'Man-made' global warming

17 July, 2012 by

UPDATE: Make that FOUR interesting articles today: Watts Up reports that a new paper attributes half the global warming signal in the last century to “data homogenisation” – that’s plain old fudging to you and me. And in 2/3 of the stations, the process resulted in a temperature increase. What a surprise! Not. Read it all.

I am as prepared as anyone to accept that we are causing some warming of the climate. However, the precise amount and whether it’s a problem is the key issue.

The surface temperature data sets all show a fairly marked recent warming (far more than the satellite record), but how much of that warming is due to changes in the climate, and how much is due to, say, urbanisation, or data “homogenisation”? Homogenisation is a polite way of saying “fudging”, by the way. Excuses to “adjust” raw data for a variety of reasons, some legit, some less so – changing instrumentation, location etc etc.

Despite the fact that you would expect surface temperatures to have generally increased with population and urbanisation, and therefore any adjustments should cool the more recent records to compensate, the bizarre thing is that the data sets appear to be “cooling the past”, to make the present appear warmer… huh?

Three interesting articles today from various blogs concern the surface temperature record. Firstly we have Steven Goddard on the US Historical Climate Network (USHCN):

The animation below shows how USHCN turns a measured strong cooling trend since 1930, into a strong computer generated warming trend.

USHCN2 uses a three step process to cool the past and warm the present. Going from the actual measured daily data to “raw monthly” reduces the decline. The TOBS adjustment flips the trend from cooling to warming, and then a final mysterious adjustment creates a strong warming trend.

Whatever the final mysterious adjustment is, it has to include UHI – which would do the exact opposite of what we are seeing.

(click to see animation)

Watch those older temperatures plummet inside Tom Karl and James Hansen’s computer games, which are used to influence critical US government policy decisions.

They cool the 1930s by 1.3 degrees, and then claim that the past decade has been the warmest by a few tenths of a degree. Enron accountants would be proud of such fine data presentation. (source)

See? Man-made global warming! Then we have Jo Nova on the Bureau of Meteorology, which hasn’t yet worked out a rather fundamental rule of temperature recording:

In total, the ACORN-SAT database released in March displays about 1,000 (one thousand) violations of [the] simple rule that for any day

The Maximum Temperature must be greater than the Minimum Temperature.

This is a blindingly obvious type of error which should not have escaped quality control. It throws serious doubt on the whole ACORN-SAT project. In my opinion, these violations indicate that the entire ACORN-SAT database is suspect, and should be withdrawn for further testing. (source)

Hmm. And finally, over the ditch in New Zealand, the National Institute for Atmospheric and Water Research (NIWA) is in court today faced with a challenge that its temperature record is also not so ‘hot’ (heh):

A climate change group has taken the National Institute for Atmospheric and Water Research (NIWA) to court over what they say are inaccurate temperature recordings.

The New Zealand Climate Education Trust – a branch of the NZ Climate Science Coalition – are challenging NIWA figures which show a rise in temperatures in New Zealand of 1degC over the past 100 years.

This figure is significantly higher than global warming figures around the world and the trust is questioning how NIWA calculated the figures and whether they are accurate.

It believes there has either been no warming or a trivial warming of around 0.2degC.

The group’s lawyer Terry Sissons told the High Court at Auckland today that  NIWA could have obtained inaccurate New Zealand average temperatures due to ‘sudden site relocations’ and by regularly changing temperature gauging instruments.

“We’re not saying that climatic changes are not happening but let’s at least ensure the evidence gathered for the benefit of New Zealanders is accurate and is done properly,” Sissons said. (source)

So in other words I think we have a ‘consensus’, ladies and gentlemen: surface temperature records are a crock the world over.

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Let's make sure Gillard has to answer these questions

16 July, 2012 by

Hang out with the PM? No thanks…

The OurSay website is inviting us to “hang out with the Prime Minister” – nothing I could think of could possibly be worse, but anyway – and you have the chance to vote for the three questions she will be asked [Update: link fixed to show most popular questions first]. You may recall that ACM’s question on OurSay’s The Climate Agenda reached third place and therefore received a full page article in Fairfax – that must have hurt.

