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Will Steffen defends Climate Commission report

21 May, 2012 by

Sydney hot days (click to enlarge)

Will Steffen writes in The Australian today, claiming that the paper’s own articles last week somehow back up the Commission’s own alarmism about hot days in New South Wales:

The Australian apparently asserts that the commission did not look at enough weather stations to provide an accurate overview of changes in hot weather in the Sydney region. It published five graphs of changes in hot weather, the original two from the commission’s report plus graphs for Sydney Airport, Bankstown Airport and Prospect Reservoir. However, these other graphs confirm precisely what the commission has shown – that the number of hot days in western Sydney has risen during the past four decades and has risen at rate greater than that for the eastern suburbs.

In fact, the commission erred on the careful, conservative side by not including the station at Prospect Reservoir, which showed a much more pronounced trend than either Parramatta or Bankstown Airport. In fact the trend is an increase of about 200 per cent in hot days since 1965.

Note how Steffen shifts the goal posts back to 1965, despite the fact that the graphs published by the Australian and the associated article (see here) only relate to the last 20 years. Eyeballing the data for the last 20 years shows a small increase, if you’re being generous, but Steffen cannot say how much can be attributed to increased urbanisation rather than “global warming”, saying it’s “probably” due to a combination of both. What combination, exactly? Er…

Steffen concludes:

The Australian said in its editorial: “We accept that the majority of scientific opinion says human-induced carbon emissions are contributing to a warming climate.” That is correct.

It could have added that human-induced emissions are the main contribution to observed warming in the past half-century. Then it would have been spot-on.

So there is much agreement between The Australian and the Climate Commission on the science of climate change. It is time to stop the phony [sic], divisive, manufactured “debate” on climate science, and move on to solutions to the climate change challenge. (source – paywalled)

Steffen has no idea whether human emissions are the “main contribution” to recent warming because no-one does. It’s all based on incomplete climate models.

And the debate is far from phoney, despite the usual attempts by the consensus side to shut it down. If human effects are small or even of a similar order compared to natural variation, then every dollar we spend trying to mitigate climate change is a dollar thrown away. In other words, until we know climate sensitivity precisely, all of this is based on the precautionary principle, except the costs far outweigh the benefits.

And as for “solutions to the climate change challenge”, I would be grateful if he would kindly explain what the government proposed solution of a carbon tax will actually do for the climate, when China and India’s increasing emissions will swamp anything Australia can achieve unilaterally. Actually, don’t bother. We know the answer: NOTHING.

In any case, why should we trust the Climate Commission at all? There’s no dissenting view present, no alternative opinion to consider, nothing to challenge the accepted consensus, no case for the defence. It’s just a bunch of like minded climate activists pushing AGW propaganda to prop up the government’s climate policies.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

ANU's Will Steffen speaks on "death threat" emails

14 May, 2012 by

FOI request

UPDATE 3: Anthony at Watts Up? posts on this again (many thanks!):

Quote of the week – Death by Coochey coup

UPDATE 2: Will Steffen speaks again on ABC’s The World Today (link):

“Well I think that newspaper headline you’ve got there in front of me called ‘Climate of Fear’ could actually be turned around to describe what happens in some cases to climate scientists and our staff. 

But there’ve also been direct aggressive and threatening events, physically threatening events to some of my staff. But there were a couple of incidents there which my staff interpreted as being threatening and I think they had very good reason to do so. 

I took a whole range of pieces of evidence – email, non-email and so on – to our security people at ANU (Australian National University) who are experts in the field and asked their advice. And their advice obviously taking a rather conservative position to ensure our safety, which is appropriate, that we move to much more secure quarters, which we have.”

“A rather conservative position”… Note how the ABC is once again cozying up to the alarmists and showing not a hint of critical questioning of anything Steffen says. 

UPDATE: Alan Jones’ comment this morning is again on the death threat emails. Listen here.

They don’t learn do they? ANU’s Professor Will Steffen, the Gillard government’s alarmist in chief, was given a free kick to plug the Climate Commission’s latest doom and gloom report (video here). I’m not even going to bother going into it, because, well, life’s too short. What was more interesting was the response of Steffen to a very gentle question by the interviewer about the “death threat” emails:

Interviewer: Have you ever received a threatening email? Have you received a death threat in your work in the climate change area?

Steffen: It’s certainly a matter of perception there – I believe I have in terms of some very threatening actions to staff and to myself personally. They weren’t via email though and they weren’t during the period under question, so we certainly took the action we thought was appropriate. My number one concern was the safety and wellbeing of my staff and it wasn’t an isolated incident it was a number of incidents that were coupled with very threatening emails. I took all of this to experts on security, I’m not an expert on security, so I had to go to our own people to interpret what was going on. Their expert judgment was we needed to take some measures to ensure the safety and wellbeing of my staff and that was my number one priority.

