French earthworms discovered on vacation in Ireland

26 July, 2012 by

Lovely day for a Guinness…

Yes, it’s time for the climate change (non-) story of the week. Worms are on the move, apparently. Fed up with their life in France (and let’s face it, who wouldn’t be?), worms are moving to Dublin. And it’s all due to “climate change”, or perhaps, the urban heat island effect? Or maybe they just prefer Guinness to Grenache:

Scientists have discovered a thriving population of Mediterranean earthworms in an urban farm in Dublin, Ireland.

The findings by University College Dublin scientists published in the journal Biology Letters suggest that rising soil temperatures due to climate change may be extending the geographical habitat range of the earthworm Prosellodrilus amplisetosus.

“Soil decomposer species including earthworms are frequently introduced into non-native soils by human activities like the transportation of nursery plants or live fish bait,” says Dr Olaf Schmidt from the UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science, and the Earth Institute, University College Dublin, one of the authors of the report.

“There have been a few recordings of the earthworm P. amplisetosus outside of its native range in the Aquitaine region of south-western France, but now we have discovered a successfully thriving population in Ireland, about 1,000 km north of its native habitat.”

Urban farms have higher temperatures than rural farms so the scientists suggest that this may have helped P. amplisetosusto becomeestablished in this new location. The mean yearly air temperature in Aquitaine in south-western France is about 3 degrees higher than in Dublin, Ireland.

The finding brings to 27 the total number of known earthworm species living in Irish soils. (source)

The last piece of information very handy for that old favourite of the trivia night, “How many species of earthworm live in Irish soils?” Now you’ll never be stuck for an answer.

Top o’ the mornin’ to yer…!

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Michael Mann threatens legal action over Steyn comment

25 July, 2012 by

Climategate to be judicially considered?

If this goes the distance, it will certainly be worth following very closely.

Mark Steyn, writing at the National Review (backup WebCite link here), made a number of comments about Michael Mann regarding the Hockey Stick, and Mann has responded with a three-page lawyers’ letter threatening defamation proceedings (see here: page 1, page 2, page 3 – originally published on Mann’s Facebook page, reproduced here for ease of reference).

The interesting point here is that much of the letter focusses on the various investigations into Climategate as evidence that there was no wrongdoing, which inevitably means that if this matter were ever to reach court, not only would the investigations come under close scrutiny, but also the Climategate emails themselves. This would therefore be the first opportunity for an examination of the materials in a proper judicial environment.

Andrew Montford’s report (at the UK GWPF – PDF) into four of those investigations found that to a greater or lesser degree, they were “rushed, cursory and largely unpersuasive”.

In respect of the University of East Anglia investigations, Mann’s letter states that the Oxburgh enquiry (the Scientific Assessment Panel) found:

“No evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit”

and in respect of the second UEA investigation (the Independent Climate Change Email Review), that

“the scientists’ rigour and honesty are not in doubt.”

Montford, on the other hand, claims in respect of the UEA reports that they:

“avoided key questions and failed to probe some of the most serious allegations. Terms of reference were either vague or non-existent. Insufficient consideration in the choice of panel members led to a failure to ensure balance and independence.”

In respect of the UK Parliamentary Inquiry, Mann claims:

“criticisms of the Climatic Research Unit were misplaced and that its actions ‘were in line with common practice in the climate science community’.”

Montford, on the other hand, states:

“The half-day hearing by the Science and Technology Select Committee was curtailed by the impending election. Key allegations were not examined and CRU staff were cleared of some allegations without evidence. The main CRU critics were not invited to give oral evidence and much of their written evidence was not taken into consideration.”

In respect of the Penn State inquiry, Mann states that it found:

“there is no substance to the allegations against Dr Michael E Mann.”

Montford, on the other hand, quotes from an article in The Atlantic (worth reading in full) which looked in detail at the investigation:

“The [Penn State] report…says, in effect, that Mann is a distinguished scholar, a successful raiser of research funding, a man admired by his peers – so any allegation of academic impropriety must be false…

Mann is asked if the allegations (well, one them) are true, and says no. His record is swooned over. Verdict: case dismissed with apologies that Mann has been put to such trouble.”

The other three inquiries cited (by the US Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Commerce and National Science Foundation) all reached similar conclusions. How rigorously were those inquiries carried out? At this stage, we don’t know.

But it’s hardly confidence inspiring. Perhaps the only way we will ever see allegations properly tested will be in front of a court of law, which may, thanks to Mann’s threat, actually happen.

