Power suppliers in Australia can sleep a little more easily than their peers in the UK. Read more here.
Climate & Climate Change
Climate Conference in Amsterdam
The Royal Geological and Mining Society of The Netherlands, together with the Royal Institute of Engineers and the Royal Geographical Society organise a national conference with the title:
CLIMATE CHANGE: Facts, Uncertainties and Myths
Thursday November 20th 2008 at the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam
The title already suggests that everybody talks about climate change, but what are the facts? What are the scientific uncertainties and what is nonsense? Should we be concerned like the “climate alarmists”, or can we ignore the problems like many “climate sceptics” seem to be doing? The conference organisers believe that we should do none of that, but we ought to think about it. At this conference, the question of climate change will be tackled from various scientific disciplines. The issues will be considered climatologically, geologically, biologically astronomically and even philosophically. New facts, new interpretations and new insight will be presented.
The subject is hot. The speakers are top-class in their discipline and will present their own research results. The location is first-class and the admission fee is low. The discussions will be lively and enlightening. With great confidence in the success, I invite you to be present at this conference. All information can be found at http://www.kngmg.nl., where you can also register. The flyer can be downloaded at: flyer
See you on November 20th,
Peter de Ruiter, KNGMG President
More from Martin Durkin on Global Warming
Go into a party of lefties in New York and tell them the science on global warming doesn’t stack up. They don’t say, ‘Good Lord, what a relief, I thought we were in for it.’ Instead they get very cross with you. They’re terribly attached to their apocalypse and don’t take kindly to people rocking the boat. Read more here.
Call for Papers on Climate Impacts
Dear Friends,
We are planning to publish a series of papers looking at the economics, politics and impacts of climate change. The CSCCC will release these papers individually throughout 2009, and also use them as basis to write a second Civil Society Report in the lead up to the important United Nations COP-15 (taking place in Copenhagen in December 2009). The call for papers is open to everyone (of course, not all papers will be accepted) so please send the call for papers below to anybody you think might be interested.
The more people receive this call for papers, the more material the CSCCC will be able to publish in 2009.
Best, Caroline
CALL FOR PAPERS ON CLIMATE IMPACTS
The Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change (A coalition of 49 civil society organisations from 37 countries – www.csccc.info) is planning to produce a series of papers on the economics, politics and impacts of climate change during 2009. If you are interested in submitting a paper on any of the subject areas outlined below – or indeed other areas – please contact us on admin/a\csccc.info (replace /a\ with @)
The issues:
Disease
Water availability
Sea level rise
Extreme weather events (i.e. storms, hurricanes, floods, and droughts)
Agriculture
Forestry
Ecosystems and Species
How Melbourne’s Climate Has Changed: A reply to Dr David Jones (Part 6)
Dr David Jones, the head of climate analysis at the Bureau of Meteorology, recently attributed a decline in Melbourne’s rainfall to global warming. Amongst various comments, he claimed in The Age that the autumn drying trend could be linked to either human-induced climate change through greenhouse gases or changes in the ozone layer over Antarctica.
Ockham’s Razor, the principle proposed by William of Ockham in the fourteenth century: “Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate”, which translates as “entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily” would require that Dr Jones choose one or the other theory, greenhouse gases or depletion of the ozone layer, as an explanation for the decline in rainfall.
But does either theory really represents much more than speculation?
Indeed lead authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) acknowledged just after the release of their last big report that until major oscillations in the Earth System, including El Nino-Southern Oscillation, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, North Atlantic Oscillation and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, are better understood regional climate, and in particular regional rainfall, is a difficult problem.
Furthermore, there are perhaps other simpler explanations for the recent decline in rainfall.
Indeed Dr Jones recently confirmed that his comments in The Age were based on data from just one weather station: a site in Melbourne’s central business district.
This brings us back to Part 1 of this series in which Bill Kininmonth, a meteorologist formerly with the Bureau, made comment that “the rain gauge in Melbourne’s central business district is now sheltered from the rain bearing winds of the southwest”.
How To Censor a Climate Sceptic
Dr Roy Spencer is a well known climate sceptic who has published extensively in mainstream peer-reviewed scientific journals and earlier this year had a popular book published entitled ‘Climate Confusion’.
Yesterday, November 3, 2008, two technical papers that Dr Spencer had recently submitted to the journal Geophysical Research Letters were outright rejected in back-to-back emails and on the same day all 78 reviews of his book on Amazon.com were removed from that website.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.