WE know that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology can’t forecast weather more than a few days out. So why should we believe a climate forecast to 2030?
According to Sara Phillips, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Bureau’s new State of the Climate 2014 report is a reliable source of information because it distils hundreds of experiments into three consistent reports.
In fact there are few if any experiments that have been distilled in the writing of the reports. Rather Bureau staff have ran some computer simulations designed to produce a particular output, and combined this with homogenised and adjusted historical records again designed to produce a particular result. Conclusions include:
1. Australia’s climate has warmed by 0.9°C since 1910, and the frequency of extreme weather has changed, with more extreme heat and fewer cool extremes.
2. Global mean temperature has risen by 0.85°C from 1880 to 2012.
When I wrote to the Bureau in January asking why the national average is only calculated back to 1910, I received a reply explaining that data prior to 1910 “is often fragmented and of uncertain or low quality”. If this were the case, it begs the question how a global mean temperature can be calculated back to 1880?
This is one of seven questions I’ve put to Greg Hunt, Minister for the Environment, in a letter dated 4th March 2014. Minister Hunt is ultimately responsible for the operations of the Bureau and I’m of the opinion their operations deserve close scrutiny.
There is this myth that the Bureau is comprised of hard working scientists providing, like the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, information without bias or agenda. More likely the Bureau, like the mainstream climate science community more generally, has become somewhat compromised.
Of particular concern to me, is the Bureau’s decision of last June, to discard the statistical models that had been used to generate seasonal rainfall forecasts in favour of a general circulation model that has no predictive skill at all. I have documented the absence of skill in the general circulation model in a peer-reviewed paper recently published in the journal Atmospheric Research (Volume 138, Pages 166-178).
I conclude my letter to Minster Hunt with comment that:
If the temperature record for Australia can be extended back to 1860, providing an additional 50 years of data, then this should be a priority. This information is more important than the calculation of a national average temperature. If data is to be adjusted and homogenized then the methodology applied needs to be clearly stated. Indeed having access to all the available records as far back as possible is important because it helps unravel the true features of the natural climate cycle, a goal that meteorologists and astronomers were working towards well before the establishment of the Bureau in 1908.
In arriving at theories that explain the natural world, the best scientists always use all the available data, not just the data that happens to fit a particular viewpoint. Furthermore, long historical data series are critical for statistical methods of rainfall forecasts, including the application of artificial neural networks that can currently provide more skillful forecasts than POAMA, the general circulation model currently used by the Bureau to produce the official forecasts. That the Bureau persists with POAMA, while failing to disclose to the Australian public the absence of any measurable skill in its monthly and seasonal forecasts, should be of grave concern to the Australian parliament.
My letter to the Minister can be read in its entirety here: http://jennifermarohasy.com/questions-for-the-australian-bureau-of-meteorology/
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Great stuff. Love this:
“If the temperature record for Australia can be extended back to 1860, providing an additional 50 years of data, then this should be a priority. This information is more important than the calculation of a national average temperature. ”
Keep us posted!
More like BOM knows that if the federation drought figures are included, their 0.9C increase would disappear.
Two things jump straight out of that pre 1910 reply you got.
The very arrogant dismissal of all pre screen readings as unreliable-
Everyone was a fool before then , it seems
Serious people who went to very careful lengths to be accurate, (like Sturt for surveying ), being basically ridiculed.
The second thing is the name Karoly- say no more.
Yes Jen, they would much prefer the freedom of paleo and proxy data prior to 1910 where they are free to interpret it any way they choose.
Meanwhile Glowbul Warming, like SLR, marches ever the same:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
While holding forth on their certainty of the historic levels of CO2 from ice cores on the recent ABC’s report on this, they conveniently forgot to mention the historic high temperature levels [up to 4c above current GAT] that accompanied those historic low levels of CO2 also indicated by those same ice cores.
The selective certainty of their science, the denial of uncertainty and natural variation is breathtaking.
A little O/T, but a comment on some BOM published observations which, unless I’ve missed something, must reflect on the credibility of their observations in general. Yesterday afternoon, the online observations for Melbourne showed the maximum for the day as 23.2 and the minimum as 21.8 (unfortunately did not note the times) with the current temperature as 18.6. My question is: how can the current temperature be lower than the minimum for the day? Does the “day” for minimum temperatures vary from the “day” for current or maximum temperatures? I know I am probably showing my ignorance as the BOM will have a very good explanation.
Even though the heading of the article link below is not of the BoM’s doing, the innuendo is.
Not once do the BoM mention the local level of carbon(sic) as an indicator, though they use it in their models.
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/bureau-of-meteorology-prepares-to-cop-flak-for-failing-to-forecast-geelong-storm-20140220-332dq.html
As the SotC report is of the last 2 years of climate, could it be seen as a KPI for the carbon(sic) tax, which, as Gaia & Greg Hunt know, passed the lower house of parliament October 2011?
(2.5 years of tax)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-12/accusations-fly-as-carbon-bills-pass/3551822
It is indeed concerning that NRM government departments as well as departments responsible for providing assistance for weather related emergencies such as floods, droughts and fire are relying on BoM’s seasonal forecasting to make pre season management decisions.
@Ian
Luke carries on about trends, OK let’s say the instruments and the installations were different, but the trend would still be apparent?
Maybe they show warming or hotter temps. back then and that’s what we are not supposed to see?
It’s all relative.
human self-interest powerfully shapes our perception of our responsibilities, and so it is no surprise that those who stand to gain significantly from exercising a certain economic freedom without constraint (such as profiting from the exploitation of fossil fuel resources) will wish to argue (and will truly believe) that their actions are not detrimental to the interests of others and thus do not need responsible constraints (such as regulation), regardless of any evidence to the contrary.
]It is therefore not surprising that a significant majority of climate change deniers tend to be of right-wing political persuasions and that organised denial tends to be commonly associated with big business, most notably the fossil fuel industries that profit most from their freedom to pursue the economic activities causing anthropogenic climate change.There is a powerful desire amongst those who benefit from fossil fuel use to deny that these sorts of economic activity are causing a huge problem, and in particular to deny that any link between fossil fuel use and global warming has actually been demonstrated.
Many have documented, minority scientific views sceptical of anthropogenic climate change have been persistently funded by big business and the right wing of politics to make them appear as credible critiques of the much wider scientific consensus. It is virtually predictable that if you are a Republican or Tea Party follower in the USA, or quite likely that if you are a Liberal Party voter in Australia, then you will deny the reality of anthropogenic climate change.
However climate change is reality, and reality has an annoying habit of not going away no matter how hard one tries to ignore it. The link between human activities and climate change is well established, with numerous studies demonstrating that the observed changes during the last century cannot be explained by natural variability alone, but are readily explained if human activities are taken into account8. The combined thermal content of the ocean and atmosphere continues to rise despite some variability in the rate of that rise; globally-averaged sea-level rise driven by increased warming continues unabated, and the area and thickness of summer arctic sea ice continues to decrease.
As the physical reality of climate change becomes more and more obvious, the pressure on right-wing ideology is becoming stronger and its underlying worldview is more threatened. Since any rational arguments that right-wing climate change deniers once had have long since become untenable, their desire not to acknowledge the problem that climate change poses for their ideology appears to be driving them to ever louder, shriller and more obsessive denial.
Robert LePage,
I can see you have a lot of interest in theory and motivations. But can we just do a local test of your beliefs.
Where do you live?
Is there any evidence to suggest recent sea level rise? What were the temperatures at your place back in the late 1800s? Did the recent Millennium drought break with flooding rains for your community?
What is your own personal experience of climate change?
It is one thing to be book ‘learned’ and another to test that theory/that propaganda against something real world.