I wonder if this has been fully thought through? Commentators are raising the point that a requirement to produce documents arising from legal proceedings would be far harder to avoid than simple FOI requests, and the disclosure obligations would mean that many more documents may become public as a result. It may also confirm some of the suspicions raised in Montford’s report, namely that the inquiries were superficial at best.

It looks like opening a can of worms…

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No carbon tax bounce for Gillard

24 July, 2012 by

Is Gillard Australia’s worst PM ever?

The vultures are circling. Labor politicians are openly discussing the need for drastic action. Labor primary vote has sunk to 28%. And the carbon tax backflip has a lot to do with it, that and Labor’s desperate agreement with the extremist Greens to form a minority government:

A LABOR senator says today’s disastrous Newspoll should be a “clarion call” to the party to make dramatic changes or face a decade in the political wilderness.

Rudd supporter Mark Bishop said the poll, revealing a three point slump in Labor’s primary vote to 28 per cent, should be a wake-up call to the party to respond to the will of voters.

While stopping short of calling for Julia Gillard to stand down, the West Australian senator said it was clear there was now no prospect of a recovery under current circumstances.

“It is a very, very poor result,” Senator Bishop said.

“It can only be interpreted as a clarion call to Labor to get its house in order and be responsive to the now-firmly established views of the Australian community.

“We’ve now had almost 12 months of polls hanging around 30 per cent, sometimes a couple of points below, sometimes above.

“That pattern is now established. It won’t change. The Australian community are demanding change at a range of levels within the government, and it’s time for the government to heed that, otherwise the outcome will be the destruction not only of the government, but of the labour movement for the next 10 years.”

Despite showering middle Australia with billions of dollars in handouts, the party’s primary vote has fallen below 30 per cent for the first time in three months.

Labor trails the Coalition 44 to 56 on a two-party preferred basis.

Ms Gillard said she wasn’t interested in opinion polls.

“Government is about governing,” she told reporters in Sydney today. (source)

LOL. She can only keep up that kind of BS for so long…

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UN carbon price crash: now just 1/7th Australian price

19 July, 2012 by

The Australian economy…

Australia’s “world leading” carbon price of AU$23 per tonne is now nearly seven times the price of UN-backed carbon credits, which yesterday fell to a new low:

Prices for UN-backed carbon credits sank to a record low in morning trading on Wednesday after doubts emerged about European Commission plans to prop up the bloc’s ailing emissions trading market.

Benchmark prices for certified emission reduction credits fell as much as 12.9 per cent from the previous day to a record low of €2.86 in early trading – a decline of 31 per cent from the start of July.

Allowances traded in the European Union’s emissions trading system, which the CER credits normally track, fell to a low of €6.80, down 11.5 per cent on the day and their lowest point since mid-June, before recovering to €7.18 later in the day.

Carbon prices have fallen to fresh lows at several points over the past nine months as a glut in the supply of EU credits has been exacerbated by sagging demand due to weak European economic conditions.

Some analysts believe carbon credits need to cost as much as €50 to drive the low-carbon investment that is a central plank of UN policy, so some EU countries, including Denmark and the UK, have been pushing for a plan to bolster the market. Others, such as Poland, which generates about 90 per cent of its electricity from carbon-intensive coal plants, have strongly opposed such moves. (source)

That’s the spirit, Julia – sacrifice the Australian economy on the UN’s environmental altar, right?

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Carbon tax compensation lost in gaming machines

18 July, 2012 by

Tragic

This would be funny if it weren’t so tragic:

Pokies [that’s ocker Aussie slang for gaming machines – Ed] have swallowed a chunk of the federal government’s carbon tax compensation, new figures suggest.

Revealed today by The Australian Financial Review, the figures show handouts to low-income earners under the scheme have led to surges in gaming revenues from pubs and clubs in Queensland and Victoria.

They show that there was a 7 per cent rise in poker machine revenues in Queensland in May when the government’s first clean energy payment was made to eligible people.

And the following month poker machine revenue rose by almost 12 per cent in the state on a year-by-year basis. (source)

Just another unintended consequence of old fashioned socialist interventionism.

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Bureau: warmer times for Australia… again

18 July, 2012 by

Click to enlarge

The Bureau of Meteorology has just released its latest seasonal outlooks, and it is projecting a very high chance of a warmer than normal late Winter and early Spring over much of Australia:

The national outlook averaged over August to October 2012 shows the following:

  • warmer days are more likely over most of Australia, except the northern tropics
  • warmer nights are more likely over most of Australia, except for the far tropical north

This outlook is predominantly a result of warmer than normal waters in the Indian Ocean; emerging warmer than normal Pacific waters have had a lesser impact. (source)

The BoM is predicting 75-80% chance of this over much of the continent.

