Brisbane: coldest December day in 123 years

7 December, 2011 by

Throw another reindeer on the barbie…

Another from the Weather Isn’t Climate Department:

Cloud and rain has limited Brisbane’s temperature to 19.1 degrees so far today, putting the city on track for its coldest December day since 1888.

20mm of rain had drenched the city between 9am and 3pm, while the associated cloud cover had blocked out the warming rays of the summer sun.

The highest temperature recorded after 9am in Brisbane was 19.1 degrees, which is around 10 below average for the month of December. The main Brisbane weather site only has 12 years of continuous records, but checking surrounding sites from the city and the old regional office site, the current maximum of 19.1 would be the lowest recorded since 1888 (assuming we stay at or below 19.3 until 9am on Thursday). (source)

Of course, this story is as meaningless in relation to climate as all those hysterical claims that hot days are a sign of “global warming”.

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Idiotic Comment of the Day: Ban Ki-moon

7 December, 2011 by

Moon(-bat)

The UN Moonbat is on cracking form today in Durban, trying to scare world leaders (most of whom are preoccupied with keeping their economies solvent) into taking utterly futile and eye-wateringly expensive action on climate change. Fortunately, there is little chance of that:

“It would be difficult to overstate the gravity of this moment,” Mr Ban said overnight at the start of a four-day meeting of the world’s environment ministers.

But somehow, Moonbat succeeds:

“Without exaggeration, we can say: the future of our planet is at stake – people’s lives, the health of the global economy, the very survival of some nations.“

Without exaggeration, that’s bullish*t. I humbly suggest that Mr Ban take a cold shower and read the Climategate 2.0 emails. He might learn something.

Source.

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IPCC "too sullied to be credible"

5 December, 2011 by

Sullied

Professor Stewart Franks speaks some highly inconvenient truths about the IPCC (reported, amazingly, by the ABC):

Stewart Franks says there is no evidence that carbon dioxide drives global warming and he blames the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for scaring people about a future climate catastrophe.

For the past decade Professor Franks has focussed his research on natural variability in climate as being the driver of extreme droughts and rain events, rather that CO2 emissions.

He says the emails from Kevin Trenberth from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, show fundamental flaws in their methodology, but the public is being kept in the dark.

Professor Franks says he believes the emails support his own argument that natural variability is responsible for warming.

“Now I’ve been criticised for talking about these modes that we’ve barely beginning to understand as somehow being some kind of a denier of climate change or a pure contrarian,” he said.a

“But it is really heartening to see that these scientists actually acknowledge and in fact one scientist went as far as to say ‘What if all the warming we actually see is just natural multi-decadal variability?’

“He then said, ‘They’ll probably kill us’.

“I think we do need an independent and judicial review of the evidence both for and against the likelihood of climate change beyond naturally catastrophic climate variability.

“I must say the IPCC is far too sullied by the leaks and some of the shenanigans that the emails show have be going on.

“It is now too sullied to be credible.” (source)

He’s absolutely right of course. The IPCC has lost the little trust it may once have had, thanks in part to the Climategate emails which reveal an organisation driven by political agenda, happy to silence dissent, disappear inconvenient data, destroy emails and smear critics. This issue was giving me pause for thought only a day or so ago, as I pondered how climate science can be rehabilitated. I actually believe an organisation akin to the IPCC can serve a useful purpose in the climate debate, if and only if it were to be constituted properly. However, this isn’t going to be easy.

For a start, the IPCC has to go, once and for all. Clear the slate and start again. Secondly, any successor organisation should have nothing whatsoever to do with the UN. I’m not entirely sure which global organisation should take its place, but that’s a decision for later. Thirdly, funding should be made a level playing field – sceptics and consensus scientists should compete on equal terms for research grants. Fourthly, either vested interests should be allowed to participate across the board, or they should be excluded completely. Cosying up to WWF whilst slamming “Big Oil” is rank hypocrisy. Finally, the successor organisation must have transparent procedures and processes in place. The IPCC is opaque in its appointment of key personnel and the review procedure for its reports, and this is completely unacceptable.

