Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Opinion

Early Warning of Massive Earthquates Possible: John McRobert

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EARLY  Wednesday morning a 8.3 magnitude earthquake caused a tsunami in the Pacific, killing at least 140 people in Samoa and Tonga. Later in the day a 7.6 magnitude earthquake hit western Sumatra in Indonesia, drowning hundreds of people and burying thousands more under rubble.

Many in Samoa claim the warning system in place failed because an alert was only received after the tsunami hit.  The official line has been that when the earthquake is close to land, the technology is such that there is simply not time for adequate warnings.  

Brisbane-based engineer, now publisher, John McRobert, disputes this assessment claiming major earthquakes have precursor seismic shocks hundreds of kilometres below the Earth’s surface, and the transmigration of the energy, and the path to the surface can be accurately predicted: [Read more…] about Early Warning of Massive Earthquates Possible: John McRobert

Working to Develop More Reliable Methodology: Keith Briffa

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keith briffa 2007THE United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and most others who believe in anthropogenic global warming (AGW), have been influenced by the work of climatologists relying on tree-ring data to reconstruct past climate because the thermometer record only goes back to about 1850.  The claim that there has been an unprecedented upswing in temperatures over the last 100 years making 1998 the hottest year of the last thousand years, has for example, been based on reconstructions from tree-ring data.

In response to recent suggestions by Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre that the official reconstructions may have been fudged, Keith Briffa, from the Climate Research Unit associated with the UK Met. Office, has responded explaining that there was no cherry picking of data in the development of the reconstructions used by the IPCC and others, rather, the methodology is not yet robust.  

Given this admission from a leading UK climate scientist, it would perhaps be appropriate for the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri,  to now advise world leaders that there are potential problems with the methodology used in the development of key assumptions underpining the consensus view on anthropogenic global warming and that until further notice, the big meeting in Copenhagen should be postponed.

[Read more…] about Working to Develop More Reliable Methodology: Keith Briffa

Leading UK Climate Scientists Must Explain or Resign

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McIntyre_rcs_chronologies_rev2MOST scientific sceptics have been dismissive of the various reconstructions of temperature which suggest 1998 is the warmest year of the past millennium.    Our case has been significantly bolstered over the last week with statistician Steve McIntyre finally getting access to data used by Keith Briffa,  Tim Osborn  and Phil Jones to support the idea that there has been an unprecedented upswing in temperatures over the last hundred years –  the infamous hockey stick graph.  

Mr McIntyre’s analysis of the data – which he had been asking for since 2003 – suggests that scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the Hadley Centre associated with the UK Met. Office  have been using only a small subset of the available data to make their claims that recent years have been the hottest of the last millennium.   When the entire data set is used, Mr McIntyre claims that the hockey stick shape disappears completely. [1]    

Mr McIntyre has previously showed problems with the mathematics behind the ‘hockey stick’.   But scientists at the Climate Research Centre (CRU), in particular Dr Briffa, have continuously republished claiming the upswing in temperatures over the last 100 years is real and not an artifact of the methodology used – as claimed by Mr McIntyre.     However, these same scientists have denied Mr McIntyre access to all the data.    Recently they were forced to make more data available to Mr McIntyre after they published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society  –  a journal which unlike Nature and Science has strict policies on data archiving which it enforces.   [Read more…] about Leading UK Climate Scientists Must Explain or Resign

Australian Liberals Oppose Carbon Trading

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Australian Opposition Leader (Malcolm Turnbull) will be forced to stare down more than two-thirds of the Liberal back bench if he proceeds with his plan to negotiate with the government over amendments to the emissions trading scheme before December’s Copenhagen climate change conference.   Read more here.

Melting Glaciers and Cognitive Dissonance

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Glacial_lakes,_BhutanMOUNTAIN glaciers in Asia are melting at a rate that could eventually threaten water supplies, irrigation or hydropower for 20 percent to 25 percent of the world’s population: that is according to the latest United Nations Environment Program report.

Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute puts it this way, “The melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan Plateau will deprive the Indus, Ganges, Yangtze and Yellow rivers of the ice melt that sustains their flow during the dry season and the irrigation systems that depend on them.”

But according to Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, it’s a case of cognitive dissonance.  He explains:

“In other words the supply of melt water from the melting glaciers is threatened by the melting of the glaciers. This is correct in that if the glaciers melt completely there will be no more melt water from the glaciers.

“What if the glaciers were not melting due to a colder climate? Then where would the irrigation water come from? How about if the glaciers were advancing 100 meters per year toward the villages that need the melt water for irrigation?   [Read more…] about Melting Glaciers and Cognitive Dissonance