From Steve Jones
Global Warming/Climate Change:
Sorry about this but it’s just too important NOT to bother people with. I know you may believe in global warming but it’s not like a religious belief: it’s something which IS amenable to reason and evidence. Anyway you should not be cross if it turns out it IS all nonsense and the world isn’t going to end after all.
I first wrote this very hastily over an
otherwise very busy weekend as the matter had become so urgent (around
I have given this issue a great deal of thought and spent a great deal of time finding out all I can about it. I have concluded that the whole issue is a fraud. What is most frightening about that fact is that the Governments of the world are being encouraged by many to deal with it by spending vast amounts of precious capital and resources which I believe would at very least be better spent elsewhere.
The theory of anthropogenic global warming (or CO2 induced man-made climate change which is what we are talking about here) hangs on many premises (or ‘ifs’):
- An accurate database of temperature over time.
- An accurate database of measurements of the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere over time.
- A demonstrated correlation between the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (and the significance of this correlation).
- Proofs that CO2 exercises a causative effect in the way suggested by the so-called ‘greenhouse effect’.
- Dire predictions
- The alleged Consensus
- The problem with models.
The call for action involves a number of other concerns eg:
8. That warming would have an overall negative effect.
9. That humans can (practically or otherwise) reverse the alleged trend.
10. Cost, Consequences, the Precautionary Principle etc
I will expand on these points below:
ONE: Various groups have attempted to construct world temperature datasets in an attempt to reflect world temperature over time. This is a very difficult task as more than 75% of the world is water (or wilderness) where very few temperature sensors (if any) have existed over time. Such temperature sensors as exist anywhere are also not uniformly distributed. Researchers divide the surface of the world into approximately equal sized grids, ASSIGN temperatures to each square in a grid and then attempt to average all the grids to come up with an average world temperature which varies over time. This assignation is based on (sort of) adjacent surface temperature stations which may even be a thousand kilometres from the grid square concerned. This is particularly so in arctic and oceanic areas. Further the number and quality of stations has been decreasing quite alarmingly over time such that some very large areas (especially nearer the poles for example) have virtually no stations. Neither surface based sensors nor satellites cover the entire earth (the satellites also don’t cover the area nearest the poles either) so huge assumptions have to be made about the temperatures in the ‘unknown’ grids.
That is to say that over three quarters of the temperatures in the calculation of the world’s temperatures are estimated or assumed. What makes this inaccuracy even worse is evidenced in that the Surface Stations Project has found that over 80% of the surface station measurements are wrong by at least 2C degrees. So the world temperature datasets – all of them – have this huge uncertainty which you are never told about – yet you are expected to BELIEVE that for example the temperature of the world rose by .5-1C degree during the whole 20th century or that it has risen or fallen by .1C degree or whatever during the last decade, etc. Believe it if you wish, but don’t try to make the rest of us believe it. The inaccuracy of the datasets is much greater than the alleged change in the datasets. I am NOT making this up.
There are other ignored assumptions involved in this approach in that it assumes that it is equally important what the temperature of each square is as if each square represents an equal input into the earth’s heat engine which is so obviously NOT the case that it amazes me that most scientists ignore it. For example very much more of the earth’s heat arrives and leaves near the equator. Changes in temperature in some parts of the world are very much more important than changes in others. Be that as it may…
There are three main surface based temperature datasets as well as a couple of satellite ones. If there is disagreement amongst these datasets (as there is) this leads us to question whether we have taken the world’s temperature right (assuming that it is possible to do so at all – a questionable assumption). The three main surface datasets are CRU/Hadley, NASA/GISS and NCDC. These datasets start around 1850 but for the purposes of the ‘warmists’ the period before about 1890 is usually ignored (because it was warmer than now!). The two main satellite datasets are UAH and RSS They only go back about 30 years. There is also balloon information going back to about the 1950’s. . There exist also a couple of very old long term datasets such as the Central England Temperature dataset which goes back to the 17th century, but is almost never referred to by the ‘warmists’.
The surface temperature datasets have been constructed by gathering information collected (mainly by each country’s weather bureaus – the quality of some of this data would obviously be worthless – think Soviet Union after the collapse of communism for example) at various different weather stations, choosing which sets of data will be used and for what dates, assigning temperature values to the grids where the sensors were and to adjacent grids where there were no sensors. Often the last of these involves assigning temperatures to places which are literally thousands of kilometres from the nearest sensor (as if you could know the temperature in Hobart by recording the temperature in Brisbane!) so there is a clearly fallacious methodology at work here anyway. Even the satellites do not cover the entire earth, just the swathe of it they pass over – but they no doubt give a more accurate picture than the surface stations.
Then the grids are averaged to come up with an assumed world temperature. I imagine it makes a difference whether you average the temperature of each cell daily, weekly, monthly etc and which order you do the averaging in ie whether you average every grid for the whole world each day first and then average the days or whether you work out the average daily, monthly and yearly temperatures for each square and then try and average for the world. Strange things like that do make a difference (including the terribly minor differences we are talking about for global warming eg approx .6C for the entire 20th century). There is a vast variety of mathematical ‘trickery’ involved in the whole global warming business: far too much for you or me to understand or assess.
John Daly worked out for example that reading the Minimax thermometers at different times of the day could introduce errors of just such size (.5-1C degree) as could switching the type of paint the temperature boxes are coated with or switching from manual reading to automated reading such that the boxes are no longer opened twice per day and are therefore just that little bit hotter. Both of these latter changes coincide with the period of alleged warming starting c1980 for example.
In any case it is important how you process the material: the assigning, the averaging, corrections for urban growth, stations moving, changing sensor methodology etc. What you do with incomplete data is quite important too. Our local station was Yinnar (now closed – thousands of stations have been closed or omitted, almost all of them rural ones and that has had an upward effect on temperature figures too). I imagine the data was collected by the postmaster who must have taken holidays after Xmas back in the 1920’s for example. There were two years back then when we had something like a whole year’s rainfall in November (might be nice to get some rain). Neither of those two years is recorded as the wettest year on record (which they were by a long shot) however as the Bureau’s computer is obviously told to ignore years with incomplete data.
So how incomplete data is treated is very important, but we don’t know how any of these adjustments are made, nor will the people who run the various datasets (Phil Jones at CRU or Jim Hanson at NASA for example tell us, despite being repeatedly asked with FOI requests etc). Many of their refusal shenanigans are contained in the ‘Climategate’ files. This is NOT science. This is expecting us to believe something which the person manipulating the shells over the peas won’t explain.
It is obviously important to check the reliability of the data before you use it too (garbage in = garbage out). So for example, it is clearly understood (at least by ordinary citizens) that our great cities are enormously warmer than the surrounding countryside. You would clearly NOT use the temperature records from Melbourne for example when you have remote stations at similar latitudes (temperature obviously varies with latitude) with a very complete dataset: Cape Otway and Wilsons Prom (each a similar distance from Melbourne East or West) for example go back to the middle of the 19th century – PLEASE take a look at their figures, which show a pronounced COOLING trend. You would equally choose Bathurst’s records over Sydney’s – and so forth. When the datasets have been compiled by the above agencies this elementary step has been ignored. Melbourne’s records are in, Cape Otway’s and Wilson’s Prom’s are out. I have checked this for both CRU and NASA/GISS.
Another important consideration is whether the station has a really long-term record. Some countries have records going back into the 17th century (eg the Central England Temperature Record began in 1659 – and shows no AGW warming); Australia has a number of reliable records going back into the mid 19th century. Yet the temperature records we are being told about by CRU, NASA etc start usually AFTER 1880 (or later). It is clear from the older records that there was a very warm period in 1860-1880 in most of Australia. If you look at the records of our long-term sites (see Appendix 2,3) you will see that a huge percentage of our most extreme weather occurred in the 19th century – in a period actually ignored by these alleged world temperature record sites. This is an enormously important point. Another reason they start when they do is that this was a pronounced cool period (following the previous hotter period) so that when you graph the temperature record to today it will SEEm as if there has been about -5-1 degree of warming for the 100-130 years. This change is NOTHING to write home about: world temperature climbed over 2 degrees in a couple of years as we emerged from the Little Ice Age, and in the last year temperatures have plummeted nearly a whole degree.