As I have said many times, I am agnostic on the causes of the 20th century warming. However, I am damn sure that I want to see apolitical, impartial and unbiased science, untainted by environmental agendas, before I am prepared to accept it as gospel. And the IPCC will never, ever be able to meet that requirement.

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Tropical fish on Barrier Reef adapt in two generations

5 December, 2011 by

Am I bovvered?

From the Science is Settled Department comes the news that the fauna of the Barrier Reef can adapt to even sudden changes in water temperature extremely quickly. The Daily Telegraph reports:

ONE of the direst warnings about the effect of climate change on Australia – that rising sea temperatures will devastate the marine life of the Great Barrier Reef – has been dramatically challenged by new research.

Scientists from the CSIRO and James Cook University found that tropical fish easily adapted – and actually thrived – despite being forced to live in water up to 3C warmer than normal, a temperature increase at the highest end of global warming predictions.

They found that it took just two generations of tropical damsel fish, common on the Great Barrier Reef, to adapt when they were reared from birth in tanks of warm water.

The scientists warn that previous methods of studying the ability of tropical fish to cope with rising sea temperatures – by looking at one generation of fish – is flawed.

“We demonstrate that a tropical reef fish is highly sensitive to small increases in water temperature but can rapidly acclimate over multiple generations,” the scientists said in peer-reviewed work published in prestigious journal Nature Climate Change.

“Acute exposure to elevated temperatures predicted to occur this century caused a 15 per cent and 30 per cent respective decrease in individuals’ maximum ability to perform aerobic activities such as swimming or foraging, known as aerobic scope.

“However, complete compensation in aerobic scope occurred when both parents and offspring were reared throughout their lives at elevated temperature.

“Such acclimation could reduce the impact of warming temperatures and allow populations to persist across their current range.

“This study reveals the importance of trans-generational acclimation as a mechanism for coping with rapid climate change and highlights that single generation studies risk underestimating the potential of species to cope. (source)

Once again, the alarmist argument that the planet and its inhabitants cannot adapt to climate change has been shown to be flawed in this case. If the planet were so fragile, how come we have a diverse and thriving ecosystem that has suffered through multiple changes in climate more dramatic than that occurring at present?

Clearly the tropical fish haven’t got around to enacting a carbon tax to “tackle climate change”, so they’re stuck with boring old adaptation which they can clearly accomplish very rapidly. Maybe we should follow their lead?

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Sydney: coolest start to Summer in 51 years

4 December, 2011 by

Sydney storms

From the Weather Isn’t Climate Department:

Thunderstorms are helping Sydney achieve its coolest start to summer in 51 years, according to weatherzone.com.au.

Thunderstorms rolled across the city late this morning and early afternoon, cooling most suburbs below 17 degrees, well below average for this time of year. The storms also brought brief rain and hail to some western and northern suburbs. Picnickers and beach-goers were sent scurrying.

“In the first four days of this summer, Sydney has now failed to reach 23 degrees, making it the coolest start in 44 years,” Weatherzone meteorologist Brett Dutschke said.

“The city is on target for its coolest start to summer in 51 years with none of the next three days expected to reach 23 degrees,” Dutschke said.

In the summer of 1960, each of the first 10 days were cooler than 22 degrees. (source)

Bring me sunshine…

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Attenborough: "irrelevant" whether climate change is man-made

4 December, 2011 by

Sold out

UPDATE: Attenborough is bankrolled by the BBC, so it’s hardly surprising that he toes the alarmist line. As a commenter pointed out, look what happened to David Bellamy when he dared speak his mind.

We still have to do something about it, apparently. Another icon of my youth, David Attenborough, sells out to the Dark Side and reveals himself as a climate alarmist. Like the Natural History Museum and the BBC, these institutions have sullied their reputations by abandoning impartiality and embracing alarmist hysteria.

Attenborough’s latest pronouncements on the climate make interesting reading, because he seems to suggest that we should take action on climate change irrespective of whether, or to what extent, it is caused by man. I actually heard this in the wee small hours on ABC News Radio and thought I was having a bad dream:

“I don’t think anyone can seriously deny it is happening,” he said. “What the controversy is about is whether mankind has been a factor in that. I personally think we have and it would be surprising if we hadn’t given what we have been doing for the last 125 years.”

