Suspect Global Warming Tales: 2013 - No. 5

If you have been listening to and reading Australian media, notably the ABC, you will have noted a massive upsurge in Global Warming stories over the past couple of weeks.  Reams and reams of balderdash lovingly ladled out to the gullible and not one journalist is prepared to undertake the most basic research that would counter the claims asserted by the scaremongers. 

The heat is on, people. 

Yes, yes – we know, there is an IPCC 4^th Lead Author’s Meeting in full swing in Tasmania (13^th to 19^th January, 2013) which is being conducted behind closed doors, of course.   We don’t want any Lord Chris Moncktons informing the Meeting there’s been no significant Planet warming for over 15 years – with more no warming to come!

This Tasmanian junket probably explains why Australian mainstream media is in flood with global warming hysteria.           

I am really worried by the feverish blatherings of the Catastropharians.  It seems they are too pig-headed to even acknowledge the empirical research undertaken by scientists (and others) who are non-cultists.   When the evidence doesn’t fit the game plan, ignore it!  But we’ve known that for a number of years.  It seems this is the way of science in the 21^st Century?  The theoretical overrides the empirical.

It comes down to truth.   And transparency.  And data accuracy.  We’ve had none of that.  No wonder so many thinkers are sceptical.  We are right not to trust these witch doctors.

Have a look at Australia’s High Priest, Tim Flannery’s latest effort in The Age today as he sets about working the gullible up into a frenzy:-

Get your barf bags ready!

Rising temperatures make mockery of rising scepticism

Date

January 15, 2013

Category

Opinion

Tim Flannery

If we believe warming is over we won't be ready for extreme weather.

 WITH record-breaking extreme weather causing havoc around the nation, it's important that Australians understand what climate scientists are saying about the climate in future. But the conflation of two aspects of climate information is misleading the public, either maliciously or carelessly.

The first concerns average temperatures, the second what's happening at the extremes. These are different aspects of climate change, and climate scientists deal with them using different methods.

Is the world warming or cooling? This is a question about average temperature, and the answer can only be found by examining many decades of climate records. That's because there's a lot of annual variability in average temperatures.

By selectively choosing a few years of records, you can tell any story you want. But the trend over the longer term is undeniable. The world is warming, and Australia is 0.9 of a degree Celsius warmer than it was a century ago.

Editors know that headlines tell the story, which is why it's concerning that The Australian chose the headline ''Climate results validate sceptics'' for an article on the British Met Bureau's latest four-year forecast. Here is what the forecast in fact said: ''Global average temperature is expected to remain between 0.28°C and 0.59°C (90 per cent confidence range) above the long-term (1971-2000) average during the period 2013-2017, with values most likely to be about 0.43°C higher than average …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.''

The spin matters. If Australians believe that the warming trend is over, and are suspicious of meteorological reports, they are likely to be less well prepared for extreme weather.

The evidence for an increase in such weather is clear. The CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology have reported that Australia has experienced fewer very cold days and more very hot days than it did 50 years ago.

The current heatwave is breaking many temperature records. The nation's hottest day occurred on Monday, January 7. For seven days in a row, from January 2-8, the average maximum temperature across Australia was above 39 degrees. And with the extreme heat has come bushfires, destruction, health problems, and disruption of infrastructure.

Record-breaking heat is, by definition, weather not experienced for as long as records have been kept. But it's not just unprecedented heat the nation is facing.

In 2011, sea-surface temperatures to the north-west of Australia reached record highs. Increased water evaporation contributed to the wettest year on record in Australia. The vegetation of the inland flourished. But then the region experienced its longest period ever without rain, drying the vegetation. Now, the record heatwave is allowing fires to flourish.

It's a chain of climatic extremes that can have deadly consequences.

Climate sceptics are trying to play down the significance of these events. This weekend the Climate Commission published a report by some of Australia's most eminent climate scientists on the connection between climate change and the extreme heat Australia is experiencing.

The report concluded that: "The length, extent and severity of this heatwave are unprecedented in the measurement record. Although Australia has always had heatwaves, hot days and bushfires, climate Scientists have concluded that climate change is making extreme hot days, heatwaves and bushfire weather worse."

