Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for December 2006

Thankyou & Best Wishes from Jennifer

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There are people who visit this weblog everyday, some once a week, others pop-in after receiving my occasional e-news. Then there are those who just pass through having, for example, googled something like “global warming for dummies”.

Last month the site was visited by over 21,000 different people who downloaded over 110,000 individual pages and traffic is steadily growing.

To everyone, whether you have made me laugh or cringe, a big thankyou! I have learnt a lot about all sorts of things.

Also, a special thankyou to George McCallum in Berlin, Rick Ness in Jakarta, and Neil Hewitt in North Queensland, for the wonderful wildlife photographs you have shared with us over the last year.

snowman.jpg
from George McCallum, Berlin at Christmas

StripeyPossum_Blog_2.JPG
from Neil Newitt, a stripey possum and my favourite photo for 2006

black&whiteanimal.JPG
from Rick Ness, thankyou and what is it?

Colin_Simpsonblog.JPG
from Colin, lost in the Simpson Desert and scariest picture sent in from a readers of this weblog in 2006

Pilliga Wildfire 2.JPG
from the Pilliga, once Koala habitat, burnt November 2006

Burleigh Caroline Jan06.JPG
my daughter Caroline, going for a surf, how we spend Christmas holidays in Australia

Happy Christmas!

And my best wishes, especially to Richard Ness for 2007.

Season’s Greetings from Motty

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Have a cool Yule, y’uall,

The Mott family are about to indulge their old man with a week or more at the farm. They will spend a few days lamenting their lot and the absence of TV, Internet and a decent toilet whilst observing, bemused, as dad and husband leaps into all those activities that sensible people regard as work to be avoided at this time of year, and which are guaranteed to have him completely soaked in sweat by mid morning and moaning like an old dog by dusk.

They will also see a new house that is actually starting to look like one, and begin to envisage life in a new space (before they leave school).

And slowly, almost imperceptibly, they too will slip into the rhythms of the pax rustica and discover that the first dive into the dam is so much more sublime when it follows a good dose of honest toil. They will savour the unrivalled flavour of an “earned meal” and rediscover the coolest downloads of all, those that come from a site called, “campfire”. And they may even conclude that the very best time to contemplate the meaning of life and man’s place in it, is from high on the side of a hill by the full moon.

Along the way their dad might pass the time with one of those old stories of “the glad rags and the handbags that their poor old grandad had to sweat to buy”, that will, at first, bore and embarrass them a little, but leave a lasting fabric of attachment to a place and its people and times.

They will practice the forgotten arts of playful banter over a well rummaged table, the contentment of a snooze under a tree, and may yet discover the importance of having a bee in one’s bonnet.

And their mum and dad will get time to think of all the folks they would have liked to show a lot more appreciation for.

All the best for the season.

Ian Mott

Is Global Warming Cool: A Note from Luke

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Hi Jennifer,

2006 might be regarded as the year of climate change hysteria or perhaps the year where we had to get serious about attribution and what is and is not global warming.

Certainly one could not help but notice various bouts of unseasonal cold weather this year with frosts affecting fruit crops in Tasmania, juxtaposed with record high temperatures of late in western Queensland and Russia.

Following a press release from the World Meteorological Society , a regular commentator at this blog Sid Reynolds questioned whether the WMO has infra-red rose coloured glasses and can only see when warm records are broken, having previously listed an impressive slew of recent record breaking cold events.

THE STATISTICS OF EXTREMES

There is a perception that the climate change story selects record breaking events to suit its argument and ignores the cold extremes.

So how do we view extreme events. What’s fair and what’s not?

Certainly global warming theory does not say all weather will be suspended and all temperatures from here on, everywhere in the world, will be always warmer every moment of every day.

It does not say there will never ever be another cold spell – or even a record-breaking cold event.

