Introducing the Green Climate Monster

20 January, 2011 by

Just call me GCM!

Just happens to have the same initials as general circulation models – that’s pure coincidence of course. Anyway, I’d like to introduce this little fella to you (see photo). After many minutes of painstaking research, Australian Climate Madness has decreed that all unusual or severe weather events of whatever nature, anywhere in the world, are solely the mischievous work of the Green Climate Monster (he gets bored easily). The GCM is responsible for the shrinking Arctic ice sheet, the growing Antarctic Ice sheet, advancing glaciers, retreating glaciers, heatwaves, cold spells, mountains of snow, absence of snow, droughts, floods, hurricanes, absence of hurricanes, very windy days, calm days, sunny days, cloudy days, foggy days, El Niño and his twin sister, the seasons, thunderstorms, absence of thunderstorms, excess rainfall, less rainfall, extinction of frogs, discovery of new frogs, fewer polar bears, more polar bears, everything else listed at the Warmlist, and plenty more besides.

Now I know what you’re thinking. That’s totally ridiculous. Everyone knows that the GCM doesn’t exist, to which I would respond: disprove the existence of my little green friend. The GCM causes everything. Nothing you mention can possibly NOT be as a result of the GCM’s little games – he has a very commendable work ethic – I don’t know how he does it, to be honest. So any weather or climate phenomenon you care to mention results, either wholly or in part, from the wayward actions of the GCM.

To which you will inevitably respond: you’re crazy, Joe – check yourself into the local loony bin – you need serious medication, pal.

But simply replace my imaginary friend with “climate change” and that’s the situation we find ourselves in today. Climate change causes everything. Nothing can disprove climate change. Whatever happens, whether it be a long drought in Australia that “experts” thought would never end, to tragic floods in Queensland and Victoria, climate change is to blame – we know that because politicians, climate scientists and the mainstream media tell us.

The problem with this is that it becomes an unfalsifiable hypothesis, and therefore inherently unscientific. Ask a climate scientist what weather pattern or climate signal would show anthropogenic climate change were not happening, and they wouldn’t be able to give you an answer.

So you will see a lot of the Green Climate Monster in the future. Whenever, something is blamed on climate change, the GCM will pop up on this blog – because we know who’s really behind it, don’t we?

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UK madness: "greenest government ever"

20 January, 2011 by

William Hague the Younger

And they say it as if it’s something to be proud of! Personally, I wouldn’t be proud of associating myself with an anti-human Marxist ideology, which would demolish our hard-won Western standards of living, with everyone sitting in the dark because the reliable coal- and gas-fired power stations have been abandoned, and the windmills are standing becalmed – a monument to environmental stupidity, with people shivering in their homes, unable to afford to pay their energy bills.

And that isn’t just hyperbole, the UK has committed itself to cutting its emissions by some astronomical figure like 80% by 2050, so the lights going off is a real possibility.

But UK Foreign Minister William Hague, who I remember making a cringe-making speech at a Tory conference in the 1980s as a precocious teenager (see photo), and who is visiting Australia at the moment, thinks that being the greenest government ever is something to aspire to:

The most senior minister from the Conservative-led British coalition Government to visit Australia will today lay out his nation’s ambitious plan to combat climate change, as debate continues over whether global warming has contributed to devastating floods in several states. [Have to drop that in of course, this is the Canberra Times, after all – Ed]

Foreign Affairs Minister William Hague will deliver two speeches in Sydney where he will promote British Prime Minister David Cameron’s vision for his coalition administration to be the “greenest government ever”.

In contrast, the Federal Government’s policy is unclear and Prime Minister Julia Gillard is waiting for a committee to recommend whether to proceed with an emissions trading scheme or adopt a carbon tax.

That’s nonsense. The Federal government’s policy IS clear – a price on carbon during this parliament – and equally idiotic as the UK’s policy.

The communique issued after the talks said that both governments were committed to ”promoting swift action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” at home and overseas.

”Action on climate change is urgent and cannot wait for the signature of an international treaty,” it said. (source)

And it will do nothing for the climate. Pointless environmental tokenism at its worst.

