Flannery fired

19 September, 2013 by

Pack yer bags, mate

Pack yer bags, mate

The Herald Sun reports:

PROFESSOR Tim Flannery has been sacked by the Abbott Government from his $180,000 a year part time Chief Climate Commissioner position with the agency he runs to be dismantled immediately.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt called Prof Flannery this morning to tell him a letter formally ending his employment was in the mail.

Public service shake-up as heads go

In the letter, Mr Hunt tells Prof Flannery: “The Climate Commission does not have an ongoing role, and consequently I am writing to advise you that the Climate Commission has been dissolved, with effect from the date of this letter.

He thanked him for his personal contribution and then said “The Department of the Environment will soon write to you concerning administrative arrangements for finalising your engagement as Chief Climate Commissioner.”

All other climate commissioners will also be sacked with the move to save more than $500,000 this financial year and $1.2 million next financial year.

The Coalition will now take advice on climate change from the Department of the Environment. (source)

The Climate Commission didn’t have one single climate realist on board, and was stacked with Australia’s worst alarmists, Will Steffen, David Karoly and Flannery himself. Far from being an independent climate body, it was a mouthpiece for Labor government propaganda and shameless scaremongering.

Good riddance to the lot of ’em.

UPDATE: Commission’s Twitter account (@ClimateComm) has vanished already! Sad to see the website still there… not for long, however.

UPDATE 2: The ever-warmist ABC (Anything But Conservatives) gives Flannery space to gnash his teeth and wail about the injustice of it all:

Professor Flannery, who is also a former Australian of the Year, has defended the commission’s role.

“We’ve stayed out of the politics and stuck to the facts,” he said. [BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! – Ed]

“As a result we’ve developed a reputation as a reliable apolitical source of facts on all aspects of climate change. [Stop it!! Stop it!! My sides are splitting!!!!! – Ed]

“I believe that Australians have a right to know – a right to authoritative, independent and accurate information on climate change. [Er, I think I just wet myself… – Ed]

“We’ve just seen one of the earliest ever starts to the bushfire season in Sydney following the hottest twelve months on record.” [And, Flannery goes out true to form, with a ridiculously alarmist statement… See ya’ later pal. Glad we won’t have to hear from you any more – Ed]

(h/t Baldrick)

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , ,

Rising scepticism and falling alarmism

30 May, 2013 by

seesaw

Swings and roundabouts

Three articles of note today. First, UK chair of climate committee says warming may be natural, second, Met Office admits that warming of last century isn’t statistically significant, and finally, Aussie scientists downgrade alarmist predictions.

To the UK first, where Tim Yeo, chairman of the parliamentary Energy and Climate Change Committee, has embraced free-thinking, rational scepticism and has abandoned dogmatic and quasi-religious alarmism, in a shift which will send shock waves through the climate community.

As the Telegraph reports, in 2009 Yeo said this:

“The dying gasps of the deniers will be put to bed. In five years time, no one will argue about a man-made contribution to climate change.”

We didn’t need to wait five years for that, since Yeo has now finally acknowledged the uncertainties himself:

Humans may not be responsible for global warming, according to Tim Yeo, the MP who oversees government policy on climate change.

The chairman of the Commons Energy and Climate Change committee said he accepts the earth’s temperature is increasing but said “natural phases” may be to blame.

Such a suggestion sits at odds with the scientific consensus. One recent survey of 12,000 academic papers on climate change found 97 per cent agree human activities are causing the planet to warm [that’s John Cook’s crock on consensus, by the way. What has consensus got to do with it anyway? If more people think the Sun goes round the Earth, does that somehow make it true? “8 out of 10 cats prefer Whiskas“… – Ed].

Mr Yeo, an environment minister under John Major, is one of the Conservative Party’s strongest advocates of radical action to cut carbon emissions. His comments are significant as he was one of the first senior figures to urge the party to take the issue of environmental change seriously.

He insisted such action is “prudent” given the threat climate change poses to living standards worldwide. But, he said, human action is merely a “possible cause”.

Asked on Tuesday night whether it was better to take action to mitigate the effects of climate change than to prevent it in the first place, he said: “The first thing to say is it does not represent any threat to the survival of the planet. None at all. The planet has survived much bigger changes than any climate change that is happening now.

