AGW or FSM?
It’s the Holy Grail of alarmism. Even though there is almost no hope of ever doing so, the team are desperate to point to an extreme weather event and say that man-made climate change caused it, or made it worse.
Professor Matthew England (one of Anna Rose’s advisers in ABC’s I Can Change Your Mind about Climate – see here) has another go here, and uses weasel words to hijack a study – unrelated to climate change – to advance The Cause:
Abnormally high ocean temperatures off the coast of northern Australia contributed to the extreme rainfall that flooded three-quarters of Queensland over the summer of 2010-11, scientists report.
A Sydney researcher, Jason Evans, ran a series of climate models and found above average sea surface temperatures throughout December 2010 increased the amount of rainfall across the state by 25 per cent on average.
While the study did not look at the cause of ocean warming in the region, a physical oceanographer, Matthew England, said climate change could not be excluded as a possible driver of this extreme rainfall event.
Matthew England, who was not involved in the study, said ocean temperatures off northern Australia were the highest on record at the time of the Queensland floods.
“While the La Nina event played a big role in this record ocean warmth, so too did the long-term warming trend over the past 50 years,” Professor England, the co-director of the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre, said. (source)
Interfering with SST data now are we?
Australian Climate Madness 
Has this twit apologised for his LIE to Nick Minchin yet?
Isn’t it interesting that they always leave off the modifiers from their alarming titles.
They say “Global Warming” when they really mean “Catastrophic Anthropomorphic Global Warming”. They say “Climate Change” when they really mean “Catastrophic Anthropomorphic Global Warming”. Then when you deny what they really mean to say, they can claim you deny simple Global Warming and Climate Change.
Explanations that yes the glob as warmed since the little ice age and yes, the climate is changing are taken to be assent for the Catastrophic Anthropomorphic forms of the terms. By that corruption of the language, they think they win and that you lose every time.
Fundamentally they never mean what they say nor say what they mean with sufficient precision and clarity to know that they are saying. What is clear is that they intend to continue their billions of grant money to support their so called “science”, their expeditions to conventions in pretense of saving the globe, and their plans to institute a global, top down, command and control, totalitarian governance upon all of us. They are to be the masters and we are to be the voiceless and rightless serfs who are to exist only by their permission.
We must learn how to say NO so they can no longer evade OUR meaning.
Maybe he should read up on La Nina. The warm water goes west from the Equadorian coast to produce the cool temps there.
Of course the IPCC begs to differ with Prof England in its Special Report on Extreme Weather
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4.5.3.3. Attribution of Impacts to Climate Change: Observations and Limitations
A key question concerns whether trends in such losses, or losses from specific events, can be attributed to climate change. In this context, changes in losses over time need to be controlled for exposure and vulnerability. Most studies of long-term disaster loss records attribute these increases in losses to increasing exposure of people and assets in at-risk areas, and to underlying societal trends – demographic economic, political, and social – that shape vulnerability to impacts. Some authors suggest that a (natural or anthropogenic) climate change signal can be found in the records of disaster losses, but their work is in the nature of reviews and commentary rather than empirical research.
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Click to access SREX-All_FINAL.pdf
the study did not look at the cause of ocean warming in the region, a physical oceanographer, Matthew England, said climate change could not be excluded as a possible driver of this extreme rainfall event.”
Yet another unfalsivyable hypothesis.
Carbo Diem. We will fight this nonsense, and we MUST win this battle for science, rational thinking and freedom from holier than thou statists who like nothing better than to tell us what to do, which light bulbs to use, where we may buy our energy from and how good we will feel about this carbon tax.
Anybody not familiar with Flying Spaghetti Monsters … see here.
“These 3 were captured in a rare moment, now known as ‘spin-doctoring’!”
Actually, as soon as he uses the word “Global”, be it with “Warming” or “Climate Change”, he has already falsified his hypothesis. At the time of the flooding rains, ocean temperatures were down in many, many parts of the world, and of course specifically down in the eastern pacific. If the rain was caused by a warming that is NOT global, then it is NOT caused by “Global Warming”…
Aahh, those ubiquitous climate modals again.
At least the global warming aficionados can’t be accused of wanton waste.
They have re-cycling down pat.
This guy is really beginning to annoy me. His portrait (above) floated into my consciousness last time I tucked into a pot of noodles, and that was before I knew what a FSM was. The term is apt.
Last year on The Weather Channel Dick Whitaker explained, in terms that anybody could understand, what had happened in 2010/11. La Nina to the east, Indian Ocean Dipole to the west, in a combination that is likely to produce some interesting weather phenomena, just like it did in 1974. It has happened before, it will happen again.
Lionell, I agree wholeheartedly with your point, but isn’t it **Anthropogenic** Global Warming, not **Anthropomorphic**. Presumably the warming we are referring to is “human-caused”, not “of human form”.
There are actually steps before we can blame carbon dioxide for the floods which is what they are all trying to say.
First of all increased CO2 must be shown to be causing global warming.
Secondly, Global warming must be shown to be a source of ctual changes to the climate apart from just a tiny increase of a small fraction of 1 C to date.
Thirdly, this assumed “Climate Change” must lead to the excessively high temperatures in Northern waters which England claims “could” have caused the heavy rain and flooding
Fourthly, it has to be shown that the high temperatures in Northern Waters, caused the flooding.
Such a coincidental chain of events must have happened with even greater vigour in 1842, 1993 and 1974 and with almost as much vigour from time to time throughout the 1800s and 1900s!
I think England is drawing quite a long bow.
John Nicol
I’m not a scientist, but I have been in Launceston during winter. There are many old houses with old fireplaces. From the ridge running above the cbd in late afternoon, one can see the particulate pollution, hovering over the city, from these wood fires. This is burning fossil fuels. I used this just as an examplem of “human activity…”, and it is having a detrimental effect on air quality there. If people really think we can continue endlessly to burn these fuels and put this pollution into the atmosphere without causing any kind of reaction in the weather, they are simply living in fairy-land. The weather is a hugely complex set of events that manifest changes slowly. Where I now live in northern NSW, over the last 15 years – at the same address, I have seen many changes in the weather, that seem to be permanent now. We have suffered flood on flood, lost cars, property damage, etc, and sometimes we can cop 150mls of rain in a single day.
Naturally, this is all just in our imagination, and nothing has really changed at all. (?)