Interviewer: You certainly got the impression you and your staff were under direct threat?

Steffen: I certainly got the impression I was and my staff were the recipients of some fairly aggressive actions in person.

So the threats were suddenly not by email, and they weren’t during the period in question, i.e six months before the story broke. So what did the ABC write again?

Several of Australia’s top climate change scientists at the Australian National University have been subjected to a campaign of death threats, forcing the university to tighten security.

Several of the scientists in Canberra have been moved to a more secure location after receiving the threats over their research.

Vice-chancellor Professor Ian Young says the scientists have received large numbers of emails, including death threats and abusive phone calls, threatening to attack the academics in the street if they continue their research.

He says it has been happening for the past six months and the situation has worsened significantly in recent weeks.

So according to the ABC, there were plenty of threats by email, and within the six months prior to the story, completely contradicting what Steffen said on the ABC this morning. Who’s right?

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Quotes of the Day: Will Steffen

6 July, 2011 by

Quote of the Day

In a sycophantic piece in the Sydney Morning Herald Will Steffen, the Gillard government’s climate adviser, claims, without any irony, that science knows all there is to know about the earth’s climate:

”What debate? There is no debate in the scientific community about this.”

And another one for luck:

”We don’t debate gravity, we don’t debate the tides.”

Apparently, he’s also “bemused, frustrated and appalled” that the media dares publish anything that criticised the consensus as well.

Odd that just today, an article claims that the IPCC artificially adjusted the results of a peer-reviewed study on climate sensitivity so that they fitted better with the organisation’s political aims. Is that what you mean when you say there’s no debate?

Odd also that there are a thousand or so peer-reviewed papers that challenge the consensus and new ones are published every week – hang on, they would be published in the wrong journals and written by the wrong scientists, I guess.

With people like Steffen advising the government, what could possibly go wrong?

Read it here (and weep).

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Will Steffen: Labor's Alarmist-in-Chief

23 May, 2011 by

Knows everything there is to know about the climate

It really is no wonder that the Climate Commission, headed by warmist Tim Flannery (salary $180k), and advised by Will Steffen, the Labor government’s chief scaremonger, has produced the skewed and catastrophist projections that it has. Let’s look at Steffen’s previous form:

In January 2011, Steffen linked the Queensland floods to climate change (whilst at the same time saying he wasn’t):

Climate change committee member Professor Will Steffen, the executive director of the ANU Climate Change Institute, said there was no direct link between global warming and the tragic flash flooding in Toowoomba which has killed at least nine people in southeast Queensland.

But he told The Australian Online that climate change would lead to heavier, more frequent rain.

“As the climate warms, there is more water vapour in the atmosphere,” he told The Australian Online.

“This means that there is a probability that there will more intense rainfall events around the world.

There is some evidence that we can see them now. I think the place where the best data is the US.” (source)

Then back in May 2010, he compared those sceptical of catastrophic man-made warming to “flat-earthers”:

While there were uncertainties about the pace and impact of change, he said, the core of climate science – that the world was warming and the primary cause since the middle of the last century had been industrial greenhouse gas emissions – should be accepted with the same confidence as the laws of gravity and relativity.

“Right now, this almost infantile debate about whether ‘is it real or isn’t it real?’, it’s like saying, ‘Is the Earth round or is it flat?’ [Climate change] is a hugely important question and yet we are not having a rational discourse in the media in Australia on this question. That is my biggest frustration.” He called on the media to focus on areas where there was not a consensus, including the link between climate change and the south-east Australian drought and how rapidly sea levels would rise. (source)

Steffen has never, ever, conceded that there is any doubt in the debate. EVER. He clearly believes that he knows all there is to know about the climate, and anyone who dares suggest there are unknowns is simply branded a filthy denier.

So is it any wonder that a climate report prepared by him spouts the usual alarmist hysteria? Nope. Not in the slightest.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Will Steffen to report on Queensland floods

18 January, 2011 by

Impartiality personified

Yes, you read that right – the same Will Steffen who is the Labor government’s Chief Alarmist, and who has already made up his mind and linked the Queensland floods to climate change (see here). Kind of like the University of East Anglia investigating Climategate – no, wait, they did. What hope is there for an impartial, balanced report? None. The people of Queensland deserve better.

A report on the flood disaster and climate change will be undertaken by an expert on the federal government’s multi-party committee which is investigating ways to price carbon.

Professor Will Steffen, a member of the climate change committee set up by the Gillard government in September last year, told AAP he was working on a report covering the floods.

