Archives for October 2007

The CSIRO 2007 Climate Report: an assertion-laden sales brochure by John McLean, October 2007

The report, “Climate change in Australia”, by the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology was released on 2
October 2007 and predicted a dire climatic future. The contents of the report have been widely accepted by politicians, the media and the public with hardly a murmur.

That’s a rather disturbing acceptance of a document that is loaded with vested interests, ignores various
temperature factors, unjustifiably minimises influence of a major climate force and lacks substantiation for
its most important claims.

In short it is little more than a sales brochure for the unproven claim that man-made emissions of carbon
dioxide are the cause of climate changes.

1. It contains a prior assumption that carbon dioxide has caused warming

From the very start of chapter one the report makes it clear that greenhouse gases will be the key focus, and
of course prime suspect, if such can be said of kangaroo courts.

In that chapter we are being softened up for a barrage of assertions and sure enough chapter 3 presents those
assertions by claiming that almost every climate variation in Australia over the last 50 years was caused by
anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide.

The CSIRO presents no evidence for this claim and the weight of its argument is based only on the repetition
of words. Readers are clearly expected to accept this at face value but a wide reading of relevant literature
shows plenty of reason to question it.

Delve a little deeper and the CSIRO report is largely based on the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC). Explore the IPCC’s claims and the evidence there is also remarkably weak. First
we have an assumption that temperature data is accurate and that a loose but delayed correlation between the
increases in temperature and carbon dioxide is somehow evidence that carbon dioxide drives temperature.
Second is the assumption that climate models are accurate, which is difficult to believe when even the IPCC
admits that many climate factors are poorly understood.

In other words this CSIRO climate report is focused exclusively on an already-questionable premise and
provides no justification for doing so or evidence to support the premise.

Conclusion

If the 2007 CSIRO climate report makes any claims to be an impartial, thorough and accurate assessment of
the recent and future Australian climate then it does so under false pretences.

It is overwhelmingly biased towards greenhouse gases being the major cause of climate change since 1950
and yet produces absolutely no evidence for this assertion. Some natural forces are ignored and another that
is first highlighted as being linked to historical climate variations is subsequently dismissed as being minor
or irrelevant.

There is only one notion that matters to this report – that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide have a
major impact on climate. Come hell or high water, this report tries to ram that unproven notion into its
readers at every turn. Create climate models based on that assumption, never verify their accuracy and then
wave a consensus of results as if it was proof, that’s the process behind this report.

The report is, by and large, nothing more than a marketing document, one written by people with vested
interests, never subjected to any independent review and gravely biased towards a particular claim.

We would never accept without independent and impartial review an evaluation of a drug written by it’s own
researchers or an invitation to invest in shares that was written only by a company’s sales department so why
should we accept this CSIRO report without similar review?

It is an exceptionally sad reflection on Australian politicians, news media and the public that the report has
been so readily accepted as credible and the predictions treated as near-certainties

Read the full critique here.

The CSIRO report can be downloaded from here.

Yes, another ‘brainwave’ from Greenpeace reported in the Herald Sun:

Greenpeace urges kangaroo consumption to fight global warming

MORE kangaroos should be slaughtered and eaten to help save the world from global warming, environmental activists say.

The controversial call to cut down on beef and serve more of the national symbol on our dinner plates follows a report on curbing greenhouse gas emissions damaging the planet.

Greenpeace energy campaigner Mark Wakeham urged Aussies to substitute some red meat for roo to help reduce land clearing and the release of methane gas.

Map courtesy of PIRSA

The map above shows Goyder’s Line, which is defined by Wiki as ‘a boundary line across South Australia corresponding to a rainfall boundary believed to indicate the edge of the area suitable for agriculture. North of Goyder’s Line, the rainfall is not reliable enough, and the land is only suitable for grazing and not cropping.’

A recent review by the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) and CSIRO suggested that the line could shift as far as Clare Valley by 2070 under the most extreme climate change scenario. However, it is more likely that the line would stay roughly where it is now or move just north of Jamestown.

Read more about George Woodroffe Goyder here.

There’s an article in farmonline.com discussing Goyder’s line and climate change:

Goyder’s Line on the move with climate change

and from ABC Rural: Goyders line could shift to Clare

Many thanks to Luke Walker for alerting me to the story of Goyder’s Line.