Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

King Tide Not So High

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Jen, Here is a photograph of the King Tide yesterday, 12th January 2013, at Cleveland Point, Moreton Bay.

The King Tides here, where I used to live from 1946 until the early 1950s, used to cover the lawn on this land by about an inch (25mm) or so. Today’s King Tide was 2.68 m at the Brisbane Bar (about as high as they get) and the barometer reading at high tide was 1012.5 hPa (normal).

There were no enhancing or diminishing factors influencing sea levels that I am aware of. The remaining decking on the ruined jetty (click on photograph to see more of jetty) is at the height of the top of the sea wall (lawn height) so it can be seen that the King Tide height is about 300 mm below the lawn height.

So, according to my observations, sea levels in Moreton Bay have gone down about 300 mm over the last 67 years.

Cheers, Spangled Drongo

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Comments

  1. spangled drongo says

    If you click on the picture you can see how the base of the old jetty is level with the wall and lawn.

  5. Johnathan Wilkes says

    “who says the that sea wall and lawn are at their original levels”

    Crafty buggers, lifted the lawn surface but somehow the jetty moved with it?

    “My guess is under ten years ago and “

    Or lifted the jetty as well but used very poor materials, if it deteriorated to the extent shown
    in less than 10 years.

  6. gavin says

    Did I mention the jetty JW? Those piles are probably 100 y/o but they don’t serve well as a tide mark in the pic unless they could have been submerged on occasions long ago. Doubtfull realy.

    Otherwise it’s a darn good photo alongside all the latest on flickr

  7. spangled drongo says

    Here is a comment posted at Deltoid by Neil White:

    Neil White

    January 13, 2013 Spangled Drongo

    It’s because I’m careful that I’m very sceptical of anecdotal evidence. In most cases (especially in an area like this where a lot of people have agendas) it turns out to be WRONG when it is possible to check it. As an example, a year or two ago I had a guy tell me that sea level was going down at Busselton (WA) because he’d found an old map of Busselton (before they built the jetty) where the coastline was further inland than it is today. And therefore blah blah blah. It took about 20 seconds of googling to fnd the real reason – the large volume of alongshore sand transport which was blocked by the jetty (or something like that – I’m not a coastal engineer). Bizarrely this guy (who lived in Margaret River!) had never bothered to go and look – there are signs all over the Busselton foreshore about this.As well as the numerous state government and coastal engineering reports the google will find for you.

    The Cleveland light house is certainly not an unchanged site – there has been a lot of work there and I wonder if they didn’t build up the lawns to stop them being flooded at King Tides. Can you prove they didn’t? Do you have any levelling history at all?

    But let’s accept your 300mm drop over 67 years for the moment. That is an average drop of nearly 5mm/year. This doesn’t show up in any of the nearby tide gauges. Did all of this drop happen before the tide gauges started, or are the tide gauges wrong?

    Are you now saying that global SL has gone down by 300mm in the last 67 years? Does the BTP apply to Cleveland as well, or only to Chevron Island? And if it applies to Cleveland, why doesn’t it apply to all of the high quality tide gauge records around the world?

    And all of what Bernard J said too!

    Have you presented us with a single relevant, verifiable fact?

  8. spangled drongo says

    And my reply:

    spangled drongo

    January 13, 2013 Neil White, that is the old jetty we built ~ 1946. That is the old wall. Someone since has put some part of a newer block fence on top of the old wall as you can see and you can guess the possible reason. The neighbouring properties’ lawn levels are still the same as this one, as they always were.

    The old well is still there. Only the internal boarding is rotting and collapsing as would be expected after 67 years and the well is severely silted up. This has had the effect of actually lowering the surrounding lawn but still it doesn’t flood.

    All the old Oleanders are still there. the decaying slipways and general landscaping are still in place.

    IOW, the site is completely intact and original.

    And as I said upthread, those old lawn floodings can be verified by talking to old timer locals. When a king tide covers your property it is not something you forget and we are not discussing the depth of the coverage, just any coverage.

    On top of that, this benchmark agrees with all my other benchmarks for the Moreton Bay region ranging from the last 40 to 70 years most of which I also verified on Saturday.

    They all show very obvious falls in SLs. Just as you can see the very obvious fall in this photo between the lawn level which is the same as the wall height level and the jetty deck level, and what is now the current king tide level.

    AT LEAST A FOOT LOWER.

    This doesn’t need to be measured by me to the last millimeter when it is so obvious that the SLs are only going one way. DOWN.

    Have you ever carried out any enquiry by talking to people who are very connected to the sea and its levels?

    Like talk to people who have run a slipway business for a few generations. I’m sure there would be plenty around the country in suitable situations.

    If you did you might discover that there are many similar verifiable facts just waiting to be discovered.

    And I am not necessarily claiming that that is the true amount of fall but when ALL my benchmarks show FALLING SLs, your accelerating SLR claim is very hard to reconcile.

    You have to admit you are not doing your job very well when you ignore the real world and make most of your claims based on not what you see but what a computer tells you.

  9. Ian Thomson says

    Sorry that this it O/T, but such a grave situation necessitates urgency.

    Here we have a seeming mass extinction of a species possibly taking place ( at times ), under our very noses.
    It is going on totally ignored by the MSM .
    Worse than that, it seems that the Green stronghold of Sydney Australia may be at the very forefront of the destruction of Natural Habitat.
    Urgent political action needs to be taken to save yet another species from man made destruction.
    I for one will volunteer to make random habitat inspections of the gender who are most likely to be causing destruction.
    – 100K , car, laptop, should cover it for now.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-13/brazilian-bikini-waxes-make-crab-lice-endangered-species-health.html

  11. handjive says

    The Green Cross, who just received further financing from the QLD Newman government
    (read tax payers) of over $300k might welcome your photos on their fraudulent website, “Witnessing King Tides”:

    http://witnesskingtides.org/witness-king-tides.aspx

    If those photos at ” (The Witless) Witness King Tides” are anything to go by, we have nothing to worry about.

    “King tides” have been around since man started noticing tides.

    http://www.msq.qld.gov.au/Tides/King-tides.aspx

    Now they are proof of global warming?

  12. John Turner says

    Anyone who doesn’t accept that sea level has increased over the last 20 years needs to study the BOM annual reports on the results of the 16 carefully monitored sea level measuring station around the Australian Coast
    Along the east coast the sea level has risen an average of about 3mm per year for each of the last twenty years. From The Gulf of Carpentaria to southern WA the increase has been greater.
    If in doubt study the data.

  13. handjive says

    @Comment from: John Turner January 14th, 2013 at 8:57 am

    Is the The Lempriere-Ross mark one of those “16 carefully monitored sea level measuring stations”?

    Can you provide a link to your claims?

    This Ordnance Survey Bench Mark engraved into a rock face on a little island near Port Arthur, Tasmania out there in 1841 by the famous Antarctic explorer Captain Sir James Clark Ross and amateur meteorologist Thomas Lempriere to mark mean sea level is still there today.

    CSIRO promised a report out by 2000 – nothing to date in 2012 and still waiting – because this mark is still only 350mm above mean sea level.

    http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39386000/jpg/_39386131_dead350.jpg

  14. spangled drongo says

    Handjive, it was Caitlin from “witness” who reminded me of last Sat’s big tide so I also sent her the above photo and comments to set her mind at ease.

    No reply.

  15. Ian Thomson says

    Hi John Turne
    “Along the east coast the sea level has risen an average of about 3mm per year for each of the last twenty years. From The Gulf of Carpentaria to southern WA the increase has been greater.
    If in doubt study the data.”
    The water is rising more, on one side of the boat, than it is on the other ?
    The Mining Boom – all the people are rushing over to the West.
    60mm.
    ” EVERYBODY PANIC !! ”

    Sorry too many unknowns to call it sea level rise. A recent study in Alaska, of platelets, even calls into doubt what we know about Plate Tec.
    What we do know is that we know very little . If we admit it.
    We do know more about features on Mars’ surface, than about those on the floors of our own Oceans

    Or to return to the above is it all the minerals going to China ? I wonder if China is sinking 3mm a year.

  16. handjive says

    The “Witness King Tides” site is a spin off from a Green Cross site “Harden Up.”

    Green Cross is initiative of Mikhail Gorbachev.

    Stumbled upon this comment & link at Judith Curry’s ‘Climate etc’ blog:

    -Mikhail Gorbachev, speech to the Soviet Politburo, November 1987

    “Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about Glasnost and Perestroika and democracy in the coming years. They are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal changes in the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep.”

    “As the Soviet collapse became imminent in the final years, the Communist strategy became to infiltrate global environmental organizations. Gorbachev was active in this effort as eary as 1990.”

    “In 1992, the year following the Soviet collapse, the framework was already underway following the UN’s Earth Summit, after which he founded Green Cross International (GCI) officially in 1993.

    That same year, Gorbachev’s GCI was the fountainhead of the infamous Kyoto summit, during which he sat as the president of the proceedings.”

    read on: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread525624/pg1

  17. Avatar photojennifer says

    John Turner

    If you consider the technical literature for the east coast of Australia based on paleo-liminological and geo-morphical studies that consider the last 2,000 years it is well documented that sea levels have, on average, fallen by about 2 metres. That is correct FALLEN by about 2 metres over the last 2,000 years.

    The longest tidal gauge measurements are only about 150 years and I gather for Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour. My understanding is that these show no change.

  18. spangled drongo says

    “Sorry that this it O/T, but such a grave situation necessitates urgency.”

    Ian,

    I’m rushing a letter off to the Wildlife Preservation Society as we speak.

    And sorry to undercut your offer, but I’m so worried I have offered to do inspections on a purely voluntary basis.

  19. cohenite says

    The history of sea level around Austrlaia is looked at in these papers: this one looks at the last interglacial 125 BYA:

    http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=4361472

    This one supports Jennifer’s point and was posted here some time ago:

    http://jennifermarohasy.com/2007/11/a-review-of-sea-level-change-on-the-southeast-coast-of-australia/

    And this one clarifies the one above:

    http://www.academia.edu/543512/Mid-late_Holocene_sea-level_variability_in_eastern_Australia

  20. Neville says

    Thanks for this post and the photo SD. It has certainly encouraged some fairly lame and silly replies.
    Jen is correct and so is Cohenite about the Eemian SLs etc.

  21. ianl8888 says

    @cohenite

    Please be careful to distinguish between isostasy (tectonic lithosphere movements) and eustasy (global fluctuations in sea water quantities)

    The 2nd reference you listed discusses isostasy, while the last reference discusses eustasy

  22. cohenite says

    I stand corrected Ian; isostasy: did the Earth move for you darling? Eustasy: we’re sinking not swimming.

  23. gavin says

    I listen to our SL expersts. John Church was interviewed on radio national this morning re the UN Hobart conference

    “More than 250 scientists from the UN’s chief science body are in Hobart this week to discuss the science of global warming before the release of their fifth paper later this year”

    http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2013/s3668907.htm

    Expect more from our trusty ABC

  24. John Sayers says

    Yes Gavin – your ABC was spouting sea level rise of 80cm – 1.2m on this morning’s AM program.
    I just fell about laughing as I do when ever I turn on the ABC these days.

    I’m with SD on this one – was recently at The Pass at Byron Bay where the sea level was the same as it was back in 79 when I first used to swim there.

  25. Ian Thomson says

    sd,
    OK I’ll match that and add habitat care and silviculture.
    Seriously. sometimes,
    where does the ABC find this obscure stuff ?

  26. spangled drongo says

    John, I rang the ABC this am when I got that story on gavin’s link to tell the guy on air who had just announced it, my side of the story as a first hand witness.

    They wouldn’t take my call.

    Can’t spoil a bullshit story like that with a spray of truth. Sarah Clark has even stopped taking comments on it.

  27. Robert says

    The ABC is shifty, manipulative and trashy. The typical program these days will start with a cheap visual grab, supported by solemn voice-over and cheesy mock-classical music. This introductory drek will be followed by in-shallow analysis by plummy sounding airheads whose main attributes are their smugness and their conformity to the flimsy values of the posh urban left.

    SD, we should never be surprised when the ABC resorts to censorship and authoritarian practices. That’s what weak, conceited elitists have always done. It’s all they can do, in order to stay safe in their cocoons of privilege.

    Anyway, SD…love your work!

  28. gavin says

    Tut, tut Rob, our ABC censors all alike, even me. Oh, herself as well who commented recently on obesity during one chummy chat.

    Tip, quietly express your views to program managers off air. They are usually keen on developing public interest topics and fair play for all audiences. I had a reasonable run when Chris Ulman was local breakfast radio host after the Jan 2003 bushfires but I would not expect the same access on our national 7.30 Report.

  32. ianl8888 says

    @cohenite

    “isostasy: did the Earth move for you darling? Eustasy: we’re sinking not swimming.”

    Good enough 🙂

    The point is important, however, since the warmista happily, indiscriminately, treacherously mix the two with gay abandon to suit themselves

  33. gavin says

    Putdown rhetoric is just another form of eliteism, It may amuse legal bods but it is not science.

    I8; “warmista”? Can you be precise?”-

    ” treacherously”? by what authority do you usurp our integrity watchdog, the broarder public or narrower, peer review?

    Meer opinion is not science either

  34. spangled drongo says

    Yeah, those were the days! I eustasy SLR 67 years ago but not these days so much. ☺

    And gav, so PURPLE is the new colour for hysterical?

    How hot was it out there when birds and bats were dropping dead at 20,000 per mile at Parramatta, 222 years ago?

    And what conclusions did you come to on “unpreventable” bushfires?

  36. Robert says

    No doubt John McTernan will propose a name for our new weather map colour. “Misogyny” perhaps? Since the Macquarie Dictionary’s adjustment of the word’s definition, and the BOM’s adjustment of just about anything, I’m sure nobody will be surprised. If Sue Butler or David Jones are having any problems with spin, Mr. McTernan is only a phone call away.

    These days, it’s like changing the colour of your hair or getting a fake tan. Another day, another adjustment.

  37. spangled drongo says

    And Robert, one of the tricks you have to learn in the CSIRO and BoM is how to manipulate that GRACE Gravy Meter.

    Pays off big time.

  39. Debbie says

    Gee whiz Gavin,
    Have you ever heard of the expression “flogging a dead horse”.
    ? ? ? ? ?
    Far too many at the ABC are self important, elitist snobs who are far more interested in character assassination than anything much else.
    Most of them wouldn’t last more than a day in the REAL (bold) environment.
    They are hopeless sooks who want everybody else to fix it up but haven’t got a clue what is really wrong or how to fix it.
    Most of them would struggle changing a flat tyre!
    They would be some of the last people in Australia whom I would ask for practical advice!

  41. Debbie says

    Some interesting names and organisations on that paper Cohenite.
    Maybe Graeme or SD could put that one up at deltoid if they’re still engaging on SLR over there?
    I wonder how they would summarily dismiss such people as J Church and orgainisations like CSIRO?

  42. gavin says

    Although this paper could end up a bombshell in the polotics of climate science, it is just a breakthrough in formal recognition of factors affecting modern SL measurement.

    From the abstract

    “The reconstructions account for the approximate constancy of the rate of GMSLR during the 20th century, which shows small or no acceleration, despite the increasing anthropogenic forcing”

    SD; note, SLR is on not off.

    Today I completed a new series of photos on Coogee beach despite numerous beach goers I’m not allowed to oggle or engage in any way. We did meet an older girl who has been bathing in the ladies sea pool for 50 years and is very clear that king tides are up. Being quite short I guess made her particularly aware.

    These “sea pools” date back to the beginning of last centuary and I suggest their maintenance can be easily documented as many old photos still exist. A mature SLS on duty outside the Coogee club today, said on bad days waves sweep that pool so fiercly they can’t use it. With high tide at 11.45 am on a very mild day compared to yesterday, I can now show it.

  43. spangled drongo says

    Remember this gav?

    “Meer opinion is not science either”

    So what’s your measured HAT obs over what period?

  44. Robert says

    Gav, you’re taking snaps of Wylie’s and McIver’s Baths? Nice spot. I’ve spent more of my life in the east than anywhere else, though I remain a St. George boy at heart. (Wouldn’t support those Roosters if they climbed into my lap.)

    It’s always been a bit dicey in those pools when the seas get big; but it’s worth remembering that, when the other beaches are closed, Coogee can go from mill-pond to surfable.

    At 5’11” I have not been able to perceive any change in sea levels at Coogee. Your short new lady friend has the advantage of me.

    I could tell you that all is well at Coogee…but somehow I don’t think you want to hear it.

  45. Debbie says

    What can you show Gavin?
    What’s IT?
    I went to Uni at UNSW in the late 1970s and lived at Sth Coogee on the cliff area overlooking the beach for 3 years.
    You have not explained anything different to what I saw VERY REGULARLY in those years.
    BTW, according to THE DATA and the MODELLING you shouldn’t be able to see those particular pools you’re referring to.

  46. ianl8888 says

    Ah Gav, you do natter on … but I know you need a place to come for a chat, so on the few occasions I log in here I leave you to do just that. And in truth your posts are quite incomprehensible anyway

    However, knowing what isostasy and eustasy are is not elitist (note the spelling, Gav); rather not knowing is simply ignorance of basic geological science. These concepts are grounded in hard geological evidence, not mere opinion (again, note the spelling, Gav)

    Warmistas are those who abuse the public with unrestrained alarmism by manipulating the general scientific illiteracy and mathematical innumeracy of most of said public. Like Wobyn Williams of 100m surge fame, or Flannery recently ascribing the most recent La Nina episode to atmospheric CO2 levels, or Karoly claiming that a large, temporally stationary, heated bubble of air over the Aus desert in January, an almost annual occurrence, is evidence of CAGW … well, until the winds changed, he did

    You’re not a warmista, your audience is way too small. And no-one believes you are measuring accelerated SLR by paddling in seaside rock pools in summer, although they may envy you your luck

    Are you aware that when Billy the Kid (William the Conqueror, 1066 and all that) landed his invasion fleet on then Celtic shoreline, his actual location was about 5km or so inland of the current marshy shoreline and over 10m higher in sea level (I’ve actually examined his marked maps in the UK London museum) ? 10+m vertical and 5km horizontal in under 950 years, with no intervening glacial epoch to transform sea water into ice sheets and lower the SL

    Isostasy in action. Wobyn, eat your heart out

  47. cohenite says

    gav says:

    ““The reconstructions account for the approximate constancy of the rate of GMSLR during the 20th century, which shows small or no acceleration, despite the increasing anthropogenic forcing”

    SD; note, SLR is on not off.”

    And continues to flog not only a dead horse but one which has been cremated.

    The paper shows that AGW has no input into sea level rise; so once again we see a theory with no consequences; and a theory with no consequences is just ideology.

  48. gavin says

    “It” Deb is a wealth of SL information that can be gained by simply studying rocks, historic tide pools, walls etc around our most popular beaches.

    Coogee Beach represents a problem for tide line shooters like me, with it’s unusually steep tide zone gradient. Any dumper can deliver a good foamy wash right to the top of the slope.

    Regardless, a dedicated researcher should find enough suitable high and low water bench marks in close combinations to provide an alternative to tide gauges then and now.

    http://www.randwick.nsw.gov.au/Places_for_people/Recreation_and_leisure/Ocean_pools/McIvers_Baths/index.aspx

    http://www.dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/ocean_baths

    http://www.google.com.au/search?q=coogee+ocean+pools&hl=en&tbo=u&rlz=1R2NDKB_enAU518&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=sSj1UPabEouWiQe1_IHICA&ved=0CGcQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=612

  49. Debbie says

    Gavin,
    I’m sorry.
    But if you ‘simply study’ Coogee as well as most of the other nearby beaches there like Maroubra, it is not showing anything alarming re SLR.
    The changes are simply ordinary changes due to ordinary coastal erosion and heavy urbanisation.
    Did you read what Jen said above?
    At Coogee where I lived there is plenty of evidence that SL must have been much higher at some stage than it is now.
    We actually studied the geological features there as part of my course at UNSW.

