Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Palmer Gored: A Win for Mandated Carbon “Markets”

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A new alliance between Al Gore and Clive Palmer is likely to result in the repeal of the carbon tax, but the big winner is probably the global warming industry, not the ordinary Australian. Indeed if you think your electricity bill is about to plummet, you’ve been mislead. gore and palmer

Much of the increase in the price of electricity over recent years can be attributed to the mandatory Renewable Energy Target (RET): a government legislated requirement on electricity retailers to source a specific proportion of total electricity sales from renewable energy sources including wind and solar, with the extraordinary costs paid by all electricity users.  

Al Gore appears to have convinced Clive Palmer, to support the repeal of the carbon tax on condition that the RET is consolidated. Earlier today Dennis Jensen spoke in the Australian parliament about some of the lucrative deals that Gore has done over the years:

Indeed Dr Jensen’s speech provides some historical context, while Jo Nova explains what the conditions Palmer has placed on repeal of the carbon tax will mean longer term for Australia:

It seems now that Palmer’s amendments to repealing the carbon tax do not include an Emissions Trading Scheme …  but keeping the $10b Clean Energy Finance Corporation is a win for Gore, and so is keeping the RET (Renewable Energy Target) and the Climate Change Authority — it’s another government funded advertising unit for the carbon scare campaign. The more patrons who are dependent on the carbon-subsidies, the more pro-carbon lobbyists there are. And they lobby like their livelihood depends on it — because they have nothing if the government policies don’t prop up their pretend free market.

As Ross Garnaut, a long-time proponent of climate alarmism and phony markets, commented today:

We’re in a better position than when we were facing abolition of carbon pricing, major tampering with the Renewable Energy Target, abolition of the Climate Change Authority, abolition of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

It may not be the ideal way of doing things, but Mr Palmer’s support for keeping existing arrangements will have important effects.

Warming Never Completely Negated Earlier Cooling: Some Thoughts on NSW Temperature Trends

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Last night I presented a paper for the Sydney Institute entitled ‘Modelling Australian and global temperatures: what’s wrong? Bourke and Amberley as case studies’. The paper written with Ken Stewart, Dennis Jensen and John Abbot concludes with some thoughts on the New South Wales annual mean maximum temperature record. In particular we suggest that the record can be thought of as showing a cooling trend of -1.95 degree per century to 1960, and a warming trend of 2.48 degree per century since, Table 1.

Table 1

Taking these values and thinking about them in terms of a rate of cooling for approximately 70 years (1890 to 1960) and then a rate of warming for 54 year (1960 to 2013), we can estimate how much New South Wales cooled and then warmed. The sum of these values gives us the net change, a value that if we then multiple by a total period of 124 years, gives an indication of the rate of cooling per century.

This trend of -0.021 degree C per century suggests that the earlier cooling was almost, but not completely, negated by the later warming. To be clear, the overall temperature trend for New South Wales, calculated from the unhomogenized maximum temperatures as recorded at locations with long series, is one of cooling.

Vale Ray Evans & How to Win an Argument

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I first meet Ray Evans at a dinner at the Institute of Public Affairs. It must have been in about 2004, ten years ago, because I had just seen the movie ‘The Day After Tomorrow’. Staring Dennis Quaid as a paleoclimatologist professor, the movie was about the Gulf Stream shutting down resulting in catastrophic global cooling and a new ice age.

Ray Evans 1935-2014
Ray Evans 1935-2014

We were seated at the same table and I mentioned that I had enjoyed the movie, that it had been entertaining. He was scathing of my comment, while admitting he hadn’t seen the movie, and didn’t intend to. He understood that it was themed around advocacy for anthropogenic global warming. Ray was already vehemently opposed to the new doctrine. While he wasn’t keen to discuss the plot of the movie, he was keen to engage me in a discussion of the Gulf Stream.

I think that the next time we meet was at a lunch in Perth, also hosted by the IPA. On that occasion he was scathing of my suggestion that wind turbines could be beautiful. I may have also attempted a defence of wind farms as a source of renewable energy. But was properly put in my place by Ray who had a great depth of knowledge, not only of the economics of wind farming, but also of the quantities of steel and cement used in the construction of each turbine and their associated carbon footprint.