We’re all with you so far. Man has had some effect on the climate. Continue.

“But in the way it is irrelevant given temperatures are increasing and we know that is potentially doing a lot of damage and if we can we should try and stop that happening. Whether it is caused by us or not, we can bring down carbon emissions and that could stop temperatures rising.” (source)

Just run that past me again… “whether it is caused by us or not, we can bring down carbon emissions and that could stop temperatures rising.” Right, so you’re not sure whether man-made carbon emissions have caused the recent warming, but cutting those emissions will stop it somehow? Sorry, not following that logic at all, I’m afraid. In fact, it’s complete and utter nonsense.

Not surprising, because this isn’t an argument based on logic, it’s an argument based on an environmental ideology. Thankfully we have Nigel Lawson to put the more rational perspective:

Sir David Attenborough is one of this country’s finest journalists, and a great expert on animal life. Unfortunately, however, when it comes to global warming he seems to prefer sensation to objectivity.

Had he wished to be objective, he would have pointed out that, while satellite observations do indeed confirm that the extent of arctic sea ice has been declining over the past 30 years, the same satellite observations show that, overall, Antarctic sea ice has been expanding over the same period.

Had he wished to be objective, he would have pointed out that the polar bear population has not been falling, but rising.

Had he wished to be objective, he would have mentioned that recent research findings show that the increased evaporation from the Arctic ocean, as a result of warming, will cause there to be more cloud cover, thus counteracting the adverse effect he is so concerned about.

Had he wished to be objective, he would have noted that, while there was indeed a modest increase in mean global temperature (of about half a degree Centigrade) during the last quarter of the 20th century, so far this century both the UK Met Office and the World Meteorological Office confirm that there has been no further global warming at all.

What will happen in the future is inevitably unclear. But two things are clear. First, that Sir David’s alarmism is sheer speculation. Second, that if there is a resumption of warming, the only rational course is to adapt to it, rather than to try (happily a lost cause) to persuade the world to impoverish itself by moving from relatively cheap carbon-based energy to much more expensive non-carbon energy. (source)

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Cold feet on climate: banks slash carbon traders

3 December, 2011 by

Carbon traders?

City institutions are pretty savvy when it comes to securing the future of their businesses. Decades of experience have taught them which opportunities are genuine and which are fake. During the last decade, climate change departments have sprung up in many international investment banks, accountancy and law firms around the world, keen to cash in on the massive revenue streams from advising on and/or trading in carbon and climate markets.

Maybe the penny has begun to drop, since many such institutions are already starting to show signs of cold feet on climate change and are slashing employees working in such areas. As the Sydney Morning Herald reports (via Bloomberg):

Investment banks are cutting traders and analysts in climate-related businesses as a slump in shares and carbon emission permits coincides with a deadlock in international climate talks.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. Managing Director for Environmental Markets Odin Knudsen left his post in New York by mutual accord after his team was shrunk, while UBS Securities LLC fired Vice Chairman Jon Anda and his Climate Policy Group co-workers, Anda and Knudsen said in interviews. Ben Lynch left his London job as an alternative-energy analyst for Commerzbank AG and it was taken over by a utilities analyst, company spokeswoman Claire Tappenden said. The departures took place since September.

The biggest banks, trying to recover from trading losses and a clampdown on investing their own money, are clipping resources from emissions-related businesses as United Nations talks have failed for years to extend Kyoto Protocol greenhouse- gas curbs beyond their expiration in 2012. The International Emissions Trading Association, the main carbon-market trade group, has seen its membership slide about 6 per cent this year.

“People are leaving the industry because they’ve been fired or because they see no prospects,” said Emmanuel Fages, head of energy research for Europe at Societe Generale SA in Paris. “That is the sad story.” (source)

“Sad story” is not exactly how I would put it. You would have thought, if the world were “rushing ahead” towards global carbon trading, the banks would be pulling out all the stops to ensure they were first in line to cream off a healthy profit. But it appears, at long last, that these institutions are coming to their senses and rapidly bailing out of an imaginary, manufactured market, mired in corruption and bogged down in fraud – and with little future, given the current global financial strife.