  50. John Sayers says

    I always find it interesting that the man who has spent all his life studying SLR – Nils-Axel Mörner, and says that there has been no seal level rise is always attacked because he once said something about dowsing yet has never had his science proven wrong.

    It’s so typical of the warmist religion – if you disagree with their science you are personally attacked and ridiculed, not scientifically proven wrong.

  51. ianl8888 says

    @Debbie

    “At Coogee where I lived there is plenty of evidence that SL must have been much higher at some stage than it is now.
    We actually studied the geological features there as part of my course at UNSW”

    Just so

    All of the wave-cut platforms along the east coast have long been mapped in exhausting detail

    The most interesting in terms of the sheer volume of observable data is the extensive platform at Long Reef (north side). An absolute favourite for Geology/Biology 101 excursions

    And directly across Pittwater Road is the DY lagoon, with successive outcrops of peat showing everywhere across its’ edges

    If dear Gav was even faintly interested in organized observations and data, he’d buy any one of a dozen quite cheap texts on Sydney Basin geology and then really look at SL changes. Sydney Harbour is a drowned river valley (Paramatta River), but SLR slowed to almost nothing after the melt of the last glacial epoch

    Contemporaneous accelerated SLR is just another scarey-bear red herring, quite insignificant. CSIRO says so now as well (cohenite’s link above, even though the full paper is paywalled)

  52. Neville says

    Thanks for the link to that new study Cohenite. Just about says it all and some of those names have been at the fore over many years.

    Seems that Morner was correct all along. But where is the AGW signal to be found if it can’t be found in accelerating SLR?

    Poor Gav has been flogging a dead nag for ages , but best to leave him be. If they can’t explain the much warmer earlier holocene ( see Alley’s GISP2 graph) and much higher sea levels back then they haven’t got a leg to stand on, or a solitary clue.

    BTW why is the holocene IGlac the coolest of the last 5 IGlacs I wonder?

  53. spangled drongo says

    The brawling in Woodridge between taxpayer funded and housed Aboriginals and Pacific Islanders is not racist, just inter-ethnic according to our ABC.

  54. Debbie says

    Yes definitely John Sayers,
    The study we did compared those cliff faces north and south.
    The evidence was very easy to see, very easy to photograph and was very well documented in our texts.
    I’m sure if Gavin looked at his photos with an open mind, he would see it too.
    I’m also sure he could easily find the texts in the second hand university book shops for a few dollars.

  60. spangled drongo says

    Neville, that Watkin Tench report should be made compulsory reading in schools.

    And I had to put a comment on WUWT to Matt about his great contributions.

  61. gavin says

    I8 & Nev; thanks but I am not interested in Sydney basin geology, plate tectonics, holocene or interglacial temps, paleo studies etc, just SD’s king tide topic and SL in industrial times.

    Deb; if you haven’t followed UNSW on SL and climate change studies, google can help you.

    I chose Coodgee for constructed tide marks knowing it’s about the most popular ocean bathing spot in Aus with it’s natural breakwater Wedding Cake Isl giving max swimming days and heaps of potential for casual king tide wittnessesl.

    Another aspect is the vast ammount of commercial photography

    https://airviewonline.com/gallery/search?search=Wedding-Cake-Island-Coogee&sort=relevance&dir=desc&page=1&perpage=24

    So all off topic critics can go jump

  63. Johnathan Wilkes says

    I know it’s a waste, asking, but do these pics. prove, Gav?
    They look good I admit but so is my wedding photo, proves nothing but, no that’s not true, my wedding photo at least proves I was there.

  66. spangled drongo says

    “Any doubt re Church & CSIRO?”

    Read what the abstract says in his paper gav, not the crap he spruiked to the ABC:

    Abstract

    “Confidence in projections of global-mean sea-level rise (GMSLR) depends on an ability to account for GMSLR during the 20th century. There are contributions from ocean thermal expansion, mass loss from glaciers and ice sheets, groundwater extraction and reservoir impoundment. We have made progress towards solving the “enigma” of 20th-century GMSLR—that is, the observed GMSLR has been found to exceed the sum of estimated contributions, especially for the earlier decades. We propose that: thermal expansion simulated by climate models may previously have been underestimated owing to their not including volcanic forcing in their control state; the rate of glacier mass loss was larger than previously estimated, and was not smaller in the first than in the second half of the century; the Greenland ice-sheet could have made a positive contribution throughout the century; groundwater depletion and reservoir impoundment, which are of opposite sign, may have been approximately equal in magnitude. We show that it is possible to reconstruct the timeseries of GMSLR from the quantified contributions, apart from a constant residual term which is small enough to be explained as a long-term contribution from the Antarctic ice-sheet. The reconstructions account for the approximate constancy of the rate of GMSLR during the 20th century, which shows small or no acceleration, despite the increasing anthropogenic forcing. Semi-empirical methods for projecting GMSLR depend on the existence of a relationship between global climate change and the rate of GMSLR, but the implication of our closure of the budget is that such a relationship is weak or absent during the 20th century.”

    Now that tells you that they know SLR is a load of garbage and they are trying to escape from some of the more hysterical predictions they have made in the past yet at the same time avoid getting lynched by the mob.

  67. Robert says

    It might be a 20cm rise, or it might be an 80cm rise. Does it matter? The ABC doesn’t sweat the small stuff. It’s too busy digging out stock footage of ice floes somewhere and some Aussie beachfronts somewhere else – and then kinda juxtaposing them for a dramatic message. But, hey, what happened to the ominous sound track? Is the whole cheesy music department of the ABC on stress leave? Did Tony Abbott walk past the cheesy music building?

    Our own ABC. Somewhere in the world there must be a crappier, snobbier, sorrier collection of conceited twits. But where? Where?

    Gav, can we have more nice pics of Coogee?

  68. Johnathan Wilkes says

    SD
    yes I read that, it may have been you who posted the link in the first place.
    I also listened to Mr Church on the link provided and the hypocrisy of the man is astounding.

    I can understand he cannot elaborate in detail on radio, but he could also just say “we don’t know” or “we are not sure what’s happening”, but they will never do that, protecting one’s next pay packet is paramount.

  69. gavin says

    SD; That paper is not all Church & White; but it struck me they had to be there like it or not and their colaboration was necessary for the next wave of ocean research. It also struck me there are quite few for something so important.

    It’s also back to base. What we have now is a greater emphasis on Geodesy in the search for SLR and it’s rate of change. I saw it first with the Port Arthur tide mark saga, we had no references for the re calibration of any instrument record related to SL over time.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodesy

    What you guys get from the abstract is sweet nothing because it’s all about not having enough info to settle the heat budget via ice loss, SLR etc for even the last 100y. Therefor the public should demand more research in geomorphology terms for that period

  70. John Sayers says

    But recent papers (2012) have shown three things

    1 – the Himalayan glaciers are not losing more ice than they gain.
    2 – the Greenland ice sheet is gaining more ice than it loses.
    3 – the antarctic ice extent hit a record size.

    so where is this supposed additional water coming from that causes supposed seal level rise??

  72. spangled drongo says

    “It also struck me there are quite few for something so important.”

    Wake up gav, why does a dog lick its privates? Because it can and it derives pleasure out of it.

    But at least it doesn’t generate wealth at the taxpayer’s expense like these doomscreamers do.

    Boosted by our darling ABC.

    Tomorrow’s dose of doom will be the GBR and all the agony that entails.

    When they’ve spent so much of our money just making the sandwich boards, this is only the start of their advertising campaign.

    You ain’t seen nuthin yet.

  73. Ian Thomson says

    The Dutch, who have much more to fear from SLR than some overrich Sydneysiders, say it is all rubbish, say there is no abnormal rise.
    I guess that it is one of the downers of living Downunder all that imaginary meltwater slides to the bottom. We should count ourselves lucky we don’t live down near Auckland Is. Must be hellishly flooded there already.

  74. Debbie says

    You’re not interested Gavin?
    Where is your historical perspective?
    How do you prove anything without it?
    You are moving into nonsense land with your Coogee pics.
    Look at the cliff face in your pics.

  75. spangled drongo says

    “I saw it first with the Port Arthur tide mark saga, we had no references for the re calibration of any instrument record related to SL over time.”

    That Ross/Lempriere mark is probably the most reliable long term SL change indicator we can devise.

    As someone who knows about the complexity of scientific instruments, you, gav should know that if you put an automatic tide recorder with all its electric, electronic and mechanical bits in an enclosed “stilling pond” it is going to need a lot of constant attention to keep it working.

    This enclosed, salty, humid, marine environment is possibly the most hostile you could get for this sort of equipment and it would need constant servicing possibly necessitating recalibration and resetting.

    This practically guarantees that you won’t get continuous, reliable, believable data.

    A mark like the one at PA is as reliable as possibly anything long term that we could build.

  76. ianl8888 says

    “I8 & Nev; thanks but I am not interested in Sydney basin geology, plate tectonics, holocene or interglacial temps, paleo studies etc, just SD’s king tide topic and SL in industrial times”

    I already know that, dear Gav

    However, these data that you have no interest in are the hard evidential underpinnings of SLR studies … doesn’t mean you need to understand them, but without that understanding you are simply aimless

    But, believe it or not, I’m quite happy for you to paddle around. Just don’t insult those who do understand these data by calling them “elitist”

    Got it ?

  77. Johnathan Wilkes says

    sd,

    here is bit of info, it appears that the mark is not mean sea level but high water

    Taken on its own, the reported time of the striking would suggest that the mark was originally near mean sea-level.

    Significant work has gone into determining which of the accounts is correct, including a current major study by a collaboration of international scientists, as knowing whether the mark was originally placed near mean sea-level or high water is crucial to being able to compare sea-levels of 1841 with today. This study has concluded that it is almost certain that the benchmark was originally placed near high water. The conclusion is based on other estimates of sea-level made later in the 19th century, and on the fact that, if the mark had originally been placed near mean sea-level, then the Penitentiary building would have suffered flooding every few years (there is no record of this having happened).

    http://soer.justice.tas.gov.au/2003/casestudy/4/index.php
    Don’t know if it makes any difference?

  82. spangled drongo says

    Thanks for that link JW. It does seem hard to believe that the Ross/ Lempriere mark would be put anywhere other than MSL because that is and always has been the level used to calculate SLs from. It is also the level Ross refers to.

    Placing it at some level “near high water” when high water is such a variable thing seems a very half-baked, unscientific thing for people like Ross/Lempriere to do.

    The Penitentiary was not built until 1843 and as a granary and flour mill, not a pen. It was converted to a pen dormitory in 1857 [because it flooded?] and was gutted by fire 40 years later never to be used again for anything.

    Quien sabe? On the one hand you have SLR of 13cm, on the other SL fall of about a foot.

    I know there has been an enormous effort made to claim that the benchmark was put in at “near high tide” which is very unconvincing and unscientific and just not the thing a couple of very ocean-savvy people to do.

  83. gavin says

    Nev; tiresome mate, so tiresom to have a stream of skeptic comment and no published science

    JW: so good to to see you following some of my links such as the Port Arthur SL mark review.

    i8; “these data? insult” ? sure, I see your attitude, but I’m not that engaged with off topic comment.

    SD; re your “automatic tide recorder with all its electric, electronic and mechanical bits in an enclosed “stilling pond” and maintenance etc, I doubt those early instruments were that sophisticated. Have you come across a cross section of instruments as used for tide monitoring and a comparison, one to another?

    Fivety years ago, I was fully engaged learning and calibrating all types of liguid level and flow instruments, so can verify the importance of routines for each device. Also I suggest the marine environment demands considerably more care than the industrial sites I was used to. However slime and caked froth can badly affect any float well.

    Without certification, any mark, measure or recording won’t stand up tothe rigouruos analysis we need today in tracking rate of change issues.

  84. gavin says

    Nev;

    “A report in the Australian on Tuesday (Sea rise ‘not linked to warming’, page 1) said a paper by JM Gregory with a contribution from John Church had “found no link to global warming and no increase in the rate of glacier melt over the past 100 years”. In fact, the paper found the effect of anthropogenic global warming on the rate of sea level rise would have been greater in the 20th century but for volcanic activity. It found that in the past two decades the rate of sea level rise had been larger than in the 20th century”

    http://www.climatecodered.org/2013/01/the-australian-admits-it-misinterpreted.html

    Comment please

  87. ianl8888 says

    Last time, Gav dear

    ““these data? insult” ? sure, I see your attitude”

    The word data is the PLURAL, Gav. I see your ignorance

    My attitude is informed by actual data over several thousand years. Without that, you cannot tell if SL is changing, or the land mass is moving, or both. That’s why the satellite data (PLURAL) is so critical for better analyses, albeit so far only from 1979. Your attitude is formed by the need for relevance, I suspect

    SD’s photo shows no significant change at all in the area recorded (the pier shows that). It surprised me in that there seems to be no evidence of the significant erosion/deposition processes so persistent along the east coast of Aus

    cohenite is linking sufficiently to papers to keep sanity alive here. If you don’t like his suggestions, then log onto the International Journal of Geology (Google Pro) and feast away. Most of the papers are not paywalled, plenty of SL papers WITH data (PLURAL)

    Stay paddling, Gav – but don’t leave your water wings at home

  88. Robert says

    Vulcanism is often raised as a “chance” event affecting “actual” climate. The truth is, vulcanism is the most likely source of a radical climate change, and a climate-changing eruption within each person’s lifetime is a likelihood. To be de-industrialisng and fiddling with flimsy alternative energies when a Laki or Tambora scale eruption occurs would certainly cost lives and bring untold suffering. Even a Krakatoa would be disastrous for harvests, transport etc. Novarupta, St. Helen’s and Pintatubo in the 20th century were bad enough…but volcanoes come much bigger than those three. Also, the way a volcano erupts and its real pollution effect can be more important than initial force.

    People truly interested in climate catastrophes would show a vital interest in vulcanism. In fact, the climate trillions barely leak a trickle in that direction. The Big Money and Big Show are elsewhere.

    But it never was about climate or humanity, was it?

  89. gavin says

    i8 “the satellite data (PLURAL) is so critical for better analyses”.

    Sure is, now I can leave you to SD on that point

  90. gavin says

    coh’s rag tag science v the elite?

    AAP

    Scientists have rejected claims that the latest research on climate change finds no link between global warming and rising sea levels.

    CSIRO scientist Dr John Church, regarded as Australia’s leading authority on sea level and climate change, said they were clearly connected.

    “It is clearly linked to increases in greenhouse gases,” he said.

    http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/sea-level-rise-linked-to-climate-change-20130115-2cqkr.html

    and there is more!

  91. John Sayers says

    Gavin – these guys just spout whatever lie they think appropriate for the day:

    Dr Power said that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be very cold periods as the climate system wasn’t wholly determined by humans.

    “It is clear that these sorts of things do become more common under climate change and it is clear that Australia has warned up, the world has warmed up and coastal seal levels have warmed up, global sea levels have warmed up,” he said.

    global sea levels are slowing down! oceans are cooling, temperature remains constant despite increasing CO2! this all flies in the face of their BS.

    These guys just ignore the facts to support their own hobby horse which is usually tied to the name of the department they run with the support of government and corporate funding. They can’t afford to say anything else!

  92. Neville says

    Gav I think you’re on thin ice trying to argue for SLR that is any different than we’ve seen over the last century.
    Probably about another 8 inches for the next century or perhaps a foot. This won’t be a problem but then again all the latest research from tide gauges shows little rise.

    I also think that SD’s observations over may decades poses a problem for your enthusiastic urgings.

  93. Debbie says

    Gavin,
    Why are you so intent on being alarmed?
    Updated data is indicating that the earlier TREND is decelerating and that the relationship with AGW is ‘weak or non existent’.
    Isn’t that a good thing?
    Of course that doesn’t change the fact that a significant percentage of humanity has chosen coastal areas and estuarine areas as permanent habitat.
    Unfortunately coastal areas are not interested in being static or stable.
    Isn’t that the real problem?

  94. gavin says

    Nev; given my coast watching began during the 1940’s, I don’t need your advice on SLR over the next half century or the problems I may have with SD’s own claims. This set of coastline / estuary pics also shows little current SLR but note the old sea bed inland, historic breakwaters etc

    http://www.world-geographics.com/oceania/australia/tasmania-154/2172565-camp-creek.html

    This historic photo 1950’s shows the high tide at the Camp Creek – Inglis River junction. Unfortunatly local council foreshore improvements since have drasticly changed this couta boat port but the creek mouth weir is about to be reviewed. I hope engineering records give tide marks.

    https://www.facebook.com/campcreekwynyard/photos_stream#!/photo.php?fbid=254851417959292&set=pb.181354685308966.-2207520000.1358457076&type=3&theater

    JS; “global sea levels are slowing down! oceans are cooling, temperature remains constant despite increasing CO2”

    Listen to the RN climate series including today, new speakers, new evidence.

  95. Debbie says

    Gavin,
    I get it!
    You only listen to the ABC?
    No wonder you’re so concerned.
    If you only ever listen to the ABC you would definitely think humanity is going down the toilet, environmentally, politically, economically and every other “. . .ally’ I can think of.
    And they are such elitist snobs about it as well!

  96. gavin says

    Deb; explore my links. My point is I have no better place to observe SLR

    Here is a rare photo of a high tide before any major engineering round the Inglis R estuary where my aunt lived in one of the earliest homes built in the 1800’s. Most land LHS pic behind houses on main dune flooded at high tide during heavy rains, so SL became an issue for all living on the foreshore.

    http://eheritage.statelibrary.tas.gov.au/resources/fullimage0850.html?ID=WYHS_000161&ImageNum=1

    Note, the first large house became a maternity hospital and I can remember it all, quite a throttling experience, rekindled through later childhood drama. btw, this pic is the first time sceen and I’m astounded by the narrow beach before river mouth breakwater work

  98. cohenite says

    gav says:

    “coh’s rag tag science v the elite?”

    Well ok let’s see what the elite says; Hansen:

    http:www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2013/20130115_Temperature2012.pdf [// removed]

    Temps flat for at east 10 years, THEREFORE no steric input to SLR and a contadiction to Church who I’m afraid says one thing in his papers and another to the stupid gullible media.

    The elite have always been liars.

  99. Debbie says

    Why are you ‘astounded’ Gavin?
    There are plenty of places world wide where humans have built that close to the ocean….some places even closer than in this pic.
    I’m astounded that they’re now complaining that storms etc are interfering with their infrastructure after they built it that close to the foreshore.
    What else do you think they should have expected?
    I’m further astounded that many are arguing it’s everyone else’s fault and everybody else’s responsibility that they chose to build there!
    Coastal infrastructure has always been vulnerable to the vagaries of the ocean Gavin.
    Coastlines ERODE (bold)….they always have!!!!
    AND (bold) we have always known that haven’t we?
    Natural environments are not interested in permanent human infrastructure, especially the coasts and estuarine environments…..haven’t you noticed?
    We are NOT (bold) going to solve that problem by ‘bed wetting’ about SLR. (I love that term SD! It is a highly amusing way to explain the prevailing attitude!)

  101. Johnathan Wilkes says

    “care to tell me what is different??”

    more houses? it’s in colour?
    Do I win a price?

    Oh you refer to the beach? none that I can discern.

    Actually if you look closely at the beach on the Lockett st. end, it seems to be wider?
    Or is it an optical illusion?

  103. gavin says

    Hey guys; having way too much fun after chasing about after JS’s google of Wynyard Beach to answer silly questions about the images, but thanks John.

    This pic looking east does justice to the place and SL arguments.

    There is the early stone breakwater still protecting the Old Port. Our 100 y/o weatherboard cottage (2 blocks back from Mt Hicks Rd) stands hidden under trees I planted a while back, testomy to my very rough replating on the crest of the sand dune that also happens to be the original road way.

