By Paul
LONDON – Warnings about the effects of climate change have made most Britons aware of the crisis, but few are willing to make major changes to the way they live, a survey showed on Friday.
Planet Ark: ‘Most Britons Aware But Unwilling on Climate Chang e’
Most people are ready to make personal sacrifices to address climate change, according to a BBC poll of 22,000 people in 21 countries.
BBC News website: Most ready for ‘green sacrifices’
By Paul
“Consider Fig. 1 showing the negative of the anomaly of atmospheric pressure in Darwin, Australia and used by Trenberth and Hoar (1997) as a measure of the strength of the Walker circulation. Fig. 2 displays the sea surface temperature (SST) Niño3.4 index commonly used as a measure of the strength of El Niño. Trenberth and Hoar(1997) infer that ENSO behavior shifted after about 1970 to more frequent and larger El Niño events. (The change was interpreted as the result of global warming and to be “unprecedented” in the historical record.) Solow (2006), however, noted that their anomalous test period, 1992-mid-1995, in Fig. 1 was not independent of the earlier interval of supposedly normal behavior; he used the subsequently longer record to recalculate the probability that the nature of ENSO had changed in some significant way. His conclusion was, in contrast, that while the test period appears different from the earlier one, subsequently there was essentially no evidence that the nature of the physics had changed. The comparatively dramatic story of the original authors is thus replaced by a much more ambiguous and unexciting, but presumably more soundly-based,description of the nature of ENSO.”
Carl Wunsch: Extremes, Patterns, and Other Structures in Oceanographic and Climate Records
Abstract: The human eye and brain are powerful pattern detection instruments. Coupled with the clear human need to perceive the world as deterministic and understandable, and the often counter-intuitive results of probability theory, it is easy to go astray in making inferences. In particular, many examples exist where attention was called to apparent extreme behavior, whether in time or space series, or in the appearance of unusual patterns, that are just happenstance. Used carefully, and with a residual open-mindedness, it is possible to employ some simple statistical tests to avoid the outcomes of inferring unusual behavior where none is present, nor in rejecting a major finding as being insignificant.
Climate Audit: ‘Carl Wunsch on Self-Deception’
By Paul
Rain may have fallen over parts of south-eastern Australia over the weekend – in some places to the point of flooding – but the confidence of farmers in the future of their businesses has fallen to its lowest level this year, results from Westpac and Charles Sturt University reveals.
ABC News: ‘Farmer confidence hits yearly low as dry drags on’
Thanks to Luke Walker for the link.
By Paul
The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) has been rating the policy announcements of all federal political parties on the issues of water and climate change.
ABC News: Govt told to ‘pull up socks’ on environment
Thanks to Luke Walker for the link.
By Paul
The Greens have launched their Sun Fund policy in Cairns, which seeks to use the Federal Government’s claimed $300 million annual fossil fuels subsidy for renewable energy instead.
The Greens believe that this will reduce greenhouse gas emissions thus protecting the likes of the Barrier Reef and wet tropics.
ABC News: ‘Greens pledge to push renewable energy’
Thanks to Luke Walker for the link.
By Paul
Summers in Cloncurry seem to last forever and there is always a sunny side to the street, making it an ideal place to become the first town to run entirely on solar power.
ABC News: ‘Cloncurry set for solar revolution’
In 1889, the Queensland town of Cloncurry recorded Australia’s hottest day – 53 degrees Celsius in the shade. It’s a record of which the town is very proud.
According to State record temperatures “There are also numerous extreme high temperatures which have been recorded prior to about 1910 using non-standard instrumentation, most notably a reading of 53.1 at Cloncurry in January 1889. It is likely that this will be struck from the official record in the near future.”
Thanks to Luke Walker for this one.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
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