Oh great, Le Page is here pontificating:
“It is therefore not surprising that a significant majority of climate change deniers tend to be of right-wing political persuasions and that organised denial tends to be commonly associated with big business, most notably the fossil fuel industries that profit most from their freedom to pursue the economic activities causing anthropogenic climate change.”
By the same logic we can say that those who believe in AGW are communists, green fanatics and misanthropes who want humanity to suffer.
Le Page waffles on:
“The link between human activities and climate change is well established, with numerous studies demonstrating that the observed changes during the last century cannot be explained by natural variability alone, but are readily explained if human activities are taken into account”
No, quite the contrary:
http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/has-man-made-global-warming-been.html
http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/has-global-warming-been-disproved-part-2.html
http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/man-made-global-warming-wrong-ten.html
Alternatively the evidence against AGW is overwhelming:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2008/09/ten-of-the-worst-climate-research-papers-a-note-from-cohenite/
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2009/04/more-worst-agw-papers/?cp=all#comments
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/07/another-10-of-the-worst-agw-papers-part-3/
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2013/05/ten-of-the-worst-climate-research-papers-5-years-on/
In short Le Page is an inferior troll compared to our resident nuisances luke and bazza. In fact in percentile terms Le Page is percentile 1 while I’d put luke at percentile 85 and bazza at a solid 70.
Good grief Jennifer, when someone like Robert LePage visits and leaves a spray behind, you can be sure
the warmists are worried
Hi Robert Le Page,
Are you not aware that one of Al Gore’s biggest sponsors has been Exxon ?
Everyone on the left of politics in the US has just about got a dollar off George Soros.
Meanwhile, back here , this ‘conservative’ just dropped off an item at the local radio station , concerning a CSG protest meeting.
You seem to be one of those class structure believers , from way back in the day.
If you took the time to read over some of the diverse comments on this blog , you might just notice that ‘denying’ is not an ideological thing. It is a scientific thing.
Warmism, on the other hand , seems to be almost religiously based on party lines.
Standing on a soapbox full of carbonista’s money and accusing all critics of being bought off.
BoM cluelessness is catching to other science writers: http://pindanpost.com/2014/03/04/fact-checking-a-science-writer/
David Appell is also defending the indefensible over at Judith Curry’s blog about climate sensitivity and CO2.
Robert le Page seems to have done an absolutely champion job of missing the point of this post.
” . . .and thus do not need responsible constraints (such as regulation), regardless of any evidence to the contrary.”
What a load of absolute rubbish & politically motivated nonsense RLP!
Those of us who live and work in the REAL environment/climate/weather day in and day out. . . and who have to deal with the NRM regulators and legislators day in day out. . . would actually LEAP WITH ABSOLUTE JOY (!!!!) if there was such a thing as responsible, common sense regulation that returned responsible & practical, triple bottom line outcomes!!!!
To be very clear RLP. . .
The issues Jen highlights have virtually NOTHING (!) to do with whichever wing anyone may or not be flapping around with. The highlighted issues are based on EVIDENCE(!)
Despite massive investments in GCMs and more NRM related resources given to BoM . . .BoM’s skill in regional seasonal forecasting has CLEARLY NOT IMPROVED and consequently (and IMHO irresponsibly). . . impractical pre season regulation management decisions are being made based on a politically motivated ‘wish’ or ‘belief’ that BoM’s skill level in this space is high and also, IMHO, to gain political PR kudos with people who DON’T actually live and work in the REAL seasons and who are therefore not bearing the risk of these counterfactual, pre season management decisions (although of course they are footing part of the bill for the exponential growth in NRM bureaucracies)
Your pontificating about right wings and big business and fossil fuel companies etc. . .is just political fluff and nonsense.
Robert LePage, if you get to the point of being able to restore a “stable” climate the people in my region would prefer you NOT restore it to the period between 1895 and 1950. We especially wish to avoid a repetition of the period between 1910 and 1919 – much too hot and dry, okay for the old timber industry, terrible for now.
I guess we’d settle for the period between 2006 and 2012 before the nasty 2012 Spring. After a couple of centuries, that period would be the best of a bad lot. Can you dial that in for us? Of course, what’s good for us is not so good for elsewhere. Lots of La Nina might keep eastern Australia happy but the droughts in China and North America would be unspeakable.
But I’m sure once you control minds and taxes the climate will follow.
ROFL!
NO ROBERT!
🙂 🙂 🙂
We won’t settle for that period in the Southern MDB!!!!
That period encompasses some of the worst weather that good old OZ can throw at you here.
2006/07 was the worst period of the millennium drought for this area and 2012 was the worst flooding we have seen since the 1970s. . .and then we were forced to deal with all the legislators and regulators in between (ie 2007 Water Act and the Murray Darling Basin Plan)
🙂 🙂
If these people can control the weather and dial it back to a suitable period. . .the Southern MDB would DEFINITELY pick a different timeframe altogether.
The naïve conflation of weather and climate in the opening sentence of the post sets the tone – “We know that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology can’t forecast weather more than a few days out. So why should we believe a climate forecast to 2030?”
As for the seven points in the latter to Hunt, he will be able to rebut them with wiki or he too will become a bigger joke. They are mostly about historic temperatures, part of a vendetta that has more to do with denialist propaganda than science. The opening sentence of the final para of the post unveils the usual denialist strategy “In arriving at theories that explain the natural world, the best scientists always use all the available data, not just the data that happens to fit a particular viewpoint.” What irony.
In the letter, the suggestion ( Q2) on the use of Australian data back to 1850 to extend the Australian record back before 1910 is also extraordinary. The suggestion appears to be that data useful for global temperature estimation is a useful sample at continental scale. The notion displays ignorance of statistical sampling methods and of the surface area of Australia compared with the globe.
Q3 queries the Australian 2013 temperature record as follows “There has been considerable variability over recent years in both the annual average temperature anomaly, and also the annual maximum and minimum temperature anomaly, with 2011 and 2012 relatively cold years, which suggests this may not be a warming trend at all. Furthermore, when state boundaries are considered, only South Australia, was significantly warmer in 2013”. The facts are:
There is no mention of an extreme la Niña which obliterates the claim “2011 and 2012 relatively cold years, which suggests this may not be a warming trend at all”. (the best scientists do not ignore data that does not happen to fit a particular viewpoint!)
In relation to South Australia being “significantly” warmer in 2013:
NSW 2nd warmest on record
NT record
Qld 2nd
Tas 4th
Vic 3rd
WA record
(the best scientists do not ignore data that does not happen to fit a particular viewpoint!)
There is an underlying fear here of how new records influence public opinion accompanied by an ignorance of how a specific record does not underpin the mountain of evidence on global warming. There is no science of isolated events.
Other claims such as the alleged superiority of the neural net seasonal forecasts over POAMA are premature until the research is less isolated and reproduced, if that is in fact possible given the limited generality, and the lack of objective methods for choosing stations and estimating accuracy.
Enough said.
Bazza, I agree entirely with your assertion that “the best scientists do not ignore data that does not fit a particular viewpoint”.
Why, then, do you ignore the entire purpose of Jennifer’s article, and her letter to the Minister, which is the release of that data?
You obviously have a low opinion of yourself as a scientist if you would ignore the readings carefully gathered by government meteorologists from the mid 19th Century.
Look here Deb, you’re just the MDB, some sort of giant food bowl thingy. Now the timber industry’s gone from round here we are the regional centre of buggy racing, highway-bypassing, Fredo’s pies and Slim Dusty nostalgia. We come first!
Any more contradiction and I’ll leave this blog. And I won’t just leave it once! You won’t be getting off that easy!
