Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Eric Abetz Tackles Robyn Williams on Treatment of Bob Carter

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THE Australian Broadcasting  Corporation (ABC) is slashing the budget for its network of foreign correspondence* when more than ever Australia needs to be able to accurately and continually assess its place in a rapidly changing global power dynamic.

At the same time some local ABC journalists, like Robyn Williams from the Science Show, are peddling alarmist propaganda while denigrating our best independent thinkers.* 

At Senate Estimates in Canberra* last week, Senator Eric Abetz queried Managing Director, Mark Scott, on the treatment of  Bob Carter by Mr Williams  and in particular asked why the week Professor Carter’s new book was launched, instead of discussing the book, The Counter Consensus, the Science Show paraded a British journalist masquerading as a climate expert to attack a paper published by Professor Carter two years earlier. 

[Read more…] about Eric Abetz Tackles Robyn Williams on Treatment of Bob Carter

Much Water Flowing to SA

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The director of Murray-Darling Basin operations for SA’s Water Department, Andrew Beal, says “This is certainly the best year we’ve had in a decade in terms of flows into South Australia”.  Read more here.

SA Government Cancels Wellington Weir

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The Greens have welcomed a South Australian Government decision to cancel any plans for a weir at Wellington on the lower Murray, saying the idea was always ill-conceived… the Premier said “What we now need to do is make sure that the new Murray-Darling plan has enough water for the Lower Lakes”.    Read more here.

The Need for a New Theory of Climate (Part 2)

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ACCORDING to the philosopher Thomas Kuhn, a scientific theory, for example, Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is likely to be based on a particular set of experimental and theoretical techniques for matching it with what is observed in the physical world. 

The hard core of AGW theory is embodied in the law and mathematical expression described by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius over one hundred years ago.  In its original form, Arrhenius’ law states that if the quantity of carbonic acid increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression.   Dr Arrhenius calculated values for the absorption of infrared radiation by atmospheric carbon dioxide and speculate that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide would cause a global temperature rise of 5 – 6 °C.  

It wasn’t until 1988 that AGW captured significant political attention.  That was when climatologist James Hansen, in his testimony to US congressional committees, claimed a 4.2°C global temperature increase would result from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. 

Since then estimates have been continuously adjusted down.  

In the 1995 IPCC report, for example, a doubling of carbon dioxide was predicted to cause a 3.8 °C increase and then in 2001 a 3.5°C increase and in 2007 a 3.26°C increase.  

In 2008, twenty years after his initial influential testimony, Professor Hansen issued a statement to the effect that his central estimate of lambda was now 0.75, requiring a further reduction of the official climate sensitivity estimate by one quarter, to 2.5°C degrees for a doubling of carbon dioxide. 

Even leading skeptical scientists Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer agree to a reduced sensitivity for a doubling of carbon dioxide. 

Do all these adjustments indicate a problem with the hard core of AGW theory?
 
The late mathematician and philosopher Imre Lakatos claims that scientists who subscribe to a particular scientific theory, also known as a paradigm, will tend to work to ensure its hard core is unfalsifiable. 

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This post builds on, and synthesizes, many of the comments provided by readers at:  The Need for a new Theory of Climate (Part 1). https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/2010/10/the-need-for-a-new-theory-of-climate-part-1/?cp=all

From Rod Kerkhoven in South Australia

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I saw this one man from Adelaide University at Milang and I asked him about these barrages and he said that if they let the sea in the caravan park would have been flooded. He mentioned something about the Surveyor General’s Office telling the Premier that hundreds of acres of land would be inundated if the sea were allowed back in.   I suppose it has risen since they put the dam things in which was in 1948… They are all slashing their paddocks early this year. In fact it gets earlier and earlier and I have been here for 20 years…  One more thing:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu0kCa61VSo