Realclimate gives a cold overview on record breaking events: “In statistics, there is a large volume of literature on record-breaking behaviour, and statistically stationary systems will produce new record-breaking events from time to time. On the other hand, one would expect to see more new record-breaking events in a changing climate: when the mean temperature level rises new temperatures will surpass past record-highs”.

In short, the probability of cold extreme events should decrease over time.

REGIONAL COLD ANOMALIES

Inner continental Antarctica has cooled compared with a warming on the Antarctica peninsula and surrounding ocean.

The issue is discussed in ‘Interpretation of Recent Southern Hemisphere Climate Change’ by Thompson and Solomon
in Science 3 May 2002: 895, DOI: 10.1126/science.1069270 .

For a graphic view of that trend visit http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17257.

HISTORIC COLD ANOMALIES

What about periodic cold extremes in recent centuries?

A very recent study published in Nature shows how changes in the thermohaline circulation may have contributed to the Little Ice Age .

From around 1200 until 1850, during which average temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere dipped by around 1 °C, the strength of the Gulf Stream also slackened by up to 10%, oceanographers report. The Gulf Stream, which is part of a vast pattern of currents nicknamed the ocean conveyor belt, carries warm surface waters from the tropical Atlantic northeastwards towards Europe. The reduced flow that occurred during medieval times would have transported less heat, contributing to the icy conditions that persisted until Victorian times.

ICE AGE

The ultimate cold event in an ice age. Despite popular opinion the current orbital positions make that unlikely for millennia.

THE PRESENT DAY

What studies of extremes do we have of our contemporary climate? Anthropogenic global warming theory would indicate a reduction in the frequency of cold events (but not disappearance).

Where we have decent long term data this is exactly what’s been happening !

GW_Extreme colds 1.JPG
From: Frich, P., Alexander, L.V., Della-Marta, P., Gleason, B., Haylock, M., Klein Tank, A.M.G. and Peterson, T. (2002). Observed coherent changes in climatic extremes during the second half of the twentieth century. Climate Research, 19, 193-212. http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr2002/19/c019p193.pdf

GW_Extreme colds 2.JPG
From: Changes in Climate Extremes Over the Australian Region and New Zealand During the Twentieth Century.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/j488604372402531/

There has been another, more recent study, involving much of east Asia and Australasia also showing statistically reduced frequency of cold extremes: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/110573943/ABSTRACT .

THE FUTURE

What do state of the art climate models say about cold air outbreaks (CAOs) in a greenhouse world?

Various studies indicate that although in many areas CAOs will decrease, in some areas there will be little change. How counterintuitive. So the global atmosphere is a complex thing – local circulation changes may override as basic aspects of greenhouse forcing for some areas:

http://ams.confex.com/ams/87ANNUAL/techprogram/paper_117372.htm

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/112510787

http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/CAO/

http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr2002/19/c019p193.pdf

Interestingly, temperatures are expected to warm over the source regions of the CAOs and the coverage of snow and ice are projected to correspondingly decrease. However, the models do not necessarily project a corresponding decrease in the number of cold air outbreaks in all regions.

GW_Extreme colds 3b.JPG
From: Changes in Cold air outbreak days from a GCM ensemble run. The behavior of extreme cold-air outbreaks in a greenhouse-warmed world. Stephen J. Vavrus, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI; and J. E. Walsh, D. Portis, and W. L. Chapman. http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/CAO/mrcm.freq.abs.diff.gif

IN CONCLUSION

In conclusion, one still should expect to see periodic cold extreme events in a greenhouse world.

Exact climatology will vary from place to place depending on circulation patterns.

A simplistic assumption that cold extremes will disappear and be replaced with only hot extremes is not what the science is showing. However, in general, a greenhouse world should have a higher frequency of heatwave events compared to the current climate, and a reduction in the frequency of cold extremes would be expected. This seems to be already occurring.

Regards, Luke.

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This contribution from Luke has been significantly shortened. In particular I have deleted some of the technical argument/abstracts from technical paper to make the post more readable. I hope some of this information finds its way into the thread through comment and discussion.