You have probably been reading about the so-called ‘Climategate’ hacking of the CRU database which has shown fraud of an enormous extent in that facility – one of the three surface databases and the one most responsible for all the IPCC’s stuff. Scientists there have been literally caught altering the temperature record to create a warming when there WAS no warming. They have also been caught admitting in private that the world has cooled during the last decade (the now famous ‘Hide the Decline’) , a phenomenon which they cannot explain because they are so caught up in the relative importance of CO2 as a climate driver as compared with other forces acting to produce the world’s climate. If the other forces were not MUCH more powerful than the alleged CO2 effects this situation could NEVER have happened.
Fred Singer has this to say about the IPCC report which is the basis of action on climate change: “most of the science of the IPCC report is not controversial. The only crucial chapter is Chapter 9 (on “Attribution”), in which the IPCC attempts to show that 20th century warming was anthropogenic. It was written by only 9 scientists and is dominated by a tightly controlled clique whose members referee each others' papers and consider ‘attribution studies’ as their private fiefdom.” These are the SAME scientists who have now been caught out in the ‘Climategate’ fraud!
Last year Steve McIntyre caught Jim Hansen out doing the same thing with NASA’a records. Meanwhile RSS’s satellite record has shown a slight cooling in the world since 1979.
Serious criticism has similarly been levelled at the other two databases particularly NASA/GISS which is run by James Hanson a leading proponent of global warming. You will notice the criticisms I make of Hanson’s selection from the Australian records in the Appendix below. Particularly important are that the earlier warm period is ignored or avoided completely; remote stations are ignored in favour of urban ones, and the temperature Highlights do not agree with those coming from our Bureau, etc. A group of people working with Andrew Watts has organised a thing called The Surface Stations Project. They have been auditing each of the surface stations in their own countries. It turns out that a huge number (Read 80%) of the stations used to compile each of the databases are necessarily giving really bad data with an error of at least 2C degrees – you can guess for yourself which direction the error is in.
The most common problem has been that the stations which were supposed to be in grassy open areas immune from nearby sources of heat (or cooling) have come to be in tarred car parks, on top of buildings, at airports, next door to freeways, very close to air conditioning ducts etc. Their data should be disallowed or corrected for but this has not happened. Consequently the supposed warming has been greatly exaggerated. The recent furore over NZ records which have only this week been shown to have been the object of a similar fraud to the CRU archives is highlighted by the fact that Wellington’s sensing station is now on top of a multi storey building next to the air conditioning ducts, yet we are supposed to believe that this reflects a realistic measurement of the temperature over a vast area of NZ and elsewhere.
What might not be known to you is that none of the databases (CRU, NASA etc) which allege to be records of surface temperatures is able or willing to provide the raw data on which their estimates have been made. In CRU’s case for example, Phil Jones states that the data has now been lost! Yet we are expected to accept their prognostications of climate change without being able to see the actual station temperatures and estimated temperatures) on which they are based and without being able to see how the data has been modified or worked upon to arrive at the conclusions stated. This is just not science. Science is checkable. The people who control these databases will not allow anyone else to check their figures and time and again they have been caught out in outright deception. It would be suicide to accept their figures for climate change therefore, yet this is exactly what we are being asked to do by the advocates of action on climate change. You should realise too that the scientists who have been caught out as cheats in these matters are JUST those who run the IPCC which is the driver for all this. Therefore we simply MUST call a halt until we know more.
If the Surface Station temperatures are compared with the satellite based record we can see a huge difference. Whilst there may have been some warming after the satellites were installed (ie post about 1975), it is miniscule. They also reveal a small cooling in the last ten years or so. If you could project back the satellite record to cover the same period that the surface records insist on covering (ie from about 1885 – ignoring the previous period when it was probably warmer than now), the extent of the 20th century warming would probably be something like .1C degree, a figure so small as to be well within the limits of error of the systems measuring it. That is it would be impossible to say whether there had been any warming at all, nor would it matter.
It is probably next to impossible to work out whether the world is warming/cooling by small amounts like 1C degree anyway for the following reason: the signal to noise ratio. Imagine you are tuning a radio to a distant station. The more noise there is, the harder it is to hear the signal (the station). As the noise increases there comes a point where the signal is drowned out altogether as well. The same thing applies to temperature data. Surface temperature varies enormously (ie noise – highs and lows of amplitude on a graph). On any given day it can vary by over 20C degrees and from winter to summer by 50C. On any given day there are parts of the earth where the temperature can be as low as -100C and others where it is over 50C. This is a lot of noise. And remember that a lot of this temperature data is being estimated and/or is coming from faulty sensors ie more noise. What scientists do to work out whether there has been warming or cooling is take all the averaged figures and then work out their gradient (ie whether they are tending upwards or downwards). This is a simple mathematics thing to do and you probably learned how to do it in middle High School. Unfortunately for this process there is a statistician’s tool which estimates how reliable or how significant this discerning of the gradient (the signal) is compared with all the noise (ie the variations that are happening everywhere and all the time). It turns out that discerning a signal of 1C (or less) amongst all this variation is probably a statistical delusion.
Work needs to be done in constructing a temperature dataset which everyone can use as a baseline. Unfortunately there has been an amazing degree of fraud in constructing such datasets to date and we are a long way off having such a record with which everyone can agree. Until such time as we can reliably take the temperature of the world (if it is possible to do so) it is simply meaningless to talk about doing something about its supposed warming or cooling.
For the sake of argument however and in order to understand what the warmers are claiming, we need to at least assume a change in world temperature over time (say for the 20th century of .5/1C in order to work out what (if anything) is causing it, whether we should be concerned about it, it and whether we should/can do anything about it in the future (if it continues). The change the global warmers have been talking about for the 20th century is only this size and as stated before may not have happened (probably didn’t happen) at all. But we need some figure in order to understand how their predictions work.
They have decided for reasons best know to themselves that basically nothing else causes climate except CO2 so that they apportion ALL the change in temperature perceived (probably falsely) to have come from that cause even though the supposed correlation actually shows that something else is responsible for most of the change. They then argue that as an increase of such and such an amount of parts per million of CO2 produced temperature change of that size, so increases in CO2 of some other amount will produce temperature rises of some other size – often huge!
It has to be obvious to everyone that prior to the Industrial revolution people were responsible for very little CO2 production. (It might be the case that virtually none of the increase in CO2 we are allegedly seeing now is down to man either – more about that later). It is also obvious that in that period (prior to 1800 say) there were many periods both colder and warmer than today. I am not talking about the remote or geological past, but the historical past. Periods from which we have quite useful records. For example, the Vikings settled in Greenland in the 9th century where they happily farmed cattle, sheep etc and grew crops (something which is impossible today because it is still too cold) until they were forced to abandon their settlements when the Little Ice Age came along in the 17th century and the Thames etc froze over all winter – something which it has been too warm to do for the last two hundred years. Many millions of Europeans (and others) died as a result of this cold period. As I said, before this alleged human caused CO2 effect there were long periods when it was much warmer (or colder) than it is today, several degrees warmer or colder.
Therefore there obviously exist naturally occurring processes or forces which have a larger effect on climate than the CO2 effect has had thus far. What we have to discern in this .5/1C change in the 20th is how much of it (if any) is attributable to the increase in CO2. THAT is the key to understanding whether there is a problem with CO2 and whether anything needs to be done about it.