He went on: “Although I think the evidence that the climate is changing is now overwhelming, the causes are not absolutely clear. There could be natural causes, natural phases that are taking place.” (source)

Still in the UK, the Met Office has been forced, by a climate system that simply wouldn’t comply with the wishes of the alarmist “consensus”, to admit that the past 140 years of modest temperature rises are statistically insignificant, after six questions were raised in the House of Lords:

The issue here is the claim that “the temperature rise since about 1880 is statistically significant”, which was made by the Met Office in response to the original Question (HL3050). The basis for that claim has now been effectively acknowledged to be untenable. Possibly there is some other basis for the claim, but that seems extremely implausible: the claim does not seem to have any valid basis.

Plainly, then, the Met Office should now publicly withdraw the claim. That is, the Met Office should admit that the warming shown by the global-temperature record since 1880 (or indeed 1850) might be reasonably attributed to natural random variation….

Lastly, it is not only the Met Office that has claimed that the increase in global temperatures is statistically significant: the IPCC has as well. Moreover, the IPCC used the same statistical model as the Met Office, in its most-recent Assessment Report (2007)…

To conclude, the primary basis for global-warming alarmism is unfounded. The Met Office has been making false claims about the significance of climatic changes to Parliament—as well as to the government, the media, and others — claims which have seriously affected both policies and opinions. When questioned about those claims in Parliament, the Met Office did everything feasible to avoid telling the truth. (h/t Bolta)

Finally, David Karoly, arch warmist of Melbourne University starts hedging bets as he has to admit that ludicrously scaremongering claims of 6 degrees of warming were “unlikely”, but given Karoly’s well-known ideological and activist stance on the subject, the press release makes sure that the bandwagon still rolls on:

Scientists from the University of Melbourne and Victoria University have generated what they say are more reliable projections of global warming estimates at 2100.

The paper, led by Dr Roger Bodman from Victoria University with Professors David Karoly and Peter Rayner from the University of Melbourne and published in Nature Climate Change today, found that [good news…] exceeding 6 degrees warming was now unlikely while [bad news…] exceeding 2 degrees is very likely for business-as-usual emissions…

This was achieved through a new method combining observations of carbon dioxide and global temperature variations with simple climate model simulations to project future global warming.

Dr Bodman said while continuing to narrow the range even further was possible, significant uncertainty in warming predictions would always remain due to the complexity of climate change drivers. “This study ultimately shows why waiting for certainty will fail as a strategy,” he said. “Some uncertainty will always remain, meaning that we need to manage the risks of warming with the knowledge we have.” (source – h/t WUWT)

Interesting times…

UPDATE: The headbangers over at Un-Skeptical Pseudo-Science (no link) respond to these developments with balanced and open-minded scientific curiosity… Nah, only joking! With yet more alarmism, this time from Kevin Trenberth, who, like most of the headbangers, must be worried he’ll be out of a job in a few years’ time, when “climate scientists” go the way of spear-makers, rag and bone men and gas lamp lighters:

Focusing on the wiggles and ignoring the bigger picture of unabated warming is foolhardy, but an approach promoted by climate change deniers. Global sea level keeps marching up at a rate of more than 30cm per century since 1992 (when global measurements via altimetry on satellites were made possible), and that is perhaps a better indicator that global warming continues unabated. Sea level rise comes from both the melting of land ice, thus adding more water to the ocean, plus the warming and thus expanding ocean itself.

Global warming is manifested in a number of ways, and there is a continuing radiative imbalance at the top of atmosphere. The current hiatus in surface warming is temporary, and global warming has not gone away.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Shock: Aussie heatwave "due to climate change" as UK Met Office downgrades warming forecast

12 January, 2013 by

Regurgitating propaganda

Joke organisation

The Climate Commission, the (very handsomely) paid climate propaganda wing of the Gillard government, trots out the drearily predictable line that the recent heatwave in Australia is all due to climate change and that if only we would reduce our emissions, the planet would get back to how it was in the Little Ice Age. At the same time the Greens are claiming the fires are “punishment” for the evils of burning coal. Who says the Renaissance and the Enlightenment never happened?