Let’s see if we can make our hopeless PM squirm, shall we?

The top two questions as it stands are as follows:

“By how much, measured in thousandths of degrees Celsius, will the Earth’s temperature be reduced through the carbon tax?”

(0.0035C apparently), and:

“You said that you wouldn’t impose a price on CO2 until you had a deep and lasting consensus from the Australian people – When did you receive that consensus? and where is that consensus at now?”

It’s nowhere to be seen. And the public are abandoning you in droves…

Register at Our Say and you have 8 votes. Use them as you see fit – you have just over three days left.

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Freedom of Information: request for donations

15 July, 2012 by

Karoly the activist*

UPDATE: Very many thanks to all of you who have made donations so far (you know who you are) – we now have enough to cover the present FOI expenses. However, if you haven’t donated yet, please consider doing so anyway to help cover some of the ongoing costs of hosting this site (which exceed US$150 per month). We’re still waiting for that Big Oil cheque to arrive. Must have got lost in the post… Perhaps I should try and get some Big Green funding instead – that seems a great deal more bountiful.

I don’t normally request donations, but in this case I am making an exception, so I hope you will forgive me in advance. Firstly a bit of background.

Since my ANU Freedom of Information request was covered by The Australian (see here for full details), I have submitted a further request to The University of Melbourne (or the “Parkville Asylum” as it is known). The request is again relating to death threat emails, this time in respect of Prof David Karoly and one of his colleagues.

Prof Karoly is a Review Editor for the IPCC’s Assessment Report 5 (see here – large PDF) and also on the science advisory panel for the WWF’s Climate Witness project. Apparently, being closely involved with an environmental activist organisation like the WWF does not present Karoly with any conflict of interest, whereas clearly any “denier” who earns one cent from a sceptic think tank is hopelessly compromised. Double standards are a wonderful thing.

[UPDATE: Karoly is also happy to be associated with other shrill environmental advocacy groups, like the naive Australian Youth Climate Coalition, presenting a video on “the science” here. Now we all know that if a geologist has even the most tenuous association with a fossil fuel company, he is immediately ostracised and never trusted or listened to again. So applying those same standards to Karoly himself, presumably we should never trust him or listen to another word he says either, right? No, wait…]

He is well known to readers of this blog as being one of the Gillard government’s climate advisors and a climate alarmist (see here for a recent example). Karoly was one of the climate scientists interviewed in the original Canberra Times article relating to death threats, and a month later gave a lengthy interview to The Age in which he recycles the tired old arguments yet again:

More broadly, however, [Karoly] notes an organised distribution of emails against mainstream climate change scientists.

He points to “so-called think tanks” established by climate change sceptics, whose claims are cited widely by conservative industry lobby groups in a bid to convince legislators that climate change science is full of unknowns.

He highlights the recent establishment of a website by a group called the Galileo Movement. “This site has [ Sydney broadcaster] Alan Jones as the patron and a list of the usual climate change sceptics as their scientific advisers.”

The journalist didn’t ask him about the WWF, sadly, and Karoly clearly has no awareness of the issues that climate science faces with regard to its credibility, given Climategate and the duff predictions of people like Tim Flannery (the Climate Commissioner).

Unfortunately, it seems climate scientists love to play the role of victim. The death threats story was perfect, as it allowed them to portray themselves as innocent bystanders targeted by evil “deniers” in the pay of big oil. And they can’t stop doing it.

You may recall the Gergis et al paper, which was withdrawn after blogger Steve McIntyre found flaws in its calculations? Karoly politely wrote to McIntyre about the issue, but once the dust had settled, was back in his old ad hom ways, accusing McIntyre in a book review of  “promulgating misinformation” (the original review by Karoly has been removed, but the Google cache still shows it, and I have preserved it in PDF here).

When asked by McIntyre to provide examples of such activities, instead of responding, Karoly retreats to the cosseted environment of Un-Skeptical Pseudo-Science to resume his victimhood, protesting in the comments:

 In Australia, I have just received a threat of legal action from Steve McIntyre in Canada and am currently dealing with 6 different FOI requests.

