Archives for December 2013
When Is the Right Time to Abandon Ship?
IN September, Patrick J. Michaels likened the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to a treed cat. He wrote, “Instead of closing its eyes and scurrying to the ground, it climbs onto even higher and thinner branches, while yowling ever louder.”
Dr Michaels then went on to ask, how does the IPCC back down from a quarter-century of predicting a quarter of a degree (Celsius) of warming every decade, when there’s been none for 17 years now?
Chris Turney, professor of climate change at the University of New South Wales, could be described as a cat stuck on a high branch tweeting, but he’s actually at the Antarctic and should be considering abandoning ship, except that there is no clear water into which to launch a life raft.
According to the website Boatsafe.com it can be a difficult decision knowing just when to make the call and it is quite common for captains to wait too long to successfully get clear of a floundering foundering boat.
Four days ago the Professor Captain tweeted: “Great news. Icebreaker Snow Dragon on horizon with penguins! Everyone very happy!”
Happy because the Chinese ice-breaking vessel Snow Dragon was expected to clear a path for the stricken ship by Friday night, avoiding the need to abandon ship.
That was after this 233-foot-long Russian-flagged ship sent out a distress signal on Christmas Eve, which was picked up by the Falmouth Maritime Rescue Coordination Center, in the U.K. As the floundering ship is in the Australian search-and-rescue region, the message was passed on to AMSA, and three ice-breaking ships were sent to the rescue.
So far there has been no mention of the climate by the professor of climate change.
But some positive reporting of the weather.
When it looked like the Snow Dragon would be unsuccessful in its bid to cut through 20 kilometres of sea ice frozen to an average depth of perhaps 10 metres, Professor Captain Turney explained that the weather had improved and the ship was no longer in a blizzard.
So, presumably no need to abandon ship.
Next day the Professor Captain tweeted that the ice was cracking. Still no mention of climate. But this time he did report that the weather had deteriorated with snowfalls and stronger winds.
Still no suggestion they abandon ship. In fact Turney tweeted confidently that the second ice-breaker, an Australian ship the Aurora, would be able to successfully rescue them. This despite reports that there was a growing distance between their floundering stricken ship and open water.
Oh. And wind conditions were putting a lot of strain on one side. Turney added that, “The build-up of ice on one side has given it quite a tilt.”
Not the climate, but the ship.
In fact must be five days stranded now, no clear water, and no mention of climate change.
I am surprised because there is surely potential for some simple climate change type calculations that could be done by the many scientists onboard.
For example, Professor Captain Turney has explained that sea ice can buildup fast because of high winds. Note. High winds, no mention of climate change.
But let me continue.
When the Captain Professor first realized there was no open channel through the ice they were only about two nautical miles from open water. Next thing, more than 20 miles of ice had built up. Now it’s apparently closer to 50 kilometers.
As someone genuinely interested in climate change I ask, “Given the tilting ship, is about 2,800 kilometres south of Hobart, if this catastrophic cooling trend continues, how many days before it is possible to skate across Bass Strait, from Hobart to Melbourne?”
But I digress. Back to the key issue: When is the right time to abandon ship?
As I write the distance between open water with the ice breakers and the tilting ship is somewhere in the vicinity of 50 kilometres. I don’t know how many penguins.
Of possible significance they are running out of coffee.
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Sources of information
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/ipcc-political-suicide-pill
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/27/22059393-great-news-rescue-vessel-within-sight-of-explorer-ship-stuck-in-antarctic-ice
http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/rescue-vessel-near-university-nsw-professor-chris-turneys-icetrapped-cruise-ship/story-fnizu68q-1226790782675
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/27/22068563-icebergs-blizzards-and-a-creaking-ship-antarctic-explorers-tense-wait-for-rescue?lite
http://www.iol.co.za/scitech/science/environment/vessel-still-stuck-in-antarctic-ice-1.1627313#.UsFrbf2Tqro
Carbon Off-setting an Expedition to the Antarctic
CHRIS Turney is professor of climate change at the University of New South Wales. He recently set off on a 233-foot-long Russian-flagged ship with 70 or so colleagues to check-out the climate by following in the footsteps of famous explorer Douglas Mawson’s 1912 expedition to the Antarctic.
I’m assuming that the ship is running on diesel. So it would be incurring a “carbon debit”. Did Professor Turney make provisions to off-set this debit before he set off?
According to David Suzuki the first thing to consider before buying carbon offsets is:
“Know your carbon footprint and understand what your largest sources of emissions are. Ensure that you include all of your major emission sources, such as electricity consumption, fuel use, and travel.”
Since setting off, the ship has got stuck in ice. Three ice breaker ships have set-off to rescue it.
Should the fuel consumption of the three ice breakers also be included in Professor Turney’s carbon offset calculations?
None of this information about carbon offsets is being communicated by Professor Turney who is sending out lots of tweets and some blog posts. I’m also wondering what the Professor has discovered about climate change and the change in ice cover at the Antarctic since 1912 when Douglas Mawson ventured down there.
Seasons Greetings from the Capricorn Coast
I have a home not far from an ICOLL (Intermittently Closed and Open Lake and/or Lagoon) at the bottom of Lammermoor Creek on the Capricorn Coast.
There is a sandbar across the top of the lagoon that stops it emptying at low tide, but allows the sea to fill it on a very high tide.
That was until very recently when the sea pushed in a whole lot more sand, in fact so much sand that the tide can’t top the lagoon up with water at the moment. From the pictures you can see that the trunk of the casuarina in April was high above the lagoon, but now is partially covered in sand.