All of which is ably aided and abetted by the ABC, the Alarmist Broadcasting Corporation, naturally:

A new report from the Federal Government’s Climate Commission says the heatwave and bushfires that have affected Australia this week have been exacerbated by global warming.

The report – Off the Charts: Extreme Australian Summer Heat – warns of more extreme bushfires and hotter, longer, bigger and more frequent heatwaves, due to climate change.

It says the number of record heat days across Australia has doubled since 1960 and more temperature records are likely to be broken as hot conditions continue this summer.

When Prime Minister Julia Gillard linked the heatwave with climate change this week, the acting Opposition Leader Warren Truss said that was utterly simplistic.

But climate change experts have no doubt that climate change is a factor in the current conditions.

The scientific advisor to the Climate Commission, Professor David Karoly, has written the report for the Climate Commission to answer questions about the link between heatwaves and climate change. 

“What we have been able to see is clear evidence of an increasing trend in hot extremes, reductions in cold extremes and with the increases in hot extremes more frequent extreme fire danger day,” he said.

“What it means for the Australian summer is an increased frequency of hot extremes, more hot days, more heatwaves and more extreme bushfire days and that’s exactly what we’ve been seeing typically over the last decade and we will see even more frequently in the future.”

OK, who DIDN’T see that coming? Just like the recent floods and the drought and [insert any weather phenomenon you care to mention], it’s all caused or “exacerbated” by climate change. Well duh! Maybe the climate is changing. It says nothing about the cause. As any reader of this blog will know, if it’s hot it’s climate change, if it’s cold it’s “just weather”. Yawn, yawn, yawn.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the Met Office has actually downgraded its warming forecast for the next five years:

AS Australians sweltered through a record-breaking summer heatwave this week, one of the world’s leading scientific bodies revised down its five-year projection for the world’s average temperature.

The revision, slipped quietly into the public domain on Christmas Eve by Britain’s Met Office, has fuelled a significant and growing debate about what exactly happened to global warming.

On one analysis, the forecast confirms what many people have been saying for some time. Global warming effectively stopped 17 years ago and, if the new forecast is accurate, that “pause” will be extended to 20 years.

Using new computer models, the Met Office now believes global temperatures up to 2017 will most likely be 0.43C above the 1971-2000 average, with an error of plus or minus 0.15C.

The Met Office had previously estimated the most likely global temperature increase to be 0.54C above the 1971-2000 average during the period 2012 to 2016.

The Met Office says despite the change, “we will continue to see near-record levels of global temperatures in the next few years”.

“This means temperatures will remain well above the long-term average and we will continue to see temperatures like those which resulted in 2000-2009 being the warmest decade in the instrumental record dating back to 1850.”

But the release of the data – and the way in which it was released – has fuelled a strong reaction. David Whitehouse, of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the new prediction challenged the assertion that the underlying rate of change of global warming was unchanged.

“If the latest Met Office prediction is correct, and it accords far more closely with the observed data than previous predictions, then it will prove to be a lesson in humility,” Whitehouse said.

“It will show that the previous predictions that were given so confidently as advice to the UK government and so unquestioningly accepted by the media, were wrong, and that the so-called sceptics who were derided for questioning them were actually on the right track.”

In response, Britain’s science media organisation released quotes from leading climate scientists to explain the revision.

Richard Allan, reader in climate science at the University of Reading, said: “Global warming is not ‘at a standstill’ but does seem to have slowed down since 2000 in comparison to the rapid warming of the world since the 1970s.”

He said the slowdown reflected greater scientific understanding and was due in part to increased heat being trapped in the world’s oceans. “Nothing in their (Met Office) data leads me to think that global warming due to human influence has stopped, or is irrelevant. It hasn’t, and it isn’t,” he said.

Professor Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics Group at the University of Oxford, effectively said the revision provided a lesson in the dangers of spin.

“A lot of people (not the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) were claiming, in the run-up to the Copenhagen 2009 conference, that ‘warming was accelerating and it is all worse than we thought’. What has happened since then has demonstrated that it is foolish to extrapolate short-term climate trends.”

