Climate scientists meet to improve brainwashing skills

15 June, 2010 by

Washes away scepticism faster than other leading brands

Note that they’re not meeting to hang their heads in shame and discuss the shonky science, fudged data, blocking of FOI requests or intimidation of sceptical climate journals, which is all par for the course. No, this is all about communication – it’s just that they’re not getting their message across properly, obviously. The science is just fine, the public are just too stupid to understand:

REPRESENTATIVES of scientific organisations including the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology will meet today to discuss better communication of the science behind man-made climate change, in the wake of crumbling political and public consensus on global warming.

The conference in Sydney, organised by the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies (FASTS), is part of a long-term bid to develop a ”national communication charter” for major scientific organisations and universities to better spruik the evidence of climate change.

The conference will hear an address from Australia’s chief scientist, Penny Sackett [who is a fully paid up alarmist – see here]. Representatives of the CSIRO, Bureau of Meteorology, Australian Academy of Science and Department of Climate Change, among others, will attend [all on the alarmist bandwagon, of course, because without it, they would lose their juicy funding cheques].

…

FASTS president Cathy Foley said although public scepticism was on the rise, scientific evidence of man-made climate change had not changed, and it was sad the community was less and less trusting of scientists. [And who do you have to blame for that? The scientists themselves – think “Hockey Stick” and “Climategate”]

Dr Foley said a well-organised and funded climate sceptics’ movement had increasingly captured attention [That old chestnut again – a bunch of retired scientists and lone bloggers are better funded and better organised than the entire global warming industry? Yeah, right].

”We are concerned the debate around climate change has become a left-wing versus right-wing debate – or a kind of religious argument – when it should really be about the strength of the scientific evidence,” Dr Foley said.

The conference was not about politics or ”brainwashing” the public, she added.

The thought never entered my head. Oops, just noticed the title. Maybe it did.

Read it here.

UPDATE: Listen here to how the ABC treats this entire story with kid gloves, and allows Cathy Foley to misrepresent the science as having been settled for hundreds of years. Yes, the principle of greenhouse warming is settled, but the science of climate feedbacks (which is what we need to understand to determing whether we will get catastrophic warming) is most definitely not.

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New blog: RCS Audit

22 March, 2010 by

Regular ACM commenter Eloi has started a superb site, which has already been blogged by Anthony Watts and Andrew Bolt, looking at the quality of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology Reference Climate Station network – and not a moment too soon. These sites are supposed to be the gold standard by which we measure our nation’s climate, but looking at this photo, it is a crock:

Spot the weather station in the junk…

As Eloi puts it:

This has to be one of the favourites so far – the station is just dumped in a lot along with corrugated iron fences and builders’ rubble. CRN1 status: Fail.

Visit the site at RCS-audit.blogspot.com.

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BoM: 2009 "second hottest year on record"

5 January, 2010 by

Good news for doom mongers

The warmenistas will love this – oh, well, can’t begrudge them a bit of fun – it’s been a shocking year for the poor blighters. The Bureau has come out and labelled 2009 the second hottest year on record:

“2009 ends Australia’s warmest decade on record, with a decadal mean temperature anomaly of +0.48C (above the 1961-90 average),” the Bureau of Meterology said.

“In Australia, each decade since the 1940s has been warmer than the preceding decade. In contrast, decadal temperature variations during the first few decades of Australia’s climate record do not display any specific trend. This suggests an apparent shift in Australia’s climate from one characterised by natural variability to one increasingly characterised also by a trend to warmer temperatures.”

In a statement, the bureau also noted that the World Meteorological Organisation stated that 2009 is expected to be the globe’s fifth warmest year on record (about 0.44C above the 1961-90 average).

And the moronic Peter “Where’s Penny” Garrett leaps on it as evidence of “global warming”:

Environment Minister Peter Garrett said today the finding that Australia’s annual mean temperature for 2009 was 0.9C above the 1961-90 average exposed Tony Abbott’s false climate change claim that global warming has stopped.

“This false and misleading claim is today shown to be completely at odds with the rigorous scientific findings of the independent experts at the Bureau of Meteorology,” Mr Garrett said.

“This is the latest Abbott climate-change clanger to be exposed by the independent experts and once again shows why Mr Abbott cannot be trusted when it comes to climate change.”

Mr Garrett said the weather records underlined the need for a carbon pollution reduction scheme to reduce global warming. (source)

Where’s Penny again? Where’s Kevin? When those two aren’t around, it’s left to the pea-brained rock-star to deal with climate matters. So what does this actually say? It actually says that the surface temperature in Australia is the second highest since 1850 [Update: actually, since 1910, which makes it even less relevant]. Big freaking deal. The planet was at the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850, so guess what, it’s getting warmer.

What doesn’t it say?

  • It doesn’t prove any link with CO2 emissions, so Garrett’s link to the CPRS is total nonsense
  • It doesn’t say that the satellite record shows far less warming (almost none) since 2001 (see below)
  • It doesn’t say the planet has been warmer previously – it has, many times – nor that the rate of warming is anything unusual.

In fact, Dr Roy Spencer has just posted the December anomaly from UAH:

Dr Spencer comments thus:

While the large amount of year-to-year variability in global temperatures seen in the above plot makes it difficult to provide meaningful statements about long-term temperature trends in the context of global warming, the running 25-month average suggests there has been no net warming in the last 11 years or so. (source)

Which would you trust? Satellite data, or thermometer records that are fudged and “adjusted” and “homogenized” by the likes of CRU?

UPDATE at 3 pm: And of course, every two-bit rag, newsletter and gossip sheet in Australia is now running the story. Stuffed full of alarmists, the editorial offices have had a pretty tough time, what with the climate not co-operating, and Climategate. But now they can breathe a collective sigh of relief as a big, copper-bottomed scare story finally breaks (except it isn’t if you actually stopped for five seconds to think about it).

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