Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Climate & Climate Change

Deal with Climate Reality as it Unfolds: Bob Carter

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“OVER the last 18 months, policymakers in Canada, the U.S. and Japan have quietly abandoned the illusory goal of preventing global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Instead, an alternative view has emerged regarding the most cost-effective way in which to deal with the undoubted hazards of climate change.

“This view points toward setting a policy of preparation for, and adaptation to, climatic events and change as they occur, which is distinctly different from the former emphasis given by most Western parliaments to the mitigation of global warming by curbing carbon dioxide emissions.”

So begins an article by Bob Carter recently published in Canada’s Financial Post. The article is a summary of a public lecture Professor Carter will be giving in Ottowa, Toronto and Calgary over the next week. It continues…

“Ultimately, the rationale for choosing between policies of mitigation or adaptation must lie with an analysis of the underlying scientific evidence about climate change. Yet the vigorous public debate over possibly dangerous human-caused global warming is bedevilled by two things.

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World Leaders to Tackle Real Pollution from Black Carbon

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“IT seems to have gone virtually unnoticed, but the world leaders at the weekend’s G8 summit look as if they have taken the biggest step in years in tackling climate change. And it’s quite apart from anything to do with carbon dioxide.

“The summit’s final communiqué, the Camp David Declaration, supports; comprehensive actions’ to reduce “short-lived climate pollutants”. These substances – including black carbon (soot), methane, ground-level ozone, and hydrofluorocarbons – are responsible for about half of global warming…

“More important still, the measures would save some 2.4 million lives a year, mainly by cutting the inhalation of soot, chiefly emitted by vehicle diesel engines and by the inefficient wood and dung burning cook stoves used by most of the world’s poorest people – and increase grain harvests, at present hit by pollution, by 52 million tons a year. 
While the international climate negotiations drag on, these pollutants can be reduced through existing national laws and regulations, using technologies that are already available…

Read more here: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geoffreylean/100159272/g8-leaders-open-up-vital-new-front-in-the-battle-to-control-global-warming/

G8: Leaders open up vital new front in the battle to control global warming by Geoffrey Lean @ The Telegraph, May 22, 2012

Basil Beamish for Climate Commissioner

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I’ve been reading about the Commission: the Climate Commission established to provide all Australians with an independent and reliable source of information about the science of climate change.

Two of the commissioners, Professors Will Steffan and Lesley Hughes, have just published a report stating that New South Wales is becoming hotter and heatwaves will become more severe.

My name is Mr Koala Bear and I’ve been studying their report ‘The Critical Decade: New South Wales Climate Impacts and Opportunities’. And that is not what the data says, not all the data.

Scientist Basil Beamish begins at the beginning. He has plotted climate data for two sites in NSW for which there is data back to 1890: Bathurst (pink line in chart) and Observatory Hill (blue line in chart). One of these is an inland site and one is coastal. One is to the east of Parramatta, the site favoured by the Cimate Commissioners and one is to the west.

This data suggests that that it was hotter back in the period 1910 to 1930. It was indeed very hot at Bathurst in 1919 with more than 31 days above 35.0°C (pink line in chart).   At Observatory Hill, the hottest year measured by days above 35.0°C was 1926 (blue line in chart).

If Professor Steffan and Hughes are going to make statements about temperatures trends they have an obligation to consider all the instrumental data that is available. I mean they have an obligation to begin at the beginning, not 1960 as they do in their very misleading report.

I am not keen on the idea of counting day above 35.0 °C by calendar year as a measure of global warming. A problem is that the calendar year separates the hot months in each summer; it arbitrarily splits this one discrete period into two repeatedly. But never mind, if the Commissioners want to do this they can. But they must start at the beginning.

Professors Hughes and Steffan have no business being Climate Commissioners.

I want to start a petition: Basil Beamish for Climate Commissioner!

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The Climate Play

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THE Heretic, a play about climate change by award winning British playwright Richard Bean, is currently on at the MTC Summer Theatre in Melbourne.

Outspoken warmist Clive Hamilton has reviewed the play with comment:

Richard Bean has swallowed, without chewing, all of the climate denier talking points favoured by the Tea Party. He must have spent a long time clicking from one denier website to the next, without ever bothering to look at any real science — you know, the science endorsed by every scientific academy in the world…
Diane Cassell is presented by playwright Richard Bean as the lone figure of integrity who has the courage to stand up to the climate science establishment, scientists who are cravenly manipulating their research to stay on the gravy train.

Today the play was reviewed by blogger and sceptic Andrew McIntyre at Quadrant Online:

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2012/05/on-with-the-play

Mr McIntyre concludes with comment:

But how will Australian audiences react? As mentioned above, in the performance I attended last night, there were some long spots and not as much laughter as I thought it deserved. There was one saving grace. A long-standing warmist friend I happened to encounter at interval said that it “made her think”.

That is an improvement on being offended.

Climate Commission Fudges Hot Day Data

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IF you believe Australia’s Climate Commissioner, Tim Flannery, it is getting hotter and hotter in Western Sydney.[1]

But scientist Basil Beamish noticed that in the Climate Commission report they only show the trend of the number of hot days from 1970-2011. There is data for Sydney, measured at Observatory Hill, back to 1890.

Dr Beamish noticed that if you use all of the hot days data back to 1890 it is clear there is a different long-term pattern in play (see blue line in chart). In fact the year with the greatest number of hot days for Sydney is 1926 (12 days) and this has not been beaten since.

But instead of reporting on the long term trend for Sydney as measured at Observatory Hill from 1890, Professor Flannery has chosen to just focus on Western Sydney and in particular use only the data for Parramatta North (see red line in chart). This data set begins in 1970, which was a low point in the hot days cycle. By choosing Parramatta and beginning in 1970, Professor Flannery can make the upward trend in hot days look dramatic.

Parramatta is further inland than the Observatory Hill site and so the summers are warmer and the winter’s colder. But if there were data for Parramatta back to 1890 it would almost certainly show the same pattern as Observatory Hill. Indeed it was almost certainly hotter in Parramatta, in Western Sydney, in 1926 than anytime since.

Once again the observational data does not support the nonsense claims made by Australia’s Climate Commissioner, Professor Flannery.

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Basil Beamish provided the chart and many of the words. Thank you.

1. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-14/heatwaves-bushfires-predicted-to-hammer-nsw/4009006

Counting More Tornadoes in the US, & Heat Waves in Western Sydney

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THOSE committed to catastrophic global warming can keep finding new evidence for global warming while those sceptical keep attempting to debunk the new claims.

For example, the number of tornados in the US is increasing.

But the increasing count is due to better weather tracking technology recording more low intensity events, according to Alan Cheetam.

The charts are from Alan Cheetham’s website. Its a trove of information and data that helps puts the dire warnings about tornados and much more in some perspective. It can be accessed here: http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/
Tornado information here: http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/GW_4CE_Precipitation.htm

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Monday May 14th

After posting that those committed to global warming keep finding new things to scare us with, I wake up to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation claiming:

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