For the sceptical, the Met Office’s near-term predictions are coming home to roost. In 2007, it predicted that by 2014 the global average temperature was expected to have risen by 0.3C compared with 2004, and that half of the years after 2009 were predicted to be hotter than the current record hot year in 1998.

“Given that we have data for three of the five years of that period, and all show no departure from a constant temperature when analysed statistically, this is a prediction that will probably be totally wrong,” Whitehouse said.

“In any case, it is completely at odds with the new forecast.”

The headbangers are in strife, desperate to hose down this story, so Un-Skeptical Pseudo-Science does it’s usual trick of assembling an article by cutting and pasting lots of scary GISS graphs and portraying anyone who could possibly reach a different conclusion as somehow one thermometer short of a weather station.

Happy New Year (just the same as the last one, two, five, twenty…).

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Karolygate

31 October, 2012 by

David Karoly

I haven’t had a chance to read the FoI materials on this yet, but Climate Audit and Bunyipitude dissect the Karoly/Gergis Hockey Stick debacle, on-hold, correction, retraction, withdrawal or whatever it really was.

Prof Bunyip has an ongoing series of posts here.

Climate Audit reports on the discovery of the error here, and the battle with the Journal of Climate here.

You can download all the documents here.

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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! 

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Aussie Hockey Stick paper 'put on hold'

9 June, 2012 by

UPDATE: Leigh Dayton, “science” writer for The Australian responds to an email relating to this issue from one of my readers thus:

“I deal only with peer-reviewed science, not cherry-picked “evidence” from people not engaged in research.”

Only thing I can say is: wow. Yet another self-selected environmental activist, alas. Check out this article if you are in any doubt about her blinkered approach to climate. It even uses the “D” word.

Again, thanks to the tireless efforts of Steve McIntyre, truly a hero of the realist cause, the paper by Joelle Gergis (climate activist), which claimed a Hockey Stick in Australia (and who then refused to release the data), has been put on hold.

David Karoly writes to McIntyre:

An issue has been identified in the processing of the data used in the study, which may affect the results. While the paper states that “both proxy climate and instrumental data were linearly detrended over the 1921–1990 period”, we discovered on Tuesday 5 June that the records used in the final analysis were not detrended for proxy selection, making this statement incorrect. Although this is an unfortunate data processing issue, it is likely to have implications for the results reported in the study. The journal has been contacted and the publication of the study has been put on hold.

This is a normal part of science. The testing of scientific studies through independent analysis of data and methods strengthens the conclusions. In this study, an issue has been identified and the results are being re-checked.

We would be grateful if you would post the notice below on your ClimateAudit web site.

We would like to thank you and the participants at the ClimateAudit blog for your scrutiny of our study, which also identified this data processing issue.

Note that Karoly says McIntyre’s scrutiny “also” identified the issue, hinting that they had found it themselves independently. How likely is that? Where were all the peer reviewers? Missing in action? Blinded by their own ideology? Just a coincidence that McIntyre blows holes in it and suddenly they find a problem? D’ya think they’d have bothered if McIntyre hadn’t exposed the paper as being potentially flawed? I very much doubt it – it would have just added to the “consensus”.

McIntyre however cautions:

I urge readers not to get too wound up about this, as there are a couple of potential fallback positions. They might still claim to “get” a Stick using the reduced population of proxies that pass their professed test. Alternatively, they might now say that the “right” way of screening is to do so without detrending and “get” a Stick that way.

Why are they trying to “get” a stick? Is that science, or activism?

Read Steve’s post here.

(h/t Paul M – thanks)

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Hockey Stick lives! In Australia, apparently…

17 May, 2012 by

Mann's Hockey Stick: on life support in Australia

UPDATE 2: Thanks to Baldrick in the comments for this. Joelle Gergis is, guess what, a climate activist. Her blog is here, and although it hasn’t been updated for some time, a five minute glance found the following, which praises the election of Rudd in 2007, gleefully celebrates the end of Howard, and looks forward to “action on climate change”:

“After 12 long years, we have a progressive prime minister who will ratify the Kyoto protocol, prioritise a rehaul of the education system and have the humility to say sorry to the indigenous people of our country.

