Lubos Motl at The Reference Frame posts a video of Dr John Christy’s testimony to the US Environment and Public Works Committee on global warming. It is well worth watching:
Australia's shivering start to August
2 August, 2012 by
More brazen monkeys
More from the Weather Isn’t Climate Department – I can hardly keep up!
It’s all meaningless of course, it’s just weather after all.But you don’t hear the mainstream media, or Tim Flannery, or Clive Hamilton or David Karoly or Will Steffen, all rushing to bleat that this is evidence that “global warming” has slowed, or that such weather “is not consistent” with global warming models.
Whereas, if it was a heatwave on the other hand, as we will no doubt get come summer, all the above will be whining on about how it was “entirely consistent with” projections for climate change.
That’s the great thing about double standards and unfalsifiable hypotheses, right lads?
In New South Wales:
Sydney’s coldest start to August in 14 years
Sydney has shivered through its coldest start to August in over a decade.
On Wednesday, the first morning of the month started out on a cool note, dipping to seven degrees just after 5am. While this was only two degrees below average, it was the coldest first morning of the month in 14 years. (source)
and:
Icy morning in NSW
Parts of New South Wales endured the coldest August morning in 12 years as fog and frost descended on the state.
The Central West Slopes and Plains saw their lowest August temperatures since 2000 this morning. Trangie and Condobolin Airport cooled to -4 degrees, which was eight and seven degrees below average respectively.
Clear skies and light winds last night combined with lingering cold air, following days of persistent southerly winds. This set up allowed heat to radiate away from the surface during the night, providing the ideal conditions for the mercury to plummet this morning. (source)
In South Australia:
Temperatures plunge across SA
August has made a chilly entrance in South Australia.
It has been the coldest August night in Adelaide for 13 years.
The temperature dropped to 2.2 degrees Celsius about 6:20am at the weather bureau at Kent Town and to just 1.3 at Adelaide Airport. (source)
In Queensland:
Coldest morning in years in Brisbane and Bundaberg
It was one of the coldest mornings of the year for Queensland with a few places having their coldest morning in over a decade.
All of Queensland recorded temperatures below the August average except for parts of the Peninsula.
People felt the chill as Brisbane had its coldest morning in four years, dropping to a chilly 4.6 degrees, six below the August average.
Bundaberg Airport was a standout, falling to 3.4 degrees this morning. This was its coldest morning in 17 years and was eight degrees below average.
Mount Isa was very cold, dropping below freezing for only the second time this year and registering its coldest morning in 10 years. It was a staggering 11 degrees below average, reaching minus one.
Blackall in the Central West also recorded its coldest morning in 9 years, dropping to minus two. (source)
All courtesy of Weatherzone.
Adelaide's coldest August morning in 13 years
1 August, 2012 by
Brass monkeys
From the Weather Isn’t Climate Department:
It has been a chilly start to August for Adelaide, plunging down to 2.2 degrees this morning, making it the coldest August morning in 13 years.
Just before sunrise, Adelaide dipped down to its lowest August temperature since 1999, when it dropped to 1.7 degrees. This morning’s 2.2 degrees was six below the August average minimum of 8.2 degrees.
This has been a particularly rare morning with Adelaide actually being colder than Canberra.
This freezing morning can be attributed to the combination of several influences. A cold front which passed recently brought a pool of cold air. A large high pressure system then moved overhead which cleared skies and made winds become light.
The city was not the only place which felt the cold. Adelaide Airport recorded 1.3 degrees, their lowest August temperature in 10 years. Elizabeth got down to 0.1 degrees, which is also a 10-year low for August. Noarlunga plunged to 4.2, their coldest August morning since 2006.
It won’t remain too cold all day with a top of 15 degrees expected during the early afternoon. The next few mornings also look like being warmer, due to extra cloud cover and wind bringing temperatures closer to average. (source)
Reaction to Muller's BEST announcement
1 August, 2012 by
BEST or worst?
The media have lapped up Richard Muller’s “Damascene conversion” story, with some journalists even going so far as to call him, laughably and shamefully, a “denier”.
It’s a story too good to be true. A man who has erred and strayed from the Cause has “seen the light” and realises the error of his ways. Funny how the religious imagery keeps cropping up in relation to climate change…
Anyway, the reality is that Muller was never a sceptic and by carrying out science by press release is simply engaging in acts of self-aggrandisement (not my words, but those of Michael Mann).
Andrew Orlowski writing in The Register takes apart the claims:
Richard Muller’s Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project, which began with goodwill from all corners of the climate debate, has made a series of bold announcements (without benefit of peer review) to the effect that global warming is definitely serious and definitely caused by humans. This has aroused derision among formerly supportive climate sceptics, caused an eminent climatologist to abandon the project, and even drawn criticism from generally alarmism-sympathetic media commentators.
Muller, professor of physics at UC Berkeley, is often regarded as a climate sceptic because he has frequently criticised the techniques used by climate scientists in the past and because he accepted funding for BEST from libertarian oil billionaire Charles Koch. When BEST launched in the wake of Climategate, it vowed to be “an independent, non-political, non-partisan group”, with Muller promising that “there will be no spin, whatever we find”. Critics of the existing temperature establishment, including well known sceptics Anthony Watts and Doug Keenan, welcomed it.
However each announcement has been aggressively trialled in the press not only before the peer review process had judged them ready for publication – which may not be a major issue – but also before anyone outside the BEST project could examine the papers at all. This requires the ordinary reader to take BEST’s accompanying press releases on blind faith – which is not a barrier for some journalists, but is far short of acceptable practice. (source)
Read the whole thing.
Also take a look at Jo Nova’s response:
Almost all the coverage of the Muller and BEST results confounds three different points, is poorly researched and mixes up cause and effect. Richard Muller is shamelessly promoting himself as something he is not, and his conclusions are nonsense on stilts that defy rational explanation.
Everyone knows hot air rises off concrete, yet scores of people get befuddled by statistics. The maths-talk is irrelevant. If your analysis tells you that thermometers next to combustion engines and industrial exhaust vents is recording global warming — your analysis is bunk, and we don’t need a peer reviewed paper to say so.
Muller’s three claims:
- He’s a converted skeptic. (Naked, demonstrably wrong, PR.)
- The world has warmed by 0.3C/decade. (He’s half right — he’s only exaggerating 100%.)
- That it’s mostly due to man-made emissions. (Baseless speculation.)
As far as public policies go the only point that matters is 3, but most of the conversation is about 1 and 2. Worse, most journalists and many so-called scientists think evidence for warming is the same as evidence that coal fired power stations did it. How unscientific. (source)
Kudos to Ben Cubby at Fairfax for actually deigning to speak to Jo about this and reporting it. They still manage to illustrate the story with a picture of cooling towers which are giving off … steam.
Australian Climate Madness 
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