    Worth noting, no one has built on the old lagoon area out the back. Port Creek, long time a drain used to meander across this old sea bed for miles.

    http://beachsafe.org.au/beach/tas1063

  105. Johnathan Wilkes says

    “Oops; was refering to closeup shot, but this one shows how land and sea bed are one”

    Ooops indeed, T Abbott would be grateful to you for promoting Surf Life saving

  107. spangled drongo says

    And please enlighten us gav, how you measure any SLR at Wynyard?

    BTW, that point to the west of the river was a farm called Inglisdale and not so long ago I wanted to buy it. 240 acres with river and ocean frontage, opposite the town and a good farmhouse and gear with cows grazing on kelp on the beach.

    $240,000 would you believe and my better half wouldn’t be in it. Whoever bought it has turned the point into a golf course and the western half into a housing estate.

    Made money but ruined a lifestyle.

    If any time I ever think I am smart I think about Inglisdale and take a reality check.

  108. gavin says

    “Whoever bought it has turned the point into a golf course and the western half into a housing estate”

    Bet you never saw it, otherwise… you would know those links pre date us

    Builder’s blocks up the back are on the market at reduced prices for about 100 thou, anyway let’s answer a couple of recent Q’s.

    I was literally born on a dune there facing north to the sea. Areas east of the river mouth are as flat as a tack except for a slight step down at the present shore line and that’s only about a tussock high. Close to the river though, a concrete beach wall and breakwater return shape the river mouth. On the oposite bank a rock wall (seagull rockery) extends Golf Links Point. Inside the channel is a wier on Camp Creek where coastal shipping once moored. Further in is an extension from the other wharf across from the Commercial Hotel surposed to compensat for the loss of berths both sides just inside Camp Creek.

    High tides in the estuary seem not to go over the weir, but don’t quote me. The East Wynyard Beach has altered slightly and fore shore works aimed at tourism seem to go on past the Old Port and probably reclaim more beach on the way. East side Port Creek Inlet was done in my time there as the road works continued,

    These projects begin with huge quarry rocks being dumped right on the sand. Burnie foreshore on the eastern side of Emu Bridge is all under the 4 lane hwy now as is most of the western approach Wynyard side.

    What I failed to find was any photos of recent king tides and like SD’s Morton Bay pic, who knows how they line up peak by peak.

  109. John Sayers says

    “Sorry John; too hot, try again”

    Gavin – you re not worth discussing this with – you have shown yourself to be a warmist believer no matter what the evidence.

  110. gavin says

    Yesterday, another record temperature day and the 10th anniversary of the 2003 bushfires was commemorated in peace at the Mt Stromlo memorial park despite our similar weather. Other communities in S E Aus wern’t so fortunate and had to hit back at the conditions.

    john; anybody who disputes my observations today is a fool.

  111. spangled drongo says

    If you know it so well gav, was there a farm there called Inglisdale opposite the town?

    And looking at photos that someone else took, no matter how well you know the area, is a waste of time. You just don’t get that you need to make observations at a fixed, positively identifiable point that is a constant over most of your lifetime, during the highest tides that have occurred there.

  112. spangled drongo says

    “Yesterday, another record temperature day”

    Any report on how many birds and bats dropped dead around Sydney yesterday like they did in 1791?

  113. spangled drongo says

    “john; anybody who disputes my observations today is a fool.”

    What observations are those gav?

    That the weather is BAU?

  114. Debbie says

    Gavin!
    You’re in la la land!
    Yesterday was over 40 today is lucky to be 30.
    Apart from the fact that you’re just commenting on the weather, there is NOTHING unusual or alarming about it.
    BTW Jen,
    excellent column in the Land this week.
    Gavin could learn something about managing fire risk if he read it.

  115. Johnathan Wilkes says

    In case nobody here heard it before,

    Tomorrow
    (noun)

    A mystical land where 99% of all human productivity, motivation and achievement is stored!

  116. Neville says

    This interesting post from Frank Lansner backs up my previous Greenland temp posts about the earlier and later 20th century record.

    The earlier 1920 to 30 record even has a 50% higher rate of warming than 1995 to 2005. See link to the study completed in 2010.

    http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/greenland-temperatures-63.php

    Just shows Greenland temps are not unusual or unprecedented over the last 100+ years. So what is the panic about?

  117. Neville says

    Another Greenland post from Frank Lansner covering the Medieval WP. The dark blue line is a combination of 27 non tree data sets.

    http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/medieval-warm-period-rdquomwprdquo-38.php

    He also shows a map of the world showing temps during the MWP and nearly all are higher than today.

    This information comes from 752 scientists from 442 research Institutions in 41 countries. But the public nows almost zero about this research.
    Why hasn’t this info been made available and promoted as well in the MSM?

  119. el gordo says

    Philip Lloyd at Watts

    ‘Many of the fears about sea level rise are unfounded. Yes, the sea is rising slowly. Satellite measurements since the early 1990’s confirm a rate of rise of about 3mm/. However, there are already defences against the sea. It is necessary to allow for tides, storm surges and even tsunamis. The existing defences are measured in metres, not mm. An increase in the average level of 3mm/a can be offset by raising the defences by an additional brick every 30 years or so. The rising sea level is not a threat.’

  120. gavin says

    Sure that’s not Gunna Land, JW?

    Deb; with five generations of bushmen behind me, I don’t need a lesson in fuel or wild fire managment from you or anyone else. Btw one ancestorial line was stationed at Port Arthur, another should have left me a piece of Inglisdale despite having other relationships. One of my aunties used to get quite mad about it after she traced down a missing family link with first settlers from the VDL pastoral era.

    SD; you should recall our discussion about a fine Angora stud worth about a mill being shiped to NZ from that farm during a period when I canvassed door to door. A premium property with no kids in sight went out of farming but apparently there is nothing on the internet about it’s transition.

    Mr King from VDL settled north side of the Inglis about 1840 and for the remainder of the 19th century, the Wynyard area supported the busiest coastal shipping in the state. South side of the Inglis was all tall timber, a feature overlooked by exploring pastoralists.

    This flat region was a bother for even small ships and so began the search for suitable berths. Breakwater ends still mark the Old Port along East Wynyard Beach. These squarish wave barriers well off the beach are the end of a long stone wall that was built as a guard against high seas generated in such shallow waters. Tide mark No1

    The rock wall from the Golf Links with beacon, Tide mark No2. Estuary improvements, Tide marks No3. Camp Creek weir, Tide mark No4, Motel apron by the remaning wharf “Burnie Airport” Tide mark No5, Camp Creek and Inglis R road bridges and replacements, Tide marks Nos 7 & 8

  121. Robert says

    The Big Heat is certainly here. The Big Cold which gripped Eastern Europe in early 2012 has instead gripped the Middle East, Asia and Russia this winter. Extraordinary stuff, terrible for India where people just aren’t equipped for cold.

    There have been these widespread and severe cold events in the NH in recent years, with the 2012 event in Europe being one the worst in history. Is that just weather? And, by contrast, is this current heat in Oz climate? Truly, I don’t get it. How did so many people miss or forget such an event as this:
    http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/three-weeks-on-iceeurope-cold-1/61629

    Or are certain people just looking the other way?

  122. Debbie says

    Yes Gavin,
    I have actually noticed you have dug yourself a metaphorical ditch and are now literally stuck in a rut.
    As soon as someone says they don’t need to learn more the rest of us can immediately see the problem.
    It’s a bit like that ‘the science is settled’ PR nonsense.

  123. sp says

    Gavin seems to writes a lot without saying anything useful.

    Dont know what he is trying to achieve – other than convince us that sea level is rising and he has photos to prove it.

    He used to write some reasonably useful stuff, but now just writes metaphysical rubbish and irrelevant “history”.

    Must be the heat!!!

  124. Johnathan Wilkes says

    “He used to write some reasonably useful stuff”

    With respect sp, point to it!
    Must have been a while, since I can’t recall any, and my memory is better than average.

  126. SP says

    JW

    “He used to write some reasonably useful stuff”

    With respect sp, point to it!
    Must have been a while, since I can’t recall any, and my memory is better than average.

    OK – maybe I was being too kind. The past stuff was a bit more usefull than the recent stuff in so much as it (sometimes) led to interesting discussion (by others mainly, sometimes Gav).

    And at times I could see the point he was trying to make – even if I did not agree.

    But the recent stuff ……… way out there!!!!

    I still think there is still a long hard fight to remove the AGW pestilence, despite recent advances in MSM reports (no warming 17 years, etc).

    But the alarmists have dug themselves in way too deep and will not give up or go away to save face. They were so “certain” once, but not so now. But they will no go, and like a cornered rat, will become more vicious as their room to move decreases.

    Unfortunately, it is clear that the Gavs of this will need to be driven away and revealed for the religious cranks they are to make it more difficult for them to jump on the next bandwagon.

    So now I concede JW, Gav has probably never written any reasonably usefull stuff.

  127. gavin says

    Just keeping you guys up to date

    Abstract

    “The last decade has produced record-breaking heat waves in many parts of the world. At the same time, it was globally the warmest since sufficient measurements started in the 19th century. Here we show that, worldwide, the number of local record-breaking monthly temperature extremes is now on average five times larger than expected in a climate with no long-term warming. This implies that on average there is an 80 % chance that a new monthly heat record is due to climatic change. Large regional differences exist in the number of observed records. Summertime records, which are associated with prolonged heat waves, increased by more than a factor of ten in some continental regions including parts of Europe, Africa, southern Asia and Amazonia. Overall, these high record numbers are quantitatively consistent with those expected for the observed climatic warming trend with added stationary white noise. In addition, we find that the observed records cluster both in space and in time. Strong El Niño years see additional records superimposed on the expected long-term rise. Under a medium global warming scenario, by the 2040s we predict the number of monthly heat records globally to be more than 12 times as high as in a climate with no long-term warming”

    http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/monatliche-hitzerekorde-haben-sich-durch-die-erderwaermung-verfuenffacht

  128. cohenite says

    Jo has already had one post abut the current temps and claims of records; another is due to go up soon.

    The BOM has once again covered itself in disgrace for using this current hot spell to justify AGW.

    Sydney’s record of 45.8 disappears when UHI is taken into account; UHI effect on temp ranges form 0.oo6C per decade as estimated by the IPCC and up to 0.8C per decade according to studies in California where a contrast between expanding urban and rural areas is possible:

    http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GW_Part3_UrbanHeat.htm

  131. Johnathan Wilkes says

    sp,
    yes I concur, thinking back to the times when he was talking about what he really knows, i.e. instrumentation, he was on the ball and I could follow his thread having started out in the same field of work originally.

    But lately for some reason he decided to take the place of Luke and that other feller, the alter ego of Luke, and since then it’s all downhill as far as content goes.
    Pity really.

  132. spangled drongo says

    Interesting when the greatest recent SLR supposedly took place:

    Here are the top ten decades of SLR since 1700 in mm/year as per Jevrejeva et al [2008]:
    1804-1813 12.75
    1803-1812 10.67
    1728-1737 10.30
    1789-1798 8.38
    1842-1851 7.87
    1858-1867 7.82
    1788-1797 7.72
    1861-1870 7.66
    1808-1817 7.58
    1785-1794 7.18
    And here are the top ten decades since “CAGW”.
    1989-1998 4.66
    1990-1999 3.95
    1991-2000 3.86
    1956-1965 3.79
    1986-1995 3.78
    1974-1983 3.71
    1952-1961 3.65
    1993-2002 3.63
    1988-1997 3.44
    1975-1984 3.30

  134. el gordo says

    LONDON, Jan 18 (Reuters Point Carbon) – ‘European carbon prices plunged by as much as 10 percent on Friday after energy bourse EEX cancelled a German auction for 4 million EU Allowances, citing a lack of demand.’

  135. el gordo says

    NASA and the Russians are saying a mini ice age is on the cards and I’m taking their alarmism seriously.

    ‘Britain faces more travel chaos this weekend as freezing conditions and more snow prompted Heathrow Airport to cancel a further 260 flights scheduled for Sunday.’

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2264917/UK-weather-Treacherous-black-ice-causes-travel-chaos-country-forecasters-predict-snow-afternoon-Heathrow-cancels-200-flights.html#ixzz2IS9FtvRR
    Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

  136. Neville says

    SD have you got a link for the SLR numbers you listed? El Gordo let’s hope the EU carbon trading goes the same way as the Chicago exchange.
    The sooner the better, they are about 87% of the entire planet’s trading. What a taxpayer funded super PONZI scheme farce.

    I remember my Dad’s generation used to joke that “if the bastards could tax the air we breathe they would”. But now that joke has become a reality.

  137. spangled drongo says

    Neville, I don’t have the link, sorry. I downloaded that onto my files some years ago and didn’t include the source.

    I wonder if anyone else knows where it came from?

  138. Robert says

    Nice one, SD.

    Yep, SLR is mainly a 19th century phenomenon, though the rise may have started before that. I have found that it does not matter how many times you point this out, the climate bedwetters will ignore it and go on talking about the rise of oceans etc. Tried talking about the last Arctic ice scare in the late 50s, before those plunging temps in the 60s? The warmies will bang on about disappearing ice caps and they won’t even blink. These people are on automatic.

    And don’t they hate history! They HATE it. Now why is that?

  141. Neville says

    Lomborg includes that reference and graph in his book i.e. FIG 3 in Jevrejeva study Cohers linked above. Page 76 “Cool It”.

    The rate of rise is much larger in that earlier record shown on the graph as mm/year. The last rise up to 2000 is not as fast and the slope on the graph is certainly much flatter than the steep rises shown in the earlier part of the graph.

    If the glaciers are showing extra melting I don’t know why this isn’t showing up as a steep rise in these latest studies.

  143. Johnathan Wilkes says

    Forscher rätseln über Stillstand bei Erderwärmung (Climate change: scientists baffled by the stop in global warming).

    Sorry to be a pedant but rätseln not equals baffled

    closest is to “find an explanation” to “guess ” to “puzzle” but definitely not baffled

  145. Johnathan Wilkes says

    Yes John that was my interpretation too, speaking German I was baffled why they translated “rätseln” in this way.
    baffled in German is a very distinct word.

    It just gives a different meaning to the whole article if you only read the headline.

  147. John Sayers says

    I’ve started compiling the end of the apocalypse papers:

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/17/global-warming-apocalypse-canceled/?page=all#pagebreak

    http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/stillstand-der-temperatur-erklaerungen-fuer-pause-der-klimaerwaermung-a-877941.html

    http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2013/20130115_Temperature2012.pdf in which James Hansen is quoted:

    “The five-year mean global temperature has been flat for the last decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slow down in the growth rate of net climate forcing.”

    http://www.theclimatebet.com/?p=515

  151. Robert says

    On top of the Asian cold wave that has been so brutal, especially for India, Russia has just had its coldest December on record. I don’t know how far back the records go, so it’s a bit of a factoid, but the “snowcalypse” is continuing:
    http://rt.com/news/winter-snow-russia-weather-275/

    While no event in recent years has been as severe as the Central and Eastern European Cold Wave of 2012, it’s worth remembering that in 2010 England had its coldest December in a hundred years, which is “ever” in alarmist-speak, since official records only began in 1910.

    In recent years, each winter is bringing dramatic and wide-spread cold events to the Northern Hemisphere. I’m too much the skeptic to draw conclusions about future climate, but I’m not too skeptical to suggest that we equip ourselves with new and far more efficient coal power. If Abbott defeats McTernan in the next election, we have to insist he take action.

    Let’s wipe this green goo from our brains once and for all. Electrical power to the people!

  155. Johnathan Wilkes says

    yup SD just read it, and I thought “what took them this long”? and also why not extend the field to 360 degrees?

    I mean, we are not talking about thousands of $ here, a mere drop in the ocean compared to the total expenditure so far on climate related matters.

  156. spangled drongo says

    I finally got a reply from ACMA re my complaint about Robyn Williams re his paedophile/ sceptics remarks:

    “RE: Complaint about The Science Show broadcast by 2RN on 24/11/12

    I refer to your email of complaint received by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (the ACMA) concerning the above program.

    The ACMA has decided to investigate your complaint against relevant provisions of the ABC Code of Practice 2011.

    The investigation may take several months, including preparation of a report and internal clearance.

    You will be notified of the results of the investigation when it is finalised.”

  157. Debbie says

    http://regionalreach.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7047f3fa3899115ce8a8ce799&id=2097249c28&e=8f25619f59
    I have had this one sent to me several times today.
    I thought some of you may enjoy it.
    Also this one is good for a giggle:
    http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=farmer%20style&source=newssearch&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DLX153eYcVrY&ei=1PT8UP3rKsvmmAX92oAI&usg=AFQjCNFu4Z3lVUzpVSv2KrqnAMGMK4_PIg&bvm=bv.41248874,d.dGY

  161. el gordo says

    ‘AUSTRALIA’S biggest class action could be launched against the Queensland government on the basis of new flood modelling that claims thousands of homes and businesses were needlessly inundated during the 2011 flood crisis because of the “negligence” and “incompetence” of Wivenhoe Dam’s operators.

    ‘After a 12-month, $1 million investigation, law firm Maurice Blackburn – backed by a $10m fighting fund from litigation financier IMF Australia – said yesterday its commissioned research would underpin the class action against the state of Queensland.’

    Sarah Elks in the Oz

  162. Neville says

    Interesting EG. Looks like the Newman govt will be left the responsibility of cleaning up more of Labor’s mess in Qld.

    BTW we are now being told that CAGW has changed to more emphasis on extreme climate events.
    This Goklany study makes interesting reading, particularly FIG 1 showing all deaths from extreme events from 1900 to 2008.

    We are certainly lucky we live in this high tech age with instant communications and warnings etc.
    Deaths today are tiny compared to earlier periods shown on that chart. Just shows how important it is to have affordable energy that drives a much higher standard of living and also a much safer environment to live in.

    http://www.csccc.info/reports/report_23.pdf

  163. Neville says

    Sorry above should read extreme WEATHER not extreme climate events and FIG 1 was from 1900 to 2006.

  164. Debbie says

    Yes EG,
    This has similarities to the SHL debacle that saw the authorities blindly following drought born rules and dumping water into a flooded system in the face of overwhelming evidence that the catchment was sopping wet.
    In QLD they were ‘conserving’ via drought born rules in the face of overwhelming evidence that the catchment was sopping wet and they probably should have been utilising the flood mitigation capacities of Wivenhoe (considering it was originally designed to do both!)
    To some of us ‘ordinary hokey’ water managers… who apparently have sunburnt necks, are scientifically illiterate and flap around with only a right wing… the obvious problem is a total lack of flexibility in those ‘drought born’ rules.
    Same actually applies to some of those rules re regulating and managing fire risks.
    To many of us who actually live and work out here in the ‘real’ environment, it seems that there is a constant centralised bureaucratic search for an easy ‘one size fits all’ perfect set of rules to manage our entirely variable and ephemeral environment/climate.
    They want to run it by numbers and modelled trends.
    Unfortunately, the class action may not get anywhere because in a similar vein to the SHL inquiry, the relevant authorities can quite legitimately argue that they followed the rules.
    It seems that it’s not legitimate to argue that it was actually those drought born rules that were the problem!

  166. spangled drongo says

    The ironic point of that Wivenhoe flooding is that Campbell Newman, when he was Lord Mayor of Brisbane was the only person telling the Bligh govt that these record floods were odds on to happen [three months before they arrived] but the Bligh govt were too stupid to give it any credence.

    Now he’s the poor bugger left with the bag.

  167. Robert says

    The Guardian, pottiest rag in the Northern Hemisphere, has some extreme weather to report:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/20/snow-britain-big-freeze

    Meanwhile, no let up for India:
    http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/cold-dry-north-india-sees-slide-in-mercury-320407

    All the cold and snow in New York has prompted the NYT, snobbiest rag in the Northern Hemisphere, to seek the cause of this hemispherical colding. Apparently, the culprit is…

    Yep. You guessed it.