It would be fanciful in the extreme (given the natural variability in quite recent times – ie less than 1000 years ago) to think that even half of the effect could be caused by CO2, and even if it were, we then have to discern how much of the (alleged) increase in CO2 is down to man and could therefore conceivably be changed BY man.
TWO: The warming premise is that CO2 has been increasing as a percentage of the atmosphere and that increase has had certain effects. Unfortunately there is no universally agreed dataset which shows how many parts per million (ppm) CO2 represents of the atmosphere over time. It is a tiny fraction anyway – 385 ppm is the same as .0385 % or less than one twentieth of one percent. It would have to be very potent to have much of an effect! Direct chemical analysis of the atmosphere today reveals about 385ppm at Mauna Lau in Hawaii, but it varies a lot. This is an observatory on top of a volcano. Volcanoes are one of the main producers of CO2; normally they produce collectively more than man does. It is a strange place to position your gold standard CO2 reference point. However there are other stations monitoring CO2 ppm in other parts of the world – and they reveal some interesting facts too, such as that below.
Most of the fossil fuel burned in the world (like 90%) is burned in the Northern Hemisphere. Circulation of air between hemipheres is quite slow. We know from monitoring radioactive CO2 from nuclear tests (Carbon 14) for example how slowly the CO2 produced in the Northern Hemisphere makes its way to the Southern (likewise CFCs etc). At very least it is not instantaneous but takes months or even years. Strangely though CO2 increases (and decreases) simultaneously in both hemispheres. If mankind’s burning of fossil fuels was even a major source of CO2 in the atmosphere this could not be the case as it could not have arrived in the Southern Hemisphere so soon. Something else is producing the changes in CO2 other than man.
Another interesting thing we know from monitoring Carbon 14 from nuclear explosions is how long CO2 stays in the atmosphere and it turns out that an individual molecule of CO2 persists for only something like 7 years - which shows that the alarmist claims of the greens that human CO2 will have an effect for thousands of years is just poppycock.
As I said at the outset much of the evidence for CO2 percentages in the past atmosphere comes from the analysis of ice cores. There are reasons to question the validity of ice core evidence. There are some other proxy data for historical CO2 levels from various sediments etc which conflict with the ice core data and point to quite large fluctuations in CO2 level in the past - of a much larger kind than are predicted in the global warming theory. These were natural fluctuations which had nothing to do with man’s emissions.
There also exists a database of direct measurements of CO2 levels by chemical analysis for various different pasts of the world going back to 1812 when this method was devised. Prof Zbigniew Jaworowski and a scientist named Beck have done a lot of work on this. There have been over one hundred thousand individual measurements. It is clear from these measurements that there have been at least two times since 1812 when CO2 level have been much higher than today - try 50% higher – something like what the warmers predict by 2100. One such period was in the 1940’s a noticeably colder period than today. There have even been ice ages in the past when the percentage of CO2 has been much higher (in fact many TIMES higher) than it is today.
There IS no unanimously accepted explanation of why CO2 levels rise and fall over time independently of man, but they do. However it is the case that most of the (free) CO2 in the world is in the seas. When the sea is colder it can absorb more CO2 and when it warms it releases CO2. This is called ‘outgassing’ (you can check it out by leaving one glass of coke in the fridge and one in the sun and seeing which one goes flat fastest). So as the world warms the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere increases and as it cools it decreases. Some of this change at least may be very slow though. The peaks and troughs of CO2 and temperature (whilst correlated) in fact occur at 800 year removes. This means that increases in CO2 we may be observing today could be correlated with the warm period 800 years ago, the Medieval Warm Period, and have nothing to do with the people of today at all!
Most of the CO2 in the atmosphere today is from natural processes. We can tell by measuring the carbon isotope profile of tree growth what proportion of the CO2 is down to man as fossil fuels have an isotopic signature. We must remember though that much of the fossil fuel burning is natural (naturally burning coal seams and the like produce at least as much CO2 as man does – indeed we could halve the amount of CO2 produced from fossil fuels by simply putting out these naturally occurring fires which would immediately compensate for ALL man’s emissions – they are also an enormous waste of resources – surprising that Mr Rudd does not suggest this course of action: but then there would be no CONTROL or TAX involved). It turns out that the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere coming from fossil fuels is less than 5% - just nothing to worry about. Therefore no conceivable reduction in human produced CO2 can have more than 5% effect on the total ppms ie 5% of 385 or 19ppm which is not enough to cause or forestall ANY warming even if it were the case that we could immediately and forever abandon all fossil fuel use. Just an idiotic idea.
A further odd aside about CO2 removal (or sequestration): More than two thirds of CO2 is Oxygen, as you can see. If we remove an amount of CO2 from the atmosphere permanently we also remove TWICE as much oxygen, which is what we breathe! This might not be a very good idea!
THREE: The correlation between CO2 and temperature is usually based on studies of ice cores eg from Vostok in Antarctica or in Greenland where the depth of ice is assumed to represent several million years of accumulation.
There is a further premise in the ice core analysis representing CO2 percentages in the atmosphere when what has been measured in the ice is not CO2 itself but (a proxy) an oxygen isotope believed to correlate to the percentage of CO2 to have been present in the atmosphere from which the snow which formed the ice fell. Analyses of fresh snow show a poor correlation between the percentage of CO2 represented in snow and that in the atmosphere from which it fell – this fact further diminishes the ice cores as accurate measures of the percentages of CO2 in the past atmosphere.
However the ice core data (if accepted) DOES show a correlation between CO2 percentages and temperatures over time. What is less often noted is the size of the correlation and the time direction of the correlation. Most people would assume that the correlation involves rises in CO2 PRECEDING rises in temperature when in fact the temperature rises PRECEDE the CO2 rises. This makes it very difficult to argue that CO2 increases were the causes of the temperature rises - particularly as the time delay is approximately 800 years. Yes, that’s 800 years between the rise in temperature and the rise in CO2.
There has been a further attempt by global warming believers to correlate CO2 increases to temperature over a much shorter and more recent time period. They point to the (alleged) increases in CO2 and the (alleged) rises in temperature since say 1975 and simply state that as both have gone up, one is the cause of the other. The last decade when temperatures have levelled out or decreased while CO2 has increased are hard to reconcile with this position. There was a former period approx 1945-78 when the same thing happened according to their figures. In short the percentage of CO2 has not been a reliable indicator of world temperature in the past, so attempts to say it will be in the future are at best fanciful.
Correlation itself is little understood by most people. Two very important points: how important (or significant) IS the correlation, and does the correlation prove a causative relationship (and in the direction indicated).
The simple test to judge the significance of a correlation is to square its value and express it as a percentage. (Correlations are always figures between 0 and + or – 1. So for example, if we square a correlation of .5, this gives us a percentage of 25 which is to say that the two things correlated vary together 25% of the time and vary SEPARATELY 75% of the time. Correlations have to be pretty big to be very important then. The correlation between CO2 and temperature (even if it weren’t in the wrong direction and delayed by 800 years as previously mentioned) is quite slight, ie well less than .5 anyway so that there are many other more important correlations ie more than 75% of all climate drivers are other than CO2 (eg solar output, obviously).
Clearly too the cause has to precede the effect, then it has to be shown to BE the cause. Some things we wish for come true and others do not. The fact that the wish precedes the thing desired does not mean in the slightest that the wish causes the outcome. If wishes were horses beggars would ride, but if we spend all our money on these climate wishes there will be nothing but beggars.