UPDATE: Irony of ironies, the European carbon market (of which the UK is a part) has had to be suspended because of fears of yet another massive fraud (read here). Why can’t Julia and her hopeless Labor government see what’s coming? They don’t need a crystal ball, just look at the UK.

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ACM on Melbourne's MTR 1377 with Luke Grant – tonight

19 January, 2011 by

MTR 1377

Tune in to Luke Grant’s show on Melbourne Talk Radio (MTR 1377) to hear a chat with Simon about the floods and Victorian Governor David de Kretser’s comments on climate change. If you’re in Melbourne, do tune in from 8pm (not sure when it’s going out yet), or you can listen online at:

www.mtr1377.com.au

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Victorian governor blames climate change for floods

19 January, 2011 by

Clueless

I mean what else can it be? Does the governor understand the concept of geological time? Does he understand that records only go back 150 years? Does he appreciate that events like this have gone on, unobserved, for thousands of years? Does he understand that the role of governor is above political point scoring? Clearly the answer is no to all of these questions, especially the last, where following Quentin Bryce’s lead, he thinks he can say what he likes. But David de Kretser has form for this. A climate activist, he advocated a carbon tax back in 2009 to “fight global warming” (see here). So it’s little surprise that he, like the odious Bob Brown, rushes to blame climate change for the Victorian floods:

“I’m sorry, I’m one of these believers in climate change I’m afraid and if its [sic] doesn’t get that message out I don’t think its going to go away,’‘ Prof de Kretser told 3AW yesterday. [In other words, “I’m using these events to cynically push my own political agenda” – Ed]

“There’s too many of these events [Too many for you? Going to start controlling nature now, are you? – Ed], not only in Australia but throughout the whole world that are happening now, which everyone says this week (is a) one in 100, one in 200 years (event) but they are happening pretty much more frequently now.”

The Governor, seeming to sense his statement would be controversial, made the comments in relation to both the recent floods and the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires.

Government House staff said he was not be available yesterday for any further comment on his position. (source)

That’s the spirit, make controversial statements with no basis whatsover and then hole up in the residence and refuse to face the criticism. But at least Ted Baillieu has called him out:

Premier Ted Baillieu later disagreed with the Governor’s linking of the floods to climate change. ”I don’t think we are in any position to make a comment on that, frankly,” he told The Age.

He said he had been told yesterday that Melbourne Water was now saying Victorians should expect 30 per cent more rainfall in the next 10 years.

”You’ve only got to go back 12 months ago and they were saying Victorians should expect 30 per cent less,” Mr Baillieu said. (source)

More rain, less rain, more drought, less drought, more hurricanes, fewer hurricanes, stronger hurricanes, weaker hurricanes, more heat, more cold – whatever – it’s all climate change.

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Wivenhoe role in Brisbane floods

18 January, 2011 by

Spillway at Wivenhoe

An article in The Australian today highlights the role of the Wivenhoe Dam in the flooding that affected Brisbane:

The official records from SEQWater show that, at 6am on Friday, January 7, Wivenhoe Dam, Brisbane’s insurance policy to protect the city and surrounding suburbs from a massive rainfall and flood event, was at about 106 per cent capacity. This means that Wivenhoe had filled to 100 per cent of its capacity for water supply with a total 1.15 million megalitres, and it was 6 per cent into its additional 1.45ML of storage for flood mitigation.

On Saturday, January 8, it is understood to have let about 100,000ML go; on Sunday, when Mr Goodwin’s family was there, a further 116,000ML were released.

By 9am on Monday, the levels in the dam had soared to just over 148 per cent, and it was reported that managers at the dam had “scrambled”.

That afternoon, the extreme rainfall over Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley unleashed a maelstrom that the Bureau of Meteorology had not predicted. While the run-off from this event did not fall into Wivenhoe’s catchment of about 7000 sq km, the dam’s operators were caught by surprise and released 172,000ML as the capacity went past 150 per cent.

Through Tuesday, as Wivenhoe continued to rise past 175 per cent and then 190 per cent, the situation was becoming critical as the available buffer for more rain had been almost fully taken up. Nobody wanted the dam to go to 200 per cent, and the theoretical maximum of 225 per cent needed to be avoided at all costs.