There was no threat of legal action, just a “please explain” – but it’s so much better for The Cause if you don the mantle of victimhood and claim you’re under threat of legal action. Read Steve’s post over at Climate Audit here.

Also, one of those FOI requests was mine – I was going to let it drop, but seeing the  manner in which Karoly has reacted to McIntyre, I’m going ahead with it. So I am therefore asking if you would be so kind as to make a donation.

It is likely to be several hundred dollars, so if you are able to contribute anything (every single dollar helps) I would be personally very grateful. Please mark your donation “FoI” so that it can be allocated specifically to this project rather than towards general operating costs.

Click the Donate button in the Big Oil Tip Jar in the left sidebar to send funds via PayPal.

Thank you all in advance.

*Karoly’s t-shirt reads “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” – the slogan of the radical Left “Weather Underground” movement – see here. Again, it’s perfectly fine for Karoly to be an activist! 

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Brendan O'Neill on 'extreme weather' hysteria

14 July, 2012 by

Brendan O’Neill

You can bet the farm that if there’s some noteworthy weather event (with the emphasis on the term “weather”) somewhere on the planet, there will be a Green nut-job on hand to say it was all caused by man-made global warming.

Usually it’s couched in weasel words, of course, the most common formula being the “consistent with” ploy.

The floods in Queensland were “consistent with” global warming projections. The drought in south-east Australia was “consistent with” global warming projections. The rains that filled the dams and ended the drought in south-east Australia were “consistent with” global warming projections. The Victorian bush fires (that were actually worsened by a variety of non-climate related factors) were “consistent with” global warming projections. The record low temperatures in Canberra last week were “consistent with” global warming projections. My cat getting fleas is “consistent with” global warming projections. My losing a $2 coin down the back of the sofa last Tuesday is “consistent with” global warming projections. [Insert anything you like] is “consistent with” global warming projections.

As has been said countless times on this blog, it is, of course, the classic example of an unfalsifiable hypothesis: ask a greenie to describe the kind of weather events that would not be consistent with global warming, and you’ll get a stony silence. Because anything and everything is “consistent with” some global warming model somewhere. And I’m almost glad the warm-mongers continue to make these nonsensical claims, because every time they do, it moves them further away from proper science and into the realms of astrology.

Brendan O’Neill has a whale of a time exposing the neo-Medieval view of the planet punishing humanity for its sins:

Greens now constantly promote the wild idea that mankind’s irresponsible behaviour is causing “extreme weather”, and that only by being more meek, by radically overhauling our lifestyles, can we hope to tame this weather of mass destruction.

But haven’t we heard this kind of thing before? Yes. From the biblical era to the Middle Ages, the idea that the immorality of man was responsible for enraging nature or God and causing storms and floods was widespread.

So the modern green claim that floods in Britain are a consequence of our wicked over-reliance on fossil fuels, that is of our daring to live industrialised lives, is just a pseudo-scientific updating of the Noah story.

Genesis tells us it was when God saw “the wickedness of man was great” that he decided to “bring a flood of waters upon the earth”.

Today, greens give us a science-tinged version of that morality tale. Mark Lynas, one of Britain’s leading eco-thinkers, says that with all our fossil fuel-using and climate disruption “we have woken Poseidon (God of the Sea) from a thousand-year slumber, and this time his wrath will know no bounds”.

A columnist for The Guardian says recent floods are a kind of punishment for our polluting behaviour. “The turbulent weather we’ve seen is a warning of what lies ahead for us,” she said, unless we can be “cajoled, led, provoked and taxed into changing (our) ways”.

Here, Gaia replaces God as the sender of floods to reprimand man and “change our attitudes”.

Quick, stone another sceptic…

Read it here.

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Queensland: stop climate brainwashing in schools

14 July, 2012 by

Climate sense

A few days ago, The Australian reported on the fact that, in the Queensland curriculum, science is regarded as a “social and cultural activity”, an approach totally at odds with the concept of the scientific method:

“Science is a social and cultural activity through which explanations of natural phenomena are generated,” it says.

