Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for October 2009

Postscript

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Update August 1, 2010 – There will be a federal election in Australian on August 21, 2010.  Neither of the major parties has a serious climate change policy.   ‘Least-worst climate policy?’ by Jennifer Marohasy at Quadrant Online.

Update June 21, 2010 – I am back publishing in the peer-reviewed literature.  First article for a while:  ‘Accessing environmental information relating to climate change: a case study under UK freedom of information legislation’, by John Abbot and Jennifer Marohasy, Environmental Law and Management, Issue 1, Volume 22 [2010]. 

Update December 12th, 2009 –  Jennifer Marohasy is no longer regularly posting at this weblog.   But occasionally posts information from friends at the community thread [ https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/category/community/ ].   Dr Marohasy is still writing for The Land and some of her columns for this and other newspapers can be read at her website [ https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/articles.php ].

Dr Marohasy was publically documenting discrepancies – including incomplete data sets being used by top UK climate scientists that spuriously support the case for global warming – before the now infamous emails from the Climate Research Centre in the UK were leaked.  She gives informative and entertaining talks on global warming and other environmental issues [ https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/display/speaker.html ].

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Lance Endersbee (1925-2009): Civil Engineer, Academic, Scientific Sceptic, Mentor

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Lance_Experience Curve CO2 and SST with 21 moving average 12May09I NEVER met Professor Endersbee, but we corresponded by email.

He contacted me about six years ago when I was working on the Murray River and water issues. He expressed concern about Australia’s great artesian basin and over extraction of what he considered a finite resource.

We later corresponded over climate change issue. Lance believed we must try harder to understand the causes of natural climate change instead of assuming anthropogenic global warming. He was particularly interested in the oceans as a source of carbon dioxide. On June 24, 2009 he wrote:

“The relationship between CO2 and ocean temperature is ordained by the solubility relationship.   I attach [see above] a chart showing my experience curve for the only reliable temperature records we have. It is difficult to argue against a correlation of 0.99.   [Read more…] about Lance Endersbee (1925-2009): Civil Engineer, Academic, Scientific Sceptic, Mentor

Scientist Steve Schneider Flips Fears

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On the TV show In Search Of…The Coming Ice Age, Steven Schneider wonders whether mankind should intervene in staving off a coming ice age.  Watch the old footage on YouTube here.

Learning Dust Lesson to Fight Wildfires

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untitledIT is generally agreed that the worst dust storms since European settlement were during the 1944-1945 period.  

In his book Out of the West: A Historical Perspective of the Western Division of NSW, former Western Lands Commissioner, Dick Condon, says there were 34 severe dust storms at Wagga Wagga during the period 1944-45, many so bad that it would have been necessary to turn the lights on in order to see inside the average sized house.  

Mr Condon suggests the dust storms during the 1982-83 drought were not as bad as those during the period 1885 to 1945 because of the much improved conditions of the landscape in the semi-arid and arid grazing country in western New South Wales.

In contrast, it is generally agreed that bushfires are getting worse.   [Read more…] about Learning Dust Lesson to Fight Wildfires

Early Warning of Massive Earthquates Possible: John McRobert

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EARLY  Wednesday morning a 8.3 magnitude earthquake caused a tsunami in the Pacific, killing at least 140 people in Samoa and Tonga. Later in the day a 7.6 magnitude earthquake hit western Sumatra in Indonesia, drowning hundreds of people and burying thousands more under rubble.

Many in Samoa claim the warning system in place failed because an alert was only received after the tsunami hit.  The official line has been that when the earthquake is close to land, the technology is such that there is simply not time for adequate warnings.  

Brisbane-based engineer, now publisher, John McRobert, disputes this assessment claiming major earthquakes have precursor seismic shocks hundreds of kilometres below the Earth’s surface, and the transmigration of the energy, and the path to the surface can be accurately predicted: [Read more…] about Early Warning of Massive Earthquates Possible: John McRobert

Working to Develop More Reliable Methodology: Keith Briffa

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keith briffa 2007THE United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and most others who believe in anthropogenic global warming (AGW), have been influenced by the work of climatologists relying on tree-ring data to reconstruct past climate because the thermometer record only goes back to about 1850.  The claim that there has been an unprecedented upswing in temperatures over the last 100 years making 1998 the hottest year of the last thousand years, has for example, been based on reconstructions from tree-ring data.

In response to recent suggestions by Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre that the official reconstructions may have been fudged, Keith Briffa, from the Climate Research Unit associated with the UK Met. Office, has responded explaining that there was no cherry picking of data in the development of the reconstructions used by the IPCC and others, rather, the methodology is not yet robust.  

Given this admission from a leading UK climate scientist, it would perhaps be appropriate for the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri,  to now advise world leaders that there are potential problems with the methodology used in the development of key assumptions underpining the consensus view on anthropogenic global warming and that until further notice, the big meeting in Copenhagen should be postponed.

[Read more…] about Working to Develop More Reliable Methodology: Keith Briffa