Win for Bob Brown, Loss for Forests

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Yesterday the Federal Court in Hobart ruled that logging operations in the Wielangta forest in south-east Tasmania breach an agreement between the Australian and Tasmanian governments and that the logging company does not have an exemption under relevant environment protection laws.

Senator Brown had argued in court that forestry operations endangered a rare beetle, the swift parrot and the wedge-tailed eagle.

Since the ruling Senator Brown has suggested that all logging operations in Tasmania are a threat to rare and endangered species and that the ruling should be the catalyst for an immediate review of all logging operations in Australia.

Also, according to Senator Brown’s website:

“The Judge pointed out that the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act requires more than avoiding harm – it requires that logging plans help the rare species populations to recover.

Here are paragraphs 281 and 282 of Judge Marshall’s 301 paragraph ruling:

281 I do not consider that the State has protected the eagle by applying relevant management prescriptions. Management prescriptions have helped to slow the eagle’s extinction but have not protected it in the sense of either maintaining existing numbers or restoring the species to pre-threatened levels.

Will the State protect the three species by applying relevant management prescriptions?

282 It is unlikely the State can, by management prescriptions, protect the eagle. As to the beetle and the parrot, the State must urge Forestry Tasmania to take a far more protective stance in respect of these species by relevant management prescriptions before it can be said it will protect them. On the evidence before the Court, given Forestry Tasmania’s satisfaction with current arrangements, I consider that protection by management prescriptions in the future is unlikely.”

Cinders, a regular contributor at this blog, sent me the following note:

“The Federal Court has found that forestry operations in the Wielangta forest area have not been carried out in accordance with the Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) by reference to clause 68.

Clause 68 of the Tasmanian RFA states that: The State agrees to protect the Priority Species listed in Attachment 2 (Part A) through the CAR Reserve System or by applying relevant management prescriptions.

The state government has created a reserve system of 2.7 million hectares including 97% of high quality wilderness, 45% of the State’s Native forest and over 1 million hectares, yet the judge ruled that this reserve system was not adequate to protect three threatened species listed in attachment 2 (Part A) of the Tasmanian RFA.

He also found that management prescription introduced by the state through its experts in the Department of the Environment, funded with millions of dollars from taxpayers, and also through Forestry Tasmania’s management systems and forest practice planning systems were inadequate to protect the species.

I would argue that the “protection” failed last week when wildfire consumed the proposed harvesting coupe and much of the surrounding forest!

Despite the Court appointed expert stating “that the forestry operations in Wielangta in coupes 17E and 19D and the proposed forestry operations in Wielangta in coupes other than 17E and 19D are not likely to have a significant impact on the eagle, having regard to its endangered status and all other threats to the eagle.”

The judge perferred to use legal precedent and interpretation to determine that there would be significant impact.

The upshot of all this legal arguement in a forest that is not pristine but has been heavily harvested in the past is to now create uncertainty for timber workers and their families in the week before Christmas.

In a Media release issued yesterday, Barry Chipman, State Manager of Timber Communities Australia said:

“This is a lousy Christmas present to the families of forest workers and dependent businesses.”

“The federal court’s decision not only endangers the RFA but the jobs of over 10,000 timber workers in Tasmania.”

The full judgment can be found at http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/federal_ct/2006/1729.html .

Cinders.

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I have previously written about the Wielangta forest here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/001746.html

No Anthropogenic Signal in Tropical Cyclone Record: An Inconvenient Truth (Part 5)

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As 2006 draws to a close it is interesting to ponder the big issues and events from the past year.

Along with the drought, bushfires, extinction of the baiji, 2006 will perhaps be remembered as the year of climate change hysteria.

I think the movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ in which failed US Presidential hopeful Al Gore described carbon dioxide as the enemy, and then constructing a story as simplistic, horrific, technically flawed* and politically naïve as that CIA dossier on those weapons of mass destruction, was a significant contributor to the hysteria.