And once the money dries up, it’s Game Over.

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Climategate 2.0: IPCC bias and defending "The Cause"

3 December, 2011 by

PhD attacked

Are you beginning to notice a thread running through the Climategate 2.0 revelations? Several threads, perhaps? Silence dissent, suppress inconvenient data, ad hominem attacks, stifle FOI requests, support “the Cause” at all costs? That’s what happens when you attempt to use science to justify a political agenda in a field as complex as climate change. The pressure to maintain a constant message inevitably conflicts with the spectrum of scientific data on the subject, much of which challenges the assertions of “the Cause”.

Any sceptic who dares to expose the uncertainties risks damaging “the Cause” – which must be avoided at all costs. Hence the distasteful plot to damage the reputation of Patrick Michaels by questioning his PhD, exposed in one of the Climategate 2.0 emails. Michaels writes an open letter to the director of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) :

I’m sure you have seen and discussed with your staff many of the “Climategate” emails released first in November, 2009, and then more recently, earlier this month.

Everyone agrees that the tone and content of many of them is a bit shrill and occasionally intolerant (kind of like University faculty meetings), but there is one repeating thread, by one of your most prestigious employees, Dr. Tom Wigley, that is far beyond the pale of most academic backbiting.

The revoking of my doctorate, the clear objective of Tom’s email, is the professional equivalent of the death penalty. I think it needs to be brought to your attention, because the basic premise underlying his machinations is patently and completely false. Dr Wigley is known as a careful scientist, but he certainly was careless here.

The global circulation of this email has caused unknown damage to my reputation. Also, please note that all communications from Dr. Wigley to his colleagues on this matter were on the NCAR/UCAR server.

The relevant email was sent to Rick Piltz, a UCAR employee at the time, and copied to Michael Mann, Pennsylvania State University, James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Benjamin Santer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,the late Steven Schneider, Stanford University, and several other very prominent climate scientists. The influence of these individuals is manifest and evidence of a very serious attempt to destroy my credential.

What Dr. Wigley wrote to this group of individuals was:

“You may be interesting [sic] in this snippet of information about Pat Michaels. Perhaps the University of Wisconsin ought to open up a public comment period to decide whether Pat Michaels, PhD needs re-assessing?”

As I said, revoking the doctorate of a scientist is the equivalent of imposing a professional death penalty. Unfortunately, Wigley’s rationale for organizing this effort was based upon a pure fabrication. (source)

And as Dr Roy Spencer argues, protecting “the Cause” trumps everything else:

Ever since the first Climategate e-mail release, the public has become increasingly aware that scientists are not unbiased. Of course, most scientists with a long enough history in their fields already knew this (I discussed the issue at length in my first book Climate Confusion), but it took the first round of Climategate e-mails to demonstrate it to the world.

The latest release (Climategate 2.0) not only reveals bias, but also some private doubts among the core scientist faithful about the scientific basis for the IPCC’s policy goals. Yet, the IPCC’s “cause” (Michael Mann’s term) appears to trump all else.

So, when the science doesn’t support The Cause, the faithful turn toward discussions of how to craft a story which minimizes doubt about the IPCC’s findings. 

…

In the case of global warming research, the alternative (non-consensus) hypothesis that some or most of the climate change we have observed is natural is the one that the IPCC must avoid at all cost. This is why the Hockey Stick was so prized: it was hailed as evidence that humans, not Nature, rule over climate change.

The Climategate 2.0 e-mails show how entrenched this bias has become among the handful of scientists who have been the most willing participants and supporters of The Cause. These scientists only rose to the top because they were willing to actively promote the IPCC’s message with their particular fields of research.

Unfortunately, there is no way to “fix” the IPCC, and there never was. The reason is that its formation over 20 years ago was to support political and energy policy goals, not to search for scientific truth. I know this not only because one of the first IPCC directors told me so, but also because it is the way the IPCC leadership behaves. If you disagree with their interpretation of climate change, you are left out of the IPCC process. They ignore or fight against any evidence which does not support their policy-driven mission, even to the point of pressuring scientific journals not to publish papers which might hurt the IPCC’s efforts.