Bazza, with you lot playing occupy climate science, why is it that all the countries like Australia, US etc., are getting hotter:
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/noaavsnasaus1999temps.gif
But the world is getting cooler:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997/normalise:0.5/scale:0.5/offset:0.34
bazza says:
“In relation to South Australia being “significantly” warmer in 2013:
NSW 2nd warmest on record
NT record
Qld 2nd
Tas 4th
Vic 3rd
WA record
Nah:
http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2013/03/03/a-tale-of-two-records/
And:
“(the best scientists do not ignore data that does not happen to fit a particular viewpoint!)”
Rubbish; Ben Santer for a start.
As for BOM, they do ignore it and what they don’t they homogenise.
Now look here Robert!
🙂 🙂
I have been told that sort of behaviour on the blogosphere is called ‘flouncing’.
That is definitely not responsible adult behaviour!
🙂 🙂
We already have a couple of those ‘flouncers’ hanging around here. I seem to recall one of them ‘flouncing’ at you quite recently????
Anyway. . .if these people are so smart and can control the future climate/weather with taxes. . .why can’t we just put in different ‘preferred climactic period’ orders?
RLP:
It’s nice of you to lump the majority of “climate change deniers” into one neat pigeon hole, so much easier to understand the issues. For all my “denialism” being attributed to my right wing tendencies and being funded by big business and fossil fuel interests – well, I suppose to the extent that QSuper has shares in BHP, Rio etc that’s true, but I can’t get so much as a discount from the servo no matter how much I tell them I doubt catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.
As for the reality of global warming becoming more obvious, no doubt you can explain to Year 12 students why RSS satellite data show ZERO trend in global temperatures for their entire lives- 17 years, 6 months.
It’s the Australian climate change industry that, like you, is in denial.
Hi Ken Stewart
Thanks for your help with the letter. It would have been great to give you and your work more acknowledgement… I have included you as a footnote… ACORN-SAT: A Preliminary Assessment, Ken Stewart, May 2012, http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/acorn-sat-a-preliminary-assessment/
And encourage others to visit that link.
Bazza 1.20pm:
“The facts are: There is no mention of an extreme la Niña which obliterates the claim “2011 and 2012 relatively cold years, which suggests this may not be a warming trend at all”. (the best scientists do not ignore data that does not happen to fit a particular viewpoint!)”
Once again, repeat after me: if it’s warm, it’s due to humans; if it’s cool, it’s due to La Nina.
It’s very fortunate that La Ninas can explain cooling but El Ninos (of which there were a few in the 80s and 90s) can’t possibly have anything to do with warming.
Cohenite: Sorry mate, that link doesn’t refer to the whole of 2013, which is what Jen is discussing. But you’re spot on with Santer. Did you read the APS transcript too?
I note that in his haste to argue Bazza has also done a champion job of missing the main concern even though it starts with: “of particular concern. ..”
Thanks Jen!
Good letter too. I hope you get a decent reply, not public service gobbledy-gook.
Ken
Well, provided we have another Rudd government to pay me for staying home when the gullies flood, I’d like this climate:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/lnlist/197376/197306-197603.gif
Totally don’t want this:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/enlist/190203/190111-190210.gif
Even if Kev pays me I don’t want it.
Just be aware, Debs, that even with the best available tax science it won’t always be possible to adjust the climate with the necessary accuracy. Dang thing has a mind of its own.
Anyway, I’m leaving now. Sayonara. I’m going…going…
Nice letter Jen,
Let’s hope Minister Hunt’s department can handle it OK and advise him well !
A case of “watch this space”
Incidentally, I’ve had some email exchanges with the ABC’s Sara Phillips on certain facts that she does not seem to be in acceptance of.
“Cohenite: Sorry mate, that link doesn’t refer to the whole of 2013, which is what Jen is discussing. But you’re spot on with Santer. Did you read the APS transcript too?”
Hi Ken; yeah I know, it’s a summer post; an oldie but a goodie and goes to the point.
Yes I have read the APs ‘debate’; Santer has done so much truncating and shuffling I can’t keep up; In addition to the APS I was thinking of these:
http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/oreskes-same-old-crap.html
http://www.john-daly.com/sonde.htm
I’ve edited out the slander from the last two comments. Can we please keep the discussion civil. Image whoever you are making reference to is within earshot. Cheers
PS Robert, Where are you going?
Bob_FJ – a number of times I have tried to post on Sarah Phillips blogs or query her statements – “negative” posts seem to rarely get posted, questions are never answered on her blogs(Drum)
Jen, I’m only threatening to go. It could be a long process.
Tsk! He won’t go. Jennifer. )
cohenite, Thx fer the link to John Daly. In the dark days at the height
warming alarmism. madness of the crowd, John Daly was a beacon of
sanity … love his blue sky back drop.
How accurate is the WFTs data and graphs? Just looked at the 1910 to 1943 warming for Had 3 and 4 compared to the 1976 to 1998 warming for Had 3 and Had 4.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/to:1943/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1976/to:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1976/to:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1910/to:1943/trend
They are almost identical on a per year basis. Just used per year on early 33 warming and multiplied by 22 to compare to 1976 to 98. There seems to be little difference, so where’s the impact of much higher co2 levels?
So RLP offers a diagnosis of skeptics as subhuman deniers paid by big oil.
And of course AGW true believers are sweetness and light, whose big oil funding is good.
And pointing out that the climate is not changing, if one merely relies on measurements and history, much at all is only possible if the one making the claim is truly wicked indeed.
I think Robert is going so he come back, Jen.
Have a great one.
PS- I like the new more assertive editing. I will do my best to be a good boy. ;^)
How the IPCC misled the world about climate sensitivity.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/06/more-reax-to-lewis-and-crok-what-the-ipcc-knew-but-didnt-tell-us/#more-104567
The Eemian IG was much warmer than our Holocene. Greenland climate was up to 8c warmer than the temp today and SLs were many metres higher as well.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/24/first-complete-ice-core-record-of-last-interglacial-period-shows-the-climate-of-greenland-to-be-significantly-warmer-than-today/
Of course Antarctic ice cores prove that the Holocene is cooler than the four previous interglacials. That makes the Holocene the coolest for about half a million years. So where’s this dangerous CAGW? And thanks to Luke’s link we know that Antarctica was warmer from 141 to 1250 than today and there was a LIA from 1550 to 1880.
But there was a warmer spike of about 30 years within that later LIA period in that study. How could all this happen without co2 exceeding 280ppmv at those times? But ya gotta laugh.
I agree Robert,
I totally wouldn’t put an order in for that one!
🙂 🙂
And of course it has a mind of its own. It shows very little respect for human produced, calendar based trends.
Focusing on nationwide averages is not particularly useful even though it may be interesting.
Even though 2012 has been recorded as 30% wetter than average, the seasonal distribution of the precipitation did not deliver optimal results.
I can see you have a lot of interest in theory and motivations. But can we just do a local test of your beliefs.
Where do you live? IN TASMANIA
Is there any evidence to suggest recent sea level rise? YES I HAVE A WATERFRONT PROPERTY AND THE HEIGHT OF THE SEA DURING STORMS AN HIGH TIDES HAS INCREASED IN THE LAST 17 YEARS.
What were the temperatures at your place back in the late 1800s? NO IDEA BUT WE HAVE HAD RECORD TEMP SET IN THE LAST YEAR.
Did the recent Millennium drought break with flooding rains for your community? IT WAS THE WETTEST WINTER ON RECORD
What is your own personal experience of climate change? WE ARE HAVING FREQUENT GALES AND ONE THAT WAS EXTREME AND PUT THE POWER OFF FOR 30 HOURS.