One of the crucial questions that will be asked in a commission of inquiry, called late yesterday by Premier Anna Bligh, is whether the releases from the flood storage compartment of a little over 200,000ML on the weekend were too little, too late, necessitating a huge outpouring to get levels down quickly.

The operators of the dam gave the order on Tuesday, cranking up the release to a staggering peak rate of 645,000ML a day. At that point the Brisbane River flood was not a case of if but when: the computer modelling showed major flooding from this Wivenhoe discharge was inevitable and would peak in the 36 hours the water would take to reach the city gauge.

The release from Wivenhoe at a peak rate of 645,000ML a day represented up to 30 per cent of the dam’s total capacity. Nobody was under any misapprehension about the consequences. It was this release from Wivenhoe that represented about 80 per cent and perhaps more of the volume in the Brisbane River.

A rainfall event that could have been comfortably managed by the dam if its flood compartment had been lower had turned into a major flood that would devastate thousands of homes. (source)

So the question to be asked is, was it an oversight not to release water earlier, and at a more controlled rate, in anticipation of the floods, or was it to preserve water in the dam due to some diktat from the climate change department? Hopefully the inquiry will answer that question.

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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.

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Bob Brown: cynical, insensitive opportunist

17 January, 2011 by

Bunch of cynical ecotards

“Never let a good crisis go to waste” could have been written for Bob Brown. No depths are too low for the Greens’ leader, exposing his “party” as a bunch of hysterical ecotards, more concerned with using the Queensland floods to push their extremist environmental agenda than for the suffering of so many people as a result of this tragedy. Fortunately, he has been criticised for his comments by all sides:

GREENS leader Bob Brown is facing mounting condemnation after calling on coal companies to foot the bill for the Queensland flood recovery.

Senator Brown said coal companies, as major climate change contributors, should pay a 40 per cent resources super profits tax to pay for the clean-up.

Minerals Council of Australia deputy chief Brendan Pearson accused Senator Brown of “rank opportunism”, unworthy of a serious political leader.

And Australian Coal Association director Ralph Hillman said domestically-mined coal made a tiny contribution to global carbon emissions.

Liberal Senator Eric Abetz said the Greens leader should apologise for his “insensitive” comments.

“Senator Brown’s comments expose the Greens and his leadership as shallow and cynical; willing to peddle political propaganda in the face of a natural disaster,” Senator Abetz said. (source)

The Greens are hardly worthy of the title “political party”, just a rag-tag bunch of Marxist environmental fruitcakes.

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Commandments for warmists

16 January, 2011 by

Thou shalt not… call us deniers

Busy weekend, so posting is a little sparse. However, Willis Eschenbach’s post on WUWT in response to Kevin Trenberth’s ludicrous statement that the burden of proof in climate science should be reversed (in other words it should be for the sceptics to prove little or no human influence rather than the other way round – climate madness of the week) contained a wonderful set of recommendations for climate scientists, which I have renamed The Commandments. There’s way more at WUWT, but here they are in all their glory:

You want to regain the trust of the public, for yourself and for climate science? It won’t be easy, but it can be done. Here’s my shortlist of recommendations for you and other mainstream climate scientists:

•  Stop trying to sell the idea that the science is settled. Climate science is a new science, we don’t even have agreement on whether clouds warm or cool the planet, we don’t know if there are thermostatic interactions that tend to maintain some temperature in preference to others. Or as you wrote to Tom Wigley, Dr. T,

“How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter.  We are not close to balancing the energy budget.  The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not!  It is a travesty!” [SOURCE: email 1255550975]

Curious. You state strongly to your friend that we’re not close to knowing where the energy is going or to balancing the energy budget, yet you say in public that we know enough to take the most extraordinary step of reversing the null hypothesis … how does that work again?

At this point, there’s not much about climate science that is “unequivocal” except that the climate is always changing.

•  Don’t try to change the rules of the game in mid-stream. It makes you look desperate, whether you are or not.

•  Stop calling people “deniers”, my goodness, after multiple requests that’s just common courtesy and decency, where are your manners? It makes you look surly and uncivilized, whether you are or not.

•  Stop avoiding public discussion and debate of your work. You are asking us to spend billions of dollars based on your conclusions. If you won’t bother to defend those conclusions, don’t bother us with them. Refusing to publicly defend your billion dollar claims make it look like you can’t defend them, whether you can or not.

