Opinion

THE Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) admits it was wrong about urban heating effects as a professional statistical analysis by Andrew Barnham exposes a BOM claim that “since 1960 the mean temperature in Australia has increased by about 0.7 °C”; the BOM assertion has no empirical scientific basis.

Read more here:  http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/11/new-retreat-from-global-warming-data-by.html

[Read more…] about Confirmation Bias at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (Part 2)

SEVERAL weeks ago on the Science Show, broadcast nationally by our ABC, the host Robyn Williams interviewed a journalist, Bob Ward, masquerading as an expert on climate science.    Mr Ward proceeded to make various inaccurate statements and false claims including that he had systematically reviewed the literature on climate science.    As a consequence of this systematic review the listener was lead to believe that Mr Ward had accurately identified a paper by Professor Bob Carter, James Cook University, as the worst paper ever published on climate science. 

In fact Mr Ward has made no systematic review, and the focus on Professor Carter and a paper he published two years previously was not news.    Furthermore Professor Carter was not invited onto the program to debate Mr Wards as suggested in the following letter, but rather to make a pre-recorded comment.

The real news that week was that Professor Carter’s new book, The Counter Consensus, was to be launched at a small function in Melbourne – something the program failed to mention.  

I complained to the ABC about the interview which I construed as a spiteful attack on Professor Carter’s credibility orchestrated by host of the science show, Robyn Williams, a well known hater of so called ‘climate sceptics’.

I received the following official reply yesterday which is complete nonsense.  Indeed the program violated the ABC’s various codes because while purporting to be factual, was inaccurate and not in context. 

[Read more…] about National Broadcaster Refuses to Apologize to Bob Carter

THE Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) continues raising serious concerns for policy makers and the public as to whether the “adjustments” that government-funded employees continue making to raw surface and ocean temperature data sets can be trusted.   In a new collaborative paper, Is The Western Climate Establishment Corrupt?, Dr. Dave Evans has gathered substantial evidence that corruption has become endemic within government-sponsored climate units.  Dr. Evans finds that, “The Western Climate Establishment has allowed egregious mistakes, major errors and obvious biases to accumulate — each factor on its own might be hard to pin down, but the pattern is undeniable.” Evans asks, “How many excuses does it take?”

[Read more…] about Is The Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? Asks SPPI

ON Friday 29 October 2010, The Cairns Post reported on the recently released Climate Change Report with respect to impacts on the Far North Queensland region. One of the statements contained in the article was:

 “The number of days over 35C in Cairns is expected to triple and the Gulf and Cape can expect longer drier spells interrupted by more intense rainfall.”

If we just focus on the number of days over 35C statement, then how is this qualified? The words “expected to triple” are with respect to what baseline? How is this expectation derived, from historical data or models? The historical data can easily be checked by downloading the records for Cairns from the BOM website (http://www.bom.gov.au).

The results are shown in Figure 1, Temperatures for Cairns above 35°C from 1943 to present.

The long term average number of days above 35°C is 3 per year. There have been four years in the past (1956, 1971, 1988 and 1992) when the number of days has trebled or more above the long term yearly average. It can therefore be expected that this may occur again in the future as part of the natural variation; in fact looking at the frequency of these events, Cairns is overdue for another one of these above average years. The interesting question is should this not occur for say the next 10 years, does this refute the expectation being reported in this newspaper article? Does this graph in fact support the concept that there has been a lack of evidence for warming in the Cairns region since 1996 and is the natural climate cycle in this region still operating within an historical range? Is there justification for an alternative view that the climate in Cairns may be moving into a cooling phase? As usual only time will tell.

Returning to the use of the unqualified word such as “expected”, what does this mean? There is no probability assigned to this descriptor. Yet based on the historical data a probability can be assigned to the hypothesis of a trebling of the number of days with temperatures above 35°C from the long term average for Cairns. According to the records this value is 0.06 (or a 6% chance). Ironically there is twice as much chance (14.7%) that there will be no days above 35°C.

The warmest period for Cairns shown in Figure 1 is from 1988 to 1995, and currently 2010 has reached the long term average of 3 days above 35°C. With the current La Nina pattern in effect it will be interesting to see what maximum temperatures are recorded for November and December of 2010. At this stage it is clear that the 2000’s have not shown any unprecedented warming in the Cairns region based on this maximum temperature parameter. 

Dr B Basil Beamish
Senior Lecturer in Mining Engineering, School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering, The University of Queensland, Brisbane Qld 4072