Sea level rise Tasmania at the longest running site:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2002GL016813/abstract;jsessionid=AEB39B6C8D5EB8CDB9B627FB4DA0BF01.f03t01
sp @ March 6th, 2014 at 7:11 pm
Yes, my experience in email exchanges with Sara Phillips has run much the same course. For a while I thought that direct and various copied emails to her might yield some interesting debate and perhaps give her some pause in attitude.
My final email to her follows, but she did not reply:
QUOTE: Hi Sara,
Thank you for your enthusiastic reply to mine below.
In your recent article you were strong on the issue of statistics in the determination of the IPCC’s declared 95% confidence levels, and the claim that 97% of scientists agree on a consensus.
May I point out that there are two very fine Canadian statisticians and data handlers, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick who have altered the history of climate science.
I recommend that you read this article, IPCC: Fixing the Facts, concerning the way that political pressures from certain governments at the Stockholm review resulted in the disappearance of important information as touched on in my first email. Some interesting background is also contained here, and better read first: Marotzke’s Broken Promise. BTW, Judith Curry is chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology and has impressive achievements in climate science.
Oh, and might you think that the following ABC scare image is ridiculously misleading? Why do it?
(image of “black steam” issuing from seriously backlit water cooling towers not shown here)
From an editor’s choice environment blog; 06 July 2011
No need to use Adobe Photoshop or other photo editing software when there is really serious backlighting available as the sun sets, making white water particles look really sinister. UNQUOTE.
There are five embedded links in the above which probably will not appear
Robert LePage @ 12:22 pm today
I’m a tad puzzled by your comment. Is it in the context of comments by:
Ken Stewart March 6th, 2014 at 3:59 pm or hunter @ 12:35 am today?
And for instance, I paste next your capitalized shout:
“YES I HAVE A WATERFRONT PROPERTY AND THE HEIGHT OF THE SEA DURING STORMS AN HIGH TIDES HAS INCREASED IN THE LAST 17 YEARS.”
Really? Where are you, and what is the magnitude of increase in what in your last 17 years?
RPL, that must have been quite a gale. I’m relieved your caps lock survived the terror.
Hey, what about this for some Tassie weather-not-climate:
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2009/06/04/2589538.htm
Robert LePage, I am sure you believe what you have written. But on the basis of known records, your sea level rise cannot have been more than maybe 3-4 cm at most and probably less than 2. And that’s an average – how much was contributed by high water values and how much by low water values? From tidal records, how does highest high water today measure against highest high water 20 years ago?
Record temps? Over what period? What records exist for your region and how far back do they extend? What temps were experienced BEFORE records began? Without some knowledge of temperatures over the at least the past 100-200 years it’s hard to make that sort of statement. Ditto for wettest winter.
And ‘frequent’ gales??? That’s pretty subjective, do you have any idea of the frequency and severity of gales in the past? Extending back to original settlement by white man? On what evidence do you base your claims?
Just because weather has varied over 17 years doesn’t mean it hasn’t varied before, or that the variation is due to AGW.
Just for entertainment, here’s a few anecdotes I found after a bit of a search.
On 20 December 1837, the brig Schah was blown ashore about two nautical miles east of Rame Head (east coast of Gippsland) in Australia. The Schah, a 91-ton vessel, was on its way from Hobart to Sydney, carried ten passengers and a crew of nine. The Schah was struck by heavy gales from the southwest, losing some of its sail.
According to rainfall records 1843-45 were dry years in South Australia. By the year 1846, the interior and north were converted to an arid desert. In New South Wales, Australia, there was a drought from August 1842 to February 1843. The Patterson River ceased running in November. In 1843, there was a severe drought in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. In Central Australia, the high temperature on 21 January 1845 was 131° F (55° C) in the shade. On 11 November 1845, the temperature was measured at 127 ° F (52.8° C) in the shade.
On 7 April 1848, the vessels Georgina and Spy were driven ashore near Hobart, Australia, during a gale. Three people were drowned.
There were floods in southern Tasmania, Australia from 26 February to 22 March 1854. This was caused by tremendous rainfall throughout Tasmania. A total of six people lost their lives and 15 injured. Several lives were lost due to floods in Hobart. The Jordan River was at its highest since 1828.
At Richmond the Coal River rose to 11.8 feet (3.6 meters). Three bridges were destroyed between New Norfolk and Lachlan. The Clyde Bridge at Hamilton washed away.
On 27 February 1854, there was a great flood at Hobart Town, Australia.
On 13 August 1858, there was severe flooding at Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. The Jordan River flooded at Pontville. One person died in the flood. Antill Ponds road was covered by 5 feet (1.5 meters) of
water.
On 14 August 1858, hurricane force winds contributed to the loss of the John Nussey. The foremast and fore gaff were destroyed and the jib was torn to ribbons. Pumps were used to keep the water level down, but when the stay foresail ripped, the vessel became unmanageable, drifting broadside onto a reef at the back of Griffiths Point in Victoria, Australia.
In 1863 in New South Wales, Australia, the Macleay and Darling Rivers flooded. Ten people perished in these floods. Queensland experienced flooding during most of the year. South-central Victoria rivers
flooded. Also severe flood damage was reported in Hobart, Tasmania.
On 14-20 December 1863, severe floods struck eastern Tasmania, Australia. The flooding followed a southerly gale at Hobart and in the Derwent Valley. Extensive damage occurred at New Town. Flooding
also caused agricultural losses at Oatlands and Richmond. The barometer fell to 977 millibar at Hobart.
For a week, the Hobart area in Tasmania, Australia had bushfires that became very dangerous on 31 December 1897. At least 6 people died in the fires, which began on Mt. Wellington and moved quickly southwards to Longley, Sandfly, Kettering, Woodbridge and Gordon. Colebrook, north of Hobart, also had serious fires.
On 31 December 1897, there was a three-day bushfire in Tasmania, Australia later known as Black Friday. The bushfire killed 6 people, hundreds of animals and destroyed many houses and buildings. The fires began on Mount Wellington, then spread south to Langley, Sandfly, Kettering, Woodridge and Gordon. Another brushfire spread from Colebrook to the north of Hobart
A few more… Yes, all anecdotal, but presumably based on something. Clearly, there has been bad weather in the past too.
In the first week of January 1788, the Fleet sails past the southeast corner of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania, Australia), into a violent thunderstorm and observe small patches of snow along the coastline during the height of summer.
In April 1809, there was a major flood when the Derwent River overflowed its banks in Tasmania, Australia
From 1854-59, the Adelaide area of Australia, suffered a long dry period according to rainfall records. By November 1857, there was a drought in the region of Longford and to its east in Tasmania, Australia. The drought caused considerable damage to fruit due to lack of moisture and also widespread bushfires.
In 1863, there was a prolonged drought in the Oatlands region of Tasmania, Australia, which caused crops to fail
In 1870 in Australia, there were many floods. New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania experienced heavy flooding. In South Australia, the Murray River reached record river heights. The Avon and Swan Rivers in Western Australia experienced severe floods.
In July 1871, there was a great storm in Tasmania, Australia.
On 11 June 1872, there were great floods in Tasmania, Australia
From a paper by Mr. G.J. Symons, F.M.S., “On the Climate of the Various British Colonies” – Annual Climatological Data for the Principal British Colonies.
Max temps:
Queensland, Bisbane 108.0° F
New South Wales, Sydney 107.0° F
Victoria, Melbourne 111.2° F
South Australia, Adelaide 113.5° F
Tasmania, Hobart Town 105.0° F
That stuff from RLP was just mind boggling and frightening to think that he actually believes it’s true.
