Like a bull camel in musk with a gob full of foam and
lips-a-flapping, we have the Australian Conservation Foundation’s Programme
Manager, Tony Mohr scaring the bejesus out of the chooks at the ABC’s online
website, The Drum.
Tony, dear fellow – this is Australia, one of the hottest
places on the Planet and not called “a sunburnt country” for nothing. I thought we were not supposed to confuse
weather with climate! Oh! Nevermind - I must have my wires crossed
again! We’ve lived through heatwaves
before, you know and we are bound to live through them again. Heatwaves in Australia are not a new
phenomena – although I think you would like to assume your readers are a little
bit stupid. You need to do a bit of
research on the influences of la Nina and el Nino weather patterns and perhaps
take a bit of a look at that bloody big and hot Star we call the Sun and how it
influences weather and climate on Earth.
Flares and spots – that sort of stuff.
Here’s Tony liberally spreading his foam in part. You can click on the link below, if you are
fit enough to stomach the diatribe.
Australia is in the midst of a heat wave. In
and of itself, that's nothing special, but it is getting hotter. What we do
today will dictate how hot we are tomorrow, writes Tony Mohr.
Chances are that as you read this, if you're not in Sydney, you're
either sweating uncomfortably or sitting in an air-conditioned office.
It's probably somewhere between 35 and 40 degrees Celsius outside.
More if you're in one of Australia's hotter regional areas. You probably had a
fitful night's sleep.
We all know the symptoms; Australia is in the midst of a heat
wave.
In and of itself, that's nothing special. We have heatwaves all
the time. But it is getting hotter. Climate change is making things worse. What
Australia - and the world - is seeing is weather on steroids.
No-one can point to any given hot day and say categorically that
'it is hot because of climate change'. No-one is trying to. But we know very
well that as the climate heats up, it makes the chances of a day being hot
greater, and it makes the likely maximum temperature even hotter.
We can't look at Lance Armstrong's career and say "that stage
win on Alpe d'Huez was because of doping". But we can say "doping was
absolutely a factor in him winning seven straight Tours de France".
Likewise, we know climate change is a factor in the increasing number of hot
days and nights we are experiencing in Australia, even if the cause of any
given hot day is ambiguous.
According to the National Climate Data Centre, nine of the 10
hottest years on record have been since 2000 (the other is 1998), and of the
hottest 20 years on record - that is, since 1880 - the earliest is 1987, which
comes in at 20.
Last year in the US, heat records were broken with distressing
regularity. In an ordinary year, the ratio of hot-weather records to
cold-weather records is roughly equal. In 2012, for every cold-weather record,
there were 3.5 record hot days.
The CSIRO has
found Australian annual average daily maximum temperatures have steadily
increased in the last hundred years, with most of the warming trend occurring
since 1970. There has been an increase in the number of hot days and a decrease
in the number of cold days. 2012 has been announced the ninth-hottest year on
record.
Please take note at paragraph 9 of this foaming essay as it
is relevant to my previous post involving the detective work undertaken by
Anthony Watts and relating to records and their potential for some creative
manipulation.
CSIRO, please note – we are coming out of the Little Ice
Age, you know! I would say a bit of
warming is natural and to be expected.
Of course, I am blindly assuming your data is accurate.
The CSIRO is another body attached to the public teat that
requires a good looking into.
Get your umbrellas up and follow the bouncing ball here:-
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