Jennifer Marohasy

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Australia’s Hottest: Withdrawn

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THE last really sensational global warming story broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has been withdrawn – but not by the ABC.  There has been not a word on the new development from the ABC or any of the other media outlets that originally reported on it.

The story made headlines around the world following a media release from the University of Melbourne and the endorsement of David Karoly:

‘The last 50 years in Australia have been the warmest.

The researchers from Melbourne University used 27 different natural indicators like tree rings and ice cores to come to their conclusion, which will be a part of the next United Nations intergovernmental panel on climate change report.

The findings show that no other period in the last 1,000 years matches the temperature rises Australia and the region has experienced in the last 50 years.’[1]

Sounds like another hockey stick doesn’t it? Following scrutiny at Steve McIntyre’s blog ‘Climate Audit’ the paper how been withdrawn.[2] Dr Karoly advised Mr McIntyre thus:

Dear Stephen,

I am contacting you on behalf of all the authors of the Gergis et al (2012) study ‘Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium’

An issue has been identified in the processing of the data used in the study, which may affect the results. While the paper states that “both proxy climate and instrumental data were linearly detrended over the 1921–1990 period”, we discovered on Tuesday 5 June that the records used in the final analysis were not detrended for proxy selection, making this statement incorrect. Although this is an unfortunate data processing issue, it is likely to have implications for the results reported in the study.

The journal has been contacted and the publication of the study has been put on hold.

This is a normal part of science. The testing of scientific studies through independent analysis of data and methods strengthens the conclusions. In this study, an issue has been identified and the results are being re-checked.

We would be grateful if you would post the notice below on your ClimateAudit web site.

We would like to thank you and the participants at the ClimateAudit blog for your scrutiny of our study, which also identified this data processing issue.

Thanks, David Karoly

Print publication of scientific study put on hold
An issue has been identified in the processing of the data used in the study, “Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium” by Joelle Gergis, Raphael Neukom, Stephen Phipps, Ailie Gallant and David Karoly, accepted for publication in the Journal of Climate.
We are currently reviewing the data and results.

If only they would now withdraw the next United Nations intergovernmental panel on climate change report, the carbon tax, and…

 

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1] Last 50 years were Australia’s hottest: study
Matthew Carney, May 17, 2012
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-17/study-says-last-fifty-years-were-australias-hottest/4016304/?site=science/memory&topic=latest

2] Gergis et al Put on Hold, Steve McIntyre, June 8, 2012 http://climateaudit.org/2012/06/08/gergis-et-al-put-on-hold/

How the Prime Minister Can Save the Great Barrier Reef

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EVERYONE claims to be concerned about the health of the Great Barrier Reef. Last week a joint UNESCO World Heritage Centre and International Union for the Conservation of Nature report was released claiming the reef could be “in danger”.

Earlier this week the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, wrote to Queensland Premier, Campbell Newman, expressing concern about approval for a coal mine at Alpha and the potential impact of runoff on dugongs. [1]

Ha. It’s many hundreds of kilometres from Alpha to the coast. In between is the Burdekin dam and a long way further downstream more than 20,000 hectares of sugarcane and then the wetlands of Bowling Green Bay.

It’s absurd to suggest that the mine is going to have any impact on dugongs.

Maybe the concern wasn’t so much about the mine but about the associated development, in particular the railway and plans to expand the port at Abbot Point? Maybe.

But the Great Barrier Reef covers a vast area and dugongs aren’t going to congregate about a port development.

Dugongs congregate where there are seagrass meadows and there is no evidence that seagrass meadows are generally in decline around the Australian coastline.

Dugongs numbers, however, are in decline.

And it has everything to do with something the Prime Minister can stop.

There are perhaps only 14,000 dugongs left in Great Barrier Reef waters, and some estimates suggest that about 1,000 are slaughtered each year.

If the Prime Minister really cared about the Great Barrier Reef and its dugongs she would immediately ban the slaughter of dugongs by aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in Great Barrier Reef waters.

 

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Venus

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ON June 5 and 6, the planet Venus passes between the earth and the sun producing a silhouette that few alive today will likely see again. It won’t happen again until 2117.

“Earth and Venus are similar distances from the sun, are made of the same basic materials, and are almost perfect twins in terms of size.