FOUR: Repetition does not create truth. It is generally the device of liars actually. We have all heard so much about the ‘greenhouse effect’ most people assume by now that it is real, but it is not. The earth’s atmosphere is really nothing like a greenhouse but some things are worth mentioning. Insofar as there are gases which help to retain heat near to the earth which would otherwise radiate much more quickly and devastatingly into space, water vapour is by far the most important accounting for something like 98% of the ‘greenhouse effect.’ Without its effect the temperature of the world would be something like -50C! It is also the ‘governor’ or ‘thermostat’ which controls the temperature of the earth. CO2’s contribution to the greenhouse effect is extremely minor and may even have been incorrectly calculated because of a mathematical error way back in 1921. The equations solved by a mathematician back then named Milne assumed (in order to solve them) that the earth’s atmosphere was infinite (which it clearly is not). This error has recently been discovered by another mathematician named Ferenc Miskolczi who has resolved the equations which now show that any heating effect CO2 may have will be immediately countered by changes to the atmosphere’s water vapour.
Even if CO2 were to have the theoretical effect which it is popularly supposed to have ie that a doubling of CO2 would have a certain effect on temperature, it is worth noting that the proponents of the global warming theory claim that CO2 has already gone up by half of this doubling during the 20th century. The other half of the doubling which is widely anticipated but which may or may not happen (as previously discussed) would in fact produce less warming than the first half. It is not a simple linear effect. We have already had most of whatever effect any amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would ever produce and any further increase we make will make so close to no difference it doesn’t matter.
In any case the first half of the doubling produced something less than .5/1C degree of warming at most (but that was warming from all causes remember, and human produced CO2 was only a tiny part of it anyway). We will not get more than the same amount of warming again from the other half of the doubling and probably much less - if anything at all. That is .25 to .5 C degrees – trivial! And of course it is not at all clear that there has been any warming at all. The temperature figures for Cape Otway and Wilson’s Prom for example show that the last twenty years have been about 2C degrees colder than it was in the 1860s etc. The world was probably about 2C degrees warmer during the Medieval Warm Period when the Vikings inhabited Greenland etc. This is much warmer than we could realistically expect from any increase in CO2 we could be responsible for and it produced no worldwide calamities such as the Cassandras are always touting - as far as I know, anyway we survived them without doing anything about them at all.
The mechanism which the warmists postulate is that the temperature of the earth is regulated by positive feedbacks (so that the more it warms, the more it warms and so on). If this had ever been so we would have had a runaway greenhouse effect millions of years ago and the planet would resemble something like Venus. But it is absurd to think that temperature is regulated by positive feedbacks when it is clearly regulated by negative feedbacks. Things like this: as the air becomes warmer more evaporation occurs. The evaporation forms clouds. The clouds cut out some of the incoming heat from the sun. As this happens the clouds cool, it rains. The sky is clear. The sun shines, it heats up again, and so on. This has been going on for millions of years without a runaway greenhouse effect. The models handle clouds very poorly.
You will remember what I said before about its being more important where the heat is on earth than trying to take the world’s temperature. In this regard it is clearly the tropics (approx one-third of the earth) which are the biggest part of this heat engine. More heat is coming in and going out there than anywhere else. At the poles there is not much heat to go out because it is so cold you see. The ‘greenhouse theory’ postulates that the tropical troposphere (high up in the atmosphere where CO2 is supposed to be acting like a blanket or the panes of glass in a greenhouse etc) will heat at something like three times the rate as the tropical surface (because of these purported positive feedbacks you see) and in the IPCC’s reports you can see handy pictures of the predicted tropical tropospherical hotspot. The trouble is that we have had weather balloons for over sixty years and satellites for over thirty years measuring the temperature in different parts of the atmosphere and there simply is NO such hot spot. In fact the tropical troposphere seems to have cooled slightly. If there is no hotspot there simply IS no CO2 caused greenhouse effect, so there has not been, nor will there be any warming produced by an increase in CO2.
And why is this so? It is because as the world warms there is an increase in outgoing radiation because the world really has a thermostat or temperature regulator and it works by negative feedback - as you would expect; any governor does. The extra heat is not just continually trapped in an ever increasing spiral. We have had a couple of satellites up there for nearly ten years now checking incoming and outgoing radiation and what we are seeing is exactly the reverse of what the greenhouse theory predicts.
No doubt it is the weather in the tropics which produces this thermostat effect. Here is a very simple explanation; no doubt the truth is a little more complex. I leave the detail to the climate scientists to work out – those who aren’t just busy trying to frighten all of us to death and make a fortune for themselves out of carbon trading into the bargain. In the morning it is nearly always warm, sunny, clear. As it heats up heat moves upwards, there is much evaporation at the surface, clouds form causing a cooling at the surface; sometime during the day it rains, it cools down again. Next day the cycle is repeated. Immense amounts of heat are transported each day into space. If the day is very hot all this happens a bit sooner and it rains maybe at 3:00pm. If it is a little cooler it doesn’t rain until 5:00pm maybe. The temperature of the world is naturally regulated simply by physics. We don’t need to do anything about it and can’t anyway even if we wished to.
FIVE: The warmists’ dire predictions of what we will face in terms of temperature, sea level rise, increases in disastrous weather etc have many people frightened. First I would like to point out that there has not been any increase in disastrous tropical storms, cyclones etc as a result of warming (which we might not have had) or any other cause. If there has been an increase in insurance companies actuarial estimates of damage from such events it is because there are many more valuable assets to be destroyed in such locations now than there used to be and not because there have been more storms. In fact storm activity was much worse worldwide during the Little Ice Age than in the warmer period following it since the Industrial Revolution and in which we are currently living. Probably the most benign and prosperous period the world has ever seen – yet for some reason our very prosperity has become the cause of panic and fear. Weird.
I see various predictions that the world will warm by eg 7 C degrees by 2100 and that sea level will rise by metres. If this were likely it WOULD be a concern, but whether there would be anything we could do about it any more than there has ever been anything more we could do about the weather other than ‘lying back and thinking of England’ I much doubt. But wait a moment. For the earth to warm by eg 7 C degrees by 2100 it would have to warm by one ninth of that for every decade remaining of this century or about .8C per decade. This is more than the world warmed for the entire 20th century PER DECADE and each decade’s warming would be produced by a fraction of the doubling of the CO2 that ‘produced’ whatever warming we had in that century. This is an increase in the rate of warming of something like ten times. That is an astronomical projection. It is also clearly contrary to all logic and to the very greenhouse theory which produces it. And remember that for the last decade or more there has been NO warming (a fact which cannot be explained by the ‘warmists’) and some (solar) scientists are predicting that there will most likely be continuing cool weather for twenty or even fifty years on account of how quiescent the sun has been, (the relative orbits of the giant planets etc). If anyone doubts that the sun produces warming they have never been outdoors on a hot day.
The same goes for dire predictions of sea level rise. There may have been some modest rise in sea level happening every year (almost) since we started coming out of the Little Ice Age a couple of hundred years ago. It has not been very much. We have no reliable database for this either. You can check John Daly’s photo of the height of the low tide on the Isle of Dogs at Port Arthur carved by Franklin more than 150 years ago on his website. As you can see, the mark is ABOVE sea level today. But sea level is not the same everywhere. Some places it has risen; others like the Maldives (surprisingly) it has fallen. In either case it has not been more than 1mm per year for a century and probably less. (That is 100 mm a century, one tenth of a metre!) Neither has it ever been measured accurately. We now have a satellite measuring it. I guess it is still in calibration mode really (as is all satellite data really – none of them has been up there long enough to measure climate which is always a very slow thing, whilst short-term fluctuations – weather - are much faster and more spectacular). But the satellite data is not showing any spectacular increase in sea level. In fact there was a decline recently. Sea level too would have to begin to rise very soon at over ten times its historic rate to get anywhere near meeting the predictions of a 1 metre increase by 2100. I see no sign that this will happen or is happening. It is hopelessly unclear how there could be a mechanism which would cause that.
For the world to begin warming spectacularly more heat would have to come FROM somewhere. It can only come from increased solar irradiation (but the sun has become very quiet lately), from volcanic activity (very quiet), from the seas (measured cooling the last ten years). That’s about it. Heat can’t simply come from nowhere. Heat is energy. It does not hide. If the heat is not present, the world cannot warm. QED.