  169. John Sayers says

    Great work Tony – It’s a shame you a being attacked by the Online version of Doltoids.
    Clearly global warming is dead in the water and it’s worth while to have papers presented that show why!

  170. gavin says

    Guys: Although I still drop in, this summer keeps me busy outside as the landscape dries and dies. Finished first stage of tree lopping under my back yard power lines this morning, after a week of jungle clearing up the bank above the house. However when I say a week it’s mostly mornings for the obvious reason and it’s not the Australian Open Tennis.

    This morning I also volunteered to remove young folk’s revolting compost (next suburb) because their big bin went bad. About an hour I thought with two wheelies and wagon after a pro quote of $170 min yesterday. Biggest mistake was loading lid ends first then roping top back to to wheel. While unloading the heavy one bottom first at the green recycle depot, I realised that I could not overturn it once out but had already gone through the point of no return, so ended up with one shin barked almost to toes.

    Some practical experience we can do without, but as leading compost maker who gives away bins with starter brew including appropiate worms, there are obligations with the sour side of other’s experiments. This should also apply to that thing called the Industrial Revolution with it’s millons of tons, YES; waste, including CO2 every day.

    Now a bone with Nev; mate, following your recent links I came to the same conclusion as last year. You are simply repeating opinion generated for Heartland, Cato etc inc then pasted up at wuwt as science comment. Can you ever be original? Unfortunatly for debate here, there are others too thus smitten with a narrow view of democratic freedom. Any selection of US based enterprise and science must include NASA and their latest comment on climate change.

    Global Temp. Anomalies: 1880 to 2012

    http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=158495791

  171. cohenite says

    gav’s been attacked by a wheelie bin; I think Monty Python made a movie about wheelie bins attacking people.

  172. Robert says

    gav, I’m overjoyed that you are going indie in your opinions. Breaking free of the ABC, the Walkley walking dead, silver Tony and that angry airhead, Leigh Sales! What a moment! Trust me, you won’t miss the stock footage, canned opinion, cheesy music and voiceovers…or those preachy, smirking convent girls.

    If you want something easy on the eyes with your current affairs, that Megyn Kelly on Fox isn’t too bad.

    Let me know who your faves on Fox are. I always enjoy Greg Gutfeld and Red Eye. Don’t like that O’Reilly guy much: he nags and whines like some ABC puritan who’s gone libertarian.

    You won’t have your opinions shaped by Fox, because Fox is just for flashy entertainment, like all good TV should be. They end up telling the truth a bit more frequently than Fairfax or the ABC – but that’s a very low base.

    Anyway, gav, so glad to hear you’ve gone indie. You won’t know yourself.

  173. John Sayers says

    Gav – that has to be the most deceptive video ever produced on climate change!! NASA has no idea of what the temperatures were over 70% of the planet, the oceans, and to compare it with 1951 – 2008 of course you are going to get more pronounced warming at the end of the video!

    1926 – 1956 (The midway point) would have been a fairer approach.

    You amaze me how you can post that shit with a straight face!

  175. Johnathan Wilkes says

    Gavin, you get upset when rebutted, but honestly, you post pictures without any reference to anything
    in particular or if they are somehow related to each other or something in particular, you never say what the significance of the relationship is?

    You might as well send family photos, proly would be more interesting, at least we could put face to the posts.

  176. John Sayers says

    I might add Gav that I commented on the NASA video yet every time I filled in the captcha it was rejected!

  177. Robert says

    John, out of curiosity I just posted a comment on the NASA site just saying thank you. It was immediately accepted after captcha. Someone else might want to post a critical comment, if they have one, adhering to these conditions.

    “Stay on topic. Other readers expect the posts they see here to deal with the topic at hand.

    No personal attacks. Criticism of decision-making and operational management, including the names of the individuals involved, is legitimate. Criticism on a purely personal level is not.

    No profanity. No spam. No sexually explicit or discriminatory material.

    Comments about politics and politicians must, like everything else, be on-topic and free from personal attacks.”

    (Also, no links allowed).

    I would not assume anything for the moment. But it is interesting. The comments published are mindlessly flattering, almost juvenile in tone, though maybe others are testing like I did. The fact that there is no debate or criticism appearing is very suspicious. But it is very odd if they are filtering at captcha point, rather than in mod. Space age tech in the service of consensus?

    We know James Hansen likes protest and rebellion – but only when James Hansen is doing it.

  178. gavin says

    ABC listners will know this space photo of the ACT was recently posted on Twitter.

    Astronaut Chris Hadfield, an engineer aboard the International Space Station, has built a big following on social media thanks to his regular tweets about life in orbit.

    “The first Canadian to walk in space, Commander Hadfield is a hero in his home country.

    And his sense of fun and connectedness to earth through Twitter has made him known to many more”

    Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/canberra-from-space-20130123-2d5yk.html#ixzz2IsB2B7OO

    John and others; I find this image and associated technology so fascinating, it should rate as interest anywhere. We live in such a dry place, a full Lake George (lower right) is a rare exception and this helps date the pic. Note those older shorelines. Top RHS, our Cotter River deep in the Brindabellas after the 2003 bushfires.

    Next and right across the image, the Murrumbidgee River Valley, before the completion of our new dam by it’s junction (midway) with the Cotter.

    Tip; all white patches are construction sites. Clockwise; new developments under Mt Stromlo, West Macgregor (topmost), edges around Dunlop, green fields suburbs and the new city center in Gungahlin, down to Fyshwick, Queenbean and Bungendore.

    Other landmarks including New Parliment House, city lakes, airport etc are so tiny, and we are so tiny, one could think there is infinite oportunities yet

  179. John Sayers says

    Robert – I just posted what I replied to Gav:

    that has to be the most deceptive video ever produced on climate change!! NASA has no idea of what the temperatures were over 70% of the planet, the oceans, and to compare it with 1951 – 2008 of course you are going to get more pronounced warming at the end of the video!

    1926 – 1956 (The midway point) would have been a fairer approach.

    and every captcha was rejected.

  180. Robert says

    John, reading the comments that are accepted, I’d say that NASA has managed to combine new millennium IT with a political mentality suited to Romania in the 1980s.

  183. Neville says

    Their ABC are yapping about a new Greenland study into the Eemian interglacial 130,000 years ago.
    A CSIRO member said the study shows much higher temps than previously estimated, but also less melting than they estimated.
    They also mention more SLR back then from antarctic peninsula melt and much higher SLs.

    This is a story on the study and when I get time I’ll try and find an abstract from NATURE.

    http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2013/01/23/deep-ice-cores-show-past-greenland-warm-period-may-be-%E2%80%98road-map%E2%80%99-continued

    GEEEZZZ Gav I’m not in the mood to play silly blokes at the moment. Too busy.

  184. Robert says

    Maybe NASA, like somebody’s ABC, has a whole bunch of video people producing infantile trash, and a bunch of PR people to write infantile trash praising the first load of infantile trash.

    If anybody wants a laugh, read the comments on the NASA site. I’m sure John would have been published if he had written: “U so cool and smart. Mr. Hansen so handsome, I want to luv him long time.”

    Yes, NASA has great flaks – but while Australia’s got Jonathan Holmes, nobody in the whole known universe can out-smug us.

  185. spangled drongo says

    I think John’s comment is there now.

    But how’s this for the ultimate irony, the scientists are “worried” because the world isn’t warming:

    “Scientists previously thought 14 years without further warming could be brought into line with their forecasts – but not “15 years or more,” as NASA scientists stated four years ago in the journal “Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society”. In an email to colleagues a renowned scientist wrote on 7 May 2009, at a time when the warming standstill had already lasted for eleven years: “the ‘no upward trend’ has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried.”

  186. John Sayers says

    well climate denialism is now the bastion of white, male baby boomers according to a letter to the editor in The Australian today!

    BARACK Obama is correct in suggesting extreme weather predicted by climate scientists now renders any argument about the scientific consensus and/or computer modelling as superfluous semantics (“Obama vows to act on climate change”, 23/1). Yet Obama misunderstands the climate change denial demographic by asking for support on the basis that a failure to act would “betray our children and future generations”.

    The majority of climate change deniers are white, baby-boomer males — a group of people that has established itself as the most self-obsessed in history, so any appeal to altruism is doomed to fail, as the only thing they care about is themselves.

    Far better to treat them by taking his message directly to a public that now recognises that pandering to those intent on protecting their financial self-interest to the detriment of our environment is madness.

    Chris Roylance, Paddington, Qld

  188. gavin says

    “The majority of climate change deniers are white, baby-boomer males — a group of people that has established itself as the most self-obsessed in history”- Chris Roylance.

    This has to be the classic view John, so can we deny it on this thread?

  190. Robert says

    Back in the sixties we just called the people who didn’t understand how cool and bright and right we were “parents”. Now we call them white baby-boomer males.

    What’s the betting Chris Roylance is a plummy-voiced hipster with serious mummy issues and some authoritarian leanings?

  192. Robert says

    “Here, we present a complete temperature record for Byrd Station, in which observations have been corrected, and gaps have been filled using global reanalysis data and spatial interpolation.”

    You know, gav, for a long time I’ve been saying – and late-age nappy-wearer Chris Roylance will no doubt agree – that when reality clashes with settled climate science…

    it’s time to sack reality!

  193. Johnathan Wilkes says

    Yes Robert. reality is a bitch!
    Interferes with “good sicience”.

    Just a bit of info for gav, since he refuses to read widely, I mean outside of his comfort zone.

    What is the CONUS average temperature for July 1936 today?
    What was it a year ago?
    What was it ten years ago? Twenty years ago?
    What was it in late 1936, when all the data had been first compiled?

    We already know the answers to questions 1 and 2 from my posting here, and they are 76.43°F and 77.4°F respectively, so Zeke really only needs to answer questions 3 and 4.>/blockquote>

    BTW gav. I made no comment re. Antarctica ever.

  195. gavin says

    JW; Reading up on Antarctica is my thing after being aware of instrumentation issues from the geophys year.

    For some years during the 60’s I had almost daily work contact with a former navy commander engineer who was expiditions leader, then personnel selector and guidance officer for a decade or so. I like to think despite not going my input was usefull.

    Later on I worked with a veteran, in full year expidition’s communications on site, who helped in more remote measurements.

    I feel somewhat guilty now in not ever going down.

  196. spangled drongo says

    So gav, we can attribute all your concern on CAGW to your guilt complex over not attending to the needs of Antarctica?

    JW, when they can so easily justify adjusting and recreating past data forever as we travel into the future, these alarmists have designed themselves the perfect gravy meter.

  198. spangled drongo says

    Larry, it’s another one of our serious problems that don’t get enough airing. I am always amazed how many people don’t get your message.

    I avoid taking antibiotics because they kill my gut flora and I suffer from digestive problems enough without that but my friends even ask for them when they have a cold for instance.

  199. Larry Fields says

    Hi Spangled,
    The last time I took antibiotics, I didn’t get a reaction. But I do get side-effects to a lot of other things–including some foods. I even get side-effects to the side-effects!

    Paradoxically, I can eat food that’s so spicy-hot that it grows hair on the bottoms of my feet! The main side-effect: I want more!

  200. Robert says

    SD, you need to get into unpasteurised lacto-fermented veggies: raw sauerkraut etc. I might pour some live pickle juice and preserved limes into tonight’s dinner, now you mention it. Really, if anything conserves resources, and improves nutrition, it’s that. You even get to make CO2 bubbles while the kraut sours – always a good thing, that CO2!

    Go lacto!

  201. John Sayers says

    Captain Cook became the first ship’s captain to return with a full crew after his maiden voyage to Australia because he insisted all his crew eat sauerkraut cos it prevented scurvy and supplied Vit C.

    Larry – eating spicy food, i.e. chili, is addictive as it makes the body think it is on fire so your system produces natural endorphins to relieve the pain and it gets you high, they are the same endorphins marathon runners produce which makes running addictive.

  202. Johnathan Wilkes says

    SD,
    do as Robert said, go lactose.
    I came across this simple recipe how to make sour gherkins the simple way in only three days.
    http://zsuzsaisinthekitchen.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/fermented-pickles-kovaszos-uborka.html

    When you get to the line “• Let it cool for 5 minutes.” ignore it, let it cool all the way down, other wise the gherkins tend to go soft. (they do anyway to an extent) Also you can leave out the bread, I like it with and without, not a lot of difference. Only the true sour-dough bread gives any discernible taste but any bread will do.

    I drink some of the juice every morning, it’s claimed to be a good hangover cure, not being a drinker I wouldn’t know, but it has a pleasant sour/slightly salty taste.

    I had the same drink, well ot quite, in Russia called “Kwass” made of fermented bread, in those days they sold it in summer out of what we call a “Furphy” tank on the beach. Beautiful!!!

  204. Robert says

    This is one of the best clips ever on YouTube. It’s been pretty popular over the years, but if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a chance to fall in love with real capitalism all over again.

  206. Graeme M says

    I think I’ll leave you to it over at Deltoid SD! 🙂 Those guys are nuts, but then there are really only a few of them commenting. Could be wrong but I suspect there are only a handful of regulars. Been an interesting and slightly weird experience though. I guess I am not especially unbiased, but I do think WUWT and Climate Etc are far more interesting and more open to a variety of views and ideas.

  207. spangled drongo says

    You’ve been amazingly patient and polite with them, Graeme. I don’t mind their silly insults but when you ignore that and then they start calling you a liar I tend to lose interest.

  208. Robert says

    I note with all this rain that’s tumbling down that nobody predicted it a couple of weeks back. I certainly did not predict it. Chance of a major flood here over the weekend? I’ll predict it, and if it doesn’t happen I’ll just say I never said it or that my comments have been taken out of context or…but you guys know the drill.

    They’ve pulled most of our temp records, though our hottest January would have been between 1910 and 1919, because, except for August, all our monthly heat records were set in that decade. (August was hottest in 1946.)

    Our rainfall records still stand. Now, you would think – would you not? – that the appallingly dry December just past would have been the driest “ever”. In fact, we had our driest December in 1938. Our wettest was in 1970.

    Anyone doubting the reality of climate change (ie most people who bang on about Climate Change) should consider how we emerged from the 1890s into that poxy Federation Drought. Our wettest January was in 1895. Our driest was in 1900.

    I notice that there’s been talk of 1939, after the smashing of one of those “ever” records recently, in Sydney. Would you believe that in 1939 not one drop of rain fell here in the month of February, supposedly the wettest time of year? Ten years before that we had our wettest month of any on record: in February 1929 a whopping 882.5 mm!

    Our driest year on record was in 1902. You would think that 1950 would have to have been the wettest, but, in fact, more than two and a quarter metres of rain was dumped on us in 1963.

    What can I say? Climate change!

  209. Johnathan Wilkes says

    Robert,

    I’m not going to bore the lot of you with my simple “climate records” I kept since we moved to Melbourne.
    Dad still has his full weather records, I think from the farming days.

    Anyhoo, all I recorded since this hoo-haa (a la Mrs M Whitlam) about the climate change and warming started, is the electricity usage and the days we had the aircon on.
    This year exactly five times. I would not call that a hot aussie summer.

    The electricity usage slowly crept up during winter but is near constant in the warmer months.
    Now that to me, and I admit it’s not a scientific method, tells that I need more heat in winter than I used to, and less cooling in summer.
    Naturally one can put any interpretation on that, like we are getting older etc. but not yet 60 so I don’t think that holds water.

    Mark you, that I’m not using prices, but quantities! As a matter of fact just got a letter from AGL advising that the price increase from Feb 15 will cost us and extra 1.98/week.

    Beat that with a picture Gav!

  210. Robert says

    JW, one huge price increase that goes unnoticed because it’s not imposed at consumer level is refrigerant gases. Companies have to be careful what they say because the present government is a vengeful as it is incompetent, but the cost of refrigeration is going to be yet another movement backwards from civilised standards.

    As well as toilets that won’t flush properly, hot water that won’t wash dishes properly and appliances that are too expensive to run at peak periods for average income earners, we now have food standards being compromised because businesses have to think twice about re-gassing. The cost increases have been enormous and the government’s response is to refer as much as possible to “price-gouging”. (McTernan: “Every time they complain, just say price-gouging! Then say it again!”)

    Of course, the immediate solution is to consign the likes of Gillard and Combet to the political dustbin and make sure it has a very tight lid. After that comes the de-programming. Ultimately, we have to wipe this foul green goo from our minds forever, especially from the minds of our hyper-conditioned youth.

    I was never proud or even glad to be a baby boomer until we were identified with climate skepticism. Now I’m out and I’m proud. Viva los Boomers! No pasaran!

  211. Ian Thomson says

    Yes Robert , Viva.
    I find that any even simple description of the refrigerant issue either brings total disbelief, or “We need to save the Planet ” type resignation.
    Maybe us Boomers were raised and educated to question and observe. Maybe we were too lazy to walk to the library and had no computers with pre- conceived answers.
    Maybe we just got used to LOOKING at things .

    In my case , we did have some wonderfully educated teachers and some ‘pressure cooker’ ones , so we learned that all educators were not always right.
    We observed – A very quaint thing for someone to do nowadays.
    What a pack of bloody hayseeds we are.

  212. John Sayers says

    Debbie – just thought I’d let you know I bought some Leeton grown rice from the Waitrose supermarket in the Dubai Mall today.

  213. Debbie says

    Thanks John,
    One of our best markets!
    How are you QLD people faring in the torrential downpour?

  214. John Sayers says

    I hope Jen is Ok – apparently many phone lines are down in her area so she probably can’t reply.

  215. gavin says

    Just wondering who put their bucket out as the tropics move south again.

    It’s likely too, a good dumping over the ridge in NSW today must flow west, good news in the long run.

    Stay afloat hey

  216. Robert says

    The Macleay Valley is having a big drink. Flooded in, but I’m loving it, even though it’s too late for bamboo shoots.

    You know, I think it’s safe to say that Australia has produced only one great climate scientist. Her name was Isobel Marion Dorothea Mackellar. The others just make stuff up, much like poets do.

  217. Debbie says

    Good one Robert!
    She did do a good job of it.
    I love a sunburnt country…….
    of drought and flooding rains…….
    her beauty and her terror…..”
    I also think Banjo and Lawson did OK in describing the Australian Climate and it’s propensity for extremes.
    The forecast at Goulburn is 100% chance of 20-40 ml today.
    It’s a long time since I’ve seen Elders and/or BoM put up 100% chance!
    Looks like the ACT is up for a drop too Gavin?
    But in all seriousness I do hope people in QLD… where the worst of this system has hit…. are all OK?
    I hope all were well prepared and have coped with any damage to their infrastructure in good spirits?
    I also hope the water authorities had enough sense to recognise how wet that catchment is and plan accordingly with their storage / flood control facilities?
    I guess those desalination plants will have to be mothballed for a bit longer?

  218. Debbie says

    Also SD?
    How will these storm surges compare with the King Tides in your area?
    Are you still commenting at the Deltoid SLR thread?
    I wonder how they will view this latest ‘extreme’ weather?

  219. Johnathan Wilkes says

    Debbie,

    I wonder how they will view this latest ‘extreme’ weather?
    You answered your own question. extreme caused by you know what!

    kea who posts on TB lives in that part of Qld, close to Ipswich I think, she maybe able to offer first hand account?

  220. Debbie says

    OH! 🙂
    I did too!
    Silly me!
    And here’s me thinking that with the evidence from the recent King tides and the current storm surge… SD has a definite and very sensible point to make about SL and the reality of life on the QLD coast.
    But of course it will be all because of those evil people who deny the climate!
    They are the ones who cause extreme weather events to occur because they are denying the climate (or something similar?)
    That’s what I got from my visits to deltoid a few weeks ago when Graeme and SD were trying to engage with them.
    It was a bit confusing really.
    Maybe they should burn an effigy of Dorothea while they’re at it?
    She must be classed as some type of witch in the church of CAGW.
    It is also looking like our catchment area will get a good soaking.
    That’s a good thing for us out here in the MDB as it will help to provide a better than average season this year. (but maybe not so good for the CAGWers?)
    But I’m sure we can muster up some human caused catastrophic and alarming consequences for the GBR from this event?
    I just hope that people were well prepared and are in good spirits.
    Hopefully no more lives will be lost?