If you search the Seasonal Outlook archive for “cool” or “cooler” you get 14 results. If you search for “warm” or “warmer” you get over 100. The Bureau is clearly doing its bit to prop up the Cause, but I wonder how many of those projections were actually anywhere near right? Someone with the time should go through them and compare with the actual records (also available on the BoM website).

For example, in September 2011, the Bureau claimed that the October to December months would be, you guessed it, predominantly warmer, with Brisbane and Sydney looking at a 50-55% chance of exceeding the median maximum temperature. What actually happened?

And the same for December to February, where Warwick Hughes noted:

This summer has been cooler than average across vast areas of Australia. Which has been a surprise to the BoM.

The BoM 3 month summer temperature outlooks were issued in November – actual daytime temperature anomalies were cooler over vastly more area of Australia than the BoM predicted. The actual warmth along the Perth to Pilbara coast and Sth Aust & Vic turned out to be miniscule compared to the BoM predictions. Ditto for the Far North which turned out near average. The BoM scores some marks for their Eastern and Central Australian cool predict but all of their hot predictions turned out cooler and smaller.

Let’s see how they fare with this one… check back in October.

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'Man-made' global warming

17 July, 2012 by

UPDATE: Make that FOUR interesting articles today: Watts Up reports that a new paper attributes half the global warming signal in the last century to “data homogenisation” – that’s plain old fudging to you and me. And in 2/3 of the stations, the process resulted in a temperature increase. What a surprise! Not. Read it all.

I am as prepared as anyone to accept that we are causing some warming of the climate. However, the precise amount and whether it’s a problem is the key issue.

The surface temperature data sets all show a fairly marked recent warming (far more than the satellite record), but how much of that warming is due to changes in the climate, and how much is due to, say, urbanisation, or data “homogenisation”? Homogenisation is a polite way of saying “fudging”, by the way. Excuses to “adjust” raw data for a variety of reasons, some legit, some less so – changing instrumentation, location etc etc.

Despite the fact that you would expect surface temperatures to have generally increased with population and urbanisation, and therefore any adjustments should cool the more recent records to compensate, the bizarre thing is that the data sets appear to be “cooling the past”, to make the present appear warmer… huh?

Three interesting articles today from various blogs concern the surface temperature record. Firstly we have Steven Goddard on the US Historical Climate Network (USHCN):

The animation below shows how USHCN turns a measured strong cooling trend since 1930, into a strong computer generated warming trend.

USHCN2 uses a three step process to cool the past and warm the present. Going from the actual measured daily data to “raw monthly” reduces the decline. The TOBS adjustment flips the trend from cooling to warming, and then a final mysterious adjustment creates a strong warming trend.

Whatever the final mysterious adjustment is, it has to include UHI – which would do the exact opposite of what we are seeing.

(click to see animation)

Watch those older temperatures plummet inside Tom Karl and James Hansen’s computer games, which are used to influence critical US government policy decisions.

They cool the 1930s by 1.3 degrees, and then claim that the past decade has been the warmest by a few tenths of a degree. Enron accountants would be proud of such fine data presentation. (source)

See? Man-made global warming! Then we have Jo Nova on the Bureau of Meteorology, which hasn’t yet worked out a rather fundamental rule of temperature recording:

In total, the ACORN-SAT database released in March displays about 1,000 (one thousand) violations of [the] simple rule that for any day

The Maximum Temperature must be greater than the Minimum Temperature.

This is a blindingly obvious type of error which should not have escaped quality control. It throws serious doubt on the whole ACORN-SAT project. In my opinion, these violations indicate that the entire ACORN-SAT database is suspect, and should be withdrawn for further testing. (source)

Hmm. And finally, over the ditch in New Zealand, the National Institute for Atmospheric and Water Research (NIWA) is in court today faced with a challenge that its temperature record is also not so ‘hot’ (heh):

A climate change group has taken the National Institute for Atmospheric and Water Research (NIWA) to court over what they say are inaccurate temperature recordings.

The New Zealand Climate Education Trust – a branch of the NZ Climate Science Coalition – are challenging NIWA figures which show a rise in temperatures in New Zealand of 1degC over the past 100 years.