But I suppose the climate and temp was just dandy when the Antarctic was much warmer from 141 to 1250 or during the colder 1580 to 1880 period or during the much warmer Eemian IG or the other 3 warmer IGs?
And remember the much higher SLs during the Eemian as well. And the 1.5 metre higher SLs 4,000 years ago.
Back in the bad old days of evidence based discussions and rational thought processes, people would challenge alarmists like RLP with questions like:
How much has it risen?
Why are tide markers in the general area showing little to no change, or even declines?
Are you in an area that is eroding or subsiding?
Do you have specific measurements, or are you going by memory unaided?
Has anything dangerous taken place?
And to just put RLP’s depth into perspective:
YES I HAVE A WATERFRONT PROPERTY AND THE HEIGHT OF THE SEA DURING STORMS AN HIGH TIDES HAS INCREASED IN THE LAST 17 YEARS.
– 17 years is not climate. And you offer no actual measures.
NO IDEA BUT WE HAVE HAD RECORD TEMP SET IN THE LAST YEAR.
If you have no idea, then how in the heck can you possibly assert something of any significance at all is happening?
Did the recent Millennium drought break with flooding rains for your community? IT WAS THE WETTEST WINTER ON RECORD
So yes, the drought broke. Even though the AGW hypesters predicted more drought.
What is your own personal experience of climate change? WE ARE HAVING FREQUENT GALES AND ONE THAT WAS EXTREME AND PUT THE POWER OFF FOR 30 HOURS.
So Tasmania did *not* have frequent gales at some point? And the *only* reason power cold be off for 30 hours is due to CO2, not a maintenance repair issue, not a quality control issue, and power never went off from a storm before CO2 was an issue (in your mind)?
Apropos the last several comments and RLP’s post with his own personal evidence, this post at WUWT is interesting. I wonder how accusrate his data is?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/07/in-the-uk-it-was-much-wetter-in-1929/#more-104608
This is where my own scepticism of CAGW comes from – the fact that publicly the view is spread that weather now is significantly different from the past. But without a better understanding of the past it’s difficult to make a reasoned assessment. The fact that the Met Office, an official, scientific institution, might make claims about today’s weather without adequately informing the public of past comparisons, says a lot.
While I have no great beef with BOM, I do think from all I’ve read that there is misrepresentation of past climate and weather. I don’t imagine a global conspiracy though – rather I think it’s simple human nature. There is no inducement to any scientist employed in any academic or government role to actively seek to show something other than the consensus view. All evidence will be viewed through the lens of accepted scientific theory. Who wants to be the maverick, especially when we see institutionalised bias against an alternative outlook.
Lastly, I have come to the conclusion that in climate science at least, given the chaotic nature of the subject matter, ANY case can be convincingly argued. So I am willing to concede that in my mind, the case for CAGW is as yet not disproved. But on evidence, neither is it proved. To me.
Any case can be convincingly argued?
Is that similar to saying:
“If you torture figures for long enough they will admit to anything”
? ??
Any case can be convincingly argued seems to me a legal rather than a scientific approach
GM I believe in some AGW but I don’t believe in CAGW. But so do the majority of the prominent sceptic scientists, but I’ll ask again what do we do about it?
Don’t forget the RS and the NAS tell us there is zero we can change about the climate or co2 emissions for thousands of years. As does the evidence from the ice cores. Just something to ponder every time your electricity bill goes up up up . All pain for bugger all gain.
Yes sp it certainly does. I would add social science, economics & political science to that list.
I think Neville’s question is a good question.
Another question, which Robert & I were joking about is :
It’s alarmingly warmer/wetter/drier/more extreme etc compared to what exactly?
How do we pick an ideal climactic period?
To be honest. . .the last time I was in Tas it was bitterly cold . It was during Summer. Taswegians may opt for a warmer climactic period ?
My word I walked into that one.
It was obviously a trap to cause me to expose myself and be the focus of a concerted attack by a concentrated nest of deniers.
Oh well I did ask for it by having the temerity to post on your little self obsessed forum.
I can only answer this attack by saying that it will all end in tears.
Inevitably as time passes and the effects of all the worlds ills gain momentum , you may look back at this and ask if you were maybe on the wrong track.
AGW, peak oil, overpopulation, they will be our nemesis and will probably spell the end of the human race.
Good luck to you all because you will certainly need it.
RLP,
A “nest of deniers”?
What do we do we deny?
Do we deny that you are an ill informed bigot who chooses name calling and accusation over fact and reason?
Do we deny that when asked to be specific about your claims of cliamte change you literally have nothing?
Do we deny that when confronted on this you offer a sour grapes defense and hope to walk away, pretending that you were outed?
Frankly you would do better as a UFO believer, better known as UFOols- they share your intolerance for critical thinking and have more practice in posing as martyrs for their magical thinking.
Robert LePage @ 1:06 pm
I think you have demonstrated that to engage cooperatively in this debate you need to present information that is quantified rather than stuff like; your confused local worries have worsened in seventeen years, (by some temporally unknown amounts in various unknown factors?).
Talking of 17 years, do you recognise that that is roughly the same period you complain of that all the recognised authorities agree that global average T’s have been flat. Additionally, that the Southern Hemisphere is lagging the NH in warming and has an even more marked hiatus, or arguably over that period a slight cooling, e.g. see:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/HadCRUT4.png
Last time I checked, Oz is part of the SH.
Please give us your wisdom concerning the demise of Oz with appropriate sources and quantifications.
BTW, I do not deny that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that nominally it should cause some warming, but that it is complicated and various feedbacks and stuff are not fully understood.
But check out a host of papers downgrading CO2 sensitivity for a doubling of concentration.
Oh, and your penultimate paragraph raises other issues of potential concern but in my view, saying; QUOTE …they spell the end of the human race. UNQUOTE is a not only OT, but [self snip]
Truly RPL, you’re the model of a middle class GetUp/Green, with the three most important requisites: moral certainty, a sense of victimhood and a waterfront property.
RLP says:
“AGW, peak oil, overpopulation, they will be our nemesis and will probably spell the end of the human race.
Good luck to you all because you will certainly need it.”
What about you Bob the apocalypse, won’t you need luck too or are you moving to Mars?
Oh come on RLP, don’t be a big girls blouse. You are indeed on a blog that has a definite leaning towards scepticism of CAGW, and probably some of the other ills that you list. Most of us have read deeply and widely and that is the way we view things. You want to show us the error of our ways, then use evidence and facts. And be prepared for a spirited debate.
Don’t like that? No probs, go find a blog that will simper all over you when you offer up your opinions. Most of us here have gone into bat in other places NOT sympathetic to our views, and I for one didn’t throw in the towel when the going got tough.
Are we right? At this stage, who knows. Maybe not. But on balance, I suspect more right than wrong. Regardless, there’s some good debate here at times, and it’s often been a good learning experience as well. Especially when Luke and Bazza weigh in. They may have taken their bats and balls and buggered off, but they were/are good value.
You could try hanging around, taking it on the chin and engaging on the facts.
Hmmm… kinda relevant to some of the discussion on this thread… Robert B isn’t one of this blog’s regulars eh?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/07/a-pointed-question/#more-104637
As I said before RLP actually believes his own nonsense and ignores observations of the REAL world plus he seems to have lost a grip on reality. YOU CAN’T KEEP MAKING STUFF UP AROUND HERE AND EXPECT TO GET A FREE RIDE. Geeezzzzzz.
ROFL!
🙂 🙂 🙂
“It was obviously a trap”?
That is truly hilarious.
HAHAHAHA LMAO!
RPL?
Why would anyone here be interested in trapping you?
What would be the purpose of that?
You have made my day.