  222. Johnathan Wilkes says

    Wonder what happened to 2GB webcast?
    Website not available, wanted to listen to AB.

    Affected by rain?

  224. gavin says

    Edge of the big low has moved over the ACT. Lots of heavy cloud cover but so far most of it is staying up. ABC has many flood images from QLD, NSW also the Vicorian fire regions.

    Only two commentators say we can all ride above it this time too, our PM and the QLD Premier. Locals in affected areas, especially SEQ, arn’t so sure.

  225. Luke says

    Well I see the blog has become a self decreasing incestous gene pool of denialist creeps.

    So we have Robert’s latest classic that there have been no great Australian climate scientists. What a silly old coot Robert is.

    Over the crest of the Hill of Sleep,
    Over the plain where the mists lie deep,
    Into a country of wondrous things,
    Enter we dreaming, and know we’re kings.

    Murmur or roar as it may, the stream
    Laughs to the youngster who dreams his dream.
    Leave him alone till his fool’s heart breaks:
    Dreams all are real till the dreamer wakes!

    Debs of course laps it up after having talked the most amazing utter horsehit about Wivenhoe Dam. What a stupid woman just drivelling on with whatever materialises in her vacuous cranial cavity.

    Verballing has form “Luke says Port Phillip Bay is immune from sea level rise” WTF ! What verballing sludge – I actually said years of dredging may have made some changes affecting tidal flows (may have).

    I see Neville still brings the news for those unable to go to WattsupMoFo’s or Nova’s daily whingefest themselves.

    Anyone with the semblance of a brain would be discussing SoD’s latest series.

    Anyway John Sayers I did enjoy this http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/11835459781/Pink-Floyd:-Wish-You-Were-Here?utm_source=Search&utm_term=pink%20floyd

    Might see if any intelligence appears in 6 months among the homozygotes here.

  226. Johnathan Wilkes says

    Luke you are not important enough for me to go back and point out your comment re. P Ph.
    bay and apparent lack of SLR thereof.

    But in essence I quoted you correctly.

    As to the posts?
    Jennifer is not posting new topics as you may have noticed, so we just ambling along.

    Since there is no crap from you to rebut it indeed seems, that we all agree with each other, and why shouldn’t we?

    To be quite honest you are not really missed, it just felt like it, but now that you refreshed our memory of your crude approach to debate, well, from me at least, Good riddance and if I never hear from you again, it will be too soon.

  227. Robert says

    There may be sadder things than the public disintegration of an angry (and uncomfortably aging) hipster. But, off hand, I can’t think what.

    Luke, I don’t dislike you. I probably even like you. Like a true conservative, I’ve got a soft spot for humans. They’re my favourite species by far.

    But taking out your mummy issues on our Deb is only going to humiliate you and make Deb laugh. Surely you can see that.

    Deb! Stop that laughing!

  228. John Sayers says

    “Anyway John Sayers I did enjoy this”

    well – like all the shit you post Luke i don’t get it – It’s unavailable – maybe because I’m out of the country.

  229. Robert says

    Gav, I hate saying nice things about Queenslanders, but it looks like I’ll have to. They’ll handle this. They’re Queenslanders. In 1893 Brisbane copped not one but three separate major floods in a month. Three. Really!

    I absolutely hate making propaganda for the abhorred Cane Toads, but I can say with conviction that they will handle this.

    They’re Queenslanders!

  230. Robert says

    Maybe Luke’s got a good idea doing music links. (His other ideas maybe not so good.) Here’s a link from me.

    This is like the Melbourne cup. When this guy plays this piece, anywhere in the world, everybody stops:

  232. el gordo says

    ‘Well I see the blog has become a self decreasing incestous gene pool of denialist creeps.’

    As a proud member of the Denialati I thank you.

    Welcome back comrade.

  233. Debbie says

    Well hello Luke,
    I hope all is OK where you are in QLD?
    Looking at the satellite and radar maps this morning it appears that most of the torrential rain has moved on?

  235. John Sayers says

    I posted this on facebook but I reckon you guys would be interested in this:

    Everyone keeps saying “hey John you are in Dubai?? wow!” here’s the reality of this crazy city.

    http://www.politicalinsightmagazine.com/?p=744

    http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/migrant-workers-dubai-%E2%80%9Cthey-are-sucking-our-blood

    From the Front Line: Dubai’s Labour Trap « Political Insight Magazine
    http://www.politicalinsightmagazine.com
    Political Insight provides a window to the world on all aspects of research in politics. Published three times a year by the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom, this full-colour magazine is written for everyone with an interest in politics. International both in the scope of issues …

    Raj – who cleans our apartment also manages the 21 floor apartment building we stay in – he has a team who clean, act as security, look after the swimming pool etc.
    He gets paid $1200 AED a month or AUD $312 a month – $10 a day – a beer costs $10 in the Hotel next door.

  236. cohenite says

    Dubai; the glittering, iconic illusion of the Islamic world; no wonder they’re coming in their 10’s of thousands to this country run by this witless, traitorous government.

  237. Mr Koala says

    I am such a happy koala. They remembered not to open the floodgates on Wivenhoe dam at the peak of the rains last week, naturally filling up the catchment area flowing into the Brisbane River. They were very foolish 2 years ago and did exactly that. Its a pity the Queensland Government Inquiry and the Crime and Misconduct Commission are so muzzled by their political masters that they cannot come out and state the obvoius. But what can you expect in Queensland? It was the same with the Dr Death Inquiry. They had to remove Tony Morris QC because he was asking too many relevant questions. Lets hope the class action goes ahead and shines a light on more corruption.

  238. SP says

    Is there A sea level?

    Posted on 29 January 2013by E.M.Smith

    IS THERE A SEA LEVEL?

    Folks who have been following for a while will know that one of my occasional complaints is about “over averaging”. It is a very common technique to average a bunch of stuff together and claim that the average reveals some new thing. That is rarely the case.

    Averages can be very useful, but not for what they add, it is for what they remove.
    An average is used to hide things.

    http://chiefio.wordpress.com/

  239. Robert says

    SP, dogmatising in ignorance of the seas, abysses, trenches and oceanic lithosphere is one of the great scandals of what is laughingly called “climate science”. We can thank the barbarity of publish-or-perish for much of that. It’s easier to get gang-reviewed by climate buddies than to face the enormity of what we don’t know.

    I almost can’t blame them…but I do blame them.

  240. Johnathan Wilkes says

    “An average is used to hide things.”

    Funny you should say that SD. One fields are do some work in, it is precisely that, a cloak to hide things, while the median is extremely useful. Max. and min. are nearly always misleading, perhaps not in every stat. maybe?

  242. Robert says

    Checked out the new New Julia? No, I mean the new, new New Julia. Wait! I think I left out a “new”. Anyway, here she is:

  243. spangled drongo says

    Sorry to just disappear like that but we finally got our communications [roads, power, phones, wireless, the only thing we had was radio] back today.

    660 plus mms since last Friday when ex TC Oswald paid us a visit. He was generally not too violent but like Sandy in NY, he was such a huge system he just kept sucking in all that rain. Lucky he didn’t get back over the ocean.

    Someone mentioned Dorothea McK. We were on track for one of the driest Januaries until Friday. Now one of the wettest.

    Got a lot of catching up to do when my back allows me to get on top of all the work that needs doing. Everywhere I look I see 10 jobs staring me in the face. Ya dunno you’re alive until someone like Oswald pays you a visit,

  244. Robert says

    SD, just leave the fallen branches on the track till the neighbours run over them a few times. Makes ’em easier to pick up. I’ve got a lot of labour saving tips like that.

    We’ve lot our phones here, so thank god for sat.

    I dunno, the mid-coast gives you Greg Inglis and you give us Oswald. Doesn’t seem fair.

  245. spangled drongo says

    Robert, did you get much flooding in the Mighty MacLeay? Slim would have enjoyed the weather.

    The limbs from the old gums have been falling around here but we don’t want it to last till July [like it has in the past].

  246. Robert says

    SD, it takes a lot to flood the Macleay. The pubs have still got beer.

    Euroka Creek, which runs into the Macleay, is one of my boundaries and tends to flood us in. Still, I’m not complaining – I can’t complain by phone, can I? – we’ve gone from drought to soaking in days. What a country!

    I feel we’re due for an Autumn flood, just because we haven’t had one for a bit. You know, everything comes around again.

    Did you miss the return of Luke? He’s still got the old magic.

  247. spangled drongo says

    Robert, the weather may change, the climate may change but Lukie is always predictable.

    What a rock!

  248. Johnathan Wilkes says

    “Did you miss the return of Luke? He’s still got the old magic.”

    Not that it matters but I always regarded him as quite intelligent and knowledgeable, not a mere stupid troll, like that “wow” guy on deltoid.
    He can’t help himself being a brainless idiot and there are few of them around, but Luke?

    To come back after many months absence, only to spit bile and sneer?
    Really!

  249. sp says

    Jonathon Wilkes on Luke:

    “To come back after many months absence, only to spit bile and sneer?
    Really!”

    And then go away again!!!

  250. cohenite says

    Anyway Thommo has been arrested; 149 seperate fraud charges; I wonder who he’ll bring down with him?

  252. ianl8888 says

    @cohenite

    “I wonder who he’ll bring down with him?”

    Indeed, that question must be worrying Gillard

    Same with Wilson if/when he’s pinged

  253. Debbie says

    And!
    We will have to put up with 7-8months of it!
    The election date was announced yesterday.
    I guess it’s going to be like an American presidential campaign?
    Oh joy!

  254. Johnathan Wilkes says

    Debbie,
    I think the main aim of the strategy was to be able delay any by-election
    and the secondary, maybe unintentional to wear us down.

    I’m positive that she knew exactly what’s going on and acted on that.
    When policeman and journos are aware of it one would be stupid to believe the PM was not.

    And yes it may even work by wearing us down. Not me but a lot of others who are apathetic to politics to begin with.

  255. Debbie says

    Does calling the date of the election almost 8 MONTHS in advance prevent a bi election in Australia?
    What would happen if a MP could not continue representing his/her electorate because of illness or death?
    Would that electorate be without a representative for that period of time just because an election date was announced?
    I don’t know the answer BTW…. which is why I am asking.

  256. Johnathan Wilkes says

    “Does calling the date of the election almost 8 MONTHS in advance prevent a bi election in Australia?”

    Theoretically it does not, but it is in the hands of the speaker of the house, and she is a loyal labor woman, probably following orders.

    I think the most likely resignation will come from Slipper, he has the most to lose.
    If he resigns before convicted he can keep his super.
    Depends on how he is sure of his innocence and winning, and wants to tough it out.

  257. el gordo says

    ‘I guess it’s going to be like an American presidential campaign?’

    That’s the first thing that struck me too.

    Its novel and has its risks… the stench from the industrial wing of the party will not go away.

  258. ianl8888 says

    @Debbie

    “What would happen if a MP could not continue representing his/her electorate because of illness or death?
    Would that electorate be without a representative for that period of time just because an election date was announced?”

    Yes

    The 1975 imbroglio taught us many arcane things about the workings of the Constitutional fine print and “custom, practice and tradition”

    One of the lesser known bits: the Senate writs (full or half elections) are actually issued by the State Govts through their own State Governors (who may be advised by the Governor-General but are not constitutionally required to obey; rather they are bound to their own State Cabinet advice … and in extremis, even that they can reject). If a State Govt jacks up on an early election for the Senate, the Feds can do little about it apart from political yelling and screaming until the actual Constitutional date is reached

    This is in essence why John Kerr believed he had to force a double dissolution rather than a half-Senate election as Whitlam wanted – both Q’ld and NSW simply threatened to refuse to issue only the half-Senate writs. The State Governors held a closed meeting amongst themselves in Adelaide to discuss what they could do if that conflict situation actually occurred. Of course, any results from that closed meeting are not known to the public at all. In my view, that situation would have been a REAL constitutional crisis, I don’t know that the Constitution envisaged such a situation could even arise

  261. sp says

    Superstorm Sandy (Part II: Warnings Given–And Ignored)

    In fact, Mr. Bloomberg wants to have it both ways: climate change when it advances his agenda; not climate change when it doesn’t. When the 2010 NY State Sea Level Rise task Force warned that rising seas would put the mayor’s grand waterfront plans at risk, Bloomberg became a climate skeptic.

    “Climate change poses real and significant risks to New Yorkers,” the letter stated,

    but our response must be based on science and rational, risk-based planning that allows us to make more informed decisions about how to build resilience to sea level rise. In particular, we must better understand the impacts associated with the sea level rise levels projected for the 2050s and beyond, since these are the most severe, yet also the most uncertain….

    The City supports the use of climate change projections to create maps depicting sea level rise for planning purposes, but is concerned that basing regulatory policy and additional permitting requirements on these maps is problematic, given the uncertainty and imprecision associated with current mapping and modeling technology.”

    http://www.masterresource.org/2013/02/superstorm-sandy-part-ii/#more-23833

  262. Neville says

    I’ve been off the net for about 10 ten days thanks to an awful old copper line and Telstra’s failure to fix it.

    I’ve tried to catch up to all the science at the more sane blogs but 10 days is a long time over the blogosphere.

    Good to see that Luke popped in to say hello. How’s that mitigation solution going Luke ol mate?

  264. spangled drongo says

    James A is Lukey’s hero. Wonder what he thinks now?

    Could Luke be next?

    Neville, 2013 could be marvelous.

    BTW, talking of marvels, I just got Telstra to replace 500 meters of old copper hung up in the trees that I have been repairing for the last 23 years. They hung it in the same trees but even lower because these days WH&S doesn’t let them use long ladders.

    Bloody pathetic but better than the top wire of the fence.

    How I got them to do it was by continually asking for a rebate on my bill because of slow ADSL.

  265. Johnathan Wilkes says

    SD

    Our family farm was located at ZIG ZAG rd Drummond near Malmsbury in Vic.
    The ground is full of floaters and as they used to rise and sink according to the moisture content, the cable was ground up between the stones. We used to have an overhead line but they deemed it necessary to put it underground. D8’s were used to lay the cable, must have cost a fortune.

    Kept failing.

    After two repairs, Telecom as it was then, gave up and hung the wire on the fence line, about a km of it, because by then we used the old poles for firewood.

    When dad sold the farm it was still there and working, in a way I reckon better out in sight than buried and not working.
    Only problem we had was, when it rained we had to turn off the electric fence, no idea how it would work with the internet though?

  267. spangled drongo says

    JW, I’ve had a bit to do with floaters too but yes, it was the wet weather that brought that “top wire” undone.

    Mind you, it improved when we used insulators.

    The other day I walked along the old Sydney Bris railway at Glen Innes and those old telephone poles with all the insulators were still there [going nowhere of course].

    As a kid, walking to school along the railway, I always imagined I could hear people talking on those lines.

  268. Neville says

    I hope everyone here may find the time to look at Lomborg’s address to the CIS about the projected limits to growth BS from the 1970s.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdz2NeAmMtg

    Just about everything these idiots forecast has been proven wrong. His best quote is “poverty equals pollution”.
    The near empty fridge scenario and aluminium and iron ore etc are spot on as well.

    This was the first Neville Kennard address and is preceded by a short talk about his life and business career etc.
    Neville was one of Jennifer’s friends I think and Jennifer had a post here at the time of his passing.
    BTW I know Luke and Gav have an open hatred of freedom and a love of groupthink and totalitarianism, so they needn’t bother to look.

  270. John Sayers says

    I’m sorry – Jen needs to react with us. I accept she may be of on another project but I’m suffering ignorance syndrome on this site.

  271. Neville says

    I agree with you John. I’d very much like to get a reaction for example of the Q&A after Lomborg’s talk to the CIS I linked to above.

    That’s if Jennifer or anyone else who was there could fill us in?

  273. spangled drongo says

    Gav, national anomaly hey? When you can call newspeak on weather, facts, you are entering the realms of 1984.

  274. Robert says

    “On the night of Saturday 31 January 1953 and morning of 1 February 1953 a storm swept down the east coast of Britain. Sea levels rose by as much as 3 metres and coastal defences were overwhelmed. Over 1,000 sq km were innundated and 326 people were killed. Some 30,000 people had to be evacuated and another 220 were lost at sea. It was Britain’s greatest peace time disaster.”

    The Guardian is giving the Great Storm some 60th birthday coverage, with photos. It is being raised in the context of Climate Change alarms, and warnings of those “extremes” to come.

    It does not occur to the writers or readers of The Guardian that non-Guardian types might ask the simple and obvious question: “If it’s change, why are things the same?” Similarly, when that NZ “climate scientist” warned his nation of scorching temps last week (didn’t happen), we weren’t supposed to ask the obvious: “Why was NZ’s hottest temp recorded 40 years ago?”

    It’s very odd spin: you talk about old climate disasters to evoke new climate disasters…which have not happened yet, but which are proof of change.

    The spin is worse than we thought, everything else is as good or as crappy as it always was.

  275. Neville says

    Hey Gav here’s some more facts from the Garnaut dummy. If even this fool can understand that the collapse of the co2 markets makes them all but useless, then everyone else should wake up as well.

    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/garnaut_admits_carbon_trading_prices_too_low_to_work/

    These markets are rife with fraud and corruption and are now so low they can’t work. Chicago collapsed and now Europe looks like going the same way.
    But who is going to bail out OZ if people are silly enough to re elect this barking mad clueless Gillard govt?

    Poor Tony Abbott will inherit such a mess that he will need 3 terms of govt just to clean it up and hopefully return OZ to a budget surplus.

  276. el gordo says

    ‘Occam’s Razor and the null hypothesis. William of Occam (1285-1347) was an English Franciscan monk and philosopher to whom is attributed the saying ‘Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate’, which translates as ‘Plurality should not be posited without necessity.’

    Bob Carter

  277. el gordo says

    ‘The phrase ‘Occam’s Razor’ is now generally used as shorthand to represent the fundamental scientific assumption of simplicity. To explain any given set of observations of the natural world, scientific method proceeds by erecting, first, the simplest possible explanation (hypothesis) that can explain the known facts. This simple explanation, termed the null hypothesis, then becomes the assumed interpretation until additional facts emerge that require modification of the initial hypothesis, or perhaps even invalidate it altogether.

    ‘Given the great natural variability exhibited by climate records, and the failure to date to compartmentalize or identify a human signal within them, the proper null hypothesis – because it is the simplest consistent with the known facts – is that global climate changes are presumed to be natural, unless and until specific evidence is forthcoming for human causation.

    ‘It is one of the more extraordinary facts about the IPCC that the research studies it favours mostly proceed using an (unjustified) inversion of the null hypothesis – namely that global climate changes are presumed to be due to human-related carbon dioxide emissions, unless and until specific evidence indicates otherwise.’

    Bob Carter

  281. Mack says

    Thanks for the “Occam’s Razor” information El Gordo. Yes , didn’t think it had anything to do with shaving equipment.

  283. Neville says

    Sorry the 3rd line above should read experienced and last line should read Copenhagen. Just too busy and didn’t check properly before posting.

  290. Johnathan Wilkes says

    el gordo

    Yes the comments are not too bad but I’m still waiting for an answer re. what caused the record snowfall a hundred years ago.
    Also if memory serves me right, Napoleon’s army had a bit of a trouble with the Russian winter, not to mention the German’s misfortune in 1942.

    Don’t mention the war!

  293. Robert says

    We just need to find the guy who predicted a few years ago, with certainty, that Moscow would be buried under snow in 2013. He’ll be a climate expert.