And just in case you missed the bias, here it is again:

Prof Steffen said there was evidence that extreme weather events appear to be increasing.

“We are getting more intense rainfall events as the earth warms, but it’s difficult to pin down any individual event,” he told AAP. [Oh, but how I wish I could, he thought – Ed]

“Rainfall events like the type we’ve seen in Queensland are becoming more likely as the earth warms.

“There is a long-term warming trend with or without La Nina.”

And lastly, so that you’re all thoroughly reassured about this process.

Prof Steffen said he would produce an update on the science for the committee, as part of the Garnaut climate change review update, as well as write his own independent report. (source)

Phew that’s OK then. Seriously, this guy is so compromised he shouldn’t be let anywhere near an “independent” enquiry.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Climate Council: junk science leads to record levels of alarmism

7 February, 2015 by

Only the ABC cares about Flannery any more...

Only the ABC cares about Flannery any more…

The Climate Council is nothing more than an alarmism generating machine. Every year the level of hysteria increases faster than global temperatures, and breaks records with monotonous regularity.

With Tim Flannery and Will Steffen slowly stewing in their own warmist juices, there is no moderating element to reign in the madness, which gets more and more extreme every year.

And, despite being a privately funded organisation, the Climate Council has the ABC as its uncritical media department, providing – for free – all the publicity that it needs. And when I say ‘for free’, I mean paid for by our taxes. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , , , ,

ACM retrospective: a look back at six years of climate madness

18 July, 2014 by

The climate bureaucracy is reduced to rubble

The climate bureaucracy is reduced to rubble

This blog started in September 2008, when we were one year into the Kevin Rudd Labor government. It was Labor policy to introduce an emissions trading scheme (ETS), and as we approached the end of 2009, Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull was indicating that he would give it bipartisan support.

But Coalition backbenchers were stirring, as ACM reported on 20 October 2009:

Now is the time for all good men (and women) to come to the aid of the Party – in this case, the Liberal party. The backbenchers need to stand up for their principles and not be steamrollered by their worryingly green-tinged leader:

MALCOLM Turnbull is on a collision course with his own back bench after staking his leadership on a demand that they back his climate change strategy.Several MPs immediately refused to do so.If the partyroom refused to back his strategy of negotiating amendments to the government’s emissions trading scheme, Mr Turnbull said yesterday, the Coalition would “literally be a party with nothing to say … a party with no ideas”, and that was “not the party I am prepared to lead”.

Throwing down the gauntlet to his internal critics, Mr Turnbull said: “I am asserting my authority as the leader of the Liberal Party and the Leader of the Opposition.”

“If the partyroom were to reject my recommendation to them, that would obviously be a leadership issue. That’s perfectly plain, perfectly clear,” he told ABC Radio in Adelaide.

By 20 November, things were beginning to look very grim as Tony Abbott abandons his previous support for the ETS: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Climate

‘Angry Summer’ gives way to ‘Abnormal Autumn’

3 June, 2014 by

Chief Alarmist

Chief Alarmist

I wonder if the propagandists, sorry, er ‘scientists’, at the Climate Council sit around all day thinking of these cheesy monikers?

According to head agitprop generator Will Steffen, the climate is in a foul mood. No, really:

The climate system is in a foul mood. From “angry summer” to “abnormal autumn” – we’re running out of words to describe the relentless extreme weather that Australia is experiencing as global temperatures continue to increase because of climate change. Now the exceptional heat has carried on into the autumn of 2014 in Australia.

What we are witnessing here is the final crazy rantings of a scare that is in its death throes. Nobody is listening any more and we have to scream, shout and throw tantrums to get any attention.

Yes, we have had a warm start to Autumn, but other parts of the globe are colder than average, meaning, surprisingly, that global temperatures have still barely changed since 2001. As for the climate being in a ‘foul mood’, the weather outside today is a beautiful Autumn day, thanks very much. The only ones in a foul mood are the hysterical alarmists who aren’t getting their way any more.

That won’t stop them, however. We will no doubt have Wild Winter, Stormy Spring, Sweltering Summer… all thanks to our crazy catastrophist climatologists.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

You’d think we’d never had a heatwave before…

16 January, 2014 by

Safe CO2 heatwave…

Safe CO2 heatwave… (source)

The ABC is acting as the taxpayer-funded PR agent for the privately-funded Climate Council, which itself is behaving as if it had never seen a heatwave before:

Heatwaves in Australia are becoming more frequent, hotter and are lasting longer because of climate change, a report released today by the Climate Council says.

