Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for September 2009

Warming Hawaii (Part 2): A Note from Tim Curtin

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Tim Curtin _temp and co2 chart ver 2 A TECHNICAL paper, Secular temperature changes in Hawai‘i, published just last year in Geophysical Research Letters indicates there has been recent warming on the island of Hawaii and this has been most evident at high elevations. Retired economist, Tim Curtin, has reviewed the paper and comes to a different conclusion.

Mr Curtin has also plotted his own chart, see above,  drawing on the atmospheric CO2 data recorded at the Mauna Loa Slope Observatory since mid-1958 and the temperatures reported at the same location. Interestingly despite the increasing interest in changes in climate, Mr Curtin comments that since 1992 data collection has been erratic at this key site.

Tim Curtin explains his objections and conclusions:  [Read more…] about Warming Hawaii (Part 2): A Note from Tim Curtin

No Place for Morality in School Science

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AGW_World Vision_Youth DecideIN some Australian schools science teachers are being asked to tell about the dangers of global warming and show Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth in order to prepare the students for the big vote at http://youthdecide.com.au/ .

The vote is sponsored by World Vision; Australia’s largest charitable organisation with a history of working with schools. 

When I was about 13, in about 1976, my school promoted World Vision’s 40 Hour Famine to raise money to feed children in poor countries.  I only raised a small amount through the sponsorship program but it made me feel like I had participated in something good – something worthwhile. 

Now World Vision is involved in not only humanitarian work but also the politics of climate change:   ‘Youth Decide ’09’ is a national youth vote on climate change sponsored by World Vision and no doubt results from the poll will be used leading up to the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen to tell the Rudd Government how Australian Students want cuts in emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020.  [Read more…] about No Place for Morality in School Science

Official Comment on Temperature Trends

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Observations indicate that global temperature rise has slowed in the last decade.  The least squares trend for January 1999 to December 2008 calculated from the HadCRUT3 dataset  is +0.07±0.07°C decade–1—much less than the 0.18°C decade–1 recorded between 1979 and 2005 and the 0.2°C decade–1 expected in the next decade.  Read more here from UK Met. Bureau.

Risking the Reputation of Science: Garth Paltridge

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“Perhaps the most interesting question in all this business is how it can be that the scientific community has become so over-the-top in support of its own propaganda about the seriousness and certainty of upcoming drastic climate change. Scientists after all are supposed to be unbiased in their assessment of a problem and are expected to tell it as it is. Over the centuries they have built up the capital of their reputation on just that supposition. And for the last couple of decades they have put that capital very publicly on the line in support of a cause which, to say the least, is overhung by an enormous amount of doubt. So how is it that the rest of the scientific community, uncomfortable as it is with both the science of global warming and the way its politics is being played, continues to let the reputation of science in general be put at considerable risk because of the way the dangers of climate change are being vastly oversold?”   Garth Paltridge*

Some answers are here:  http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26056202-7583,00.html 

* ‘Global warming hotheads freeze out science’s sceptics’ by Christopher Pearson, in The Australian, on September 12, 2009

Abiotic Oil (Part 3)

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“RESEARCHERS at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm have been able to prove that the fossils of animals and plants are not necessary to generate raw oil and natural gas. This result is extremely radical as it means that it will be much easier to find these energy sources and that they may be located all over the world.” 

That’s according to their own media release which continues:  [Read more…] about Abiotic Oil (Part 3)

Warming in Hawaii

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Hawaii_ Temperature gradientWHILE it is generally agreed that there has been an increase in global temperatures over the last 150 years there is much debate as to how continuous or sporadic this warming has been.   I have suggested that understanding could be aided by focusing on one or a few reference stations – particularly given trends in global average temperature is potentially an artefact of how data from stations across the world is combined and then adjusted.

A technical paper, Secular temperature changes in Hawai‘i, published just last year in Geophysical Research Letters indicates there has been recent warming on the island of Hawaii and this has been most evident at high elevations.   While the text in the paper emphasis this warming and suggests a potential negative impact, the charts in the same paper suggest that despite the increase in temperatures over the last 30 years, Hawaii is no warmer now than it was in the 1930s.   [Read more…] about Warming in Hawaii