    Okay, so he doesn’t exist. What about the guy who predicted that NSW’s Big Heat would end in floods within a matter of days? And that our summer would revert to mild, as in 2011-12, the coolest summer I’ve ever experienced? Can we find that guy? I don’t mean the guy who said that extreme weather events would occur. That’s like predicting the Cox Plate will be won by an animal with legs numbering between three and five. I want the guy who predicted Britain’s 1976 heatwave, right in the middle of the global cooling scare. I want the guy who knew our dams would be full of water right now and our desals would be serving as rusty art installations.

    Of course we can’t find him. He doesn’t exist. On the other hand, if you want guys who’ve made predictions for things that haven’t happened yet…they grow on trees. Their publish-or-perish “papers” are bumped by new POP papers before ten years are up. You can find their books in the remainders bin at K-Mart. Those guys are like lantana, they’re everywhere and valueless.

    I hate these Middle Ages. They just seem to drag on and on, don’t they? Now I’m supposed to make more temple offerings so they can put up more of those windmills that don’t pump or grind anything. Why can’t I live in an age of science and reason?

  294. Neville says

    Climate change dummies seem to be thick on the ground at the ABC science depts. We’ve all heard about “Robyn 100 metres Williams”, but now we have Dr Karl exaggerating a warming trend six fold.

    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/a_question_for_dr_karl_the_warmist/

    When he’s found out making a fool of himself he just removes the tweets and refuses to apologise and hopes it will all go away.
    What a farce and what a dummy.

  298. el gordo says

    ‘WHILE increasing our carbon tax bill, at last December’s climate change summit in Doha the Gillard government committed to cutting emissions by more than twice as much as comparable countries.

    ‘The headline story from the summit was that Canada, Japan, New Zealand and Russia walked away from the Kyoto Protocol. Like the US and developing nations, these countries are now sitting outside the Kyoto tent while a new international agreement is negotiated to cover emissions after 2020. But not much scrutiny was applied to those who stayed inside the tent, such as Australia.’

    Tim Wilson (channelling the Bolter)

  302. Robert says

    SD, is it the biggest single scam ever?

    Here’s a question I’ve posted in a couple of places:

    I’ve arranged to send the climate back to when it was good. This is being done through an array of taxes, regulations etc based on non-Kardashian models. But I have a prob, so I’m asking around. Here’s the question I’ve been posting.

    I still can’t get a date, not even ballpark, for when the climate, especially our Oz climate, was stable/normal/non-extreme. Any ideas, anybody? I’m so disappointed when I’m told that such-and-such an event is the worst or most extreme in a hundred years. Being a redneck doofus, I assume that means we’ll have to wind the clock back further than a hundred years to return to the good old stable times. Clever people see the word “worst” and conclude that something is new, but I see the word “ago” and assume that something is therefore not new.

    For example, a hundred years “ago” in my region of Oz we were setting monthly heat and drought records which still stand. If I roll back over 150 years, the Darling River had stopped flowing. If I roll back over 200 years, there was that horror El Nino of the early 1790s. (It was like this year’s heatwave but not relieved by rain after a mere few days. It went on and bloody on.) In between we had wet times, but I’m a bit concerned at going back to the serial storms of the 1970s or the flood catastrophes of the 1890s and 1950s.

    Help! I have ordered my Time Machine but don’t know what year to set it for!

  304. Neville says

    Robert I’ve tried many times to get Luke, Gav etc to answer your question, but alas I’m still waiting for an answer.
    But seriously how do you adjust the dial to enjoy a Roman or Medieval warming and not a dark age or little ice age cooling? Or perhaps something in between those periods would be nice?
    If it was that simple we’d be doing it all the time wouldn’t we? But even silly Flannery concedes we can’t change the temp for hundreds of years or perhaps a thousand years.

    But that’s only if the entire world ceases emissions of co2 today. So if OZ reduces our 1.2% of co2 emissions by 5% by 2020 it would mean we would be waiting for many thousands of years before we see a change in climate or temp.

    What a bummer, but Garnaut, Swan, Gillard Combet, Wong etc have assured us repeatedly that we are” tackling AGW or taking action on AGW” by reducing our emissions with their CO2 tax.
    Just a pity that the sums don’t add up and we can’t dial up the weather fo 30 years periods.

  305. Robert says

    Guys, I do have a period I could nominate as clement and less extreme. It was the period after 2006 and before the drought and heat of late 2012. That won’t apply to all Oz, but it applies to my part of Oz. No extreme heat, no drought, a couple of cold winters in ’07 and ’08, a bit of flooding…but no real problems. The cool summer of 2011-12 might have been disappointing for some, but I liked it.

    Of course, the climate really sucked elsewhere…but it always does.

  306. Debbie says

    It certainly did suck elsewhere!
    In that timeframe us MIA people experienced negative water allocations (06/07/08) and then destructive flooding in March 2012!
    We would pick B4 1996 or the last season (minus the March 2012 flood). 🙂
    But of course the weather/climate sucked elsewhere!

  307. Robert says

    Deb, the ’90s sucked around here. After 1989 we could never crack it for good moisture levels year round. Then as soon as that old PDO did its flip, the winds starting coming from the south and north east, and we started getting thunder even in winter. After 2006, consistently lush, even with the 2009 El Nino and the Big Dust. Climate change for sure.

    What we need is climate experts to explain it all. No, wait…

  309. Debbie says

    ROFL 🙂 🙂
    Don’t tell me?
    There isn’t a climate nirvana?
    Really?
    We can’t homogenise the weather/climate?
    DAMMIT!

  310. spangled drongo says

    Robert, SEQ & NENSW has had extremely good weather since 1976 because when that El Nino pattern arrived we ceased having cyclones which we were getting then at the rate of several per year.

    This happened overnight, not progressively like if it was caused by increasing ACO2 and even ex TC Oswald was not one of those bad cyclones we used to get.

    The 1976 step-change is where it all started. Where we went from cooling to warming. And now it’s possibly in reverse.

    Hope I can be around for the next decade. Gonna be interesting. ☻

    EG, there’s gonna be some lavish dining in that Euroloon budget.

  311. el gordo says

    ‘The 1976 step-change is where it all started. Where we went from cooling to warming. And now it’s possibly in reverse.’

    Indeed and if we return to the the 1950s its back to the future with a well documented 60 year cycle.

    ‘If you hoped the worst of the winter weather was behind us, prepare to be bitterly disappointed.

    ‘After snow caused widespread disruption last month, freezing temperatures and severe weather warnings will return this week – and plague us for another month.’

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2276160/UK-weather-Brrrr-itain-set-hit-snow-tomorrow-night-creating-tough-conditions-commuters-Monday-morning.html#ixzz2Ka6Hq54A
    Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

    Of course there might also be a tipping point in clear view, a drift back into a mini ice age.

  312. Robert says

    Fasten your seatbelt, SD. There are no guarantees, and the cycles are never quite like one another…but it could be bye-bye Madonna, hello Everly Brothers. You Queenslanders could be cryin’ in the rain.

    But if anyone down here picks up some of your overflow, LET IT BE ME!

  313. John Sayers says

    What is Heather Ridout (or Heather Sellout as Alan Jones calls her) doing on the climate commission? She was recently Chief Executive of the Australian Industry Group who are most affected by this crazy carbon tax.

    We now have articles like this

    http://about.bnef.com/2013/02/07/renewable-energy-now-cheaper-than-new-fossil-fuels-in-australia/

    where they are claiming no one will build a new coal power plant because of the additional costs – the carbon tax!!

  316. spangled drongo says

    Robert, I’m getting ready for “Round the Bay of Mexico” by the Kingston Trio. [Thee wind will blow and thee rain will pour – way up – Susianna. Better get the sugar boats up on the shore]

    And ain’t it wunnerful what our “experts” [Dr Karl, Craig Emmerson, Bloomberg, Bill Nye et al] can do with their own facts?

  317. cohenite says

    “The Bolter is still going after Emerson and Dr Karl, but I don’t think he’ll get much satisfaction from this pair of drongoes.”

    The latest post at The Climate Sceptics blog on Lewandowsky may explain why [I can’t link to it because Jen’s site is blocking it for some reason].

  320. cohenite says

    Yes SD, its Lewandowsky’s EGO, a picture of which is here:

    http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://images.wikia.com/uncyclopedia/images/4/4b/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster_2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/File:Flying_Spaghetti_Monster_2.jpg&h=514&w=514&sz=40&tbnid=u0fGAUFfOekE8M:&tbnh=109&tbnw=109&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dgiant%2Bspaghetti%2Bmonster%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=giant+spaghetti+monster&usg=__-8fH3tteE1rVItqjlncLdZpPYJU=&docid=f1ESRhZ5TFU2OM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=dZ0ZUeu8LoPZkAWTtYDgCQ&sqi=2&ved=0CEYQ9QEwAg&dur=1344

  321. spangled drongo says

    I wonder if we will worry so much about horsemeat in the lasagne when the pasta is running low?

    Oh, the inconvenience of reality!

    But the alarmists have been putting “horsemeat” in the lasagne since “whinnying jimmy” started it all.

  324. spangled drongo says

    A few bon mots from Fred:

    Anthony-Wile-Frederick-Singer-on-the-Myths-of-Politically-Correct-Science

  329. John Sayers says

    This is called throwing the shit at the fan IMO 🙂

    http://www.conscious.com.au/docs/new/CSIROh_20130201a.pdf

    Executive Summary
    CSIRO executives provided written responses to my requests for empirical scientific
    evidence that human CO2 caused Earth’s latest modest global atmospheric warming
    period
    2
    . In their responses CSIRO’s Chief Executive Dr. Megan Clark and CSIRO’s
    Group Executive—Environment Dr. Andrew Johnson both failed to provide any such
    evidence. Their responses and CSIRO’s report entitled The Science of Tackling Climate
    Change (released in October, 2009) repeatedly contradict empirical scientific evidence
    3
    .
    Responses from CSIRO executives and CSIRO’s report to media and the public do
    not contain the necessary logical scientific reasoning for the claim that human carbon
    dioxide (CO2) caused global warming (aka climate change). (Appendices 6 and 6a)
    CSIRO’s report grossly misrepresents science, climate and Nature. Its structure and
    bias mislead the public to support the government’s tax on carbon dioxide (CO2).
    Yet CSIRO Chief Executive Dr. Megan Clark provided the report to Steve Austin
    as reportedly the official CSIRO document that she stood by. (Refer Appendix 1a.)
    Analysis of CSIRO comments, behaviour and publications reveal that on the topic
    of climate, CSIRO is unscientific and blatantly political. In advocating government
    policy it contradicts empirical scientific evidence. CSIRO has no empirical scientific
    evidence that human CO2 caused warming (aka climate change).
    CSIRO has many fine people and a proud heritage. In areas outside climate it appears
    to have capability and credibility. That is threatened by CSIRO’s politicisation.
    Speaking at United Nations (UN) conferences, CSIRO scientists use taxpayer funds to
    advocate for global governance. This is consistent with CSIRO’s actions supporting
    implementation of UN Agenda 21, the UN’s campaign pushing global governance.
    It bypassed Australia’s parliament and people and threatens Australia’s sovereignty
    and our personal freedoms

  330. spangled drongo says

    Maybe the CSIRO, like the IPCC, has a charter to accept “human induced climate change” as a fact, not a possibility:

    “The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”

  331. John Sayers says

    I just appreciate that someone has taken the time to make the application to the various parties involved and documented it into a well written summary.

    They deserve our support.

  333. Neville says

    This is one of those– do I cry or laugh situations. Lomborg’s team of economic gurus and Nobel winners calculate that if every country in the world signed up to Kyoto we would postpone SLR by just 4 years by 2100.

    So after wasting countless trillions of $ we would have the same SLR in 2100 that would naturally have occured in 2096.

    I hope that makes Gav and Luke feel a lot better. See page 92 “Cool It”. I’m afraid this lack of logic and reason just makes me despair.

  335. el gordo says

    Clive has a chair at CSU and specialises in: Climate change ethics, politics and policy.

    As the world continues to cool I predict Clive’s lectures will become extremely popular.

  337. el gordo says

    The leaked AR5 admits our star maybe having a bigger impact on climate than first projected.

    “[Results] do suggest the possibility of a much larger impact of solar variations on the stratosphere than previously thought, and some studies have suggested that this may lead to significant regional impacts on climate,” reads a draft copy of a major, upcoming report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

    (channeling Watts)

  340. el gordo says

    If this trend in Germany continues it makes a mockery of the models.

    http://notrickszone.com/2013/02/12/germanys-winter-temperature-trend-in-a-nosedive-now-falling-6c-per-century/

    ————-

    On the political front, some of the watermelon blogs in Oz have the wagons in a circle, The Australian Independent Media Network (AIMN), from where they hope to sway public opinion and keep Labor in power.

    It has only been going for a few weeks and I’m banned already… because I have ‘history’ and ‘behaviour’ problems. Needless to say they never talk about the weather.

    From what I’ve seen around the left wing traps, they have hardened their position on CC and are completely and utterly brainwashed. Their blind faith is all encompassing and they refuse to discuss the null hypothesis… the elephant in the room.

  343. Debbie says

    Yes EG,
    I saw that one.
    It has drawn positive comments as well.
    I was on our local ABC radio this morning talking to Anne Delaney about this ‘leaked’ document.
    My comment, as always, was:
    It isn’t necessary (and it is actually counter productive) to play agriculture off against ‘the environment’.
    It is possible to be agriculturally productive AND environmentally responsible at the same time.
    The adversarial approach that has dominated water policy for over three decades has NOT produced worthwhile results.
    We have learned a great deal about being environmentally responsible in Australia. We are actually world leaders in this particular field. Of course we’re not perfect but in the big picture Australian agriculture is overwhelmingly a very good story.
    Instead of being so tied to the precautionary principle which panders to fear of risk (and even imagined or fabricated risk) we would do far better working on sensible risk management and therefore building on our successes and repairing our mistakes.
    I agree in essence with this policy. We desperately need to invest in upgrading our tired water infrastructure systems and making sure that they are capable of supplying into the future.
    We desperately need to repair some of the mistakes we have made (those barrages and the lower lakes being one of those)
    Of course the devil will be in the detail, but if the policy goals and visions are sound, the details can be worked out.
    Sensible investment in water infrastructure will deliver MULTIPLE benefits.
    The most obvious are:
    Food and fibre production,
    Hydro electricity,
    secure potable water supplies for human and S & D purposes,
    flood mitigation,
    drought mitigation
    Recreational facilities and,
    secure habitat for wetland flora and fauna.
    One of the things we also need to be aware of is that the rest of the world is way ahead of us as far as this type of investment in concerned. Much has already been done OS in terms of repairing and/or dismantling mistakes and investing in new storage and infrastructure facilities.
    For those who are interested, the NSW satae government is presently conducting an inquiry into the adequacy of water storages in NSW.
    The submissions and other info can be accessed online.
    http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/committee.nsf/0/36883AEC65C6AAA1CA257A0D0002BBD5
    I hope this ‘leaked’ policy document has some genuine ‘oomph’ behind it.

  345. John Sayers says

    Here’s the Clarence river scheme devised by the late Professor Lance Endersbee, ex Dean of Engineering and Pro-Vice Chancellor of Monash University. Had a long career which included distinguished work on the Snowy Mountains Scheme, Tasmania’s hydro scheme, and hydroelectric schemes in Southeast Asia.

    http://cecaust.com.au/pubs/pdfs/flyer/Murry_Darling_Basin_Authority_Flyer.pdf

    I’m not so sure about the pumping of water over to the Darling scheme but as a hydro power system and a flood mitigation system it would appear to be an interesting idea. One of the factors probably holding it back is the fact that these river are full of gold and precious metals.

    The problem is that these metals are in granite and are very hard to remove but there is a rumor around that a Japanese firm in conjunction with a west Australian mining group have devised a system that is not destructive to the environment which previous extraction systems have been.

  347. spangled drongo says

    This is the way Australia should be going but of course they will only start thinking about it seriously when half the country is starving and we are too broke to do anything.

    As Debbie says, it could be done without hurting the environment but try telling a greenie that.

    What we are proposing currently is unnaturally environmentally selective, productively negative, yet still expensive.

  348. Debbie says

    Yes SD,
    One of the things that really astounds me about ‘green’ politics is that they bleat and bleat about possible impacts to the environment and throw up past mistakes as their justification.
    At the same time they bleat and bleat about the possible impacts to the environment if anyone suggests we fix those past mistakes and/or dismantle them.
    The discussions we have often have here re the barrages and the Lower Lakes is a classic example of that.
    It seems to me that ‘the environment’ and ‘the precautionary principle’ can be invoked as an emotional and paralysing argument no matter what the proposal may be.
    Hopefully we do have enough sense not to wait until we have real shortages before we get off our proverbials and fix up some of the messes and do more of what we know works.
    Of course it can be done in harmony with what we have learnt about responsible and sustainable Agricultural practices.

    My only concern re the coalition policy is that they don’t seem to fully understand what is required to open up vast new areas for agriculture.
    While availability of water and suitable soils are esential ingredients, they are not the only essentials.
    There are many crops that we cannot grow in those areas.
    In particular, cereal crops, legume crops and many vegetable crops have been tried and they have not been successful.
    The prevailing tropical climate with its attendant diseases, insects and birds is one of the major stumbling blocks. 🙂
    (Just imagine if we started eradicating insects and birds?)
    The other major stumbling blocks such as infrastructure, warehousing and transport logistics are possible to overcome but will require considerable long term planning and investment.
    Careful consideration needs to be given to what can and can’t be produced and marketted successfully in these areas.
    Crops such as mangoes, melons, some nut varieties and sandalwood have been very successful there.
    The animal husbandry story is similar.
    Some do OK and others do not for similar reasons associated with the prevailing climate.

  349. John Sayers says

    Debbie – when I was in the Ord in The Kimberly we passed a farm that had boxes of rockmelons with a sign “help yourself” – it wasn’t economically feasible to transport them to the east coast where the market is.

    Yet here in Dubai you can buy Melon Juice (Honey Dew melon and Rockmelon juice) – it’s a beautiful beverage. The juiced product could have been viable.

  350. Johnathan Wilkes says

    John Sayers,

    “Yet here in Dubai you can buy Melon Juice (Honey Dew melon and Rockmelon juice) – it’s a beautiful beverage. The juiced product could have been viable.”

    This is where we as a nation of value adding fall down miserably. Starting with simple things as wool-scouring and tanning of hides.
    I know it’s still being done on a very small, almost cottage industry scale but not the way it should be.

    Not to mention of spinning the wool and cotton let alone weaving them into cloth for God’s sake.

    The list is absolutely endless, from agri products to minerals and other stuff.

    I’m yet to have the reasons presented to me in a believable way, underpinned with facts and figures, that it’s cheaper to ship the iron ore and coking coal to Japan or China and getting back some inferior steel, than building a smelter either next to an iron ore or a coal mine.

  351. Johnathan Wilkes says

    JW,

    “I’m yet to have the reasons presented to me in”

    Forget it.
    Just had a call from my daughter who started working for a bank in Vienna (Raiffeisenlandesbank), a few weeks ago.

    She was previously employed here with the ANZ.
    She complains that they routinely work nine to ten hour days, without overtime, bosses included, and everyone takes it as granted.
    No overtime because she is on a fixed salary, about 85K Euros.

    And this happens to be in a country that has a far better social policy for its workers than any Australian worker can dream of.
    Retirement, working conditions you name it. Austria had a socialist system for a long time looking after its population, while embracing the capitalist productive system. Seems the two are working well together. Try to tell that to our unions with their antagonistic approach.

    No wonder they can export despite high wages, their productivity is high and all its exports are manufactured products no mineral wealth to speak of.

    Who knows if it could work here? Self employed people like me, and probably Debbie do the work when it needs to be done, not when I feel like it or during “business” hours only.

    On the other hand forget my musings. Never happens here. And proly for the better, we might invite the wrong kind of immigrants, legal or otherwise.

  352. John Sayers says

    Debbie – how about this letter the editor of the Age. Some people just don’t get it do they!!