“Explanations of natural phenomena may be viewed as mental constructions based on personal experiences and result from a range of activities including observation, experimentation, imagination and discussion.

“Accepted scientific concepts, theories and models may be viewed as shared understandings that the scientific community perceive as viable in light of current available evidence.”

In other words, we are talking about here is “post-normal science” where objective truths are no longer paramount, and where various societal “interpretations” can be overlaid on bare scientific facts. As I quoted in a blog post back in 2010:

The guiding principle of normal science – the goal of achievement of factual knowledge – must be modified to fit the post-normal principle…For this purpose, post-normal scientists should be capable of establishing extended peer communities and allow for ‘extended facts’ from non-scientific experts…In post-normal science, the maintenance and enhancement of quality, rather than the establishment of factual knowledge, is the key task of scientists… Involved social actors must agree on the definition of perceptions, narratives, interpretation of models, data and indicators…scientists have to contribute to society by learning as quickly as possible about different perceptions…instead of seeking deep ultimate knowledge. (source: Eva Kunseler, Towards a new paradigm of Science in scientific policy advising)

It’s utter garbage of course. But nowhere has this new flexibility of post-normal science been exploited more effectively than in the teaching of climate change in schools. Political correctness and “social and cultural interpretations” have trumped scientific objectivity, so that students are fed a stream of eco-propaganda cut-and-pasted from environmental activist groups press releases, which masquerades as impartial science.

The typical line would go like this:

Man-made emissions of CO2 are causing global temperatures to rise and we should cut our emissions urgently to avoid the risk of dangerous climate change. A tiny minority of scientists (or “deniers” as we should call them), funded by large oil companies who want to maintain the status quo, are paid to state that climate change is not happening/is a hoax/is a Marxist plot/etc etc…

Dissent is suppressed at all costs and only the “authorised” line is plugged. If you think this is exaggerated, have a look at the extract from a geography text book at the end of this post (see original here).

But it seems that a number of Queensland Liberal National Party (LNP) members are in favour of an overhaul of Queensland’s education system, specifically the teaching of climate:

LNP members have overwhelmingly voted to ensure the removal of “environmental propaganda” about climate change from schools.

The motion, proposed by the LNP’s Noosa State Electorate Council, calls on Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek to require Queensland schools to “remove environmental propaganda material, in particular post-normal science about ‘climate change’, from the curriculum and as adjunct material at exam time”.

The mover of the motion, LNP member Richard Pearson, railed against “those false prophets who would poison the minds of our children in our schools”.

“Few people understand that the so called science of climate change is really what can be defined as ‘post-normal’ science,” he said, arguing it went beyond traditional understanding of science based on experimentation and falsifiable theories.

Another member spoke against the motion, saying he was concerned when people tried to dismiss differing opinions and he believed children to have access to all information.

The motion was nonetheless passed with overwhelming support from the LNP members at the gathering.

At last year’s conference, LNP president Bruce McIver questioned the role of humans in driving climate change, arguing the climate was always changing and children were being “brainwashed” in the way climate science was taught. (source) [Update: The Australian has more here]

I guess we wait for the brainless alarmists to start saying that this is akin to teaching creationism alongside evolution or that gravity isn’t settled science or some other idiotic comparison. No, it isn’t. Whereas there are centuries of hard empirical evidence for both evolution and gravity, there are about 20 years of flaky computer modelled projections on which the entire climate scare is based, not to mention the massaging of temperature data to prop up The Cause.

Furthermore, whereas there are no political gains to be made from evolution and gravity, climate change has been swamped by political motivations of global organisations like the UN and the IPCC (which, having been infiltrated by environmental activist groups, have already made up their minds that CO2 is to blame and are just desperately searching for evidence to back it up) and national governments, implementing pointless gestures like the carbon tax to appear politically correct (and in Australia’s case, stay in power).

For anyone to claim the “science is settled” and that only the approved version be taught in schools is delusional. At least Queensland LNP is taking a stand against this brainwashing.