If this were the Lower Murray ‘they’ would blame the upstream irrigators.
Season’s Greetings.
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Click on each photograph to bring up the individual image, and then click a second time to bring up a larger, clearer image… the orchid is especially good in close-up. The last image, photograph looking down at the last of the water in the drying lagoon, is much clearer in close-up. You can see my beautiful daughter if you look at the close-up of the second last image.
How Long Before AGW is recognised as a Spectacularly Wrong Scientific Theories by the Academies?
“ONE of the best things about science is that the discipline is self-correcting.” So wrote Eric Berger in a blog post in which he lists, what he considers, the top 10 most spectacularly wrong once widely held scientific theories.
His list included:
The stress theory of ulcers;
Immovable continents;
Phlogiston; and
Miasmatic theory of disease.
I’m wondering how long on average these theories existed before they were falsified and how many sceptical scientists were censured before their eventual overthrow?
Which brings me to the subject of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). While I’m convinced that one day it will be recognised as spectacularly wrong, at this point in history, each year its grip on popular opinion and on the scientific community seems to only strengthen.
I was disappointed to recently reread an article written in 2011 about the Murray River entitled ‘Water under the Bridge’. While its author, Kate Jennings, was sympathetic to my work, until I reread the piece I had forgotten her disparaging comments about my AGW scepticism. She wrote: “Jennifer Marohasy is a prominent climate-change sceptic, so her work on the barrages is dismissed out of hand.”
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Update 31st December 2013. Comment from David Boyd.
Hi Jen,
I was disappointed in your interpretation of Kate’s references to you in her 2011 article as “disparaging”. I don’t think they were. She was stating a problem which we “enlightened sceptics” suffered from with our then minority position on the climate change nonsense.
Remember the full quote was-
“Jennifer Marohasy is a prominent climate-change sceptic, so her work on the barrages is dismissed out of hand. (We could also dismiss anything from the Wentworth Group because it is funded by the World Wildlife Fund, which could bias findings.)”
I think Kate’s comment was “disparaging” of the “commentariat”. How absurd to attempt to undermine somebodies views on one issue, because you disagree with their views on another.
David Boyd
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Thanks David. Words, and how they are interpreted and how for the one person that interpretation can change.
For those who wish to form their own opinion, Kate’s essay can be read here… http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2011/october/1317956752/kate-jennings/water-under-bridge. It is also interesting to ponder the second paragraph…
“I insulted the Greens on purpose to get your attention. Green-ish myself. Climate change? Happening. Melting poles, warming oceans. People, do something! But if I’d started by discussing tillage fractures or SER statistics, you would’ve drifted, flipped the page. I also wanted to make a point about insults. If you begin an op-ed piece, as Tim Flannery did in the Age, with “… white Australia’s relationship with the bush has been a kind of rape and pillage”, your subsequent points about biochar as a source of energy or innovations in farming are completely lost on the audience you most want to reach…” The paragraph ends with reference to metaphors having consequences.
Kate is clear that she does believe in climate change including melting poles and warming oceans. Of course.
If an author needs to begin a piece in The Monthly on the Murray River with reference to climate change and explicitly state that she believes in it, what does this tell us about herself and/or her audience? My recent reference to Carl Jung’s writings are perhaps relevant here https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/2013/11/against-collective-integration-carl-jung/ .
AGW Falsified: NOAA Long Wave Radiation Data Incompatible with the Theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming
ANTHROPOGENIC Global Warming (AGW) theory claims the earth is warming because rising CO2 is like a blanket, reducing Earth’s energy loss to space. However, data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows that at least for the last 30 years, Earth’s energy loss to space has been rising. The last 30 years of NOAA data is not compatible with the theory of AGW. It would appear that either 30 years of NOAA data is wrong or the theory of AGW is flawed. This is Michael Hammer’s conclusion following analysis of the official outgoing long wave radiation (OLR) data.
Read the complete article here: ‘The NOAA Outgoing Long Wave Radiation Data Appears to be Incompatible with The Theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming’ by Michael Hammer. 
The research uncovers some interesting trends and most importantly highlights that:
1. Earth can only warm if the rate of energy input exceeds the rate of energy loss;
2. Thus earth would warm if energy absorbed from the sun increased or energy loss to space (outgoing longwave radiation or OLR for short) decreased – or of course both;
3. The theory of AGW claims that Earth is warming because rising CO2 is reducing the energy loss to space i.e. is causing OLR to decrease;
4. Thirty years of experimental data published by NOAA (one of the prime AGW reference sites) shows OLR has been rising progressively between 1980 and 2010 and is now 2.5 watt/sqM higher than in 1980; and
5. The period between 1980 and 2010 is when almost all the CO2 induced warming is supposed to have taken place.
“If the corner stone of AGW theory says earth is warming because outgoing long wave radiation is decreasing yet 30 years of experimental data shows OLR is rising (remember 30 years is the time AGW proponents claim is the interval necessary to separate climate from weather) it would seem the theory of AGW is as a minimum extremely seriously compromised.”
Read the complete article here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/AGW_Falsified_Michael_Hammer.pdf
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Michael Hammer has a B Eng Sci and M Eng Sci from Melbourne university. His original training was as an electrical engineer but for the last 35 years he has been employed to carry out research across a wide range of technologies for a major multinational spectroscopy company. Over that time he has taken around 20 patents and his work has resulted in a significant number of commercially successful products.
To read older blog posts from Michael Hammer click here and scroll down: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/author/michael-hammer/
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.