This figure is significantly higher than global warming figures around the world and the trust is questioning how NIWA calculated the figures and whether they are accurate.

It believes there has either been no warming or a trivial warming of around 0.2degC.

The group’s lawyer Terry Sissons told the High Court at Auckland today that  NIWA could have obtained inaccurate New Zealand average temperatures due to ‘sudden site relocations’ and by regularly changing temperature gauging instruments.

“We’re not saying that climatic changes are not happening but let’s at least ensure the evidence gathered for the benefit of New Zealanders is accurate and is done properly,” Sissons said. (source)

So in other words I think we have a ‘consensus’, ladies and gentlemen: surface temperature records are a crock the world over.

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Let's make sure Gillard has to answer these questions

16 July, 2012 by

Hang out with the PM? No thanks…

The OurSay website is inviting us to “hang out with the Prime Minister” – nothing I could think of could possibly be worse, but anyway – and you have the chance to vote for the three questions she will be asked [Update: link fixed to show most popular questions first]. You may recall that ACM’s question on OurSay’s The Climate Agenda reached third place and therefore received a full page article in Fairfax – that must have hurt.

Let’s see if we can make our hopeless PM squirm, shall we?

The top two questions as it stands are as follows:

“By how much, measured in thousandths of degrees Celsius, will the Earth’s temperature be reduced through the carbon tax?”

(0.0035C apparently), and:

“You said that you wouldn’t impose a price on CO2 until you had a deep and lasting consensus from the Australian people – When did you receive that consensus? and where is that consensus at now?”

It’s nowhere to be seen. And the public are abandoning you in droves…

Register at Our Say and you have 8 votes. Use them as you see fit – you have just over three days left.

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Freedom of Information: request for donations

15 July, 2012 by

Karoly the activist*

UPDATE: Very many thanks to all of you who have made donations so far (you know who you are) – we now have enough to cover the present FOI expenses. However, if you haven’t donated yet, please consider doing so anyway to help cover some of the ongoing costs of hosting this site (which exceed US$150 per month). We’re still waiting for that Big Oil cheque to arrive. Must have got lost in the post… Perhaps I should try and get some Big Green funding instead – that seems a great deal more bountiful.

I don’t normally request donations, but in this case I am making an exception, so I hope you will forgive me in advance. Firstly a bit of background.

Since my ANU Freedom of Information request was covered by The Australian (see here for full details), I have submitted a further request to The University of Melbourne (or the “Parkville Asylum” as it is known). The request is again relating to death threat emails, this time in respect of Prof David Karoly and one of his colleagues.

Prof Karoly is a Review Editor for the IPCC’s Assessment Report 5 (see here – large PDF) and also on the science advisory panel for the WWF’s Climate Witness project. Apparently, being closely involved with an environmental activist organisation like the WWF does not present Karoly with any conflict of interest, whereas clearly any “denier” who earns one cent from a sceptic think tank is hopelessly compromised. Double standards are a wonderful thing.

[UPDATE: Karoly is also happy to be associated with other shrill environmental advocacy groups, like the naive Australian Youth Climate Coalition, presenting a video on “the science” here. Now we all know that if a geologist has even the most tenuous association with a fossil fuel company, he is immediately ostracised and never trusted or listened to again. So applying those same standards to Karoly himself, presumably we should never trust him or listen to another word he says either, right? No, wait…]

He is well known to readers of this blog as being one of the Gillard government’s climate advisors and a climate alarmist (see here for a recent example). Karoly was one of the climate scientists interviewed in the original Canberra Times article relating to death threats, and a month later gave a lengthy interview to The Age in which he recycles the tired old arguments yet again:

More broadly, however, [Karoly] notes an organised distribution of emails against mainstream climate change scientists.

He points to “so-called think tanks” established by climate change sceptics, whose claims are cited widely by conservative industry lobby groups in a bid to convince legislators that climate change science is full of unknowns.

He highlights the recent establishment of a website by a group called the Galileo Movement. “This site has [ Sydney broadcaster] Alan Jones as the patron and a list of the usual climate change sceptics as their scientific advisers.”

The journalist didn’t ask him about the WWF, sadly, and Karoly clearly has no awareness of the issues that climate science faces with regard to its credibility, given Climategate and the duff predictions of people like Tim Flannery (the Climate Commissioner).

Unfortunately, it seems climate scientists love to play the role of victim. The death threats story was perfect, as it allowed them to portray themselves as innocent bystanders targeted by evil “deniers” in the pay of big oil. And they can’t stop doing it.