Whenever we met, he always managed to challenge my opinion and impart new knowledge and win the argument.

I now know a lot more about renewable energy, especially after reading an article by Ray full of useful facts and distressing politics published by Quadrant in July 2012 entitled ‘The Ruinous Privileges of Renewable Energy’.

Ray also knew a great deal about bushfires and the politics of control burning in Victoria. When it came to many issues, Ray Evans seemed able to see the wood and the trees and how big the forest was, but he never seemed daunted. Not in the least, and he always seemed to revel in the small facts.

You win arguments by understanding the detail. By forcing your opponent to engage with you on the detail. He once said something like that to me.

Ray stood for enlightenment values from a conservative Christian perspective and seemed to have a deep understanding and knowledge of everything that threatened that ethic.

And he believed you won arguments by getting into the detail. That is perhaps the most useful piece of information that he imparted to me, and by example.

Thank you Ray.

Federal Court Rules Against Wild Rivers

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Queensland’s Wild Rivers legislation was declared invalid in Cape York by an Australian Federal Court judge yesterday.

Cooper Creek, Cape York. Photograph by Jen. June 2012
Cooper Creek, Cape York. Photograph by Jen. June 2012

The court decision focused on the previous Labor government’s declaration of the Archer, Lockhart and Stewart Rivers on April 3 2009 as an election promise to secure green preferences in inner city electorates.

Two years earlier Neil Hewett wrote at this blog that:

“The progress of the Cape York Conservation Agenda is carving a deepening rift between indigenous interests and those of metropolitan-based ‘green’ groups. Whilst the former lobbies for social engagement within real economies, the latter crusades for an often over-simplified notion of environmental protection. Over-arching this ideological tussle, government verily executes authority for the political rewards of popular support.”

Graham Young has described yesterday’s decision as a victory for indigenous progress.

 

Open Thread

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So, I have revamped the blog. Hopefully nothing has been lost. I’ve still got some work to do, for example, sorting information into the new ‘Popular Topics’. The search button should still quickly find you what you want, as long as you can remember the author’s name or a key word or two.  Thanks for your patience today, and for the next little while.

Cooling Temperature Trend Establishing Across Northeastern Australia

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The Hon Greg Hunt MP,
Minister for the Environment.

Dear Minister Hunt,

I wrote to you on 4th March 2014 with concerns that the claims made by the Bureau of Meteorology that 2013 was Australia’s hottest year on record, are somewhat deceptive. In that letter I explained that the official temperature record has been truncated to begin in 1910 (thereby excluding the hot years of the Federation drought) and that the method used to calculate the annual average temperature for Australia is not transparent.

I’ve since come to understand that the annual average temperature for 2013, which the Bureau claimed was a record, is in fact a wholly contrived valued based on modeling of temperatures, rather than the averaging of actual recorded values. That is, careful scrutiny of the Bureau’s methodology shows that recorded temperatures at locations across Australia are submitted to a two-step homogenization process that can have the effect of changing the entire temperature trend at specific locations. A weighted mean of these ‘homogenized’ values is then used in the calculation of the Australian annual mean temperature. In turn, the ‘homogenized’ values are used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which gives advice back to the Australian government on global and Australian temperature trends.

A problem with this approach is that it can deliver an impression of climate change which accords wholly with expectations. But, it is reality that Australians should be planning for, so it would be better if the Bureau used real data, rather than modeled output when reporting temperature trends. Indeed to quote Aldous Huxley, ‘Facts don’t cease to exist because they are ignored.’

At the invitation of the Sydney Institute, I will be giving a talk on 25th June 2014, that shows the detail of how this methodology is applied, using the locations of Bourke in western NSW and Amberley in Queensland as case studies. I encourage attendance from the Bureau to scrutinize my presentation for accuracy. Indeed, all Australians should have a clear understanding of the nature of the data used in the calculation of important and highly publicized temperature statistics. All Australians should also have access to a realistic assessment of current temperature trends.

