Jennifer Marohasy

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2011 Australian of the Year: Carbon Dioxide Caused Wind to Evaporate

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Today, January 26, is that day of the year when Australia’s have another holiday and are encouraged to get together with their mates for a beer or wine and to feel good about being Australian.  It is also the day when the ruling elite thrust somebody whose values they share upon us and we are forced to suffer comment from that person for the rest of the year – or stop listening to the ABC.   Today it is Simon McKeon.  He is the fellow Julia Gillard has nominated “Australian of the Year’.

McKeon optimizes the values of the new elite.   He is a bourgeoisie-bohemian*: throughout his life he has valued commerce and also worked to save the planet.  McKeon was a merchant banker and he is now a climate change activist – at the highest level.   

McKeon was recently appointed chairman of the CSIRO – officially Australia’s premier scientific organisation and an advocate for the introduction of a carbon price and emissions trading scheme. 

McKeon was also once a sailor and this has given him first hand experience of climate change phenomena.  Speaking to The Age newspaper in 2008 Mr McKeon explained that in the 1980s and 1990s a consistent wind blew from the southwest across Waratah Bay near Wilsons Promontory.   But since at least 2004 that wind has evaporated. This observation helped convince Mr McKeon to begin minimising carbon emissions and become a business community ambassador for Earth Hour and in particular to suggest businesses switch all their lights off for one hour every year.

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*read David Brooks’ book Bobos in Paradise

http://www.theage.com.au/news/environment/bank-chiefs-green-passion-helps-businesses-get-wind-of-switchoff/2008/02/24/1203788146632.html

Another Report into Climategate

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Climategate was the scandal that erupted in the lead-up to Copenhagen resulting from the release of over one thousand emails detailing correspondence between leading climate scientists exposing conspiracy and collusion including how to stack review committees, exaggerate warming trends, and avoid the disclosure of sensitive information. 

Today in the UK, the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology released its second report into the scandal:

 http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/science-and-technology-committee/publications/

According to David Holland, this report is one for which it definitely makes sense to start by reading the ending first.   On page 39, the Committee minutes show that of its eleven members only five met to consider and approve the final report.   Graham Stringer MP proposed that paragraph 98 be rewritten as below, but was in a minority of one against three with the Chairman not voting:

“The disclosure of data from the Climatic Research  Unit has been a traumatic and challenging experience for all involved and to the wider world.   There are proposals to increase worldwide  taxation by up to a trillion dollars on the basis of climate science predictions. This is an area where strong and opposing views are held.

“The release of the e-mails from CRU at the University of East Anglia and the accusations that followed demanded independent and objective scrutiny by independent panels. This has not happened. The composition of the two panels has been criticised for having members who were over identified with the views of CRU. Lord Oxburgh as President of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association and Chairman of Falck Renewable appeared to have a conflict of interest. Lord Oxburgh himself was aware that this might lead to criticism. Similarly Professor Boulton as an ex colleague of CRU seemed wholly inappropriate to be a member of the Russell panel. No reputable scientist who was critical of CRU’s work was on the panel, and prominent and distinguished critics were not interviewed. The Oxburgh panel did not do as our predecessor committee had been promised, investigate the science, but only looked at the integrity of the researchers. With the exception of Professor Kelly’s notes other notes taken by members of the panel have not been published. This leaves a question mark against whether CRU science is reliable. The Oxburgh panel also did not look at CRU’s controversial work on the IPPC which is what has attracted most series allegations. Russell did not investigate the deletion of e-mails. We are now left after three investigations without a clear understanding of whether or not the CRU science is compromised.”

Read more from Mr Holland here:
www.ventalize.org.uk/Climate%20Change/Climategate/HoCSTC/HC444_Comments.pdf

UPDATE  FROM DAVID HOLLAND

Its worth noting that the Committee has published the unsolicited evidence it received after announcing that it planned to interview Russell and Oxburgh.  It is here:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmsctech/444/444vw.pdf
 
I think historians will wonder how climate scientists managed to get away with it for so long.

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And in a paper entitled,

ACCESSING ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION RELATING TO CLIMATE CHANGE: A CASE STUDY UNDER UK FREEDOM OF INFORMATION LEGISLATION
Environmental Law and Management, Volume 22, Issue 1, pgs 3-12

John Abbot and I draw on evidence from David Holland to show scientist at both the CRU and the Met Office are part of a culture antagonistic towards disclosure of information and why this has serious implications for both the effective operation of FoI legislation and the openness and transparency of climate change assessments.

The Value of Water to the Queensland Government: A Note from Tony

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IN all the controversy over management of dams in South East Queensland, it is worth considering the value of the resource to the nominal owners, the Queensland Government, who sell that water to consumers.

