Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Climate & Climate Change

No Place for Morality in School Science

By

AGW_World Vision_Youth DecideIN some Australian schools science teachers are being asked to tell about the dangers of global warming and show Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth in order to prepare the students for the big vote at http://youthdecide.com.au/ .

The vote is sponsored by World Vision; Australia’s largest charitable organisation with a history of working with schools. 

When I was about 13, in about 1976, my school promoted World Vision’s 40 Hour Famine to raise money to feed children in poor countries.  I only raised a small amount through the sponsorship program but it made me feel like I had participated in something good – something worthwhile. 

Now World Vision is involved in not only humanitarian work but also the politics of climate change:   ‘Youth Decide ’09’ is a national youth vote on climate change sponsored by World Vision and no doubt results from the poll will be used leading up to the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen to tell the Rudd Government how Australian Students want cuts in emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020.  [Read more…] about No Place for Morality in School Science

Official Comment on Temperature Trends

By

Observations indicate that global temperature rise has slowed in the last decade.  The least squares trend for January 1999 to December 2008 calculated from the HadCRUT3 dataset  is +0.07±0.07°C decade–1—much less than the 0.18°C decade–1 recorded between 1979 and 2005 and the 0.2°C decade–1 expected in the next decade.  Read more here from UK Met. Bureau.

Risking the Reputation of Science: Garth Paltridge

By

“Perhaps the most interesting question in all this business is how it can be that the scientific community has become so over-the-top in support of its own propaganda about the seriousness and certainty of upcoming drastic climate change. Scientists after all are supposed to be unbiased in their assessment of a problem and are expected to tell it as it is. Over the centuries they have built up the capital of their reputation on just that supposition. And for the last couple of decades they have put that capital very publicly on the line in support of a cause which, to say the least, is overhung by an enormous amount of doubt. So how is it that the rest of the scientific community, uncomfortable as it is with both the science of global warming and the way its politics is being played, continues to let the reputation of science in general be put at considerable risk because of the way the dangers of climate change are being vastly oversold?”   Garth Paltridge*

Some answers are here:  http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26056202-7583,00.html 

* ‘Global warming hotheads freeze out science’s sceptics’ by Christopher Pearson, in The Australian, on September 12, 2009

Warming in Hawaii

By

Hawaii_ Temperature gradientWHILE it is generally agreed that there has been an increase in global temperatures over the last 150 years there is much debate as to how continuous or sporadic this warming has been.   I have suggested that understanding could be aided by focusing on one or a few reference stations – particularly given trends in global average temperature is potentially an artefact of how data from stations across the world is combined and then adjusted.

A technical paper, Secular temperature changes in Hawai‘i, published just last year in Geophysical Research Letters indicates there has been recent warming on the island of Hawaii and this has been most evident at high elevations.   While the text in the paper emphasis this warming and suggests a potential negative impact, the charts in the same paper suggest that despite the increase in temperatures over the last 30 years, Hawaii is no warmer now than it was in the 1930s.   [Read more…] about Warming in Hawaii

Temperature Gradients and Spur-winged Plovers

By

Keppel Island 018 blogTHE spur-winged plover, Vanellus miles, has a distribution that extends from New Guinea along the east coast of Australia to New Zealand. 

The wader self introduced to New Zealand in the 1930s, and has expanded its range in Australia as well as New Zealand over the last few decades.

Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace suggested the current distribution and abundance of plant and animal species is a consequence of evolution rather than Divine intervention.  Consequent to this is the idea that distributions will change, they are not constant.

While the theory of evolution by natural selection is now accepted by the mainstream as a best explanation for the diversity of life on planet Earth, the very recent preoccupation with temperature and in particular the idea that small changes in temperature may result in the extinction of particular species, does not sit well with their theories on the distribution of the many species with a very broad geographic range; like the spur-winged plover.   [Read more…] about Temperature Gradients and Spur-winged Plovers

Not Evil Just Wrong

By

HOLLYWOOD loves a movie full of dire predictions about the end of the Earth.   Of course global warming has been all the rage with Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth winning an Oscar.  Although I did prefer The Day After Tomorrow in which a climatologist, played by Dennis Quad, tried to save his son in New York from an ice age.

There is a new movie due for release on October 18, Not Evil Just Wrong, which explores society’s interest in Armageddon-type scenarios with a particular focus on the cost, and potential costs, of the policies following concerns about DDT and AGW [anthropogenic global warming].

I was lucky enough to be given a sneak preview of the feature length documentary by Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney last week.   [Read more…] about Not Evil Just Wrong