The interim findings of the report, titled Australian Heatwaves: Hotter, Longer, Earlier and More Often, come as southern Australia swelters through a heatwave, with the temperature in Adelaide today forecast to hit 46 degrees Celsius.

The report says heat records are now happening three times more often than cold records, and that the number of hot days across Australia has “more than doubled”.

It says the duration and frequency of heatwaves increased between 1971 and 2008, and the hottest days have become hotter.

And it predicts that future heatwaves will last up to three days longer on average, they will happen more often, and the highest temperatures will rise further.

“It is clear that climate change is making heatwaves more frequent and severe,” report co-author Professor Will Steffen said in a statement.

“Heatwaves have become hotter and longer and they are starting earlier in the season.”

After notching up two consecutive days over 40C, Melbourne is on track to record its second-longest heatwave since records began in the 1830s.

Second-longest?

The longest heatwave in Melbourne was in 1908, when there were five consecutive days over 40C.

When CO2 was under 300ppm, well below the ‘safe’ 350ppm. Shurely shome mishtake?

Despite the IPCC and many other climate scientists refusing to link ‘extreme weather’ to climate change, the Climate Council and the ABC are quite happy to do so as part of a co-ordinated scare campaign:

Professor Steffen says the extreme weather patterns can be attributed to climate change, with the continued burning of fossil fuels trapping more heat in the lower atmosphere.

Professor Steffen says large population centres of south-east Australia stand out as being “at increased risk from many extreme weather events, including heatwaves”.

“The current heatwave follows on from a year of extreme heat, the hottest summer on record and the hottest year on record,” he said. (source)

But where’s the warming, Willy? Global temperatures have barely risen for over a decade. Whilst Australia is experiencing a heatwave, the US is freezing. Oh wait, that’s climate change too. Everything’s climate change.

All of the above is ably abetted, naturally, by the Bureau of Meteorology, which suddenly finds it an appropriate time to announce that it has introduced a definition of “heatwave”. Which begs the question, in a country which has been ravaged by heat waves since the dawn of time, why has it taken until now to define what one actually is? I’m surprised that the Bureau stopped at ‘severe’ in their heatwave categories, and didn’t jump the shark with ‘catastrophic’ (like the bush fires), or even ‘calamitous’, ‘apocalyptic’ or ‘cataclysmic’! My own suggestion would be ‘OMG we’re all gonna fry’…

Once again, the ABC dutifully does the Bureau’s PR work here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , , ,

BBC’s shameful climate propaganda seminar exposed

13 January, 2014 by

Activists, all of them...

Activists, all of them…

I wonder how much of the same goes on at our own publicly funded broadcaster? Probably all of it.

Whenever there is a climate change story to be covered, the ABC will rush to its favourites: David Karoly (alarmist), Matthew England (alarmist), Clive Hamilton (Green, activist), Stephan Lewandowsky (“scepics are conspiracy theorist fruit cakes”), Will Steffen (alarmist), Tim Flannery (alarmist), and the list goes on.

After lawyering up and spending thousands of licence fee payer’s cash on opposing Freedom of Information requests, the story is finally out, as the Daily Mail reports:

The BBC has spent tens of thousands of pounds over six years trying to keep secret an extraordinary ‘eco’ conference which has shaped its coverage of global warming, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The controversial seminar was run by a body set up by the BBC’s own environment analyst Roger Harrabin and funded via a £67,000 grant from the then Labour government, which hoped to see its ‘line’ on climate change and other Third World issues promoted in BBC reporting.

At the event, in 2006, green activists and scientists – one of whom believes climate change is a bigger danger than global nuclear war – lectured 28 of the Corporation’s most senior executives.

Then director of television Jana Bennett opened the seminar by telling the executives to ask themselves: ‘How do you plan and run a city that is going to be submerged?’ And she asked them to consider if climate change laboratories might offer material for a thriller.

A lobby group with close links to green campaigners, the International Broadcasting Trust (IBT), helped to arrange government funding for both the climate seminar and other BBC seminars run by Mr Harrabin – one of which was attended by then Labour Cabinet Minister Hilary Benn.

Applying for money from Mr Benn’s Department for International Development (DFID), the IBT promised Ministers the seminars would influence programme content for years to come.

The BBC began its long legal battle to keep details of the conference secret after an amateur climate blogger spotted a passing reference to it in an official report.

Tony Newbery, 69, from North Wales, asked for further disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. The BBC’s resistance to revealing anything about its funding and the names of those present led to a protracted struggle in the Information Tribunal. The BBC has admitted it has spent more than £20,000 on barristers’ fees. However, the full cost of their legal battle is understood to be much higher.

Read it all, then go and visit Tony’s blog: Harmless Sky

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,
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