It is just crazy to make such predictions. They are not even consistent with their own greenhouse theory which is a nonsense as we have seen anyway.
SIX: The consensus is another stupid non-argument. You cannot VOTE truth into existence though you can make a pretty good fist of voting it out! Science simply does not proceed by consensus anyway. But there IS no consensus. As the Oregon Petition (http://www.petitionproject.org/) shows there are at least 31,386 American scientists alone who oppose the theory of anthropogenic greenhouse warming. Here also are 450 peer reviewed studies sceptical of anthopogenic climate change: http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html It is simply vile of the proponents of this theory to seek to discredit people who do not believe in it by name calling, lies and innuendo as has been so common. Before long the whole global warming thing will be seen to have been junk science and this whole sorry episode will be just another embarrassing example of the emperor’s lack of clothes. Let’s put a stop to it before we bring about disastrous economic and social consequences.
SEVEN: Models are what drives the whole anthropogenic climate change engine. We have seen that neither heat nor carbon dioxide levels nor sea levels have been accurately and unequivocally measured. Yet various scientists have constructed computer models which are supposed to predict the behaviours of the earth’s climate over time. They have inputted the garbage data already mentioned into their models so it is not surprising that they get garbage predictions out. It is the predictions of these models which are being used by the climate alarmists (the frauds at IPCC etc) to spook the world into action over this issue. Since the models are able to be tweaked and run and rerun ad nauseum until their output matches the past temperature record (at least the foreshortened record used by CRU, NASA etc - ie from about 1885-2000) you would THINK they would also be able to backward predict the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period. But they do not. Nor was any of them able to predict the change that occurred in the last ten years ie the levelling off or even cooling of the world’s temperature.
This is very important as it is the advice of these models which sets the agenda for political action on this issue. It is fanciful anyway to think for example that if the Bureau of Meteorology is not able to predict the weather out to a week in the future (Any farmer knows to pretty much ignore the Bureau’s seasonal forecasts) with any more than 50% accuracy (a trick which anyone can do: either it will rain or it won’t = 50% accuracy), that they would be able to construct models which would accurately predict the climate at 10 years or 100 years in the future. At these distances in time the level of uncertainties in the models’ predictions (ie this prediction is accurate to within + or – X degrees) swamp the prediction so that it becomes a nonsense. Of course the alarmist community never tells you about the level of uncertainty of their predictions: they are delivered as if they were absolute truth – which is just silly! At a few years in the future a model’s level of uncertainty will usually be greater than the change of temperature it predicts. This is necessarily so as neither the data nor the knowledge of climate is nearly good enough to make long-term predictions. These models are nothing better than medieval crystal balls and should be ignored as just computer games: interesting but not to be taken seriously.
EIGHT: The call for action on climate change is also urged on by those who think that an upward change in temperature would be uniformly negative or even disastrous in effect. This is also a nonsense, just as it is silly to see an increase in CO2 as negative at all. CO2 is the atmospheric component essential for all life on earth. Normally an increase in CO2 percentages will lead to an increase in life on earth. Greenhouse growers routinely add huge percentages of CO2 to their crops to produce this effect. Similarly in the time of the dinosaurs when CO2 percentages were many TIMES what they are today (or than they are predicted to be in the future) there was an enormous profusion of life all over the earth, many times the quantum of life that we see today. It is fanciful in the extreme to think that we have been living through the most ideal climate the world has ever seen in the 20th century.
Similarly the earth’s climate was much more benign and suited to human prosperity and good health during the Medieval Warm Period when the world was probably 2C degrees warmer than it is today. Then you could grow wine even in Scotland for example. So even if the world warmed (from whatever cause) it would not be the diaster that the warmists picture. There is also the uncertainty that we can do anything about it, or at least that the carbon mitigation schemes would produce any change in temperature for all their cost and inconvenience.
Another ice age would be much more disastrous for life on the planet than any likely warming, as the quantum of life on earth necessarily diminishes enormously during such periods, and we are about now due for one as ice ages have occurred at pretty regular 100,000 year intervals for several million years interspersed by inter-glacial warming periods of around 10,000 years such as we are now living through. Unfortunately for us we are now approximately 12,000 years into the current inter- glacial period so it is not exactly rocket science to ask whether we should be more worried about the earth cooling or warming.
NINE: Would mitigation work? This is a most important question. First we have to accept that there IS global warming, it IS produced by an increase in CO2, humans ARE responsible for that increase in CO2, that humans CAN so decrease their CO2 production so as to make any significant difference to its world-wide level. These are some pretty big ‘ifs’. We have already addressed some of them and seen that they are straw men.
What we are not being told is (even if you accept the theory and all its predictions) what quantum of carbon reductions would be necessarily world wide to produce a degree of cooling, or to prevent a degree of warming. It turns out that a quantity of around a TRILLION tons of CO2 would have to not be produced (or removed) to make a change of just 1 C degree. This is roughly equivalent to THIRTY years of human production from ALL sources. So we would have to completely CEASE CO2 production for over thirty years to prevent one degree of warming! This is clearly impossible - and is not going to happen. The kind of trivial (in comparison) reductions that are being talked up though enormously economically expensive would have NO effect whatsoever (even if there was a greenhouse effect). Even if Australia or the whole world reduced its carbon output by 60% of the level per capita that it was at in 1990 (which is what Mr Rudd promised to do at the last election) it would clearly take centuries for it to have the effect predicted (that a reduction of a trillion tons would have over thirty years). We are just going to have to live with it, whatever happens.
I think Dec 17th 2008 when this was announced will go down in history as the day decisions were taken which were more destructive to Australia than the decision to enter the First World War, but it takes time for the lessons of history to be learned I'm afraid. That is unless the decision is reversed.
Mr Rudd's dressing up of his cuts as 5% has to rank as subterfuge with Holocaust denial, persisting with Geocentricity, Lysenkoism, etc. I take as the starting point from which we are making the cuts the historical increase in energy usage over the last hundreds of years which has propelled us from penury to plenty and from misery to bliss. Probably the normal rate of increase in energy management has been in the order of 3.5% per annum. This has been coupled with improvements in energy efficiency over time (probably in the order of 1% per annum overall) which has 'given us more bang for our buck'. I think of things like improvements in pump design, LED's, the Internet, refrigeration, canning, etc, etc. It is probable that the latter type of improvements can continue, but it is hard to mandate for them and they will only come about in a healthy prosperous economy with lots of support for R & D, things which are likely to be stifled in the new regime envisaged by the Rudd wreckers. I estimate the 5% cut as being equivalent to a further cut of about 3.5% per annum or a total cut of at least at least say 7% pa. as compared with what would have happened otherwise. The 'rule of 72' ie (dividing 72 by the compound interest rate tells you approx how many years until your money doubles) tells me that 7% over 10 or so years is equivalent to doubling, so cutting 7% pa for ten years must be the equivalent of halving. Yet some people want 15% or even 25% (and on 1990 levels) which has to be something like a ninefold decimation, something no Roman army ever did! You would hardly live to fight another day. This sort of level of self hatred is morbidly psychotic.
Most of us could figure a way to make the first year adjustments ie cutting 7% off our energy usage. Each subsequent year's 7% would become more and more difficult. I figure that by the third year when we would have had to cut about 25% compounded, that the impossibility and undesirability of this hair shirt harebrained scheme would have to have become clear to even the most imbecilic Stalinists in our midst (though they will probably be in charge of forcing us to make our cuts whilst still driving to their dachas in their limos!) Here in the Latrobe Valley that 25% by Year Three means one Latrobe valley generator out of four (ie Yallourn or Hazelwood) will have to close. Before Year Ten two would have gone, (and it would not be that long before a third had gone) though how Vic continues to function on half (or one third) its electricity is more of a mystery to me than the Trinity, bumble bees or human stupidity. These changes will turn the Latrobe Valley into several ghost towns. Property values will at least halve, but property will be impossible to sell. Our compensation for this will be approx $440pa! Our estimated losses in property alone will be what $200,000(?) plus the cost of relocation elsewhere (maybe to some island of economic bliss - Zimbabwe perhaps). This is hardly a compensation scheme.