I believe that most of the hundreds of scientists supporting the IPCC’s efforts are just playing along, assured of continued funding. In my experience, they are either: (1) true believers in The Cause; (2) think we need to get away from using fossil fuels anyway; or (3) rationalize their involvement based upon the non-zero chance of catastrophic climate change. (source)

As I repeat frequently on this blog, I am prepared to accept whatever the science tells us about man’s effect on the climate, but until the integrity of that scientific process is restored, the projections of “the Team” and the IPCC simply cannot be trusted. Climategate 2.0 shows that such integrity is at present sorely lacking.

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Alarmist scientist found guilty of smearing journalist

2 December, 2011 by

Rahmstorf - smeared journalist

Again, standard operating procedure for alarmist scientists on the climate change funding bandwagon: smear your critics. Except this time the journalist didn’t stand idly by and do nothing, she took legal action – and won. From No Tricks Zone:

Der Spiegel today has a story on IPCC bigwig and ultra-alarmist Stefan Rahmstorf, who is also a lead scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and elite member of the Hockey Team. For those of you who may not recall, Rahmstorf is the outlier oceanographer that projects a sea level rise of about 1.4 meters, even when the rest the world, including real observations, all point to something that is about 1/7 of that.

It’s a bit late at night here and so the main points only. Der Spiegel starts:

“Renown climate scientist and German government advisor Stefan Rahmstorf was found guilty of a blog attack against a journalist.  According to the opinion of a state court, he made untruthful assertions. Also the ‘Frankfurter Rundschau’ has come under fire.”

A State Court says he’s guilty of making untruthful assertions. Interpret that how you wish. The Frankfurter Rundschau is a sort of daily that former East German comrades lean towards. On the Rahmstorf ruling by the court, we reported about it here.

To make a long story short, journalist Irene Meichsner wrote a critical report about the IPCC, which appeared in the Frankfurter Rundschau daily, to which Rahmstorf reacted quite nastily. He asserted at his blog that the journalist had been dishonest, sloppy, had never read the IPCC report, and that she even lifted text from another source (Richard North and Jonathan Leake). For a journalist, such accusations are of course career threatening and thus deadly serious.

Meichsner didn’t stand for it, took the case to court, and won. (source)

Telling the truth about the IPCC is so uncomfortable for those involved that in desperation they resort to this kind of action. Maybe those promoting “the cause” should be a little more careful of smearing their opponents in future. Play the ball, not the man (or in this case, woman).

See here for an earlier story on the alarmism of the Potsdam Institute.

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NSW government "censored" inconvenient sea level data

1 December, 2011 by

A report on Channel 7’s news at 6pm this evening alleges that sea level data, showing rates of rise far lower than those projected, were censored to avoid conflicting with government policy on climate change.

Sea levels at Fort Denison are rising at only 1mm per year or less, flatly contradicting the apocalyptic projections of the state and federal governments. Doug Lord, a global warming believer and coastal manager at the climate change department until February 2010, said “Both papers were accepted and at the last minute both were withdrawn on instructions from the department.”

Angus Gordon, a coastal engineer, accused the department of a cover-up, and of suppressing the data in order to support the federal government’s position on climate change.

If the allegations are true, none of this should come as any surprise, especially after the release last week of Climategate 2.0. It is the modus operandi of governments and alarmist scientists the world over, namely to censor or suppress dissent, or in this case data, which contradicts their pre-conceived agenda of dangerous global warming, and thereby giving them the freedom they need to mislead the electorate into accepting draconian and extreme climate change policies.

There is little reason to doubt that these kinds of practices are commonplace, given the federal government’s desperation to convince the public of the “reality of climate change” and the need to take urgent action – hence the carbon tax.

Once again, the integrity of climate science and its associated disciplines has been tarnished by political motivations and politically correct environmental agendas.

[Note: as you will see from the YouTube clip, the report on 7 News was rather superficial – but typical for a network news bulletin – and contained significant ambiguities, in particular regarding the roles of the state/federal governments and the timeline of events, especially given the change of government in NSW earlier in the year. Hopefully further details will emerge.]

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