Extract from NSW Year 8 Geography text book:

Propaganda (click to enlarge)

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Roman and Medieval periods warmer than today

12 July, 2012 by

Cooling trend?

Another story you won’t see anywhere on the ABC, firmly stuck in its groupthink mode and working itself up into a lather plugging a litany of dire and alarmist statements from a symposium on coral reefs, which has predicted, amongst other things, rises in sea levels of 1.7m by the next century (far exceeding even the “gold standard” IPCC projection).

I wonder if a “coral reef symposium” would get any media interest at all if it didn’t follow the well worn-path of alarmism and links to man-made climate change? Probably not.

And why, I wonder, did the ABC choose not to report on a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change that showed the Roman and Medieval periods were actually warmer than the present, without any help from man-made CO2? Because it doesn’t fit the rusted-on groupthink, maybe?

A new study measuring temperatures over the past two millennia has concluded that in fact the temperatures seen in the last decade are far from being the hottest in history.

A large team of scientists making a comprehensive study of data from tree rings say that in fact global temperatures have been on a falling trend for the past 2,000 years and they have often been noticeably higher than they are today – despite the absence of any significant amounts of human-released carbon dioxide in the atmosphere back then.

“We found that previous estimates of historical temperatures during the Roman era and the Middle Ages were too low,” says Professor-Doktor Jan Esper of the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, one of the scientists leading the study. “Such findings are also significant with regard to climate policy.” (source)

They certainly are. But don’t expect such policies to change anytime soon.

Warmist journal New Scientist does its best to prop up the consensus and wheels out Michael “Stick” Mann to rubbish the results:

The finding does not change our understanding of the warming power of carbon dioxide. In fact, it shows that human CO2 emissions have interrupted a long cooling period that would ultimately have delivered the next ice age. [So we’ve stopped an ice age? I would have thought that was probably quite good news…]

Esper says temperature reconstructions will have to be redone because past studies probably underestimated temperatures during the medieval warm period and other warm periods going back to Roman times. The further back in time, the greater the underestimate would be.

But others have doubts. [Michael] Mann argues that Esper’s tree-ring measurements come from high latitudes and reflect only summer temperatures. “The implications of this study are vastly overstated by the authors,” he says. (source)

Because when you’re an activist first and a scientist second, like Mann and the rest of the Hockey Team, your mind is firmly closed to even the possibility of contradictory evidence.

Link to paper here.

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Donna Laframboise in Sydney

11 July, 2012 by

ACM author with Donna Laframboise

Last night I attended the Sydney talk of Canadian author and blogger Donna Laframboise, whose book, “The Delinquent Teenager who was mistaken for the world’s top Climate Expert” has recently been published here in Australia.

A large crowd had gathered at the Sheraton on the Park to hear Donna speak about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In her talk, she explained how despite protestations that the IPCC was a collection of the world’s best climate scientists, much of the IPCC’s reports were written by students and environmental activists, and that many appointments to the panel were politically motivated.

She also showed that the IPCC’s claim only to rely on peer-reviewed science was false, with over 30% of the references cited in the recent AR4 coming from newspaper clippings, WWF and Greenpeace reports, press releases and other grey literature. I wonder how much of that grey literature supported “the consensus”? I’m guessing roughly 100%.

I have corresponded with Donna in the past and it was great to meet her finally! Donna, I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay in “Fantasy Island”.*

John Roskam of the IPA

 

Donna Laframboise

 

Signing books

* Roger Pielke Jr.’s Blog: Welcome to Fantasy Island!

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Labor's shameful hypocrisy over Greens

10 July, 2012 by

Bunch of nut-jobs

The slow and painful disintegration of the Labor/Green alliance is a joy to watch – Labor’s chickens are all coming home to roost.

But at the same time it reveals the astonishing hypocrisy at the very heart of the ALP.

Back in 2010, Labor were only too happy to welcome the Greens into their fold, with friendly handshakes and smiles all round and Bob ‘n’ Julia signing their marriage pact before the assembled press.

