Climate & Climate Change

What is it about ‘global warming’ that brings out the worst in people like Tim Flannery?

Prof Flannery was on ABC Television’s The 7.30 Report last night promoting his new book. I have not read The Weather Makers but I understand from the interview last night that he proposes temperatures are going to rise by 3C and the really bad thing is that our addiction to coal is now driving weather patterns.

Prof Bob Carter, also interviewed, responded: “The idea that we can manage the climate is frankly hubris.”

Flannery also proposed a carbon tax and that this be levied immediately to move power generation away from coal to solar, wind and possibly even nuclear power.

I gather The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, yesterday and on the weekend, gave the book and the dire predictions loads of coverage.

In comment at another post Rog provided these links:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/editorial/storm-warning-on-impact-of-climate-change/2005/09/25/1127586743182.html
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/nuclear-future/2005/09/25/1127586747151.html
http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/flannery/biog.htm

I received the following note from Warwick Hughes:

The 20th anniversary of Jones et al 1986 seems a good time to assemble all available reviews of these IPCC cornerstones that slipped under the radar of science. I have just posted:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/cru86/ . …

The Hughes et al review begins:

Next year will mark 20 years since the publication of the two landmark Jones et al papers that launched the dataset that underpins IPCC Global Warming as we now know it. For over 200 years Earth has been recovering from the Little Ice Age (LIA) and the associated solar minimums so of course warming has taken place. Our position in continuing to draw attention to the appalling deficiencies in the Jones et al methodologies can be expressed simply by in effect saying the following to the IPCC and their cohorts. You are proposing huge changes to the World economic system, surely the onus is on you to measure global temperature trends using data that does not include many hundreds of temperature records contaminated by local urban heat islands.

Rita hit the US mainland (near Port Arthur, Texas) as a category 3 hurricane last night. This will put Rita in the US National Hurricane Centres ‘major hurricane’ category.

It is starting to really look like there has been a recent significant increase in the number and intensity of big storms hitting the North Atlantic basin.

I thought the recent paper at Tech Central Station was interesting from this perspective. If you want to keep arguing the relevance of this paper and about numbers and intensity of hurricanes there is a long thread at this blog here.

Some have suggested ‘it’ is all to do with anthropogenic global warming (AGW), others that is is a return to ‘the conditions’ of the 1940s.

A bit has been said about weather patterns changing in Australia after 1976. This is when some claim it really started to get dry in the south west of Australia.

I had a look at the Bureau of Meterology time series rainfall data the other day and noticed that there was a spike this autumn for the SW, View image .

The spike didn’t carry through to winter. But it will be interesting to see what this year’s total rainfall for the SW looks like.

I have also noted water allocations keep increasing for irrigators in the Murray Darling Basin. I gather places like Mildura are looking green, as is much of western Queensland.

Could we be in for some wetter years?

According to this map, at the time of writing this post, there are 5 hurricanes in the West Pacific, Central Pacific and North Atlantic.

When Dennis struck in July, I followed its path at Jeff Master’s blog. He is now following Hurricane Rita and there are links to satellite imagery at his site . The comments are also interesting.

A reader of this weblog sent in the following link to a column by David Suzuki published in Canadian newspapers:

…Katrina, it seems, was just a convenient excuse to get the same tired “Global warming isn’t happening, and if it is it has nothing to do with anything people are doing,” message out to the masses. The charitable among us might call that being opportunistic. The cynical would call it ambulance chasing.

…To demand absolute proof in science before acting on a threat is to ask the impossible. It’s not just anti-scientific; it’s anti-science.

The piece is at:
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/about_us/Dr_David_Suzuki/Article_Archives/weekly09090501.asp .

He raises some important issues.

According to Opposition environment spokesman Anthony Albanese the latest issue of science journal ‘Science’ provides,

“A scientific basis for what the Government was told in its climate change risk and vulnerability report just two months ago”.

And when the 7.30 Report interviewed me they indicated that the science was already settled. So how does this report value add? Is it really definitive? Is the opposition a couple of months behind the government in accepting “the reality of climate change”.

Albanese is reported as stating, “Australia is at risk because of the higher incidence – in this case – the scientists have reported a doubling of category four and five cyclones and hurricanes.”

The same news reports states,

“The research, from the University of Georgia and the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, shows that high-strength cyclones have nearly doubled in 35 years in all five of earth’s ocean basins.

“Global data indicate a 30-year trend toward more frequent and intense hurricanes,” the researchers said.

However, scientists say they lack enough data to be definitive, because the period studied in the report is too short.

They also say other factors, such as El Nino current or humidity play a role in the intensity of tropical storms.”

Now why didn’t they include the data from the 1940s – the last time the US had lots of intense hurricanes?

Who has read the paper in the new issue of Science?