This hilarious article by The Age columnist Catherine Deveny sums up how many of us felt about the end of the Howard era. Tracee Hutchison’s piece celebrating the rise of women in politics is also great.

As a climate scientist, I am hopeful that we will finally see real action on climate change.”

Are these the words of an impartial scientist? Which comes first, being a climate activist or a climate scientist? How can we rely on papers written by climate activists?

UPDATE: The paper claims that the MWP was 0.09°C below 1961-1990 levels. That’s 9 HUNDREDTHS of a degree , with a margin of error of over twice that (±0.19°C). The abstract goes on to cite the usual, “we dunno, so it must be us” reason for the recent late 20th century warming:

“The unusual 20th century warming cannot be explained by natural variability alone, suggesting a strong influence of anthropogenic forcing in the Australasian region.”

Full abstract here (paper behind paywall).

More warmism leading up to IPCC AR5:

For the first time scientists have provided the most complete climate record of the last millennium and they found that the last 50 years in Australia have been the warmest.

The researchers from Melbourne University used 27 different natural indicators like tree rings and ice cores to come to their conclusion, which will be a part of the next United Nations intergovernmental panel on climate change report.

The findings show that no other period in the last 1,000 years matches the temperature rises Australia and the region has experienced in the last 50 years.

Report co-author Joelle Gergis says the findings are significant.

“It does show that the post-1950 warming is unusual in the Australasian region,” she said.

27 different proxies? Sounds worryingly like a re-run of the Hockey Stick to me.

But at least we have finally got rid of the Medieval Warm Period! Would you expect anything less from our own David Karoly, committed believer, and one of the authors?

All lovingly reported by the ABC (Alarmist Broadcasting Corporation).

Expect much, much more of the same.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , ,

IPCC: the warmists' club

16 July, 2011 by

Frakking good stuff

Kevin Rudd used to prattle on about the “4000 guys in white coats who run around and don’t have a sense of humour” who kept telling him that man-made emissions were to blame for dangerous global warming. You’d be lucky to get to 4000 even if you included all the rent-seeking hangers-on – and there were plenty of those.

John McLean analysed chapter 9 of Working Group 1 (Understanding and Attributing Climate Change) and concluded:

“More than two-thirds of all authors of chapter 9 of the IPCC’s 2007 climate-science assessment are part of a clique whose members have co-authored papers with each other and, we can surmise, very possibly at times acted as peer-reviewers for each other’s work. Of the 44 contributing authors, more than half have co-authored papers with the lead authors or coordinating lead authors of chapter 9.

The IPCC appointed as review editor for chapter 9 a person who was not only a coordinating lead author for the corresponding chapter of the previous assessment report but had also authored 13 of the papers cited in chapter 9 and had co-authored papers with 10 authors of chapter 9 including both coordinating lead authors and three of the seven lead authors.” (source, PDF at p18)

I have called the IPCC a “coterie of warmists” on several occasions in the past, dismissively excluding criticisms from highly respected scientists that don’t fit the pre-conceived agenda, whilst welcoming with open arms sheaves of suspect grey literature from environmental advocacy groups – because they do fit the agenda. Now the redoubtable Donna Laframboise of No Frakking Consensus exposes more of the seedy mutual backscratching that passes for normal scientific practice down at IPCC Mansions, and the name of an ACM favourite pops up:

Cynthia Rosenzweig is a research scientist who works at James Hansen’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies. Once I might have described her as a senior Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) author. But she’s actually more than that.

It turns out Rosenzweig is a member of a small clique of people who wore multiple hats during the writing of the 2007 climate bible. When I hear that thousands of the world’s best scientists participate in the IPCC I envision each of them making a focused contribution in the narrow field in which they possess exceptional research expertise. But that’s not how it works.

Rosenzweig, for example, served in six distinct capacities. She was:

  • one of the two most senior authors for a chapter titled Assessment of Observed Changes and Responses in Natural and Managed Systems
  • a contributing author for a chapter titled Assessment of Adaptation Practices, Options, Constraints and Capacity
  • a lead author of the Working Group 2 Technical Summary document
  • a drafting author of the Working Group 2 Summary for Policymakers document
  • a member of the core writing team for the Synthesis report
  • and an expert reviewer for Working Group 2

In other words, certain names pop up again and again in IPCC reports. If shadowy interests were trying to “control the message” in these documents, entrusting key tasks to a small group of people might be an effective strategy.