“Yet the two planets are wrapped in stunningly dissimilar blankets of air. Venus’s atmosphere is almost 100 times more massive than Earth’s and consists mainly of CO2, a greenhouse gas that raises the surface temperature to almost 900°F. Clouds of sulfuric acid tower 14 miles high and whip around the planet as fast as 220 mph. A human being transported to this hellish environment would be crushed, suffocate, desiccate, and possibly ignite.

“For the most part, planetary scientists have no idea how Venus turned out this way.
Our models and tools cannot fully explain Venus, which means we lack the tools for understanding our own planet…

Read more http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/04jun_arcofvenus/

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Image from http://www.space.com/15973-venus-transit-pictures-2012-gallery.html

Against The Hellfire, Credit: NASA / SDO. The Solar Dynamics Observatory’s AIA 304 camera delivered this amazing image of Venus over the active Sun during the first few hours of the Venus Transit.

Eulogy: Neville Kennard had Unconventional Wisdom

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AUSTRALIAN anarchist and sceptic, Neville Kennard, died last night (Sunday 3rd June) from secondary cancer from a melanoma. Many knew Kennard as one of the brothers who owned and managed Kennards Hire and Kennards Self Storage. Kennard was also one of the first financial supporters and the first Chairman of the Centre for Independent Studies. I knew Nev as an enthusiastic supporter of Socratic dialogue and unconventional wisdom.

The last time we met was at the Royal Sydney Yacht Club  in November last year. Kennard had invited a small group to dinner there to hear Hans Hermann-Hoppe speak about fiat money.  Fiat money is what Professor Hoppe refers to as irredeemable pieces of paper.  Hoppe talked about the history of money and our current banking system concluding that only a system of universal commodity money (gold), competitive banks (not the current system where monopolistic reserve banks set interest rates etcetera), and 100-percent-reserve deposit banking with a strict functional separation of loan and deposit banking can assure economic stability and present a genuine answer to the current “monetarist fiasco”.

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Using Artificial Intelligence to Forecast Rainfall

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OVER the last year, John Abbot and I have worked on a new method for forecasting rainfall based on the use of artificial intelligence.

We have benchmarked our forecasts against output from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s General Circulation Model (POAMA 1.5).  Our model gives a more accurate forecast for 16 of the 17 sites in Queensland that have the highest quality rainfall data. Our methodology is detailed in a new paper that will soon be published in the international journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.[1]

Artificial neural networks can find existing complex relationships and patterns repeated in rainfall data.  The neural network software that we run on our standard laptop computer, can perform millions of calculations very quickly, and in this way find natural patterns that repeat themselves.

In contrast, the Bureau uses general circulation models; the same models used to predict global warming. These models attempt to forecast seasonal and monthly rainfall by working from a particular theory of climate. Our system is radically different in that we let the model find the patterns.  We let the model find the natural cycles and then forecast forward up to 9 months.

That our system works, proves that there are patterns – natural recurrent cycles – in historical rainfall data.

Contrary to some of the claims of some climate sceptics: the natural hydrological cycle is not totally chaotic.

Contrary to the claims of most warmists: these natural rainfall cycles have not been perturbed by the current elevated levels of carbon dioxide.

What we did is tune one of the most advanced off-the-shelf software packages for pattern recognition (Synapse, Peltarion) into the natural patterns and recurrent cycles in historic rainfall data.

We found a combination of historic rainfall and temperature data combined with historic data for three climate indices (Southern Oscillation Index, Pacific Decadal Oscillation and Nino 3.4) gave the most accurate forecasts. Inclusion of solar irradiance and sunspot number did not enhance the performance of our model.  Inputting carbon dioxide concentrations doesn’t improve our model.

We believe we have barely scratched the surface in terms of potential for rainfall forecasting using this method for eastern Australia and are looking for significant additional funding to progress this work.

The work has so far been wholly funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation and supported by the Centre for Plant and Water Science at Central Queensland University.

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[1] Email me at jennifermarohasy at jennifermarohasy.com if you would like an advance copy of our paper:

John Abbot and Jennifer Marohasy
Application of Artificial Neural Networks to Rainfall Forecasting in Queensland, Australia
Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, Volume 29, Number 4, Pages 717-730.

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