With the aid of the Wivenhoe dam capacity diagrams, it is possible to determine that during the recent major drought, Wivenhoe went from 100 percent down to its low point of 15 percent.  That took eight and a half years, and there were no restrictions, and water was always plentiful for every use, be that residential, commercial or industrial use.

The cost of that water at the time was also cheap, in fact, the cost was almost negligible. However, as that low point of 15 percent approached, firstly the Beattie Government, and then the following Bligh Government, started to ramp up the prices and impose progressively more draconian restrictions upon the consumption of that water.

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Looking for AGW in a Sea of Natural Variability: Drought to Flood (Part 1): A Note from Luke Walker

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After the Queensland floods, Stewart Franks’ research on the interaction of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) driving cycles of drought and flood in Australia has been advanced as the rebuttal to the proposition by some politicians and scientists that anthropogenic climate change has had a role in recent events. And that the sceptic position forms a more rational and unique unheard insight into the climate system. That indeed it is business as usual, there is nothing to worry about except mopping up, and that the average rainfall of Queensland is (drought + flood) divide by 2.

Franks’ proposition is well based on physical processes and observed data. Of course there have been other supporters of the same position from various fields:

Peter Helman suggests cycles of beach erosion are influenced by IPO cycles, “The impact of sea level rise during the last few decades has not been expressed due to low storm energy (Callaghan and Helman 2008). Climate variability determines when and how sea level change will occur on the coast. Sea level oscillates with decadal and annual climate variability. Over decades, sea level changes are related to oscillation phases of IPO (Figure 3). It has been shown that during phases of negative IPO La Ninã events are more frequent (Verdon 2007), sea level rises at a faster rate than the long term trend (Goring and Bell 2001) and is higher than the long term trend with high storm energy, are periods of coastal erosion (Helman 2007). The longest period of negative IPO recorded was from the late 1850’s to the early 1890’s and the most recent was from the late 1940’s to the late 1970’s. Both of these periods resulted in major changes and erosion of the coastline (Helman 2007).

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Nerang River and Sealevel Rise

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Dear Jen
 
Yesterday was the highest tide of the year and the highest for the last 12 months and the photo of the sea level against this old sea-wall, I took this morning at the top of the tide at slack water.
 
We built this wall 48 years ago and the SL is around 300 mm [12 ins] below the step. Last January”s KT was around 200 mm [8 ins] below this step.

During the ’60s and ’70s the king tides always came to the top of this step except when there was flooding and/or sea surge from cyclonic conditions, in which case those king tides came above the step. In recent years the SL has not reached this step…

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Conservatism and Inland Water Management: A Note from David Boyd

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I think it was John Howard who once described a conservative as someone who did not believe that everything his grandfather said was necessarily wrong!

Nobody could accuse present day water managers (bureaucrats and attention seeking scientific advocates)of being conservative. They appear to approach current issues from the clear position that their forebears didn’t really have a clue about what they were doing.

So much so, we now have a widespread “conventional wisdom” view that in the Murray Darling Basin (MDB) our rivers are all “over allocated” and that this has given rise to their “ill-health”.(They conveniently overlook the fact that the “ill-health” was really the natural result of extreme dryness which Mother Nature has dramatically corrected over recent days.)

The much maligned forebears of these modern “dark green” commentators recognised the massive variability of the inland rivers of temperate Australia and devised a dynamic, adaptive, self correcting management system. Water licenses/entitlements were issued subject to seasonal allocations. Think of it sequentially-it rains, or it doesn’t. Our dams have plenty in storage or they don’t. Our water managers then, guided by long debated Water Management Plans, determine the percentage (if any) of the licensed amount which may be extracted.

This methodology allows account to be taken of environmental and critical human needs before any extractions for irrigation are allowed. It means that in a year when water is in short supply such as in 2008/9 only 3,500GL were extracted in the MDB, not the 13,700GL upper limit which the Guide to the Murray Darling Basin Plan keeps referring to.

Farmers understand the system and its logic and accept the risks involved. They also recognise the smoke screen of politicians talking about granting certainty. A concept totally foreign to Australian farming!

Likewise, they recognise the nonsense of asking the CSIRO to calculate the Sustainable Diversion Limits for each of the rivers. If “sustainable” means the “annual” amount that can always be extracted, then given the fact that all of our inland rivers,including the mighty Murray, sometimes actually stop flowing, then the limit must be placed at nil.

Faced with these variability issues the modern water managers then revert to using averages. Given the massive spreads around the average such mathematics quickly becomes meaningless.

All of this was well understood by those who devised the system. It is clearly not understood by those who glibly state that our rivers are over-allocated and advocate correcting the perceived problem by having the Government buy up water licenses without ever mentioning the role of seasonal allocations.

Oh for more conservatives!

Read more from David Boyd at http://davidboydsblog.blogspot.com/