I do not think it is POSSIBLE anyway to mandate annual energy efficiency improvements which will equate to 3.5%, let alone 7%. For example when I was a small child a new Holden did about 30 mpg and a Fiat 500 about 60 mpg, about the same as typical family cars and the most efficient small cars today. There has not been an improvement of fuel efficiency of 3.5% pa which the rule of 72 tells me would lead to a doubling of fuel efficiency every 20 years which would have the average Holden now doing 240mpg! The nature of the internal combustion engine makes efficiency improvements of this order completely impossible. Many other of the efficiency targets will come smack up against the cold exigencies of the laws of physics. The scarcity of platinum makes switching to hydrogen powered cars (even if they existed) an actual impossibility, for example.
During nearly all of the sixty years of my lifetime we have enjoyed GDP growth of 2-4% pa and it has been absolutely wonderful. Rudd's crazies want to create negative growth slightly larger than that for the next 40 years dressed up as sensible and modest proposals - not unlike other such proposals which were laughed at in the past - such as Swift's to eat Irish babies. This monstrosity simply must be stopped.
It would be a bad enough proposal if indeed there was any need for it, but there is not. Even if the world warmed (as the IPCC fallaciously predicts) to something like the Medieval Warm Period there would be no consequent calamities. I was unaware that Kakadu or the Great Barrier Reef came into existence since then or that the Maldives and Tuvalu were populated since then. If it is so it only shows the enormous adaptability inherent in nature, so there is no cause for alarm anyway. In contrast to the predicted disaster scenarios of the future, the Medieval Period seems to have been an environmentally benign period for the world (even if the Church and various nasty invaders etc made life somewhat uncomfortable in Europe) and 'civilised' life took root even in Southern Greenland.
Unfortunately for 'The Warmers', the data provided by eg John Christie of the Uni of Alabama (UAH) for weather and satellite records of the actual climate over the past decades shows not only that there has been little or no warming, but that there has been no connection between CO2 levels and temperature (at least not in that direction). The land based temperature record is far too corrupt to rely on at all, and analogues of past temperature are questionable too. There seems to be a link in the opposite direction however, ie changes in temperature lead to changes in CO2 levels. The absence of the 'hot spot' in the troposphere also revealed by Christie's data shows conclusively that the CO2 'greenhouse effect' does not exist. Consequently there is no AGW. QED and game over one would think. I was also admittedly gobsmacked to learn that actual measurements of the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere reported by eg Beck and others (readily available data ignored by the IPCC) shows that several times in the last 200 years CO2 has exceeded the worst doomsday predictions of the IPCC for the 21st century of 400-450ppm. It has even happened since the Second World War, in my lifetime. It has also occurred in the absence of the various Doomsdays predicted by the environmental basket cases. ('Two Wongs may not make a white' as Artie Caldwell reminded us, but ONE alone makes a green nightmare!)
Predictions of solar influence on climate (and the sun's correlative effect on climate are actually real) in fact indicate that the world might be in for an extended cooling period for several decades where it would be really nice if mankind was able to lift the temperature somewhat to diminish the devastating effect on world grain harvests and the consequent famines of a cooler world. Unfortunately, though it would be relatively easy and cheap to cool the world (eg by increasing particulate exhausts from aircraft), mankind does not have the ability to produce the quantum of heat that would warm it. This ETS is anthropocentricity gone mad and much the equivalent of Canute's trying to mandate against the flow of the tide.
I notice that the greenies moved from talking AGW to 'climate change' and they started to call CO2 ‘pollution’. Opponents are described as denying climate change (as if they were supporters of Nazism and the Holocaust), which is really gross. Now, if anyone really did deny climate change that would be the equivalent of denying that the earth rotates around the sun or that the tides rise and fall. It is not the equivalent of thinking that such monumental forces are within the human grasp however - or caused by man. Mankind does not cause climate change. Men adapt to climate change. As to everything else that comes along. Even Rudd and Wong's new carbon trading regime, if we can’t stop it, I suppose.
One thing however is within our power. We have the power to throw out the crazies in the Government (and Opposition) and this should be done post haste before they have caused even more economic ruin than they have in the last twelve months. Enough is enough.
TEN: The Precautionary Principle. This is one of those neat axiomatic things like historical determinism which populate the rocks under which environmentalists live. It supposes that even if a proposition IS wrong it should be acted on just in case it is right. This would be a really intelligent way to enliven public policy. Just think of the innumerable nut-case schemes we could fund if we followed this lead. It is so preposterous you can’t imagine any sane person espousing it, yet it is just the argument that even Turnbull turns to in his desperation. And it is often espoused by the proponents of action on climate change as if it were a very sensible proposal. On this ground Governments could be spending all our money building cathedrals just in case it turned out that there was a God after all, or they could be banning wheels just in case it turned out that the theory of gravity was wrong. There is no insanity that could not be perpetrated by following the ‘Precautionary Principle’. It is simply not a sane argument. Governments have little enough scarce capital to spend on the things which really do identifiably need doing without going around wasting money on ‘what ifs’.
Capital is really the world’s scarcest resource. It is what is left over after all of us have had a share of the cake. It is what is always needed to bake the cake in the first place and to make it bigger. It is simply not to be wasted on hare-brained schemes such as the useless attempts to prevent anthropogenic climate change which is not happening anyway. Capital is urgently needed for all sorts of important things. We should not squander it on making carbon traders and bureaucrats happy, as that’s just where all the climate money will end up. What is proposed here is the biggest tax hike in history, an entirely new commodity trade in carbon at least as big as all the existing trade that exists today but which will be trading nothing but paper. Accompanying it will be a set of world-wide rules which will control every aspect of our lives.
Hidden in the Copenhagen agenda is the proposal to set up an unelected world government which will have hegemony over our national governments and over each and every one of us to administer this new regime. It will involve the transfer of vast amounts of our cash (at the outset at least 7 billion dollars per year and rising steeply after that to various third world dictators or other ‘deserving’ folks). Accompanying it will be also a revamp in the power bureaucracies such as the EPA which will control CO2 as a pollutant and so will be able to order your everyday lives in ways which you think unimaginable today. They will be able to allot a ration of CO2 to every person on the planet and dictate exactly how you will be able to use your portion. It is unlikely that you will long be able to enjoy pets, lawnmowers, air conditioners, 4WDs, meat etc. All these things and many more everyday things are already identified as ‘conservation’ targets by our would-be new carbon masters - and mistresses. Make no mistake the ETS or CPRS before Parliament at the moment is about control and rationing of every aspect of out lives. It is also a recipe for many smarties to print money. You can expect that the shrillest advocates of such schemes have already invested considerable sums in them in anticipation of untold riches to come.
Yet capital is always more urgently needed for more important things than this: for research and development, for public infrastructure, to improve human health and well-being, to eliminate disease and poverty, to improve educational opportunities, to improve communication and transport etc, etc. Tiny amounts of capital can do really magic things particularly in the Third World in lifting people out of the terrible poverty traps that subsume their lives today. Just a few million dollars can save millions from the danger of infectious disease or enormously boost the food supply by providing modest improvements in water, fertiliser or improved seed, for example. The capital squandered in this rush to put the world on a disastrous carbon diet will quickly dry the supply of capital up. This proposal will herald in a new Dark Age the like of which has not been seen before. Nothing in our lives will ever be the same again, never be as good again. Whatever your plans for the future (unless they were already doom and gloom) FORGET THEM!