Extreme weather events are important because of the danger they can present. They are also a sign that the range of weather we experience is shifting. Good community understanding of climate change risks is critical to ensure we take appropriate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to put measures in place to prepare for, and respond to, extreme weather.

Australia is not alone in experiencing record-breaking extremes. Last July in the US, more than 3000 temperature records fell as extreme heat and drought gripped North America. The climate scientists have been predicting events like this for decades. And yet still the sceptics ignore the evidence.

Professor Tim Flannery is chief commissioner of the Climate Commission.change has increased the risk of more intense heatwaves and extreme hot days, as well as exacerbated bushfire conditions.

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Yes, Professor Flannery.  The spin does matter.  It matters a lot.  So does honesty, accuracy and accountability.

Here's Jo Nova with a few inconvenient facts counteracting the Australia is melting meme.

Suspect Global Warming Tales: 2013 - No. 4

The Climate Commission established by the feckless Gillard Government in 2011 and headed up by uber-warmie-scaremonger, Professor Timothy Flannery is supposed to be authoritative, independent and a reliable information source on all things climate.  Yet, on the website, they feature a video from the mega scare-monger, Al Gore, who has recently scooped up millions in oil dollars when he sold his interest in lefty cable station, Current TV to Al Jazeera!

Over at our tax-payer funded and ever-so-balanced ABC, the Government-sponsored scare factory is going overboard trying to stampede the geese. 

Poor old Professor David Karoly obviously has not permitted a report from the British Met Office (sneakily slipped into the public domain on Christmas Eve so it wouldn’t be noticed) to land on his desk.  

Extracts:  The Met Office has admitted that global warming has stalled.

Officials say that by 2017, temperatures will not have risen significantly for nearly 20 years.

They concede that previous forecasts were inaccurate – and have come under fire for attempting to ‘bury bad news’ by publishing the revised data on Christmas Eve.

Dr David Whitehouse, science adviser to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said: ‘That the global temperature standstill could continue to at least  2017 would mean a 20-year period of  no statistically significant change in global temperatures.

‘Such a period of no increase will pose fundamental problems for climate models. If the latest Met Office prediction is correct, then it will prove to be a lesson in humility.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2259012/Global-warming-Met-Office-releases-revised-global-temperature-predictions-showing-planet-NOT-rapidly-heating-up.html#ixzz2HjJZSaQf 
 

What!  No warming for two decades?  That’s going to stuff up the error-ridden computer models the warmists deceptively use to try and convince us the planet is doomed.

It’s quite sickening to think people such as PM Gillard, Greens Leader, Christine Milne and of course, the good Professor must stoop so low as to use normal summer events in Australia to peddle their propaganda. 

Extract from ABC article:

I’ll leave you to make your mind up if the story warrants reading in full!

Heatwave exacerbated by climate change: Climate Commission

AM By Simon Lauder

Updated 2 hours 39 minutes ago

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.

Not every summer will be hotter than the one before. In fact this year is markedly hotter than the last couple of years when we had relatively milder and wetter conditions.

But what we are going to find on average is more of the hot extremes and faster increases in the future, over the next 10 and 30 years, that we have seen over the last 30 years - more hot extremes, more heatwaves and more extreme fire conditions.

Climate scientists have been talking about these increases for more than 20 years in Australia. We are now seeing exactly what was predicted more than 20 years ago.

Professor David Karoly

"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."

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Suspect Global Warming Tales: 2013 - No. 3

Oh my!  Flatulent dinosaurs!  Round 'em all up and shoot 'em before they multiply!  The dinosaurs - I mean....
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WASHINGTON — In a major new climate finding, researchers have calculated that dinosaur flatulence could have put enough methane into the atmosphere to warm the planet during the hot, wet Mesozoic era.

Like gigantic, long-necked, prehistoric cows, sauropod dinosaurs roamed widely around the Earth 150 million years ago, scientists reported in the journal Current Biology on Monday.

And just like big cows, their plant digestion was aided by methane-producing microbes.

“A simple mathematical model suggests that the microbes living in sauropod dinosaurs may have produced enough methane to have an important effect on the Mesozoic climate,” researcher Dave Wilkinson of Liverpool John Moores University said in a statement.