Robert is probably right. . .you’re exhibiting the epitome of the classic traits of the middle class getup/green.
The trap is actually in your own belief system.
RPL, you were trapped the same way Capt. Queeg was trapped: All by himself.
You show up with a silly display of empty posturing and wonder why people think you act like a twit?
Really now.
Interesting that Phil Jones once admitted that global temp data was disorganised and that was the real reason they wouldn’t share their info with sceptics.
Incredible to think that govts have spent 100s of billions on such fiddled and adjusted flimsy evidence. And now we know we can’t make zip difference to climate for thousands of years anyway. Whatever we do.
What a farce, what a fraud and yet the MSM still lap it up big time.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511701.stm
Here’s Jones’s 2010 BBC interview where he admitted no SS difference in the different warming periods from 1860 to 2009.
If you compare those numbers over the four warming periods ( see chart) you’ll see the difference is zip. So where is this dangerous CAGW these hysterics have warned us about? And where is the co2 effect to be found within the chart?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
Graeme M opines on what goes here “ it’s often been a good learning experience as well” – could have fooled me. For starters, sceptics learn and have views that are not driven by ideology or set in concrete. Nobody learns here. It is all recycling downhill. Some good examples for you earlier on. Stewart tried to rebut 2013 as the record temperature year by using the satellite data. He would have known that it is not much of a guide to screen temperatures and that satellite readings amplify ENSO. Cohenite even tried to use seasonal data to challenge annual data.
I suspect you are about the only person, Luke apart , to engage Cohenite even if it was a triviality. Sceptics as exemplified by scientists generally are a disagreeable lot wheras denialists cower together and quickly launch into ad homs or diversions when limited knowledge is spent.
Another interesting part of that BBC interview with Jones is his admission about the MWP. Here is what he said———
G. There is a debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global or not. If it were to be conclusively shown that it was a global phenomenon, would you accept that this would undermine the premise that mean surface atmospheric temperatures during the latter part of the 20th Century were unprecedented?
“There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.”
“Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented. ”
“We know from the instrumental temperature record that the two hemispheres do not always follow one another. We cannot, therefore, make the assumption that temperatures in the global average will be similar to those in the northern hemisphere. ”
Well we now know that Antarctica was warmer from 141 to 1250 than now and therefore todays warming is not unusual or unprecedented at all. Thank you Phil Jones.
But we also know that earlier 20th century and late 19th century warming trends were little different to recent warming from 1975 to 2009. Thank you Phil Jones again. But we also know that the UHIE must have been more pronounced in the recent warming as well. SO WHERE IS THE Co2 EFFECT IN OUR RECENT WARMING TREND?
Bazza,
Can I suggest you take a look in the mirror?
Not possibly projecting just a tad?
As pointed out earlier, people here are definitely not a definable demographic funded by some mysterious evil source. Neither do they flap around with one wing nor are they poorly informed/ educated.
BoM’s focus is being questioned. To many of us who use most of BoM’s excellent services (not their medium to long term forecasting). . .BoM seems to have somewhat lost its way.
I see that there is a joint report from BoM & CSIRO entitled “State of the Climate 2014” undated but widely reported some five days ago:
http://www.bom.gov.au/state-of-the-climate/
It concerns issues outside of 2014 and whilst there is discussion around the previous claim on 3/Jan this year that 2013 was the hottest year on record, it is silent on earlier claims that January, summer, and spring of 2013 where all unprecedentedly hot, (as determined for the whole country, although it is not supported at individual State and Territory level according to the BoM’s own data).
Since then, they must be disappointed to find that January, summer, and spring of 2014 were relatively cool especially at individual State & Territory considerations. This is further indication of 2013 whole of country data being an outlier, but of course there doesn’t seem to be an indication of moderation from source or the media.
It is interesting to note that the BoM claims an increase of temperature of 0.9 degrees since 1910 which is say 0.009 degrees per year, which given the order of magnitude claims of significance for 2013 alone, is I think, rather disturbing
Can anybody advise if there is any scientific basis for the supposed need to keep warming to 2 degrees i.e. plants and animals die beyond that – my understanding is it was just a “best guess” in some German policy paper?
But sp the RS and NAS tell us we can’t change anything for thousands of years. So how do we keep warming to a max of 2c for the next 86 years? Just asking.
Interesting to use Jones’s trends until 2100 ( 8.6 decades) to calculate how much warming to expect.
The trend from 1860 to 1880 for next 8.6 decades would be 1.4c warming.
The trend from 1910 to 1940 would see 1.3c of warming.
The trend from 1975 to 1998 would see 1.4c of warming.
The trend from 1975 to 2009 would see !.4c of warming.
So the temp difference until 2100 using Jones’s trends would deliver a reduction of just 0.1c ( 1910 to 1940) between the lowest and the highest trend.
Of course UAH temp would be about 0.2c lower by 2100. ( 0.14c per decade) So where is this CAGW to be found? The two pre 1950 ( as used by IPCC for start of co2 effect) trends are the same as post 1950 trends.
And UAH from 1979 to 2013 would see 1.2c of warming. ( 0.12c per decade.)
Sorry last line in brackets should read 0.14c per decade not 0.12c.
I love it when the denial industry crowd scream abuse at me, it shows how they are threatened by the inevitable.
I do realise that it is considered rude to send capitals but for those unable to “get” why I did it, it is to differentiate between my answers and JM’s post.
If any of you are looking for work, there is a thriving cherry industry in Tassie and they are always looking for pickers.
Keeping tabs on the encroaching sea
Several lifetimes of high-level expertise and some diligent volunteer work are helping Tasmania get a handle on future sea-level rise. [16 April 2013 | Peter Boyer]
http://climatetasmania.com.au/2013/04/16/a290/
Today’s Bolt report editorial displays the Green religion for all to see. Our cultists Luke and bazza would fit in perfectly. They even have a hymn as written and warbled by Bob Brown himself.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/andrew-bolt
Sorry, in my comment above @ 12:22 pm, the penultimate paragraph should not have included ‘spring in 2014’ and therefore should read:
Since then, they must be disappointed to find that January and summer of 2014 were relatively cool especially with individual State & Territory considerations. This is further indication of 2013 whole of country data being an outlier, but of course there doesn’t seem to be an indication of moderation from source or the media.
Also in the final paragraph:
When I finished with; ‘… I think, rather disturbing’
I meant from the point of view of misleadingly presented science
Gee RLP you’re not improving are you? That would have to be one of the silliest articles I’ve read for a while.
Storm surges have been common as muck since Adam was a boy, so what’s your point? And all that modelling and projections doesn’t help your case at all.
Fact is that many recent studies have shown a deceleration in SLR and even the IPCC’s models show SFA problems until 2300 anyway.
But 3mm a year only gives about 11 inches by 2100 and Coher’s tide gauge for Tassie only produces about 7 inches.
But please tell us how to mitigate your CAGW, we’ll be very interested to study your ideas. I just hope they throw out OZ’s most ruinous govt next Saturday and then you may have a chance to fix your mess.
RLP,
Do not confuse the voices in your head for skeptics screaming at you.
You were asked some questions.
You answered them and revealed you know nothing but name calling of the lowest order.
Now you come back to call skeptics low class names and to demonstrate you still know nothing.
The thing that seems to have driven you around the bend is a desperate need for a magical wicked evil group to focus your hatred on, and since there isn’t one, you have to fabricate one instead.
As to your delusion about dangerous SLR, keep with it. That is right there with your delusions about ‘peak oil'(hasn’t happened any of the several times it has been declared), AGW- it ain’t a catastrophe and is so far indistinguishable from ‘normal’ climate. And over population, which was the excremental work of Ehrlich, oft debunked but still clung to by misanthropes and self-haters tenaciously. You seem to go for a perfecta of self-delusion, and of course are smug about it at the same time.