You may recall the Gergis et al paper, which was withdrawn after blogger Steve McIntyre found flaws in its calculations? Karoly politely wrote to McIntyre about the issue, but once the dust had settled, was back in his old ad hom ways, accusing McIntyre in a book review of  “promulgating misinformation” (the original review by Karoly has been removed, but the Google cache still shows it, and I have preserved it in PDF here).

When asked by McIntyre to provide examples of such activities, instead of responding, Karoly retreats to the cosseted environment of Un-Skeptical Pseudo-Science to resume his victimhood, protesting in the comments:

 In Australia, I have just received a threat of legal action from Steve McIntyre in Canada and am currently dealing with 6 different FOI requests.

There was no threat of legal action, just a “please explain” – but it’s so much better for The Cause if you don the mantle of victimhood and claim you’re under threat of legal action. Read Steve’s post over at Climate Audit here.

Also, one of those FOI requests was mine – I was going to let it drop, but seeing the  manner in which Karoly has reacted to McIntyre, I’m going ahead with it. So I am therefore asking if you would be so kind as to make a donation.

It is likely to be several hundred dollars, so if you are able to contribute anything (every single dollar helps) I would be personally very grateful. Please mark your donation “FoI” so that it can be allocated specifically to this project rather than towards general operating costs.

Click the Donate button in the Big Oil Tip Jar in the left sidebar to send funds via PayPal.

Thank you all in advance.

*Karoly’s t-shirt reads “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” – the slogan of the radical Left “Weather Underground” movement – see here. Again, it’s perfectly fine for Karoly to be an activist! 

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Brendan O'Neill on 'extreme weather' hysteria

14 July, 2012 by

Brendan O’Neill

You can bet the farm that if there’s some noteworthy weather event (with the emphasis on the term “weather”) somewhere on the planet, there will be a Green nut-job on hand to say it was all caused by man-made global warming.

Usually it’s couched in weasel words, of course, the most common formula being the “consistent with” ploy.

The floods in Queensland were “consistent with” global warming projections. The drought in south-east Australia was “consistent with” global warming projections. The rains that filled the dams and ended the drought in south-east Australia were “consistent with” global warming projections. The Victorian bush fires (that were actually worsened by a variety of non-climate related factors) were “consistent with” global warming projections. The record low temperatures in Canberra last week were “consistent with” global warming projections. My cat getting fleas is “consistent with” global warming projections. My losing a $2 coin down the back of the sofa last Tuesday is “consistent with” global warming projections. [Insert anything you like] is “consistent with” global warming projections.

As has been said countless times on this blog, it is, of course, the classic example of an unfalsifiable hypothesis: ask a greenie to describe the kind of weather events that would not be consistent with global warming, and you’ll get a stony silence. Because anything and everything is “consistent with” some global warming model somewhere. And I’m almost glad the warm-mongers continue to make these nonsensical claims, because every time they do, it moves them further away from proper science and into the realms of astrology.

Brendan O’Neill has a whale of a time exposing the neo-Medieval view of the planet punishing humanity for its sins:

Greens now constantly promote the wild idea that mankind’s irresponsible behaviour is causing “extreme weather”, and that only by being more meek, by radically overhauling our lifestyles, can we hope to tame this weather of mass destruction.

But haven’t we heard this kind of thing before? Yes. From the biblical era to the Middle Ages, the idea that the immorality of man was responsible for enraging nature or God and causing storms and floods was widespread.

So the modern green claim that floods in Britain are a consequence of our wicked over-reliance on fossil fuels, that is of our daring to live industrialised lives, is just a pseudo-scientific updating of the Noah story.

Genesis tells us it was when God saw “the wickedness of man was great” that he decided to “bring a flood of waters upon the earth”.

Today, greens give us a science-tinged version of that morality tale. Mark Lynas, one of Britain’s leading eco-thinkers, says that with all our fossil fuel-using and climate disruption “we have woken Poseidon (God of the Sea) from a thousand-year slumber, and this time his wrath will know no bounds”.

A columnist for The Guardian says recent floods are a kind of punishment for our polluting behaviour. “The turbulent weather we’ve seen is a warning of what lies ahead for us,” she said, unless we can be “cajoled, led, provoked and taxed into changing (our) ways”.

Here, Gaia replaces God as the sender of floods to reprimand man and “change our attitudes”.

Quick, stone another sceptic…

Read it here.

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