“Indeed, our calculations suggest that these dinosaurs could have produced more methane than all modern sources – both natural and man-made – put together,” Wilkinson said.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/05/07/dinosaurs-flatulence-influenced-global-warming-study-suggests/

Suspect Global Warming Tales: 2013 - No. 2

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:-

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4455022.html

Suspect Global Warming Tales: 2013 - No. 1

This year, I intend to shine the odd spotlight on planet cooking propaganda pieces written by hyperventilating, wheelbarrow-pushing journalists.  A practice currently rife in some sectors of our not-so-balanced mainstream media.

Last year, there were a number of examples of Press Release Journalism covering the subject of Global Warming, (GW) Dangerous Global Warming (DAGW) or straight-out Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) that were drip-fed to unsuspecting viewers or readers without due diligence applied to research of the subject,  fact-checking, corrections where applicable or follow-up reports.  I believe it is the duty of responsible bloggers to open up the windows and let in some light and fresh air.  We can no longer rely on mainstream media to simply report the facts.   There’s too much spin out there.

Having opened up a Suspect Global Warming Tales File, I’ll begin 2013 with this delightful article appearing on the ABC website that is bound to scare the stuffing out of you if you are one of those people who believe the anthropogenic planet cooking spin without question because the Government tells you the science is settled, when clearly it’s not and the planet is heating up at an unprecedented rate when it’s not.   A lovely example of  journalistic engineering which is a bit similar to social engineering from our wonderful, reliably accurate, taxpayer-funded, unbiased and balanced ABC.!  MIA – a reporter interested in evidence and has experience with fact-checkers and how they work.  See below for link.

Jellyfish numbers on the rise, expert says

A marine stinger researcher says there has been a disturbing increase in jellyfish numbers around Australia.

Dr Lisa Gershwin has confirmed the deadly irukandji was responsible for several recent attacks off Fraser Island in south-east Queensland.

Two men were stung and hospitalised on Wednesday while swimming on the western side of the island.

A five-year-old boy was stung in the same area on New Year's Day.

Dr Gershwin says there have been huge, unexplained jellyfish blooms across the country.

"All over the country we were seeing unseasonably large blooms of jellyfish and we don't know exactly what is causing these blooms because we don't have enough data," she said.

She says there is a lot of good overseas research about the causes of jellyfish blooms.

"It tends to be things like over fishing, climate change pollution too much fertiliser and too much sewage in the coastal waters," she said. 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-04/jellyfish-having-huge-unseasonal-blooms/4452492

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Meanwhile, a peer-reviewed study appearing in the most recent issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS manuscript # 2012-10920R). has been released in collaboration with the University of Southampton which appears to refute some of what Dr Lisa Gershwin had to say.

Thanks to WUWT for the heads-up with regard to this Paper.  Too bad the writer of this ABC piece didn’t bother to question our very own Marine Researcher, Dr Gershwin regarding this Paper although she admits “there is a lot of good overseas research about the causes of jellyfish blooms.”  Nope – the trusty scribe just went with the flow!   But who am I to speculate as to any perceived motives on behalf of the journalist in question?  I’m just an interested observer who is not always given the facts by the ABC and Fairfax Media.  And that annoys me!

http://www.alphagalileo.org/Organisations/ViewItem.aspx?OrganisationId=93&ItemId=127244&CultureCode=en

This paragraph from the Paper:-

The key finding of the study shows global jellyfish populations undergo concurrent fluctuations with successive decadal periods of rise and fall, including a rising phase in the 1990s and early 2000s that has contributed to the current perception of a global increase in jellyfish abundance. The previous period of high jellyfish numbers during the 1970s went unnoticed due to limited research on jellyfish at the time, less awareness of global-scale problems and a lower capacity for information sharing (e.g. no Internet).

And...

Increased speculation and discrepancies about current and future jellyfish blooms by the media and in climate and science reports formed the motivation for the study. “There are major consequences for getting the answer correct for tourism, fisheries and management decisions as they relate to climate change and changing ocean environments,” says Dr Lucas. “The important aspect about our work is that we have provided the long-term baseline backed with all data available to science, which will enable scientists to build on and eventually repeat these analyses in a decade or two from now to determine whether there has been a real increase in jellyfish.”