Like Rosenzweig, Australian meteorologist David Karoly filled six separate IPCC roles. He served as a lead author and as a review editor. Along with Rosenzweig he was a lead author of a Technical Summary, a drafting author of a Summary for Policymakers, a member of the core writing team for the Synthesis Report, and was also an expert reviewer.

How anyone can take this politicised and integrity-challenged organisation seriously any more is beyond comprehension… And we can expect more of the same (only worse) with AR5 in 2013/14.

There’s much more. Read it all.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Desperation as alarmists sense the battle is lost

10 May, 2010 by

The fate of a sceptic in Kruddistan

The more desperate the quotes, the more tragic the arguments, the more it reveals that the alarmists realise that not only is the planet not complying with their incomplete and worthless climate models, but also that the penny [Wong? – Ed] has dropped in the public mind. The public realises now that the IPCC is a politicised advocacy group, spinning the science to fit an agenda conceived back in the 1980s to regulate CO2. Witness the outpouring of vitriol on Tony Abbott for daring to suggest that school pupils be sceptical (see here for original story). Heaven forbid. In Kruddistan we don’t want any of that, they should just uncritically believe whatever Chairman Rudd and the Wongbot say.

So it is with a wry smile that I read this piece in the Sydney Morning Herald.  It shows utter desperation in the face of a lost cause, even down to the headline, “Climate scientists cross with Abbott for taking Christ’s name in vain“, which once again tries (and fails) to portray Abbott as some religious nutcase:

TONY ABBOTT is under pressure to justify telling students it was considerably warmer when Jesus was alive after leading scientists said his claim was wrong.

He urged year 5 and 6 pupils at an Adelaide school to be sceptical about the human contribution to climate change, saying it was an open question.

In a question-and-answer session on Friday, the Opposition Leader said it was warmer “at the time of Julius Caesar and Jesus of Nazareth” than now.

Leading scientists said there was no evidence to suggest it was hotter 2000 years ago.

The president of the Australian Academy of Science, Professor Kurt Lambeck, said true scepticism was fine, but required looking at published data with an open mind. “To make these glib statements to school students, I think, is wrong. It’s not encouraging them to be sceptical, it’s encouraging them to accept unsubstantiated information.” Tas van Ommen, who as principal research scientist with the Australian Antarctic Division collects climate data from ice cores, said any definitive statement about temperatures 2000 years ago was “completely unfounded”.

He cited the 2007 report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which found the available data from climate records was too sparse to make clear statements beyond about 1000 years ago. Dr van Ommen said the confidence that global warming was linked to greenhouse gas emissions was based on multiple lines of evidence.

Yawn. We’ve heard it all before. As soon as you quote the IPCC, it’s time to switch off. And then they wheel out Fairfax’s alarmist in chief:

David Karoly, a Melbourne University federation fellow and climate panel lead author, said Mr Abbott’s statement appeared to be based on Heaven + Earth, a 2009 book by the geologist and climate change contrarian Ian Plimer. It has been embraced by sceptics, but criticised by scientists working in the fields it covers. [Ah yes, of course, Plimer isn’t “working in the fields it covers”, right? – Ed]

Professor Karoly said: “It seems strange to me that the leader of a political party would be seeking to disagree with Australia’s chief scientist, the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, the overwhelming majority of climate scientists and Australia’s support of the work of the IPCC. He obviously knows better.” (source)

Probably right. The public have an innate common sense which Sackett (raving alarmist), the Bureau, CSIRO (all on the climate gravy train) and the IPCC (ditto) all lack. They can smell a rat – and it’s a dead, rotting, carcass of a rat with a stench that could strip paint. One letter writer in The Australian gets it right:

CLIMATE Change Minister Penny Wong says she was disappointed in Opposition Leader Tony Abbott for encouraging climate change scepticism in the classroom, which she claimed was “irresponsible”, (“Climate change natural”, 8-9/5).

Since when was scepticism in science a bad thing? Mr Abbott was quite right to point out it is an open question as to why the climate changes, and what role man plays in that change.

