose.”
“It’s, it is a junk bond,” Morici said. “But it’s not even a good junk bond. It’s well below investment grade.”
Was the Energy Department investing tax dollars in something that’s not even a good junk bond? Morici says yes.
“This level of bond has about a 70 percent chance of failing in the long term,” he said.
In fact, Beacon did go bankrupt two months ago and it’s unclear whether taxpayers will get all their money back. And the feds made other loans when public documents indicate they should have known they could be throwing good money after bad.
It’s been four months since the FBI raided bankrupt Solyndra. It received a half-billion in tax dollars and became a political lightning rod, with Republicans claiming it was a politically motivated investment.
***CBS News counted 12 clean energy companies that are having trouble after collectively being approved for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance. Five have filed for bankruptcy: The junk bond-rated Beacon, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy and Solyndra.
Others are also struggling with potential problems. Nevada Geothermal — a home state project personally endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — warns of multiple potential defaults in new SEC filings reviewed by CBS News. It was already having trouble paying the bills when it received $98.5 million in Energy Department loan guarantees.
SunPower landed a deal linked to a $1.2 billion loan guarantee last fall, after a French oil company took it over. On its last financial statement, SunPower owed more than it was worth. On its last financial statement, SunPower owed more than it was worth. SunPower’s role is to design, build and initially operate and maintain the California Valley Solar Ranch Project that’s the subject of the loan guarantee.
First Solar was the biggest S&P 500 loser in 2011 and its CEO was cut loose – even as taxpayers were forced to back a whopping $3 billion in company loans.
Nobody from the Energy Department would agree to an interview…
Economist Morici says even somebody as smart as Secretary Chu – an award-winning scientist — shouldn’t be playing “venture capitalist” with tax dollars. “Tasking a Nobel Prize mathematician to make investments for the U.S. government is like asking the manager of the New York Yankees to be general in charge of America’s troops in Afghanistan,” Morici said. “It’s that absurd.”…
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57358484/tax-dollars-backing-some-risky-energy-projects/
10
Jo/David,
Have you had a chance to read the Full Transcripts which can be downloaded here;
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/changeyourmind/s3456871.htm
Are they accurate?
I can’t get the sound either after 26 minutes but the written transcript will suffice if it hasn’t been edited either.
00
Mattb
Fecal matter Macropus
Alfred
00
[…] 1990 the IPCC told global policymakers that even if they stabilized emissions, theworld would warm by at least 0.2C per decade for the next few decades. That was their “low estimate”. Emissions didn’t remotely […]
00
[…] IPCC (the source of global warming alarmism) has had to lower its estimated temperature riseonce again and is now predicting only a 1 C degree increase by […]
00
>> Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) confirmed in 2010 that the decadal trends for the last 150 years peak at 0.16°C per decade. In other words, what happened since 1990 was stock standard normal warming as per the last 150 years yet the IPCC could not even predict a continuation of a straight line. (An eight year old with a ruler would have been cheaper and more accurate.)
I am curious, how many 8 year olds are there among skeptics since I have seen a great many predictions that have been way under a .15 rise?
Second, since when is a peak, the average?
If we look at the BEST results from 1850 to 1950, we get about .4 C over 10 decades. That’s .04 C/decade, way under the .16 “peak”.
Some 8 year olds would have extended a straight line from 1850 to 1990 that would have been about .8 C per 140 years or .06 C /decade. Many older folks with more knowledge of natural cycles were actually expecting a return to normal and so predicted drops.
There is also this related comment: http://joannenova.com.au/2012/05/the-ipcc-1990-far-predictions-were-wrong/#comment-1250244
00
[…] is not on the opinion pages. Original Warmist theory did say that temperatures would continue to go up up up as CO2 concentrations grew. Then, when Earth’s climate, driven primarily by natural forces, […]
00
[…] is not on the opinion pages. Original Warmist theory did say that temperatures would continue to go up up up as CO2 concentrations grew. Then, when Earth’s climate, driven primarily by natural forces, […]
00
Matthew England is just another of the CO2 fraudsters like Karoly, Flannery and Steffen.
The prediction in FAR was for at least 0.2c per decade from 1850.
From the HadCRUT 3 data we have had 1c to the present, that is, 16.3 decades; 1/16.3 = 0.06c per decade.
Their overestimate by 3.33 times and this does not even incude an allowance for the stronger solar effects.
11
You don’t seem to understand climate predictions if you think any of the predictions imply a constant rate of change.
Solar radiation intensity entering our planet has been down from higher values decades back, as supported by satellite data.
00