    LEAKS reporting that Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce’s new water plan prioritises dam building show that they have neither learned from, nor understood the advances in water management over the past two decades (”Thought bubbles belie Coalition’s ‘ready to govern’ claim”, theage.
    com.au, 14/2). Australia has become a world leader in water management by developing brains not dams – our ability to adapt to extreme changes in water availability was never more obvious than during the millennium drought. Irrigators in the Murray-Darling Basin were able to grow a similar amount of food and fibre with 70 per cent less water than during wet years. Continued investment in improving water productivity will be more effective, and provide a more valuable export, than just prioritising the damming of rivers for irrigation and flood control.
    Dominic Skinner, Parkville

  353. Mark A says

    John
    I wonder how much they grew with practically no water allocation?

    If it’s true that they can produce 70% of normal with no water then I agree, scrap the whole system.
    Somehow I do not believe the story you quoted.

  355. Mark A says

    I know John, I was asking a rhetorical question.
    There were times when there was 0 allocation and the irrigators still had to pay for the upkeep of the system.

    Was only wondering what % of the normal output they produced in those times?
    Bet most of them not a lot!

  356. cohenite says

    This government is terminally stupid; take this inmitigated gibberish from Fitzgibbons:

    http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1299617/opinion-complex-and-untidy-but-tax-doing-its-job/?cs=308

    Fitzgibbon says the Minerals Resource Rent Tax [MRRT] is justified because “the resource being extracted by the mining companies is a community-owned resource”.

    This is wrong; the resource is privately owned. The company developing it pays tax on its profits like any other business. The taxes the company pays are the community resource.

    Perhaps Fitzgibbon is confused because there has effectively been no MRRT collected due to the government’s incompetence in drafting the legislation.

    What next from this government: are private homes going to be classified as community owned resources as well?

  358. Debbie says

    Arrrrgh!
    That ******* 70% figure!
    Mark is absolutely correct that it is rot, complete and utter rot!
    It was derived by using the prices of commodities and also the water trade in the middle of the drought.
    It uses figures and circumstances that have NEVER occured before or since.
    It completely ignores the fact that most of us had NO water and NO crops and we had to seriously mine our equity to survive those years.
    We’rs still paying it off!
    That figure was lifted out of the appalling socio economic work in the guide to the MDBP.
    It was thoroughly debunked years ago along with the ‘only 800 jobs will be lost if we remove 4000GL of productive water’.

  359. Neville says

    Just thought I’d give a link to Indur Goklany’s graph on extreme weather deaths from 1979 to 2002.
    Most deaths come from extreme cold but there is improvement and less deaths from flooding, heat deaths, hurricanes, tornadoes, lightning strikles etc.

    So where’s that CAGW we’re been told about from Obama, Gillard, IPCC , UN, EU etc. This is even better than it looks because a higher proportion of people live on the coast where a lot of extreme weather occurs.
    BTW lomborg states that lightning strikes are far better because more people live and work indoors today than in the past.

    http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/library/chart-graph/cumulative-us-deaths-and-death-rates-1979-2002-hurricanes-floods-lightning-tornadoes-extreme-heat-an

  360. ianl8888 says

    @cohenite

    All mineral resources are owned by the Crown in the exact form of the State Govts. The obvious exceptions are the two Territories and the undersea areas from low-tide mark to existing negotiated international maritime boundaries – minerals in these areas are owned by the Feds (this is why the Petroleum Rents Tax is workable)

    State Royalties are now levied on actual production, irrespective of any sales/profits that may occur or have occurred. Earlier in Australian history, State Govts levied their Royalties on actual profits (eg. Broken Hill in the heyday of high silver prices; Broken Hill had it’s own international stock market for a considerable period), but the State Govts swapped to production levies when profits dropped in response to low commodity prices and these Govts wanted a more reliable money flow. The State Govts claim that a Royalty (at whatever rate) is actually an ongoing sale of their assets. There are in existence privately owned (ie. by private individuals) resource deposits which were granted in perpetuity by Colonial Governors to individuals for services rendered (eg. survey mapping) and inherited down successive family generations

    The Constitution explicitly lists those original State assets passing to the Commonwealth on Federation and also explicitly states that assets NOT listed remain as State Govt assets. Mineral deposits are NOT listed. Next March 6, in about 3 weeks, a High Court case on the constitutionality of the MMRT is to be heard. Complainants are the Q’ld State Govt and Andrew Forrest from Fortescue Mining

    The High Court has decided this issue a number of times previously, and always these cases are a result of a Federal ALP Govt trying to expropriate State Govt mineral assets. Khemlani funny money, anyone ?

    More street theatre to come !! Gillard/Swan will truly be fun to watch during the hearing of this case

  361. Robert says

    Are Labor tactics becoming just too bizarre, robotic and obscure for anybody except their boosters (like GetUp)?

    I get the impression that whatever matters are raised or mooted by conservatives in the coming months, from the Gillard/McTernan government we will only get something like: “This is clearly more misogyny by Tony Abbott which will be to the detriment of Western Sydney. Misogyny, misogyny…that’s all the people of Western Sydney get from this man Abbott. Dams? Development? Job-type jobs? Production? This is Tony Abbott code for misogyny in Western Sydney!”

    I’m not saying a senior minister would go so far as to sing a song called “No Western Sydney Misogyny Wipeout” on the Parliament House lawn. Oh, wait…

  362. spangled drongo says

    Robert, it wouldn’t matter how bizarre they were they wouldn’t get any criticism from the media whereas TA gets criticised for anything. That’s how he gets his equal time ☻.

  363. gavin says

    SD; although I may try here and there, I can’t cover all that goes on in Tasmania, so thanks for that link because I also found this –

    http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2013/02/15/372403_tasmania-news.html

    but IMO the chip log issue is best covered here, and that was my experience too decades ago

    http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2013/02/14/3690443.htm

    Greens in any parliment have developed good common sense despite what this blog says. Btw we can steer our federal funds with and without Greens by simply applying common sense in all areas of public utility reform

  364. cohenite says

    Hi Ian; it is true that the C’Wealth has no legal ownership of minerals and that the states control those resources; which is why QLD and Twiggy Forrest is challenging the MRRT.

    However the ‘ownership’ by the states is not as clear as you say; for instance the QLD MINERAL RESOURCES ACT 1989 – SECT 310 says:

    All minerals lawfully mined under the authority of a mining lease cease to be the property of the Crown or person who had property therein and become the property of the holder of the mining lease subject however to the rights to royalty payments under this Act of the Crown or any other person.

    The NSW MINING ACT 1992 – SECT 11 says:

    (1) For the purposes of this or any other Act or law, it is declared that any mineral that is lawfully mined becomes the property of the person by or on behalf of whom it is mined at the time the material from which it is recovered is severed from the land from which it is mined.

    The WA MINING ACT 1978 – SECT 85 says:

    (1) Subject to this Act and to any conditions to which the mining lease is subject, a mining lease authorises the lessee thereof and his agents and employees on his behalf to —
    (b) owns all minerals lawfully mined from the land under the mining lease.

    And so on.

  365. spangled drongo says

    Gav, the Greens, with the BoP in Hobart and Canberra are running and ruining the show.

    Farmers, fishermen, miners, loggers, industry and anyone trying to produce any employment and general sustenance down there are stuffed. The producers leave and more Greens move in. They have twice the percentage of Greens that the mainland has.

    I only hope the rest of the country is paying attention and can draw conclusions as to where this Green foolishness is heading. Labor at least got a bit of the message with the Tarkine decision recently.

  366. Neville says

    If anyone wants the facts about the delusional Kyoto nonsense this address by Lomborg to the Royal Society just about covers it all.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MEKyJEn0Wk The beginning is tedious but after the first 5 or 10 minutes he brings up the facts and numbers to destroy most of the mitigation nonsense.

    What a way to waste countless trillions of borrowed dollars for little return. The change to climate or temp by 2100 would be unmeasurable.

  368. ianl8888 says

    cohenite

    Yes, I agree but you’ll see in my post that I mention privately owned mineral deposits initially granted by Colonial Governors as payment for services (generally survey or geological mapping)

    The Governors obviously regarded mineral deposits as theirs to grant if they wished. This assumption of ownership by by the Crown underpins all the State Mining Acts

    In the 80’s, Neville Wran insouciantly expropriated privately owned coal deposits, mostly in the Hunter Valley. While these holdings are not at all extensive, they ARE private property. Nick Greiner eventually established the Coal Compensation Tribunal to allow just compensation to be carried out for this theft (whether the Tribunal actually works fairly is constantly debated, but it has given us a lot of fun over the years !)

    Nowhere in any of this does the “Commonwealth” appear except for the Territories and undersea deposits between the low tide mark and international marine boundaries. This applies in force to the Bowen Basin coking coal deposits in Q’ld and the iron ore deposits in the Pilbara. Gillard and Swan have simply tried to avoid this by threatening to with-hold GST refunds … does lots of good for the ALP vote in WA and Q’ld 🙂

    Street theatre ahead … loads of fun

  370. Neville says

    The concensus only 35 years ago. A good video to watch showing a coming ice age. Remember this was only a little over 3 decades ago.

  377. Neville says

    SD it looks like Obama and crew are either pig ignorant fools or first class liars. Good to have Pielke Jnr to give us the facts and the truth.

    Meanwhile all of us around the world have to pay billions $ more for power just to pay for all the lies , corruption and fraud.

  378. spangled drongo says

    They are probably both Nev. Certainly thieves, rogues and betrayers.

    It’s interesting in SEQ at the moment. The BoM has got its modelling machine running hot trying to work out what this latest low is going to do.

    It’s got ’em stuffed.

    Their 7.30 pm report was completely different to their report of an hour earlier. I just love it when, with the latest super computers, they can’t predict the weather an hour in advance.

  380. spangled drongo says

    But Neville, you can’t believe that we [collectively] are so stupid as to fall for it.

    We are being over-run by the mad socialists yet we just lie down and cop it as never before.

    Here Andrew Montford [from BH] points out the stupidity of the head of the Royal Society, Sir Paul Nurse who is a prisoner of his own piss-weak politics but we let him lock us up too:

    http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/02/nursing-prejudice-how-climate-change-activists-are-prisoners-of-their-own-politics/

  381. Neville says

    Here is Goklany’s graph showing deaths from extreme weather events for the last 110 years.

    http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/extreme_wx_deaths.png

    Amazing how few deaths there are today although the world population has increased by many billions over that period.

    It seems that the worse decades were the 1920s, 30s, 40s and a decline to the small numbers today.
    Just proves how lucky we are to be living in a world made safer by the use of fossil fuels.

  384. Neville says

    John anmd Debbie I’m fairly certain that a bit of hanky panky still goes on in the dead of night.

    Here’s Goklany’s link to all deaths for various causes worldwide for the early 2000s.

    http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/library/chart-graph/global-deaths-year-due-various-causes-early-2000s

    Extreme weather events 19,868 per year or 0.03% of all deaths. That is 3 hundredths of 1% of all deaths.
    Sort of puts it in perspective, at least for those who understand simple maths and simple logic and reason.

  385. spangled drongo says

    I think Neville is right. Nothing has changed. It’s called vote maximisation. But stupid Gillard could have had this arms-length relationship with the Greens from the beginning and not trashed her brand anywhere near as much and we would have had much better govenance.

    But it all fitted in with her true ideology.

  386. spangled drongo says

    ABC’s The World Today [interview not up yet] were breathlessly interviewing Pachauri on AGW tipping points and IPCC predictions of doom a few minutes ago. Same old, same old.

    What’s new with our dear Auntie.

    Well it is interesting that the last time that I could find an interview they were predicting his resignation for being such a scoundrel.

    Amazing how you can forgive the Gleiks and Pachauris of this world.

    Must be something to do with ideology:

    http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2010/s2811361.htm

    Us sceptics are definitely missing out on the warm glow of this wonderful religion.

  388. Neville says

    Here is the proof that Wilders is correct and yet all the parties promote and endorse this vile religion. And nearly all condemn Wilders for speaking the truth.
    OK to kill apostates, homosexuals etc and bash women. They believe in jihad and some even think Bin Laden was OK and some promote terrorism.
    But the Juliar idiot will attend and support this group who hate Jews with a vengeance. Justwatch and listen to them condemn themselves.

    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/if_wilders_is_wrong_explain_this_conference/#commentsmore

  390. Johnathan Wilkes says

    Neville,

    Here is the proof that Wilders is correct and yet all the parties promote and endorse this vile religion. And nearly all condemn Wilders for speaking the truth.
    OK to kill apostates, homosexuals etc and bash women. They believe in jihad and some even think Bin Laden was OK and some promote terrorism.
    But the Juliar idiot will attend and support this group who hate Jews with a vengeance. Justwatch and listen to them condemn themselves.

    Neville, take some time out and read up on the evolution and changing of societies.

    Can’t recommend any off the top of my head, there are as many as there are opinions, and there are some dusies I tell you, like this one http://www.gurusoftware.com/GuruNet/Social/Topics/FourStages.htm
    but there also very good reputable sociologist out there.

    For what my opinion is worth, I think democratic civil societies evolve to a stage where they become self destroying.

    Too permissive, too self-indulgent, no real values to guide, nothing to cling to for emotional support in a crises.
    These are the times when the “barbarians” succeed.

    There is something to say for a rigid social belief system like Islam, would not suit me just like communism did not, but its
    rules are simple to follow, “obey or die”.

    Despite many warnings and cautions by those who studied it, people still want to believe that Islam is merely a religion, it’s not, and it never was.

    It is a social system, a way of life ruled by the clergy according to the Koran, unchangeable, even mentioning change is punishable by death.
    Indeed as some would say, it is a death cult, they value earthly life very little.

    It would take for ever to discuss this and unfortunately would get us nowhere.

  391. Robert says

    The fun thing about Gore and Pachauri is how they rub everyone’s nose in their carbon-gobbling lifestyles. It’s like they’re seeing how far they can go. Taking a luxury jet from NY to India just to attend cricket practice isn’t so much an indulgence as a challenge to the believers.

    Gore and Flannery have said things about sea levels, earth crust temps etc that a primary schooler couldn’t get away with, but it’s like they don’t care and their supporters don’t care.

    While it’s impossible to laugh at Garnaut’s polluting history, the others are a kind of hilarious revival of Renaissance papacy, acting out their Maharajah fantasies in the public glare and not giving two hoots. The fact that their carnival still rolls and the bucks keep tumbling in should give us comfort. Nothing this ridiculous can go for much longer.

  392. cohenite says

    “There is something to say for a rigid social belief system like Islam”

    One of the best analyses of Islamis by Sam Harris in his book The End of Faith. Harris distinguishes Christianity from Islam in the context of secular society which has constrained Christianity; only Turkey for a brief period kept Islam in check but has now succumbed. Like Wilders Harris also distinguishes between Muslims and Islam on the basis that, like all faiths, the core beliefs of islam are insane while many adherents are not and are, in Wilders’ terms, moderate people.

    There is no doubt Islam is the most aggressive religion in the world; it is implacable; and the appeasement shown by Western leaders is not just a betrayal of Western society but the potential of mankind to be rid of an atavistic, monstrous part of our heritage.

    There is nothing to say about Islam except that it is evil.

  393. John Sayers says

    Cohenite – here in Dubai we have the British empire/ American slave trade all over again. All the nicely dressed waiters/waitresses in the fancy hotels live in boarding accommodation, 8 to a room. They are paid 25dhs per 12 hour day AUD$7.00. Yet on that they still manage to send money home to their families.

    They are building the country on workers who get 600dhs per month AUD$160. Next door to my apartment is a high rise building going up – there are no safety walls like in Australia. The taxi drivers work 12 hour shifts – I had a driver the other day who is from Pakistan, as are most of the Cab drivers, he’s been here for 20 years and has family back in Pakistan. They don’t have a family reunion scheme here. No one gets nationality, the only nationals are the 900,000 Emerati, the 5,000,000 workers and expats get nothing but work.

    there are two economies running side by side – I came across a Pakistani restaurant while I was waiting for a dental appointment – I wanted breakfast so I walked in – no one spoke English but I gestured to what other were eating and got a breakfast of Channa (chickpea curry), paratha, Indian bread, a two egg omelette and 2 cups of coffee – it cost 13dhs – in the Dubai mall the paratha alone would have cost 25dhs.

    I’ve designed my client a recording studio complex that would cost half a million to build in Australia, he’ll build it for $50,000.

    yet everyday 5 times a day they all pray to Allah.

  396. cohenite says

    Thank you John; there is another speed to the Dubai economy which you missed, which is the speed of women in Islam even in ‘modern’ showcases like Dubai. It is striking to see big Muslim men in their crisp white thobes and dressier bishts while behind them walk their burqa covered women dragging the suitcases and children without any assistance from the men at all.

    It astounds me to see the witless left, especially the female left, coming out in support of Islam. I think in their ‘minds’ it is justified simply because the West and Islam are enemies and the left hate the West and therefore support the enemy of their enemy.

    Unfortunately to a lessor or greater degree every government in the West has been contaminated by the left disease and, as shown, by nearly every politician in this country’s treatment of Wilders, pay at least lip service to the idiotic position of the left about Islam.

  397. Johnathan Wilkes says

    The behaviour of the west WRT Islam is nothing less than a communal death-wish.

    Those in power must know the dangers but for some reason ignore it or actively working
    towards the outcome, while the mob is apathetic as usual.

    Like a mesmerised mouse in front of a snake we are.

  398. Neville says

    Cohenite I must admit I admire Harris, Hitchens, Myers, Dawkins etc for their stand against this pig ignorant evil cult.
    They hate Jews they hate homosexuals and have zero respect for women. I’m no lefty and certainly not religious but I have a number of friends who are Christians who I respect a lot.

    I still think the lefties above would enhance their position by concentrating more of their arguments against barking mad Islam and treat Christians in a more reasonable way.
    Of course Hitchens died from cancer about 12 months ago.

  399. Mark A says

    JW

    The “mob” as you describe ordinary people is ALWAYS apathetic.
    If you look back throughout history even the most violent and bloody revolutions were carried out
    by a few tens of thousand followers of the instigators.

    They only ever succeeded where the police and military stayed neutral, deserted or actually switched sides.

    The public then simply submitted to the new regime.
    A charismatic, persuasive leader is needed to stir them up.

    Can’t see any of those appearing on the horizon any time soon.

    Islam as cohenite said is an evil system.

    Speaking of “moderate” muslims, the proof will come when the militant extremists achieve their
    stated aim of a worldwide caliphate or even a localised muslim sharia rule.
    Then we will see which side these moderate muslims take?

    Will they stand up for the rights of the non muslims?
    Somehow I doubt it. It is easy now to speak of these moderates and say “Oh but it’s only a few militants cause all the trouble.”
    They all follow the same scriptures I’m afraid. A mute approval is as good as a spoken one.

  400. el gordo says

    Well said, cohenite.

    The feminsta’s time would be better spent helping women out of slavery in foreign lands, instead of nit picking back home.

  401. John Sayers says

    It’s different than you suggest Cohenite. Today the modern Emerati woman walks next to her husband dressed in her black outfit and five paces behind her is a Filipino housemaid carrying the goods and controlling the children, similar to what the Brits did in Hong Kong and Singapore for many years.

    In the outdoor restaurant of a nearby hotel I noticed 4 women smoking shisha – they had removed their black headdresses exposing their long dyed auburn hair – Saudis – my client remarked!

    An Indian couple were caught kissing in a public park – they got 3 years jail and were deported! An Emerati ran over and killed 3 Indian workers, he got 3 months Jail.

  402. Debbie says

    Most definitely EG!
    Australia, although far from perfect, is most definitely a world leader as far as women’s rights are concerned.
    We would do far better helping others to achieve what we have achieved so far.
    I still find it incongruous that our female (!!!) prime minister made that misogynist speech!
    Did it possibly not occur to her that females would have NO HOPE of reaching the pinnacle of politics in far too many other places around the world?

  403. Mark A says

    that misogynist speech!