Very recently it was brought to my attention that Graham Williamson wrote to Rob Vertessy, Director of Meteorology at the Bureau, also querying the claimed increase in temperatures. Mr Williamson, in his letter of 27th May 2014, specifically asked why the Bureau of Meteorology did not acknowledge the 15-year hiatus in global warming as detailed in the recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, Chapter 10, AR5). In reply to Mr Williamson, Neil Plummer from the Bureau has suggested that the IPCC is simply referring to a slow down in the rate of global warming, rather than a pause as such. Given the IPCC reports are based on temperature trends derived from ‘homogenized’ data, rather than real observational records, I am concerned that they may also not be giving a true picture of recent climate change. To reiterate, even the IPCC is using modeled output rather than real data.

As part of ongoing research into natural rainfall patterns in Queensland, Professor John Abbot and I have been studying the temperature record for northeastern Australia, as temperature is a key input variable in our neural network models (e.g. Abbot and Marohasy 2014). Considering the data from the late 1800s until 1960, a cooling trend is evident, followed by warming between 1960 and 2001. In contrast, the last 12 years show quite dramatic cooling, Table 1. All three periods have occurred while greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, have been increasing in concentration in the atmosphere.

temps

Our analysis of the maximum temperature trend for the years 2002 to 2013 is based, not on the modeled temperature values used to generate official temperature statistics, but on the unadjusted observed temperatures also available from the Bureau of Meteorology website. The thirty-one sites across Queensland were chosen on the basis that there is a continual temperature record for the period 2002 to 2013 at each of the locations. We choose 2002 as the start date, as the data suggests a change in trend at about this year from warming to cooling. This is consistent with published studies by astrophysicists and physicists (e.g. Nicola Scafetta 2010, Abdussamatov 2012, and Lu 2013) and closely follows the timing of the last solar maximum (eg. NASA update 02/05/2014, http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml). While Table 1 is limited to Queensland, preliminary assessment of data from NSW, Victoria and the Northern Territory also suggests the onset of a cooling trend.

This information is in stark contrast to the information in the State of the Climate Report 2014 recently published by the Bureau and also CSIRO. The report states that “warming over Australia has been consistent” and temperatures are “projected to continue to increase, with more hot days and fewer extremely cool days.”

In order to reconcile the information in Table 1, with the claims in the State of the Climate Report 2014, it is important to realize that, like the calculation of the annual mean temperature for Australia, data present in the report is based wholly on modeled output. That is observed temperature values have been first passed through a two-step homogenization process involving the application of complex mathematical algorithms.

It is important to make a distinction between output from a computer model and real data. In his book Science and Public Policy: The virtuous corruption of virtual environmental science Aynsley Kellow, Professor and Head of the School of Government at the University of Tasmania, shows through many examples, including from climate science, how a reliance on computer models over the last 30 years as well as the infusion of values, has produced a preference for virtual over observational data. But the Australian public and Australian industry deserve much better from the Bureau.

As an Australian scientist with a keen interest in public policy and temperature records, I ask you as the Minister ultimately responsible for the activities of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, to consider how you might reconcile increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide with a falling temperature trend, and what needs to be done if we are to adequately prepare as a nation for the possible onset of a period of sustained cooling.

Yours sincerely

Dr Jennifer Marohasy
Adjunct Research Fellow
Central Queensland University

Links/References

Letter from Jennifer Marohasy to Minister Greg Hunt, 4th March 2014
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/questions-for-the-australian-bureau-of-meteorology/

John Abbot and Jennifer Marohasy, 2014. Input Selection and optimization for monthly rainfall forecasting in Queensland, Australia, using artificial neural networks, Atmospheric Research, Volume 138, Pages 166-178.

Nicola Scafetta, 2010. Empirical evidence for a celestial origin of the climate oscillations and its implications, Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, Volume 72, Pages 951-970.

Habibullo I. Abdussamatov, 2012. Bicentennial decrease of the total solar irradiance leads to unbalanced thermal budget of the Earth and the Little Ice Age, Applied Physics Research, Volume 4. DOI: 10.5539/apr.v4n1p178

Qing-Bu Lu, 2013. Cosmic-ray driven reaction and greenhouse effect of halogenated molecules: culprits for atmospheric ozone depletion and global climate change, International Journal of Modern Physics B, Volume 27, DOI: 10.1142/S0217979213500732

Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO 2014, State of the Climate 2014 http://www.bom.gov.au/state-of-the-climate/documents/state-of-the-climate-2014_low-res.pdf?ref=button