Indeed, while support for the notion that carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels is the cause of all climate catastrophe was building, that movie more than anything else, seemed to galvanize support for the theory.

In the movie, Al Gore presented hurricane Katrina as an example of how global warming from the burning of fossil fuels has resulted in an increase in the number and intensity of hurricanes. Disturbing images of New Orleans after Katrina were shown with comment that this is “something new for America” and “how in God’s name could this happen here in the US” and the scientists warned us.

In the movie Al Gore was also big on the idea that all reputable scientists agree. That there is an overwhelming consensus on this and other climate change issues.

Yet most cyclone specialists, including Chris Landsea, have repeatedly stated that there is no evidence for or against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate record. The cyclone record includes typhoons and hurricanes.

But Al Gore ignored this inconvenient truth, and the popular press have maintained the deception.

Furthermore, there is no general trend of increasing cyclone number or intensity.

As the year comes to an end it is depressing that the popular press, so enamored with the idea of a man-made global warming climate catastrophe, continue to ignore the experts and the data.

Recently the following ‘Consensus Statements’ on tropical cyclones and climate change was developed, discussed and endorsed at the World Meteorological Organization’s International Workshop on Tropical Cyclones**, but I didn’t read or hear about it on ‘my ABC’.

The experts concluded that the recent increase in impacts from tropical cyclones (including hurricanes) has largely been caused by rising concentrations of population and infrastructure in coastal regions.

Consensus Statements

1. Though there is evidence both for and against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point.

2. No individual tropical cyclone can be directly attributed to climate change.

3. The recent increase in societal impact from tropical cyclones has largely been caused by rising concentrations of population and infrastructure in coastal regions.

4. Tropical cyclone wind-speed monitoring has changed dramatically over the last few decades, leading to difficulties in determining accurate trends.

5. There is an observed multi-decadal variability of tropical cyclones in some regions whose causes, whether natural, anthropogenic or a combination, are currently being debated. This variability makes detecting any long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity difficult.

6. It is likely that some increase in tropical cyclone peak wind-speed and rainfall will occur if the climate continues to warm. Model studies and theory project a 3-5% increase in wind-speed per degree Celsius increase of tropical sea surface temperatures.

7. There is an inconsistency between the small changes in wind-speed projected by theory and modeling versus large changes reported by some observational studies.

8. Although recent climate model simulations project a decrease or no change in global tropical cyclone numbers in a warmer climate, there is low confidence in this projection. In addition, it is unknown how tropical cyclone tracks or areas of impact will change in the future.

9. Large regional variations exist in methods used to monitor tropical cyclones. Also, most regions have no measurements by instrumented aircraft. These significant limitations will continue to make detection of trends difficult.

10. If the projected rise in sea level due to global warming occurs, then the vulnerability to tropical cyclone storm surge flooding would increase.

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* Technical flaws in the movie are documented in ‘A Skeptic’s Guide to An Inconvenient Truth’ by Marlo Lewis at
http://www.cei.org/gencon/030,05478.cfm.
Also I’ve written bits and pieces on ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ with links at my website here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/faq.php?id=15&category=18 .

** The Workshop was held in San Jose, Costa Rica, in November 2006. It was invitation-only bringing together 125 researchers and practitioners from 34 countries in the field of tropical cyclone forecasting.

*** Sections underlined where added at 8.30am on 19th following comment from Luke.

Running on Wine

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Earlier this year I read that the European Commission had given the green light to farmers in France and Italy to once again convert their surplus wine into bioethanol.

The farmers get a subsidy for distillation of the surplus wine. I guess they also got a subsidy for growing it?

Meanwhile there has been some recent discussion at this blog about world grain stocks being dangerously low because of increasing convertion of grain to biofuels. There has also been discussion about the Queensland government building a dam so farmers can grow grapes.

There seems no limit to human ingenuity and folly when it comes to farming?