    Overseas at the time and was forced to watch it due to circumstances, cringe worthy is the only way to describe it.
    Not a fan of Abbott because of his wishy washy politician’s stance on many current issues, and some past actions, but I certainly do not think he is a women hater.

  404. cohenite says

    John, the absence of enforcement does not mean the capacity is not there; islamic societies will wax and wan in respect of the degree of enforcement of the Koran’s edicts as interpreted by whatever mullah has the most AKs at his disposal at the time. This is not a matter of difference in degree with Western society but a chasm; a lessening of the intrinsic oppression of Islam from time to time and place to place does not change the quality of what we are discussing.

    I had high hopes for Turkey but I am increasingly afraid that it is regressing backwards; Mustafa Kemal Atatürk must be livid; after all he said:

    “Human kind is made up of two sexes, women and men. Is it possible that a mass is improved by the improvement of only one part and the other part is ignored? Is it possible that if half of a mass is tied to earth with chains and the other half can soar into skies?”

    I would like to think the examples you list are a manifestation of that sentiment but they are still contradicted by the Koran and the overwhelming practice within Islamist nations.

  405. Neville says

    Marc Morano interviews some of the crazy loons at the Washington rally.

    http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/2174209184001

    James Hansen endores the Una bomber’s message of blowing up power stations and dams and the Robert Kennedy Jnr idiot isn’t much better.

    Hansen is the top scientist at GISS NASA and Kennedy is a member of Congress. How do these delusional, dangerous numbskulls keep their jobs?
    Also why doesn’t the left MSM pusue their extremist ideas and call for Hansen to be sacked?

  407. Johnathan Wilkes says

    A quote from WUWT, by Phil, I heard it before but can’t trace it to the original

    “The descent into totalitarianism happens one seemingly tiny step after another. By the time most people notice, it is too late. That is why principles need to be held dear. “

    Also fits neatly to the topic of Islam.

    PS
    MA, sorry about using “mob”, I applied it to the wrong part of the population.
    My apologies.

  408. Debbie says

    I agree Mark,
    Unfortunately the best thing that Abbot can do at the moment is just say nothing.
    I hate that!
    I know it is politically savvy, but there are rather a lot of us who need some solid and sensible policy.
    Vague and wishy washy statements do not inspire much confidence.
    That misogyny speech was definitely worth a cringe.
    Apart from the fact that he works with women, the man has 3 daughters for goodness sake!
    Good luck being a ‘misogynist’ in Australia under those circumstances!

  409. Neville says

    Debbie Abbott has helped raise money for women ‘s refuges for many years by staging annual fun runs etc.
    Plus his quiet involvement as a lifeguard, firefighter and volunteer worker every year on aboriginal missions.
    This bloke is a quiet hero who has never made any fuss over his personal involvement in this personal charity work over many years.
    If he’s a misogynist and shocking example of Aussie manhood then give me plenty more just like him.
    But I can’t say the same of Gillard and her clueless, stupid behaviour before entering parliament.

  410. gavin says

    SD, a retired couple we met this holiday mentioned their trip to Antarctica with some scientists.

    Rain is the latest topic for those in the know, so I have been busy looking up our weather stations and other sources on the driest continent where rain is mentioned.

    Today I will follow the swell as the big low impacts. There was enough drift wood at the margin to make a fresh SL peak.

  411. el gordo says

    ‘Unfortunately the best thing that Abbot can do at the moment is just say nothing.’

    Abbott’s small target stance has been effective, but his foot in mouth problem may never leave him.

    On the brighter side, the government in waiting will begin releasing policy around Easter and should bring a positive hue.

  412. Debbie says

    No argument from me Neville!
    Gillard’s misogyny speech was definitely cringeworthy and she definitely did a shocker of a job pointing it at Abbot!
    She has plenty of much better examples of Australian misogynists in her own party.
    Thanks for your comment EG. I am hoping for that positive hue.

  413. Mark A says

    el gordo

    Abbott’s small target stance has been effective, but his foot in mouth problem may never leave him.

    I think he is working on it.

    I had the same problem until I lost a good client early on in my career. I always thought of myself as a witty entertaining bloke in my youth. We all did at the time I was at Uni. I suppose, we were going to change the world to our likings an so forth.
    Nothing of the sort happened thank God.

    Anyway, the boss called me in and said you are a count to 5 blabbermouth, work on it!
    Had an inkling what he meant, but asked anyway, he said count to five before you reply to anyone.
    Took a lot of time but now it’s automatic, second nature almost.

    And it works in a different way too, people like it when you let them finish speaking and when you are quiet for a little time after they finished, they think you’re only making sure they really finished.

    I think Abbott is a good bloke at heart and if the Libs. let him, he’ll develop and grow into office, my beef with him is of a different nature nothing to with his religion or such.
    Actually I’m surprised more politicians aren’t picked up for putting the foot in given the nature of the job, after all, all they do is talk all the time and in public too!

    We could do lot worth with others in the LNP, M Turnbull is a turn-off for me he is only a luke warm lib. at best and only looking after number one.

    Joe Hockey is a lightweight with poor judgement. He should have avoided Rudd like a plague instead of getting involved with him on the breakfasts show, he is outsmarting him by a mile, using Joe as a dartboard.

    Morrison is the one to watch, he has potential.

  415. spangled drongo says

    “Today I will follow the swell as the big low impacts. There was enough drift wood at the margin to make a fresh SL peak.”

    Gav, recent sub-cyclonic weather on the SEQ/NNSW coast is an absolute pussycat compared with ~ 50 years ago during the ’60s when we often got half a dozen serious, full blown cyclones in one season.

    You sound like those retirees interviewed by the meeja: “I’ve lived here 25 YEARS and never seen anything like it!!!”

    Well the reason for that is that for the last 37 years this area has had nothing but fantastic weather [since the great climate shift of 1976] and now weather is slowly cycling back to the old pattern.

    This is PDO2, not ACO2.

    The SL peak from cyclonic surge was nearly 2 meters higher during those bad cyclones than what has occurred recently.

    I have said before that during cyclone Wanda in 1974 which caused record rainfall and flooding, the cyclonic surge that met the flooding Nerang river head on, overwhelmed that flood to the point where the river was running UPSTREAM at the flood peak, thus damming the flooding river and creating an even higher flood level further upstream.

    You can see from the link attached that some of the early, esplanade-front highrise were in danger of falling into the sea and we had to dump car bodies on the beach to protect them.

    Many homes in areas where in later years they sold for 50 mil+ were washed away.

    There were higher SLs and more erosion then than now:

    http://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/322869/cyclones.pdf

  419. el gordo says

    ‘I think Abbott is a good bloke at heart and if the Libs. let him, he’ll develop and grow into office,’

    Agreed.

    The left have painted him in a bad light, but he’s a living saint next to joolya.

  421. gavin says

    SD; our big low is now way beyond your reach and is the only reason I’m here, not out there enjoying a sun rise over the bay. Still plenty of rain but I will check the sea and coastline later.

  422. Neville says

    Super cyclones over the last 6,000 years have hit around Cairns and elsewhere down the coast.
    Scientists think they occur every 200 to 300 years and the storm surges are incredibly destructive.

    http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s382613.htm Needless to say we’ve seen nothing like these cyclones since European settlement.

    In one of his videos Bob Carter showed a graph with very severe cyclones that seemed to have occured during the LIA.
    Much more severe than today but I don’t know whether they were as big as the super cyclones above.

    The period of the cool PDO ( from NOAA) that lasted 300+ years from year 994 must have seen very severe super cyclones as well.

  426. spangled drongo says

    Neville, you only have to look at the incredibly eroded topography of this country to understand that there must have been some horrendous storms and floods to cause it. Time is a factor of course but enormous bursts of energy over short periods is also a huge factor.

    Helen Caldicott describes herself as a peace activist. What a hypocrit. [I wonder if she ever broaches the subject of nuclear power in her love-ins with James Hansen]

  428. Robert says

    How’s everyone? We’re flooded in here on the mighty Macleay. (That’s how you know it’s the real thing.) 160mm on Saturday. In case someone has a theory about extreme weather here, our wettest Feb day was a hundred more than that – in pre CC 1929! Our highest rainfall for a day was late April 1963, when we copped 314mm.

    They’ve pulled a lot of our temp records, but our rainfall stats stand. Our driest Feb ever was in 1939, but our driest year was 1902.

    I love mentioning all this because it sends our Green Betters into a rage, even though it’s just bare fact.

  429. spangled drongo says

    I’ve been thinking about ya, Robert, since I saw those aerials of the Mighty Macleay in flood. John too, but he got smart and went to the dry country.

    Looks like the cycle is returning.

    I wonder how Slim’s fences are getting on.

  430. Neville says

    Best of luck Robert. Looks like the wet 1950s and 70s may be getting a re run.

    BTW a number of the experts are now having second thoughts about Labor’s NBN fibre to the home fiasco.

    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/nbn_wonders_if_its_actually_doing_the_right_thing/

    Amazing to think that OZ’s biggest project has proceeded via calculations done on the back of an envelope.
    Now some are having second thoughts about the technology and the proper mix of Fibre to home, Fibre to node and wireless.

    But what will the enevitable blowout be? As much as 50 bn, 70 bn, or 100bn?

    But why didn’t they do a proper cost benifit analysis and business plan before they started? Whatever this Labor mob touches soon turns to poison.

  431. spangled drongo says

    Neville, makes you realise what a F/wit Rudd is to lumber us with that monster.

    It’s finally dawned on them what a financial disaster it really is, so what do they do now?

    They look at what they should have looked at before they started.

    But F/wit Rudd knew he couldn’t do that then or he would have been shown up for the clown he really is.

    What was another 100bil to these fools when they had just been given the keys to Fort Knox?

    What is it with Labor? All these so-called academics and deep thinkers that really haven’t got two decent ideas to rub together.

  435. spangled drongo says

    Gympie, SEQld. 5 floods in one year.

    Local businesses have to strip the premises every time it rains.

    Farmers have had no crops for 2 years.

    The Traveston Dam that could have prevented a lot of this, disallowed by Peter Garrett after years of resumptions and negotiations.

    But I suppose the locals are happy to look at that great stretch of flood water devastating their town, philosophically, and accept that these “environmental flows” are so necessary every month or so.

  436. el gordo says

    I predict Australian Climate Madness will win the 2013 Bloggies …. for this part of the world.

  440. Johnathan Wilkes says

    SD,

    But I suppose the locals are happy to look at that great stretch of flood water devastating their town, philosophically, and accept that these “environmental flows” are so necessary every month or so.

    And people are taking my derisory comments about politicians the wrong way, go figure?

    They are all the same, in the business of buying votes. What hurts most, is that the ones you think are on your philosophical sides are doing the same. Look at the lib’s policy on “climate change” and water buy back?
    Nothing short of disgraceful.

    We are taken for fools and in truths we are fools, some of us have the illusion of not being such fools but sorry, we are.

    Just look at the latest stunt of JG “living” in the western suburb of Sydney for a week!!
    Spare me. And the sad part of it is that it will be swallowed by a lot of people after being promoted by the MSM.

  441. Robert says

    Gav, we do tend to forget that the North West has by far the most cyclones of the Australian coastline. Moreover, those of greatest intensity come in autumn, especially mid-autumn. If they’re to have an active season up there this year, the worst may come in April. One good thing: they are more trackable than those on the other side of the continent.

    Olivia in 1996 had fastest ever non-tornado wind gust recorded on Earth: 408 km/h! This beat the 1934 Mount Washington speed of 374 km/h.

    Cyclone Joan killed nobody but was incredibly destructive. A 74 million dollar damage bill for Port Hedland in 1975!

    The terrible southern WA fires of 1961 were fed by cyclones way to the north, sending colossal winds but no rain, and feeding the 41 day inferno.

    The problem in the late 19th century was all those pearlers and other shipping, so WA cyclones were great killers then. The April Fool’s cyclone of 1884 wiped out forty vessels of a pearling fleet. 140 lives lost.

    The present climate where I live reminds me a lot of the 50s and 70s. The Maitland flood formed an inland sea the size of England and Wales to the west of Sydney. A couple of decades on, Tracey demolished a city. Let’s hope we learn from the 50s and 70s, and that, in the face of such disasters, we don’t have to listen to idiot propagandists proclaiming a “new normal”.

  442. el gordo says

    Closing down the MDBA bit by bit.

    ‘THE head of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority will write to state ministers warning them that potential budget cuts will see environmental programs for the rivers axed and maintenance work threatened.

    ‘The authority – the independent body that oversees the Murray-Darling system – says if the Victorian government follows recently announced budget cuts to the body by New South Wales and South Australia it will have to further slash its operations.’

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/state-funding-cuts-to-slash-murraydarling-work-20130226-2f47v.html#ixzz2M2XWLzyz

  446. Robert says

    Seems it’s ridgy. The Northern Hemisphere has recorded it’s coldest official temp, well and truly eclipsing that of 1933. If I was a climate bedwetter I’d make something of that. It does not mean a bloody thing, of course, but it’s fascinating how a “record” becomes an “extreme” when the implication is inconvenient.

    I’m of the opinion that nobody has a clue what future climate will be like (because its complexity is worse than we thought, think or will think). However, it seems that, even if a new Ice Age occurred right now, our climate luvvies, after a slightly embarrassed consultation of Skeptical Science and the Tammie who isn’t Debbie Reynolds or Sandra Dee, would soon have it all fitted nicely to their script.

    Even if the impossible happened and we found ourselves living in a “stable” climate, they’d attribute its “eerie sameness” or “unnatural monotony” to You-Know-What. Give up. Send money.

    By the way, the Great Shaggers Reach Expedition of 2013 has had me doing that LOL thing. Is it possible to be this hilariously out of touch? McTernan doesn’t care. He’ll be back in Pommieland soon with his souvenir “Ski Mount Druitt” tee shirt and some other failure will be paying him zillions for zilch. But do you have to be from Sydney to know how totally WRONG this is? In Sydney, the one thing you do know want to become EVER is a character in yet another Rooty Hill joke.

    “So the Prime Minister of Australia has just bought these new specs from a flash boutique in Melbourne. She walks into the Rooty Hill R-ie and…”

    Tell me this isn’t happening!

  448. Neville says

    How’s this for a quote from Alby’s speech. What corruption and fraud.

    How is all of this relevant to my constituency? Let me walk you through what benefits my constituency would receive if there were a serious attempt to refocus on and change the direction of this get-rich-quick pot of gold for renewable energy opportunists. I will talk about the scale of subsidy in my electorate. In Hume alone, the subsidy for new wind turbines, excluding existing turbines, is set to reach $500 million to $1,000 million per year, or up to $10 billion over 10 years. This subsidy is equal to around $450,000 to $900,000 for each new turbine. Meanwhile, communities are at war with each other, adjacent landholders face serious land value losses and health issues continue to emerge.

  453. John Sayers says

    If it weren’t for France’s nuclear power stations running flat chat Germany, the UK, Denmark and Belgium would all be freezing their tits off!

    They go on about German solar power production yet Germany imports two thirds of its power!

    Denmark’s vast array of wind turbines are all frozen stiff, Sweden and Norway survive because they have vast Hydro systems.

    It’s a joke!

  454. Robert says

    Rest assured, Germany is going brown after green. Two new BoA units have just been added to the Neurath facility, 1100 MW each. Lots more underway. Lots more lignite found in Eastern Europe. It won’t lie about. BoA technology makes it easier to adjust and interact with the (yawn) renewables. Don’t know why they bother with that, but at least the units are NEW and EFFICIENT. The two new units at Westfalen, a hard-coal station, look pretty flash: 1600 MW, less coal, less water, and (yawn) 20% (yawn) less CO2.

    Hard to beat our Latrobe, of course, with 25% of the world’s known reserves of lignite. How green is that valley – not! Plenty of green places left in Oz. It’s green and wet everywhere I look. We need to get down with some brown.

    Love coal. Let’s goldplate our coal power industries, top to bottom.

  455. Neville says

    Robert, the Labor party and resources minister Ferguson agree that modified brown coal should be exported.

    http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/pilbara-plan-for-victoria-20120418-1x7ox.html

    How’s that for hyocritical, bi-polar dysfunction? They worry about reducing our flea bite by 5% by 2020 (substantial ammount by fraudulent certificates) but are happy to intentionally create an entire new source of black coal for export.

    If it could be another Pilbara that would mean millions more tonnes exported per annum. So much for their rant that “reducing co2 is the greatest moral challenge that we face.”

    This has to be the greatest con trick, fraud and super Ponzi scheme for the last 100 years. We will waste billions $ every year for zero impact on climate and temp and it’s easily exposed using simple kindy sums.

  457. Mark A says

    Summer records?

    I don’t know where they are getting their numbers from Debbie but I
    thought this summer was on the cool side.

    I can remember some hot summers and this was nothing like them.
    Sure it’s not over yet, but the claim is in already!

  458. Robert says

    Deb, the SMH will be a TABLOID within a few days. Now that their tree-gobbling days are over they’ll wag that green finger twice as hard. But they’re a lowly tabloid!

    Really, if anyone can construe this summer as super-hot they must be living somewhere far from me. There were a couple of super hot weeks, and, after the coolest summer in memory, it was a surprise to have to break out the electric fan. The lack of cloud cover would have meant there were a lot more high maxes than normal in Dec-Jan. It was bloody hot, but so what? The record that was broken in Sydney was from 1939, and that ’39 heatwave was far more long lasting over a much greater area. It was a death-dealer.

    Anyway, I can no longer access any details of Big Heats in 1960, 1939, 1895-6. and, even if I could, how do you do the comparison? We can still know the rainfall extremes, and the big dries of 1888, 1902 and 1939. We certainly know that this summer’s flooding has nothing on times past, years like 1950 and 1963. I tried once again to explain to one of the mattress-irrigators banging on about recent “extreme” rain that the Hunter flood of 1955 caused the formation of an inland sea to the west of Sydney that was the size of England and Wales. In the end, it was like talking to a senior SMH journalist.

    Anyway, the hottest official temp recorded in Oz and in the whole bloody hemisphere was in 1960. That won’t count with our Green Betters till it is exceeded. Similarly, the coldest official temp in the Northern Hemisphere won’t be getting much of an airing. It’s dated 2013!

    Welcome to the Old Normal, warmies.

  459. Debbie says

    http://theconversation.edu.au/hot-summer-yes-the-hottest-12505

    Here’s some more of it.

    I agree Mark A,
    Except for that very small run in early January, this has definitely been a mild summer in my part of the world.
    BTW, I can remember much longer runs of extremely hot summer weather than the run this January.
    The one I can remember as one of the toughest here in the MIA was late Jan early Feb 1983.
    My parents and their peers can remember plenty of earlier ones.
    It’s much easier to cope with these days however as we nearly all have air conditioners in our homes, in our vehicles and in our workplaces. The kids all have them in schools too.

  460. Johnathan Wilkes says

    sheeesh here we go again, Ch9 weather report just reiterated the claim of “hottest summer evah”

  461. el gordo says

    What a relief, the weather is back to normal.

    ‘Over the last five years, only last winter saw the mercury rise above the 3.3C (38F) average – taken from 30 years of statistics from 1981.

    ‘Met Office says figures are ‘part of normal weather patterns’

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2286041/So-global-warming-4-5-winters-COLDER-average-reveals-Met-Office.html#ixzz2MH3z2JSe
    Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

  464. el gordo says

    Hooray!

    ‘LABOR is considering dissolving the $218 million-a-year Climate Change Department as part of a cost-saving restructure that could see it merged with another government bureaucracy.

    ‘The department is part of a $1.6 billion-a-year climate change behemoth in place to administer the government’s carbon tax. It also includes the Clean Energy Regulator, the Climate Change Authority and the Office of the Renewable Energy Regulator.’

    Joe Kelly in the Oz

  465. Avatar photojennifer says

    Hey Everyone, I shall close this thread in the next day or two. I’ve opened a new one. Cheers,