I close with a prayer: “Al Gore, who art in thy fully offset private jet; Nobel-prized be thy name; thy carbon-free kingdom come; on planet Earth (otherwise known as Gaia) as it should be after Copenhagen; give us this day our daily meat-free diet; and forgive us our emissions, though we don’t forgive any other big fat Americans who emit against us; lead us not into exotic holiday flights; and deliver us from climate denial; for the science is settled. Amen. --Dominic Lawson, The Sunday Times, 8 November 2009
Yours faithfully,
Steve & Della Jones
130 Jeeralang West Rd, Morwell Vic 3840
Ph: 0351223328/0427041253
APPENDIX 1:
If you want to know more you can check what I have said above (and below). There are many excellent informative websites such as Anthony Watts’ http://wattsupwiththat.com/, Steve McIntyre’s http://www.climateaudit.org/, Fred Singer’s http://www.sepp.org/, Warwick Hughes’ http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/, Andrew Bolt’s http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/, etc. Each has links to others.
It is also really worth reading the
explanations at the Oregon Petition site http://www.petitionproject.org/index.php,
at the Non- Government panel on Climate Change http://www.sepp.org/publications/NIPCC_final.pdf,
Roy Spencer’s website http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/07/how-do-climate-models-work/,
The Sceptics’ Handbook http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming/,
anything by Richard Lindzen, Fred Singer etc.
APPENDIX 2:
You can check the truth/falsity of global
warming yourself here in Australia by accessing the Bureau of Meteorology’s
archives. Here is a very simple exercise you can do yourself to judge the truth
(or otherwise) about global warming:
Goto: Weather Station Data: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/weather-data.shtml
Look for ‘Long Record Temperature Stations’, (they are below, right)Open (in
Microsoft Excel), Click top left box between 1 & A which will highlight all
boxes, Choose: Data, Sort, Column F, OK which will sort them from oldest to
newest. Note some have closed, so chose ones with the most complete datasets.
Also chose ones which are most remote or which you know or figure have been
subject to the least change over time eg population growth, land clearing etc.
Then go and find them here:
Goto: Climate statistics for Australian sites:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/ca_site_file_names.shtml
Choose eg in Monthly Statistics New South Wales, Gunnedah Pool, Monthly statistics,
Click (VERY IMPORTANT) under map All Available, then notice Highest Temperature,
LowestMaximum Temperature, Lowest Temperature, Highest Minimum Temperature for each
month and also note the date in Column ‘Annual’ when the record occurred. You
will notice for Gunnedah that even though the 19th century comprises
only 24 out of 132 years of data that (counting 1900) it
includes 6 out of 12 of the hottest days and 8 out of 12 of the coldest
days! You will also notice that the period 1975 to 2009 when we have been
told the world has been warming most and when extremes of weather have
been increasing most that NONE of the hottest days have been in that
period but 3 of the coldest have been! Since that period comprises 32 out
of 132 of the years of data you should expect a like proportion to that of
extreme days of all sorts or 24.24% or about one in four (3 out of 12)as
we find with the coldest days. But as NONE of the hottest days occurs in
that period (though we should expect one quarter of them to - again 3 out
of 12) we can only conclude that Gunnedah at least has cooled in the last
32 years! If you look at the four Annual climate extremes for Gunnedah you
will see 24 Jan 1882 (hottest), 4 Aug 1921 (lowest maximum), 27 June 1881
(coldest), 2 Jan 1905 (warmest night). In other words far from extreme
weather events increasing recently it has been 87 years since Gunnedah
experienced an extreme weather event!
Perhaps the REST of Australia (or the world) has warmed and Gunnedah is
the exception? I have looked at a selection of the more remote sites on
the Australian Weather Bureau’s site which have long-term records (eg Cape
Otway Vic ) and found the same pattern, ie very few of the hottest days
have occurred in the period 1975-2008 and a very high proportion of the
hottest days occurred in the 19th century. You have to choose sites
which
have long-term records comprising the last quarter of the nineteenth
century up to 2009 otherwise some relatively warm years recently will
appear to be the warmest when they were not. Obviously large cities WILL
have warmed because of the urban heat island effect NOT because the
climate has changed.
You have to be VERY careful to notice what years have been averaged in
the column ‘Years’ as even though the station may have data from eg 1869
to 2008, it may be that the data averaged is only 1970-2008 or the like.
Some sites have moved too and so or not very reliable eg Melbourne
Regional Office has averages from 1855-2008 but the site only BEGAN in
1908 which begs the question of where the earlier data comes from and is
it comparable? Even so, for that site (a very warm site because of the
huge growth of the city) only two out of 12 of the hottest days were in
that period and they were both back in the 1980’s. The three hottest days
by a long shot were in 1938-1940. (Black Saturday may have
eclipsed this – but this day cannot have been the hottest in Victoria’s history
because of the urban heat island effect; indeed because of that it must have
been a number of degrees cooler than Black Friday in 1939). Sydney
Observatory has 6 out of 12 of
the hottest days in the defined period but no-one would have thought
Sydney had not warmed.
Deniliqiuin is one of the oldest continuous sites: It has 2 out of 12 hottest
days; Bourke has 1 out of 12; Boulia has 0 out of 12; Marble Bar has 3/12 etc.
You can look at the actual temperature records for each site by going to:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/weather-data.shtml
And typing in the station number you found on the Excel page above. Be sure to sort for temperature. Go to the page and then be sure to Highlight: Highest to see when the warmest months occurred.
You can look at the NASA/GISS records for the ‘same’ sites by going to:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/ typing in the Station Name at #2, hit return, be sure you have the right one by latitude and longitude (You can check it against the Bureau of Meterology’s record). Then compare.
APPENDIX 3:
Here are the only fifteen (sixteen counting Bathurst) sites (from the sort you did earlier – I have since found a few more from the List of All Stations on the same page - whose records begin in the 19th century and extend into the 21st century. I have included the Bureau of Meterology’s Temperature Records and Climate Statistics for them and for comparison Nasa/Giss’s Record. The sites are ordered by date of opening.
There are a number of other sites which have records going back well into the 19th Century but which closed usually over thirty years ago so that the temperature in the 19th Century cannot directly be compared with the temperature in say the last thirty years. One would have to compare the records from a site nearby. These sites are: Bourke NSW 1871 (GISS 1880-1992), Wagga Wagga NSW 1871 (GISS 1942-2009), Forbes NSW 1873 (GISS 1880-1992), Inverell NSW 1874 (GISS 1907-1992), Alice Springs Post Office NT 1878 (GISS 1880-2009), Walgett Council Depot NSW 1878 (GISS 1880-1992), Cobar NSW 1881 (GISS 1962-2009), Darwin Post Office NT 1885 (GISS 1882-2009)…
In EVERY case you can see that what NASA/GISS has done is to exclude data from the period 1850-1882 even if a available. This is ‘unfortunate’ as in every case (in rural areas) this period appears to have been the hottest on record by a long shot. If you graph the average temperatures by month over the full period 1850-2009 you will see that in practically every case there has been a decline of approximately 2 degrees Celsius over this period - which contrasts very sharply with the global warmers’ claims of an increase in temperature of approximately 1 degree Celsius over this time.
I include a Microsoft Excel pivot chart plot of Cape Otway (data taken from the Bureau of Meterology’s website here http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=36&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_stn_num=090015
) to illustrate this. You can very clearly see the temperature drop for every month (1864-2009) over this time. You will also notice that there is nothing very interesting about the last thirty years which is the period that all the fuss is about. A more pertinent question might be: ‘Why did temperature fall by approx 2 degrees Celsius about the end of the 19th century and remain relatively static since?’
