Jennifer Marohasy

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It’s Snowing in the Upper Murrumbidgee, Australia: Photographs from Allan

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Hi Jennifer,

Some photographs of last Wednesday’s snow storm in the Tinderries.

Upper Murrumbidgee D blog June07.jpg

This is the second one in two weeks and both were widespread in the Queanbeyan River/Badga/Murrumbidgee Catchments.

Upper Murrumbidgee C blog June07.jpg

The weather charts suggest some more precipitation over the weekend.

Long time locals say that this has similarities to the late fifties, early sixties when they managed to leave the district a few times through each winter due to snow.

Might have to invest in a skidoo!

Cheers,
Allan
Upper Murrumbidgee
Australia

Upper Murrumbidgee Acrop blog June07.jpg

Weekend Reading (Part 3)

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1. Presidential ambition? Report: Gore has cancelled all scheduled events for next six months (From Taipei Times at bottom of page)

Excerpt: “Tien, who invited Gore to visit Taiwan to promote awareness on global warming, told reporters yesterday that she received an e-mail from the Harry Walker Agency, which has the exclusive right to arrange Gore’s speeches, saying that Gore had canceled all his scheduled events in the next six months.”

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2007/06/27/2003367023

2. Inhofe Praises Bald Eagle Delisting – But Voices Concern Over New ESA-Like Restrictions

Excerpt: “I am concerned, however, about the recent guidelines issued under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act (BGEPA) that will go into effect when ESA protection is removed. It appears that in some cases the guidelines place the same, ESA-like limitations on the backs of landowners under the guise of different law.”

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=72cff9f3-802a-23ad-498c-ccd941285b41&Region_id=&Issue_id=

3. Top Ten Democrat Energy Bill Failures

Excerpt: “The Democrats recently passed Senate Energy Bill will increase the price of gasoline, do nothing for supply and production, and impose new mandates on energy providers which will increase the cost of electricity for all consumers.”

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=7473fba1-802a-23ad-4cfc-6edfdbfc60ff

4. Fred Thompson Report: Thompson calls UN Chief’s linking of Darfur Genocide to Global Warming ‘Absurd’

Excerpt: “Blaming global warming, however, is basically the same thing as blaming America. America is by no means the only major source of greenhouse gases, but we’ve taken the most political heat. The reason is that congress rightfully balked at ratifying the Kyoto international climate treaties during the Clinton presidency.”

http://abcradionetworks.com/article.asp?id=431466&SPID=15663

5. Feds award $20 million to study how farm odors contribute to global warming

[Note: this one $20 million grant to study ‘farm odors’ exceeds all of the money Exxon-Mobile has ever been accused of giving to climate skeptics. (Senators Snowe and Rockefeller accused Exxon-Mobile of spending $19 million on skeptical groups since the 1990’s on October 30, 2006 see: http://snowe.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=9acba744-802a-23ad-47be-2683985c724e )

Excerpt: “The United States Department of Agriculture has released reports stating that when you smell cow manure, you’re also smelling greenhouse gas emissions.”

http://www.wetmtv.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=6bcacc50-6aa5-4443-9080-c2f58593d883

6. IPCC Review Comments Now Online – IPCC publishes dissenting opinion

(Early word is that so called “consensus” may be crumbling from IPCC reviewers)

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1790

7. Al Gore’s $100 Million Makeover

(Gore’s net worth jumped from an estimated $1-$2 million in 2000 to over $100 million today)

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117/features-gore.html

8. EPA $100K grant to help make nail salons safer for patrons and workers in King County

http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/3e50135a68a71d64852572a00065593b/b99be889f040afad85257307006434a9!OpenDocument

9. Two Climate Scientists issue new Report: Temperatures in the United States, Greenland and the Arctic, Relationship to Ocean and Solar Cycles

Excerpt: When you combine the two effects, you can explain much of the temperature variances of the past 110 years for the United States, Greenland and the Arctic.

http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/temperatures_in_north_america_greenland_and_the_arctic_relationship_to_ocea/

10. Sales Slow for Hamburg’s ‘Live Earth’; Blame Snoop

Excerpt: “According to this business report from Germany, only a third of the tickets have been sold for the Hamburg “Live Earth” concert for carbon depletion.”

http://blog.nam.org/archives/2007/06/live_earth_snoo_1.php

11. Digging up the roots of the IPCC
Excerpt: “The UN’s all-powerful climate change panel is no straightforward scientific body. It is a deeply political organization that was born out of disenchantment with progress.”

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3540/

12. Leaning Tower of Pisa is saved from collapse

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/28/wpisa128.xml

13. Researchers find Earth’s internal heat keeps continents afloat

Without It Mile-High Denver Would Be Below Sea Level

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/13577729/detail.html?rss=den&psp=news

14. Russian scientist says danger of climate change equal to nuclear war

http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20070627/67914064.html

15. Russian Scientists Say the Arctic Is Theirs

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/28/whats-the-russian-for-santas-workshop/

16. Glaciers Growing in France, Switzerland, and Washington

http://newsbusters.org/node/13798

17. First Snow in Johannesburg and Pretoria Since 1981 and 1968

http://newsbusters.org/node/13787

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Thanks to Marc Morano for all the above links.