RLP,
A very basic well known phenomenon:
Coastlines erode.
Always have and probably always will.
If you don’t like that. . .my best suggestion is you might consider moving ?
Robert LePage @ 3:45 pm
I think that the main problem us rationalists here have with you is that you seem to be prone to making statements with a structure like:
‘These things are getting worse over the last 17 years’
What we really need to know is specifically what things are worse temporally and at what magnitude with some basis of reference or authority.
To point out that you present undefinable stuff to us is, if I can momentarily shout; NOT TO SCREAM ABUSE.
Incidentally in your final thingy including a photo of an eroded sandy sea front, please note that erosion is a different thing to sea level rise.
For instance, in the UK, some areas are eroding badly whereas others that used to be mooring areas for boats from the sea have changed to large areas of good land over time.
BTW, I once knew a Christadelphian family that believed that the Old Testament Book of Daniel was an absolute truth of pending apocalypse. Firm in their belief, some of the more extreme of the family moved to the Adelaide Hills and formed a community wherein to escape the coming destruction of the evil city below, scheduled for 2000 AD. I’ve lost touch with their thinking nowadays, but it is relevant that most Jews regard that Jewish book to be a work of literature, and that long ago bible scholars have shown beyond all doubt that it was written probably exactly in 164 AD (in the time of Greek domination) not in the sixth century BC as believed by the Adelaide Christadelphians that I met.
Question for you Robert; Do you think it is odd that these Christadelphians did not check the FACTS?
So, there are already jobs picking cherries, and there are jobs for dealing with sea level rises which haven’t occurred yet. I tell ya, Tassie is booming. No doubt government brochures (though produced in China) are another potential growth sector for “green jobs”.
Really, if smugness could be sold by tonne like coal and iron ore, RPL would be the new Gina Hancock. Sadly, so much of our coal and iron ore is gouged and shipped offshore to pay the bills for that most wasteful and futile of all industries: Big Green.
Just looked at the global Had 3 sst anomaly for 1910 to 1943 and 1975 to 1998 and 1975 to 2013.
The earlier trend 1910 to 1943 before the 1950 co2 effect is the higher warming trend.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1910/to:1943/trend/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1975/to:1998/trend/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1975/to:2013/trend
That’s an interesting article RLP. Undoubtedly sea level is rising, albeit relatively slowly, and undoubtedly authorities should plan for the impact of rising sea levels.
I might try registering with Canute and seeing what it offers up. Sea level rise is an interest of mine, although in somewhat of a peripheral fashion – work, family, sport and so on mean there’s very little time left over for investigating such things in any sort of depth.
Nonetheless, I don’t believe the impaqct of sea level rise is a strictly linear thing. It’s my view that your local sea level rise, some 2-3 cm in 17 years, would have only marginal impact.
Consider storm surges. The thing with these is that you cannot predict before hand when one will strike. On an given day, the tidal range extends from lowest low water to highest high water and a surge can arrive at any time in that range.
It seems to me then, that a storm surge can only cause an unexpected level of impact if it happens when the tide is at a level above the historical range.
Take for example your 17 years.
What was the annual highest high water and lowest low water for your location in 1997? That’s your ‘historical’ range. If a storm surge arrives at any time when your current tide is within that range, then the impact is not outside the range of possibility. Yes, you can argue that if sea level has risen by 2 cm, then the surge is on top of waters 2cm higher than they would otherwise have been.
But a moment’s reflection reminds us that we can never guarantee when a surge arrives and hence we can never predict ahead of time how much water a surge will have to play with. In terms of projecting possible impacts, we cannot see anything unusual unless the surge arrives on top of a tide that has exceeded the historic range.
And that, I’ll suggest, is not very often, at least not in the short term. Naturually, after enough time passes, the range between highest high water in 1997 and current tide levels will increase and surges more often than not will arrive on tides outside the historic range. But that won’t happen very often after 17 years on 2mm/year rises.
Robert many new studies are finding a deceleration in SLR so I think RLP has a few problems with his 17 year assessment. SLR to 2100 looks like a re-run of the 20th century.
The Bolter has summed up the latest rants and hysterical raves about the GBR and found it is a load of BS. But the MSM love it.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/swimming-in-a-sea-of-disinformation-over-the-great-barrier-reef/story-fni0ffxg-1226849583753
Sorry not Robert but Graeme M above. Reading too much too fast and trying to work as well. Should slow down.
Sea level rise, having begun in the late 1700s and had its fastest decadal rises before 1860, is certainly a good, safe hobby for a Tasmanian with a magnifying glass on a calm day. Don’t go looking for it in rough weather, however. Remember how places like Storm Bay got their name.
Robert you’re right about the earlier 1700s SL trends being higher than today and earlier 20th century.
Judith Curry reminds us that the 1920 to 1950 SLR trends are the same as later more recent trends as well. Not much Co2 effect to be found anywhere.
Walter Brozek and Just the Facts have another post about the latest temp trends. Heaps of info available for anyone who is interested in the facts. Nick Stokes stats are used as a check.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/09/will-global-cooling-continue-in-2014-now-includes-january-data/#more-104774
It’s instructive to look at the data for Tasmania. I have never looked at that site before, but here’s Spring Bay:
http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO71057/IDO71057SLI.pdf
Monthly data:
http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO71057/IDO71057SLD.shtml
As far as I can see from that, mean sea level since 1997 has risen around 13mm.
That graph is intriguing… I will throw all those monthly data values into Excel when I get a chance and see what the linear trend for minimums vs maximums are for the whole dataset… If I find the time and motivation that is.
Graeme I’d just like to know how you find a mean SLR of 13mm since 1997 with that link? I must be missing the obvious.
Neville, 130mm… Bloody typo. But that was just a rounded value. I averaged the monthly mean for 1997 and compared that to the 2013 value. Difference is 135mm. Is that a sensible way to look at it?
Greame thanks but I’m still not sure. Working at the moment but will have a look again when I have time.
1. you are an ill informed bigot
2. Frankly you would do better as a UFO believer, better known as UFOols-
3. you’re the model of a middle class GetUp/Green, with the three most important requisites: moral certainty, a sense of victimhood and a waterfront property.
4. don’t be a big girls blouse.
5. he seems to have lost a grip on reality
6. Do not confuse the voices in your head for skeptics screaming at you.
7. The thing that seems to have driven you around the bend
8. You seem to go for a perfecta of self-delusion, and of course are smug
9. if smugness could be sold by tonne like coal and iron ore, RPL would be the new Gina
Well that went well. You all must be feeling a lot better now?
Jennifer’s posts are always a delight and truly factual and scientific. Thank you.
A small example of the absurdity and hypocrisy of the climate zealots is the recent foray by Australian zealots to the Antarctica. There has been wide publicity of the fact that sea ice in Antarctica reached it greatest-ever-recorded extent last year. Sea ice in both Arctic and Antarctic melts during summer and freezes during winter on a vast scale. It has done so for millenia and has no effect on global sea level either way.
The zealots planned to take and publicise video of sea ice melting in Antartica in summer to counteract the image of increasing sea ice cover in the public mind. They boarded an ice-breaker – a voracious consumer of diesel (fossil) fuel. Those who claim to predict severe warming a hundred years hence failed to predict severe ice formation a few days hence. So they got stuck.
It took two other ice-breakers and several helicopters, all buring fossil fuel and taxpayer dollars at a great rate, to rescue them. And they did not even get video of sea ice melting in summer. What a shame!