Only later did we find out that a condition of the Greens’ support was “taking urgent action on climate”. So Julia, abandoning a pre-election promise not to introduce a carbon tax, announced that she would be doing precisely that.

Why did Labor MPs not protest back then at that cowardly surrender of principle? There was just a stony silence, because they had agreed to sell out their principles (such that they were) to stay in power at any cost (and what a cost it will turn out to be).

But now, barely a week after the introduction of the carbon tax, Labor has apparently and suddenly rediscovered those principles that it so hastily rejected in 2010, and is now desperately trying to distance itself from the extreme-Left party of environmental headbangers with which it chose to share a bed. It’s nothing short of pathetic.

And the most pathetic figure in all of this is Greg Combet, climate change minister, who, despite having relied on the Greens to get his disastrous carbon tax through Parliament, now lines up to criticise the Greens with the rest of his Labor mates – breathtaking.

SENIOR Labor Left figures have backed calls for the party to take a tougher line against the Greens as members of all factions lashed the minor party for its stance on offshore processing and contempt for blue-collar workers.

As the NSW Nationals yesterday revealed they expected to preference the Greens last at the next election, Labor Left faction convenor Stephen Jones said he expected that NSW general secretary Sam Dastyari’s motion to take a tough line on Greens preferences would pass the state conference.

“When the asylum-seeker legislation was in the Senate, the Greens had the choice between being a protest movement or a parliamentary party,” Mr Jones said. “They chose to continue to be a protest movement.”

Senior left-aligned minister, Greg Combet, distanced the government from the Greens, declaring Labor did not share the same values.

“We (Labor) have different values and different policies, and we certainly distinguish from them (Greens),” the Climate Change Minister said. (source)

Double standards, Greg. You only have different values and policies when it suits you. When you need the Greens, those policies and values are abandoned in an instant. Because you have no principles other than staying in power. Shameful.

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Canberra's coldest mornings since 1965

9 July, 2012 by

A light dusting of global warming there…

From the Weather Isn’t Climate department. Cue Tim Flannery, Will Steffen or David Karoly saying that this is “consistent with global warming” in 3, 2, 1…

Canberra has shivered through its eighth straight freezing, frosty morning, the coldest stretch of winter mornings in 47 years.

The mercury dropped to a chilly minus 4.8 degrees at 6.51am this morning, topping off eight consecutive mornings below minus 2.3 degrees.

The eight-day cold spell, with an average minimum temperature of minus 4.9, is the coldest string of July mornings since 1965. The all-time record was in July 1962, when the average temperature over an eight-day period was minus 7.

Canberrans felt the worst of the cold on Wednesday, when temperatures fell to minus 6.1 degrees, 6 degrees colder than the long-term July average of minus 0.1.

Wednesday’s low is still far from the record July minimum of minus 10 degrees, recorded in 1971, but is just shy of the lowest temperature recorded this year, which was minus 6.3 degrees on June 20. (source)

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'Even the dead don't escape the carbon tax'

9 July, 2012 by

A situation that is no doubt being played out all around our country, and will be until this pointless tax is repealed.

Fraudulent price rises attributed to the carbon tax will become commonplace, and every time it happens, it will forcefully remind people just whose fault it all is, and how she lied about it before the election:

A Melbourne family who claim they were slugged an extra $55 “carbon tax charge” when burying a relative were told “even the dead don’t escape the carbon tax”.

Erica Maliki and her family were burying her father-in-law at Springvale Cemetery when she was told the price per burial plot had increased because of the carbon tax.

Her father-in-law died on June 30, the day before the carbon tax was introduced, and was buried early last week.

“I thought to myself, ‘What carbon could possibly be used by putting a man in a grave?'” Ms Maliki said.

“All they did was put the dirt back in. How can they charge us a carbon tax for burying someone?”

Ms Maliki’s son Zaid said the cemetery’s receptionist told his sister-in-law “even the dead don’t escape the carbon tax”.

“We are pretty upset… that comment was a kick in the guts,” he said. (source)

In any event, technically, burial is carbon sequestration. If it had been a cremation, however…

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