Surely we want our children to grow up with open and questioning minds and not to accept unthinkingly any proposition put to them in the classroom.

The irony in all this is that Mr Abbott is presented as something of a hardliner, as being inflexible. But it now appears the boot is on the other foot. It is Senator Wong who is the dour, inflexible one as she constantly refuses to accept there is a valid scientific position on climate change apart from her own doomsday alarmist scenario.

It is irresponsible not to present the full range of scientific views on climate change to young, inquiring minds — indeed the general public, and individuals should be allowed to make up their own minds, without fear of being labelled or ostracised.

Alan Barron, Grovedale, Vic (source)

Keep it coming, SMH. Just more evidence that climate hysteria, like Rudd, is on the skids.

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Butterfly study hijacked by AGW

17 March, 2010 by

Ever felt used?

Here’s an innocent little story about butterflies [which is now plastered all over the ABC and will no doubt be on the 7 o’clock News and 7.30 Report and Lateline and every ABC web site under the sun – Ed]. Apparently they are getting impatient and are now emerging from their cocoons ten days earlier than 65 years ago. But who does the ABC choose to interview on The World Today? Firstly Michael Kearney, biologist from Melbourne University, but then, oddly, David “Asteroid” Karoly, who is a fully paid up climate alarmist (link to audio and transcript here):

Professor David Karoly of the University of Melbourne, says the study breaks new ground on the impact climate change has on the natural environment.

“Butterflies and many other natural systems are responding to warming both in Australia and around the world,” he said.

“This is the first time we’ve been able to link the change in a natural system, like a butterfly, to regional warming and then link that regional warming to increase in green house gases as a result of human activity.”

Why would they interview Karoly? So I did a bit of research, and tracked down the original home page at Monash for the study here. Firstly, it should be noted that this is a research project within the school of Biosciences (not Earth Sciences or Climate Change) and there is no mention of Karoly as part of the project. Here is the project summary from a project update dated August 2008 :

Climate change and habitat fragmentation are together a major threat to the continued survival of a vast number of species. Correlative bioclimatic models are often used for predicting future suitable habitats, but currently do not take into account whether species are able to colonise new regions, nor the mechanisms by which they interact with and adapt to their environment. We will use a butterfly model species to investigate the relationship between genetic polymorphisms, physiological capacity for dispersal, and environmental constraints at the landscape scale. This will allow truly mechanistic and more accurate predictions of how novel climatic environments will affect species distributions. (source – PDF)

Again, no mention of anthropogenic climate change or greenhouse gases or carbon dioxide (or Karoly). They are simply looking at how butterflies react to increasing temperatures – you only need to read the PDF to see that. But wait, look what’s happened. Suddenly there is a “final step”, oddly not mentioned in any of the project’s earlier documentation, where Karoly steps in and neatly links the whole thing to human caused climate change:

The final step taken by the researchers was to link the regional temperature changes with human-induced global warming.

Team member [since when? – Ed] climatologist, Professor David Karoly applied global circulation models to the Melbourne region, taking into account local factors that influence climate.

This suggested that the regional temperature changes observed over the decade were unlikely to be observed without the influence of human greenhouse emissions, says Kearney. (source)

And hey presto, an avowed climate alarmist manages to show that Melbourne’s temperature rise can only be cause by human factors [because we don’t know what else could have caused it – brilliant – Ed]. What a surprise. So somebody, at present unknown, had the brilliant idea “if we can tie this butterfly study into AGW, we might get some air time from the ABC,” and that somebody was dead right, because it fits the ABC’s unashamedly alarmist agenda.

UPDATE: The Australian Research Council lists the grants made for this study (a total of $240,000 over three years), and it too mentions nothing about Karoly or the anthropogenic nature of the climate change in question. Here is the extract from the ARC’s PDF for funding grants made to Monash (not Melbourne) in 2006 for research commencing in 2007:

Extract from ARC's funding

So Karoly has simply been wheeled in to add the alarmist perspective. The difficult questions to ask would be:

  • When did Karoly become part of the project?
  • On whose instigation?
  • Were all the funding bodies notified of the change in emphasis of the study towards human-induced climate change?
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