•  Stop secretly moving the pea under the walnut shells. You obviously think we are blind, you also clearly believe we wouldn’t remember that you said we have a poor understanding of the climate system. Disabuse yourself of the idea that you are dealing with fools or idiots, and do it immediately. As I have found to my cost, exposing my scientific claims to the cruel basilisk gaze of the internet is like playing chess with Deep Blue … individual processors have different abilities, but overall any faults in my ideas will certainly be exposed. Too many people looking at my ideas from too many sides for much to slip through. Trying anything but absolute honesty on the collective memory and wisdom of the internet makes you look like both a fool and con man, whether you are one or not.

•  Write scientific papers that don’t center around words like “possibly” or “conceivably” or “might”. Yes, possibly all of the water molecules in my glass of water might be heading upwards at the same instant, and I could conceivably win the Mega-Ball lottery, and I might still play third base for the New York Yankees, but that is idle speculation that has no place in scientific inquiry. Give us facts, give us uncertainties, but spare us the stuff like “This raises the possibility that by 2050, this could lead to the total dissolution of all inter-atomic bonds …”. Yeah, I suppose it could. So what, should I buy a lottery ticket?

• Stop lauding the pathetic purveyors of failed prophecies. Perhaps you climate guys haven’t noticed, but Paul Ehrlich was not a visionary genius. He was a failure whose only exceptional talent is the making of apocalyptic forecasts that didn’t come true. In any business he would not have lasted one minute past the cratering collapse of his first ridiculous forecast of widespread food riots and worldwide deaths from global famine in the 1980s … but in academia, despite repeating his initial “We’re all gonna crash and burn, end of the world coming up soon, you betcha” prognostication method several more times with no corresponding crashing burning or ending, he’s still a professor at Stanford. Now that’s understandable under tenure rules, you can’t fire him for being a serially unsuccessful doomcaster. But he also appears to be one of your senior AGW thinkers and public representatives, which is totally incomprehensible to me.

His string of predicted global catastrophes that never came anywhere near true was only matched by the inimitable collapses of the prophecies of his wife Anne, and of his cohorts John Holdren and the late Stephen Schneider. I fear we’ll never see their like again, a fearsome foursome who between them never made one single prediction that actually came to pass. Stop using them as your spokesmodels, it doesn’t increase confidence in your claims.

•  Enough with the scary scenarios, already. You’ve done the Chicken Little thing to death, give it a rest, it is sooo last century. It makes you look both out-of-date and hysterical whether you are or not.

•  Speak out against scientific malfeasance whenever and wherever you see it. This is critical to the restoration of trust. I’m sick of watching climate scientists doing backflips to avoid saying to Lonnie Thompson “Hey, idiot, archive all of your data, you’re ruining all of our reputations!”. The overwhelming silence of mainstream AGW scientists on these matters is one of the (unfortunately numerous) reasons that the public doesn’t trust climate scientists, and justifiably so. You absolutely must clean up your own house to restore public trust, no one else can do it. Speak up. We can’t hear you.

•  Stop re-asserting the innocence of you and your friends. It makes you all look guilty, whether you are or not … and since the CRU emails unequivocally favor the “guilty” possibility, it makes you look unapologetic as well as guilty. Whether you are or not.

•  STOP HIDING THINGS!!! Give your most private data and your most top-secret computer codes directly to your worst enemies and see if they can poke holes in your ideas. If they can’t, then you’re home free. That is true science, not hiding your data and gaming the IPCC rules to your advantage.

•  Admit the true uncertainties. The mis-treatment of uncertainty in the IPCC reports, and the underestimation of true uncertainty in climate science in general, is a scandal.

•  Scrap the IPCC. It has run its race. Do you truly think that whatever comes out of the next IPCC report will make the slightest difference to the debate? You’ve had four IPCC reports in a row, each one more alarmist than the previous one. You’ve had every environmental organization shilling for you. You’ve had billions of dollars in support, Al Gore alone spent $300 million on advertising and advocacy. You’ve had 25 years to make your case, with huge resources and supercomputers and entire governments on your side, and you are still losing the public debate … after all of that, do you really think another IPCC report will change anything?