Some Weekend Reading from Marc Morano

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1. The media tide is turning. See below from left leaning Slate Mag. writer published in Washington Post:

Wash. Post: Gore and DiCaprio scolded for promoting climate fears: ‘There must be a limit to how many calamitous films, books and television shows we, and our children, can absorb’

Excerpts: ‘I think it’s wrong to let our children believe they’ll be swept away before they get a chance to fret about college admissions.’

“There must be a limit to how many calamitous films, books and television shows we, and our children, can absorb… I, however, refuse to see the apocalypse in every balmy day. And I think it’s wrong to let our children believe they’ll be swept away before they get a chance to fret about college admissions. An article in The Post this spring described children anxious, sleepless and tearful about the end; one 9-year-old said she worried about global warming “because I don’t want to die…Usually we want to protect our children from awful events, adjusting the message to suit their age. Certainly we tried to do that after Sept. 11. But an essential part of the global warming awareness movement is the belief that scaring us to death is the best way to spur massive change. Gore explicitly compares warming to the Nazis of the last century and terrorists of this one.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/24/AR2007062401374.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

2. Actor Bruce Willis mocks environmentalists on Letterman Show (watch video)

Excerpt: First, he came out wearing a giant wind turbine hat claiming that he’s now gone off-grid and is producing his own energy. “Dave, I’ve gone green,” he told Letterman. “I’m completely off-grid. In fact, I can’t even see the grid anymore.” “This whole global warming thing — I’m not convinced. I’m a little skeptical. I’m thinking that the problem isn’t global warming, but ‘global humidity’”.

http://www.ecorazzi.com/?p=3041

3. New research finds Antarctica Ice sheet stable

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/tech/2007/jun/26/062603966.html

4. Harvard Physicist Lubos Motl takes on RealClimate.org scientists

Excerpt: “The Gentlemen at RealClimate.ORG have decided that my article about climate sensitivity and similar articles by others are too dangerous because they show that every new molecule of CO2 causes smaller greenhouse effect than the previous molecule: the absorption gets saturated. Such a conclusion could diminish the holy power of the enhanced greenhouse effect and undermine the global efforts of scientists of good faith – and their friends, politicians of good faith, lawyers of good faith, singers of good faith, and publishers of good faith – to globally regulate the greenhouse effect.”

http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/06/realclimate-saturated-confusion.html

5. Scientist dismisses UK flood, global warming link as ‘simplistic nonsense’

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007290473,00.html

6. Watch interview with Skeptical Scientist Dr. Fred Singer on AccuWeather TV’s Headline: Earth

http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2007/06/skeptical_dr_fred_singer_on_he.html

7. Al Gore Has Not Responded to Ivy League Professor’s Global Warming Wager, Media Mum

http://newsbusters.org/node/13753

8. Gore challenged to put his money where his ‘myth’ is
Meet the Ivy League professor and expert on forecasting who is challenging Al Gore to a $20,000 bet that he is wrong on global warming

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3533/

9. Research finds rising C02 emissions making poison ivy more potent

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118281532052547766.html?mod=home_personal_journal_left

10. Tigers invade Bangladesh villages killing three people, 50 cattle

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21973833-23109,00.html

11. Shark pregnancy without help from male baffles aquarium

http://www.9news.com/news/watercooler/article.aspx?storyid=72643

12. Researchers say resurrection of extinct woolly mammoth possible

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/HealthScience/Woolly_mammoth_return_possible/articleshow/2150587.cms

13. UK pub declares itself foreign embassy to avoid smoking ban

“If it is successful, the pub would be classified as “foreign soil”, allowing smokers a haven from the smoking laws covering the rest of the UK.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=464540&in_page_id=1770&ito=newsnow

14. AP: Researchers to look for evidence of ‘Bigfoot’

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/06/26/ap3859235.html

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Thanks to Marc Morano for all these links.
Happy reading and have a good weekend …

Forecasts All Up in the Air: A Note from Bob Carter

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Kevin Trenberth is head of the large US National Centre for Atmospheric Research and one of the advisory high priests of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

A New Zealander by birth, Trenberth has had a distinguished career as a climate scientist with interests in the use of computer General Circulation Models (GCMs), the basis for most of the public alarm about dangerous global warming.

When such a person gives an opinion about the scientific value of GCMs as predictive tools, it is obviously wise to pay attention.

In a remarkable contribution to Nature magazine’s Climate Feedback blog, Trenberth concedes GCMs cannot predict future climate and claims the IPCC is not in the business of climate prediction. This might be news to some people.

Among other things, Trenberth asserts “. . . there are no (climate) predictions by IPCC at all. And there never have been”. Instead, there are only “what if” projections of future climate that correspond to certain emissions scenarios.

According to Trenberth, GCMs “. . . do not consider many things like the recovery of the ozone layer, for instance, or observed trends in forcing agents”.

“None of the models used by IPCC is initialised to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models corresponds even remotely to the current observed climate.