By the way, we must hope that the zealots never succeed in reducing ‘polluting’ CO2 emissions to zero. If they do, among a multitude of other inconveniences, we shall be dead.
RPL,
What are you trying to prove?
Anyone can play that game.
Look back over your own comments. . .it’s just as easy to write up a list of your insults and innuendo. . .actually just go to your first comment.
I would suggest you grow up and instead of using empty rhetoric and pretending you’re some type of misunderstood victim. . .or some type of expert group therapist/psychoanalyst. . .try engaging on the actual topic of discussion.
Graeme just looked up Bob Carter’s Taxing Air on age 134 where there is a BOM map of OZ showing SLR.
Tassie has a NW site showing minus -1.2 mm year and a SE site showing +0.8mm year. So about 1mm a year only adds up to about 17 mm or 0.7 inches since 1997 or about 86mm to 2100 or about 3.4 inches.
But of course this is higher than Bob’s Tas sites show. But there would be very little SLR to worry about by 2100. So where is this dangerous CAGW?
More silly nonsense from Flannery.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/flannery_fibs_excuses_for_his_dud_predictions/
RPL,
But we meant those things in the most constructive way possible. Just as I am sure you do when you accuse us of being paid denialists, claiming we ignore reality and are acting in bad faith.
That you show up with no support other a brittle attitude and some lame claim about slr that is not based on, shall we be charitable, actual data, only makes our comments all the more constructive and caring.
As we say in Texas, cowboy up, pardner. You ain’t gettin’ a free ride at this rodeo.
Or, alternatively, learn about the vast conspiracy to coverup UFO’s, LGMs’, abductions, area 51, the alien constructed miniature Ayers rock, men in black and hang out with that nice consensus built group. They don’t allow skeptics in that community, just like at most pro-AGW consensus blogs. The similarities are striking, but the UFOols are not after so much tax payer money.
Wish I had a better edumacation!
I tried plotting that data in Excel and worked out how to graph it (got the same graph as BOM so I must have done something right) and then applied some linear trend lines.
I discovered I was completely wrong with my guess about min v max. The linear trend for low water is pretty much flat, but high water has a marked upward trend over the period 1992 to 2013.
Quite the opposite of what I expected.
Now, if I could work out how to view the values on the trend line I’d be getting somewhere… Just looking at it, it looks like the trend starts at 1100mm and ends at just under 1200mm for mean sea level, which is about 100mm/22 years which is 4.54mm/year. Or if it’s closer to 90mm/22 yrs it is 4mm/yr.
That’s a lot…. And nothing like what anyone else here has suggested so I must have got it all completely wrong 🙂
Of course I have no idea of what offset to apply for land fall. But it is still way higher than Cohenite’s 1mm/year for Port Arthur? I speculate that the values in that publication do not reflect a continuous record, and also if there were a recent acceleration from whatever cause since 1992, a linear trend since 1840 would tend to flatten out that rise.
So, it seems RPL may be able to point to significant sea level rise in his neighbourhood over 17 years after all?
But hey, like I’ve said before I failed year 8 maths, so anyone with a better take on this might be able to set me straight.
Graeme I don’t think Bob Carter would have his SLR OZ map wrong. His map and tide gauge readings come from a 2009 BOM publication.
Port Arthur is 0.8mm a year on this map and NW Tas gauge is minus -1.2mm a year so my 1mm a year is well above what it should be. Seems to be very little SLR around Tas.
Graeme I don’t know if this helps, but this PSMSL site shows lower E OZ SLR to be 0.5mm a year and NZ N to be 1mm a year.
http://www.psmsl.org/products/trends/
RLP, you are surprisingly accurate and thorough when listing your personal grievances (the ones you receive, that is). Now you just need to extend…
Hold on, what’s going on here. I thought it was going to get more stormy
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/the-endless-summer-we-have-some-bad-news-as-surf-fades-away-20140309-34fhx.html
Amazing, Alan, isn’t it. You have a bad surf season, a bad snow season…and the klimatariat go straight into action. The classic set up is the “Environment” article in the Fairfax Press with “scientific” explanations given preferably by someone titled “professor”. (Remember, Chris Turney is a “professor”.)
When the surf gets up again and the snow comes dumping down they don’t say “Whoops!”. Instead you get another Fairfax article quoting another two-bob authority with some different tripe about why there’s too much surf and snow. Or out come those tired old coral reefs again.
Ah well Neville, I just thought I’d check the data to see how it really was going down RLP’s way. Clearly I have no future in climate science, I’ll have to stick to my day job and reading blogs!
And ditto here Graeme, I’m way past retirement age and still working like a dog , SOB. Just kidding. Ya gotta laugh.
It is amazing Robert.
It doesn’t seem to matter what it is. . .there is someone who can argue the case “it’s because of climate change.”
The article that Alan has linked is yet another example.
So is the article that RLP linked.
An little bit of satire about this amazing developing phenomenon here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/03/the-miracle-gas-that-causes-everything-and-nothing/
The hysterics are losing badly so they have to invent more idiocy to try to support their nonsense.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/desperate_warmists_now_try_the_smallpox_scare/
Nic Lewis unravels another messy concocted study from the true believers. Seems if you don’t like some numbers you just change them, just like the temp data sets.
http://climateaudit.org/2014/03/10/does-inhomogeneous-forcing-and-transient-climate-sensitivity-by-drew-shindell-make-sense/#comments
Interesting that Steve Mcintyre has found that the average of the models as used by the IPCC are about 50% higher than observations as Nic mentions in this post. Once again CAGW is not supported by any of the evidence, so what is wrong with our MSM?
Another Gore forecast is put to the test and found to be wrong. Big suprise NOT. His prophecy doesn’t match the observation AGAIN.
http://notrickszone.com/2014/03/10/al-gores-10-year-scorching-prophesy-emerging-as-a-grand-hoax-global-temperatures-declined-over-last-decade/
It seems even Bangladesh is waking up to a prosperous fossil fuel future. Good for them.
http://www.thegwpf.org/economy-first-bangladesh-increase-coal-power-generation-2-50/
Alan and Robert, what they don’t get is that since 1976, the east coast, south of the Tropic of Cap hasn’t had a cyclone cross the coast whereas prior to that time we used to get them at the rate of half a dozen a year from the north to as far south as that ship in the picture. That picture reminds me of the Cherry Venture which was washed ashore in a storm in 1973 and following cyclones prevented it from being refloated.
But those cyclones didn’t subside gradually as ACO2 built up.
They stopped happening overnight and have not returned.
That does not correlate with increased CO2 emissions.
That’s simply the IPO or some other cycle.
What will be their excuse when that cycle returns?
The warm ocean ate my homework?
SD, when that cycle returns, it will be “welcome to your new climate” from Tammy and Cookie. And won’t they get some mileage out of a big late-autumn blow up in the NW cyclone belt. We due for one of those, I dare say. If it’s an April or even May biggie they’ll declare it “freak” even though the real big ones tend to come late up there. A bit like those “freak” spring fires in NSW. We’re supposed to believe that our driest and windiest months aren’t our fire season?
By the way, I don’t even have an old climate, let alone a new one. I can’t think of a year let alone a decade which wasn’t different to all the others. The klimatariat are fond of telling us, quite accurately, that this is a different climate to the one our parents knew. What they forget to tell you is that the climate our parents knew was different to the one our grandparents knew. And so on.
“If it’s an April or even May biggie they’ll declare it “freak” even though the real big ones tend to come late up there.”
In your NOTW Slim wrote: “When the rain tumbles down in July” in 1945.
You’re dead right about what the usual suspects will scream and that’s why they have left themselves an out with the big ones.
The more CC, the more it stays the same.