Brilliantly put, and it’s all anyone could ask.

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Daily Bayonet GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

14 January, 2011 by

Skewering the clueless

As always, a great read!

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Queensland floods: a local's perspective

13 January, 2011 by

Regular ACM contributor Bruce (brc) wrote a lengthy comment on an earlier item which I believe rightly deserves a post of its own. I would like to thank Bruce for his thorough and down to earth assessment of the current Queensland floods which commentators on all sides would do well to imitate:

Look, as a 3rd generation lifelong South East Queensland (“SEQ”) resident, all this
 world wide attention and theories are starting to irk me as talking
 heads start to spout off things of which they appear to have little
 understanding. SEQ (and Queensland in general) is periodically subject to 
intense widespread rain events: 1893, 1974, 2011. They happen. Even
 smaller intense rain events occur at least once a decade. The 1893 
floods were larger, and peaked on 3 separate occasions. Does anyone
 care to tell me how AGW could have done that, given that horseback 
was the primary transportation method at the time, and electricity
 was something played with in laboratories?

If anything, the lower 
levels in 1974 and 2011 is proof that AGW makes the flooding less 
worse (I say with tongue in cheek). There’s also a popular meme 
going around (James Delingpole and Andrew Bolt) that somehow green 
interfering caused the death and destruction. Nothing could be 
further from the truth. And believe me, I love a good outing of
 ridiculous green policy as much as the next person.

Here are the facts:

  • The 
majority of loss of life was caused by flash-flooding in and around
 Toowoomba (700m above sea level) and the Lockyer valley below the 
Toowoomba range. The streams that caused the devastation in
 Toowoomba are normally babbling brooks one can leap with a vigorous 
jump. While some warning may have helped, many deaths were caused 
by people undertaking risky actions like trying to drive across 
flooded bridges.
  • The scrapped Traveston Crossing dam project on 
the Mary river would not have saved Gympie from flooding. It would
 have been 100% full (like every other dam in the region) prior to 
the large rain events – it has been raining steadily for two 
months. In any case, it was the residents of Gympie that campaigned 
the most against the dam. Not because of lungfish (the figleaf that
 the environment minister used) but because it was a bad idea. A 
flat alluvial sandy plain is not the ideal location for a dam. It
 would have been wide and shallow on porous soil. And it would have 
subsumed a huge area of productive farmland. It was correct for the
 dam to be scrapped, and many engineers publicly stated this. That 
it was scrapped under environmental reasons was just the out for an 
embarrassed Federal government saddled with the plans after the 
former premier announced it to save his political hide (Brisbane
 was under severe water restrictions at the time) but then scarpered
 anyway. It was chosen because the area had never, and would never, 
vote for Labor anyway, so it was the best place to put it, safely
away from Brisbane voters. It would have been full, and would not
 have saved Gympie from flooding. And the townspeople in Gympie are 
used to flooding anyway, and go about moving out of the way with a 
cheery disposition.
  • Wivenhoe dam – conceived and built after the 
1974 floods – has done a very good job in extremely difficult
 circumstances. It has managed to keep the peak level of floods 
1m lower than predicted, by delicately balancing the inflows and
 outflows and timing with the low tide in the Brisbane river. It was 
already at 150% (and releasing continually, as it has been for
 months) when this large rainfall event hit. SEQ Water are to be 
commended with the way they handled this, with the Dam balanced 
within 1m of the peak level allowable before dam-protection levees
 give way to protect the wall (with devastating consequences for 
those downstream).

It’s difficult for people who don’t live in 
Queensland to understand the volumes of water we’re talking about
 here. This is not some drizzling Victorian rain or misty English 
weather. This is a proper, tropical summer monsoon rainfall a bit
 further south than it normally is. The written history of Queensland is
 only about 200 years long, but it is peppered with tales of huge
 floods that astound new observers. People see the 1974 markers on
 buildings around Brisbane and think it can’t possibly have 
happened. The puny infrastructure put in the way of these periodic 
deluges is nothing compared with the water volumes. It will happen 
again, at least once per lifetime of the average person. There’s 
nothing that can be done. After all, it’s just weather.

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