“The state of the oceans, sea ice and soil moisture has no relationship to the observed state at any recent time in any of the IPCC models.

“There is neither an El Nino sequence nor any Pacific Decadal Oscillation that replicates the recent past; yet these are critical modes of variability that affect Pacific rim countries and beyond . . . the starting climate state in several of the models may depart significantly from the real climate owing to model errors” and “regional climate change is impossible to deal with properly unless the models are initialised”.

GCMs “assume linearity” which “works for global forced variations, but it cannot work for many aspects of climate, especially those related to the water cycle . . . the science is not done because we do not have reliable or regional predictions of climate”.

Strange that. I could have sworn that I heard somewhere that the science was supposed to be settled.

One wonders whether anyone has told CSIRO that their much-vaunted regional climate models are worthless predictive tools. Perhaps someone will ask the CSIRO to refund the swingeing amounts state governments and others have paid for useless regional “climate forecasts”?

Trenberth’s statements are a direct admission of the validity of similar criticisms that have been made of GCMs and the IPCC by climate rationalists for many years.

Of course, his tail-covering assertion that the IPCC doesn’t make climate predictions or forecasts anyway has to be taken with a grain of salt. In a paper being presented at the 27th International Symposium on Forecasting in New York this week, Scott Armstrong and Kesten Green audit the relevant chapter in the IPCC’s latest report. They find that “in apparent contradiction to claims by some climate experts that the IPCC provides ‘projections’ and not ‘forecasts’, the word ‘forecast’ and its derivatives occurred 37 times, and ‘predict’ and its derivatives occur 90 times” in the chapter.

Strange that the public has this misimpression that the IPCC predicts future climate, isn’t it?

Having analysed the IPCC’s approach in detail, Armstrong and Kesten conclude that “because the forecasting processes . . . overlook scientific evidence on forecasting, the IPCC forecasts of climate change are not scientific”.

Like Trenberth’s advice, this also may well be news to some people.

In a third devastating blow to the credibility of climate forecasting, a lead author of the IPCC Working Group 1 science report, Jim Renwick, recently admitted “climate prediction is hard, half of the variability in the climate system is not predictable, so we don’t expect to do terrifically well”.

Renwick was responding to an audit showing the climate forecasts issued by New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmosphere were accurate only 48 per cent of the time.

In other words, one can do just as well by tossing a coin.

These various criticisms of climate modelling can be summed up in the following statement – there is no predictive value in the current generation of computer GCMs and therefore the alarmist IPCC statements about human-caused global warming are unjustified. Yet Australia has an Opposition and a Government that profess to set their climate policies on the basis of IPCC advice. Both also seem determined to impose an inefficient, ineffective and costly carbon trading or taxation system on the economy, for the aspirational absurdity of “stopping climate change”.

Perhaps someone should tell Prime Minister John Howard that dangerous global warming has been called off.

Professor Bob Carter is a James Cook University geologist who studies ancient environments and climate. His website is at: http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/new_page_1.htm

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First published in The Courier Mail. Republished with permission.

Floods in Goulburn

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“Ravaged by the harshest water restrictions in Australia, Goulburn, NSW, residents spent last night preparing for floods and possible evacuations.

“A huge downpour soaked the region yesterday, with Canberra receiving 44mm of rain.

“That has brought the total rainfall for the month to 83mm, but well above the June average of 38mm.

“At Goulburn, which has been struggling under Stage5 water restrictions, the Sooley Dam overflowed and the larger Pejar Dam rose to 21pc of capacity for the first time since 2002.

“But elation quickly turned to apprehension as emergency services went on a door-knock mission late last night to warn residents of a possible evacuation.

“Local farmer David Decorte … said, “We’ve gone from one extreme to another.”

Read the complete Farm Online article here: http://www.farmonline.com.au/news_daily.asp?ag_id=43403

And what else would you expect in Australia – a land of drought and flooding rains?

Growing Numbers of Sceptics? A Note from Jim

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Jennifer,

I note of late a tendency to refer to the “growing” number of AGW skeptics in the scientific community and am a bit puzzled by this.

If, like myself, you are not a scientist much less an expert in a climate related discipline, then the relative proportions and credibility of genuine experts is an important factor in making your mind up about the significance of AGW.

So who are the skeptics and is their number growing?

It might be useful to keep an up-to-date list of the genuine experts who are skeptical about either/or the existence of AGW and the seriousness of the threat it poses.

Highlighting recent “defections” either way might indicate a change in sentiment in scientific opinion if one really exists?

Of course, some principles would have to be adopted and applied rigorously if such an exercise was really to be of any use.

For example, many would argue that scientists who received funding from a source which may have an agenda served by a particular finding should be excluded.

This includes scientists who have been funded by oil and mining companies, environmental organizations , NGO’s or scientists who have received research grants specifically linked to AGW.

There is a link at Wiki which lists skeptics and provides details of their qualifications:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming

But who are the recent converts?

I can only think of two – Allegre and David Evans.

I don’t know of any defections the other way.

Should we be expecting to see more if scientific sentiment is really changing?

Regards,
Jim
Australia