You can produce your own chart of each site with Excel
Here are the sites:
Melbourne Regional Office Temperature Record 1855-2009: Click: Highlight data in table: Highest:
Melbourne Regional Office Climate Statistics 1855-2009:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_086071_All.shtml
Melbourne Regional Office Nasa/Giss record 1880 - 1992: Click: monthly data as text:
Bathurst Gaol Climate Statistics 1858-1903:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_063004_All.shtml
Bathurst Gaol Temperature Record 1858-1903: Click: Highlight data in table: Highest:
Bathurst Agricultural Station Climate Statistics 1908-2009:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_063005_All.shtml
Bathurst Agricultural Station Temperature Record 1908-2009: Click: Highlight data in table: Highest:
Bathurst Agricultural Nasa/Giss record 1909 - 1992: Click: monthly data as text:
Deniliquin NSW (Wilkinson St) Temperature Record 1858-2003: Click: Highlight data in table: Highest:
Deniliquin NSW (Wilkinson St) Climate Statistics 1858-2003:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_074128_All.shtml
Deniliquin NSW (Wilkinson St) Nasa/Giss record 1880 - 1992: Click: monthly data as text:
Sydney (Observatory Hill) Temperature Record1859-2009: Click: Highlight data in table: Highest:
Sydney (Observatory Hill) Climate Statistics 1859-2009:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_066062_All.shtml
Sydney (Observatory Hill) Nasa/Giss record 1880 - 1992: Click: monthly data as text:
Cape Otway (Vic) Temperature Record 1864-2009: Click: Highlight data in table: Highest:
Cape Otway (Vic) Climate Statistics 1864-2009:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_090015_All.shtml
Cape Otway (Vic) Nasa/Giss record 1901 – 2009: Click: monthly data as text:
Gunnedah Pool NSW Temperature Record 1876-2009: Click: Highlight data in table: Highest:
Gunnedah NSW Pool Climate Statistics 1876-2009:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_055023_All.shtml
Gunnedah NSW Resource Centre Temperature Record: Click 1948-2009: Highlight data in table: Highest:
Gunnedah NSW Resource Centre Climate Statistics 1948-2009:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_055024_All.shtml
Gunnedah Composite NSW Nasa/Giss record 1907 – 1992: Click: monthly data as text:
Hobart (Ellerslie Rd) Temperature Record 1882-2009: Click: Highlight data in table: Highest:
Hobart (Ellerslie Rd) Climate Statistics 1882-2009:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_094029_All.shtml
Hobart Regional Office Nasa/Giss record 1882 - 1992: Click: monthly data as text:
Robe Comparison (SA) Temperature Record 1884-2009:: Click: Highlight data in table: Highest:
Robe Comparison (SA) Climate Statistics 1884-2009:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_026026_All.shtml
Robe Comparison (SA) Nasa/Giss record 1957 - 2009: Click: monthly data as text:
Boulia (Qld) Temperature Record 1888-2009: Click: Highlight data in table: Highest:
Boulia (Qld) Climate Statistics 1888-2009:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_038003_All.shtml
Boulia (Qld) Nasa/Giss record 1900 - 1992: Click: monthly data as text:
Burketown (Qld) Post Office Temperature Record 1890-2009: Click: Highlight data in table: Highest:
Burketown (Qld) Post Office Climate Statistics 1890-2009:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_029004_All.shtml
Burketown (Qld) Post Office Nasa/Giss record 1907 - 2009: Click: monthly data as text:
Port Lincoln (SA) Temperature Record 1892-2002: Click: Highlight data in table: Highest:
Port Lincoln (SA) Climate Statistics 1892-2002:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_018070_All.shtml
Port Lincoln (SA) Nasa/Giss record 1922 - 1992: Click: monthly data as text:
Gayndah (Qld) Post Office Temperature Record 1893-2009: Click: Highlight data in table: Highest:
Gayndah (Qld) Post Office Climate Statistics 1893-2009:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_039039_All.shtml
Gayndah (Qld) Post Office Nasa/Giss record 1894 - 1992: Click: monthly data as text:
Richmond (Qld) Post Office Temperature Record 1893-2009: Click: Highlight data in table: Highest:
Richmond (Qld) Post Office Climate Statistics 1893-2009:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cli:mate/averages/tables/cw_030045_All.shtml
Georgetown (Qld) Post Office Temperature Records 1894-2007: Click: Highlight data in table: Highest:
Georgetown (Qld) Post Office Climate Statistics 1894-2007:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_030018_All.shtml
Low head (Comparison) Tas Temperature Records 1895-2001: Click: Highlight data in table: Highest:
Low head (Comparison) Tas Climate Statistics 1895-2001:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_091057_All.shtml
Low head (Comparison) Tas Nasa/Giss record 1895 - 1992: Click: monthly data as text
Nhill (Vic) Temperature Records: Click: Highlight data in table: Highest 1897-2008:
Nhill (Vic) Climate Statistics 1897-2008:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_078031_All.shtml
Nhill (Composite) (Vic) Nasa/Giss record 1897 - 1992: Click: monthly data as text:
Some other long-terms sites not found on the Bureau’s Long Term Temperature Stations List (I don’t know why not, ask them):
Omeo Comparison Temperature record Click: Highlight data in table: Highest (1879-2009):
Wilsons Promontory Lighthouse Click: Highlight data in table: Highest (1877-2009):
Here is a sample of other Long Term (or very old) Stations which have their data unavailable or foreshortened, eg:
Wangaratta Station (1868-1987) No 082053 - first approx 40 years temperature of data missing.
Wahgunya (1868-1979) Station No 082051 - all temperature data missing.
Aberfeldy (1891-1985) Station No 85000 – first 80 years of data missing.
Maffra Shire Hall (1878-1968) Station No 85054 - all temperature data missing.
Port Albert (1856-1976) Station No 85070 - all temperature data missing.
Warragul (Carbethon) (1878-1962 Station No 85092 - all temperature data missing.
Alberton (The Meadows) (1879-1909) Station No 85245 - all temperature data missing.
Beenak (1878-1952) Station No 86005 - all temperature data missing.
Cape Schank Lighthouse (1879-1997) Station No 86017 – first 3 years of data missing.
Dromana ( 1880-1964) Station No 86032 - all temperature data missing.
Gembrook 1877-1967) Station No 86045 - all temperature data missing.
Hastings Post Office (1872-1969) Station No 86048 - all temperature data missing.
Warburton (1878-2008) Station No 86121 - all temperature data missing.
Bacchus Marsh (1880-1962) Station No 87002 – 28 years of data missing.
Geelong SEC (1870-1970) Station No 87025 – first 30 years of data missing.
Romsey (1877-1970) Station No 87057 - all temperature data missing.
Barkers Creek Reservoir (1872-1882) Station No 88004 - all temperature data missing.
Bendigo Channel (1877-1969) Station No 88005 - all temperature data missing.
Smeaton Weir (1877-1972) Station No 88016 - all temperature data missing.
Expedition Pass Reservoir (1872-1957) Station No 88024 - all temperature data missing.
Kyneton Post Office (1873-1969) Station No 88035 – first 14 years of data missing.
Maldon (Derby Hill) (1878-2008) Station No 88041 – first 30 years of data missing.
Newlyn Reservoir (1877-1938) Station No 88101 - all temperature data missing.
Ararat Post Office (1861-1969) Station No 89000 – first 40 years of data missing.
Glenthompson (1878-1978) Station No 89013 - all temperature data missing.
Ballarat Survey Office (1840-1890) Station No 89049 - all temperature data missing.
Mortlake (1879-1996) Station No 90058 - all temperature data missing.
Warrnambool Shire Office (1867-1998) Station No 90081 - all temperature data missing.
I have had a bit of a look around some of the other states and the same pattern is repeated, for example, get this:
Campbelltown NSW (1845-1961) Station No 068014 - all temperature data missing.
You can get the list of all stations from the page:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/weather-data.shtml and check them out yourself. The Bureau has been extraordinarily wanton in junking the scientific data it has collected over nearly two centuries.
APPENDIX 4: SOME SMOKING GUNS
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/#more-13818