In his book Out of the West: A Historical Perspective of the Western Division of NSW, former Western Lands Commissioner, Dick Condon, says there were 34 severe dust storms at Wagga Wagga during the period 1944-45, many so bad that it would have been necessary to turn the lights on in order to see inside the average sized house.  

Mr Condon suggests the dust storms during the 1982-83 drought were not as bad as those during the period 1885 to 1945 because of the much improved conditions of the landscape in the semi-arid and arid grazing country in western New South Wales.

In contrast, it is generally agreed that bushfires are getting worse.  

In Inferno, The Day Victoria Burned, journalist, Roger Franklin, explains that the bushfires of February 2009, while not without precedent, were worst than earlier fires.   For example, Black Friday, 1939, according to Mr Franklin, consumed twice as much countryside, but less than half as many lives.   He goes on to suggest that for all the theorizing and inquiring, we are losing ground when it comes to managing fire and that unless the “winds change in the corridors of power” next time will be worse.  Much worse. 

It seems that we are getting better at managing drought and worst at managing fire. 

Landholders certainly learnt the lessons of over-clearing and overgrazing, which left a lot of country bare in the early days of settlement, contributing to intense dust storms. 

A lot has changed since 1945: adoption of minimum tillage, wind breaks and, of course, the success of government-sponsored programs to control rabbits.  
But when it comes to implementing management practices to reduce the impact of wildfires, well, the efforts of landholders are generally not supported by government policy.  

Indeed, while Landcare and other government-sponsored environmental initiatives encourage planting of windbreaks, they prohibit bulldozing of firebreaks. 
It seems governments have a myopia of sorts when it comes to land management; an inability to see the bigger picture.  

While trees are an important part of many landscapes, there are times and places when many should be sacrificed for the protection of lives and property from fire.    

Indeed, if we are to reduce the intensity of wildfires there are lessons to be learnt by government from success in reducing the intensity of dust storms and it is simple: empower landholders.  

In particular, give farmers and foresters incentives to improve land management, including not only the right to plant trees, but also to cut them down.

****************

‘Inferno: The Day Victoria Burned’ was available from bookstores nationally on October 1, and is $39.95 hardback.

This note was first published as a column in The Land newspaper on Thursday October 1.

Many in Samoa claim the warning system in place failed because an alert was only received after the tsunami hit.  The official line has been that when the earthquake is close to land, the technology is such that there is simply not time for adequate warnings.  

Brisbane-based engineer, now publisher, John McRobert, disputes this assessment claiming major earthquakes have precursor seismic shocks hundreds of kilometres below the Earth’s surface, and the transmigration of the energy, and the path to the surface can be accurately predicted:

“IN the early 1960s, a visionary Chief Engineer of the Queensland Co-ordinator General’s Department, John Kindler, called all of his engineering staff to a meeting (there were about 40 of us). He gave a dissertation about how development close to the frontal dunes at the Gold Coast was of concern, and of the (even then) huge economic risk of major storm assault on the coastline. He asked for two volunteers to spend a few years at the Dutch Delft Hydraulic Laboratories, the world’s leaders in handling storm erosion. Two volunteers stepped forward and from that the Beach Protection Authority was established to perform some excellent work in protecting our coastline from storm damage. The group was eventually absorbed into the Harbours and Marine Department.

In those days, Australia was considered to be a stable geologic platform with no volcanic activity, very few local earthquakes, and the word ‘tsunami’ wasn’t even in the lexicon.

The action was around the ‘Ring of fire’ in the Pacific, and in 1962, the failure of earth scientists to warn inhabitants of the New Hebrides and the Solomon Islands of a damaging volcanic eruption demanded action, and this resulted in a remarkable collaboration between Dr Claude Blot, a French volcanologist, and John Grover, an Australian earth scientist, who found and proved answers to long lead-time, accurate, early warning of volcanic eruptions and great earthquakes. They showed that these major events had precursor seismic shocks hundreds of kilometres below the Earth’s surface, and the transmigration of the energy, and the path to the surface could be accurately predicted. Some of the most dramatic examples of this is told in John Grover’s book, Volcanic Eruptions and Great Earthquakes (here I have to declare that this book was published by my company).

The Grover/Blot team was broken up for political reasons – it was deemed more politically acceptable to let the events happen without warning, than to make a prediction which could be wrong and which could therefore create unnecessary panic.

John Grover died a few years ago, but his work is being continued by a seismologist based in Canberra, Dr Dong Choi. After the Sumatran tsunami, I asked Dr Choi if it could have been predicted. The answer sent prickles up the back of the neck when he said ‘The data fits’.

But mainstream academia refused to review the John Grover book, and here we have seen another fast and furious catastrophe in the Samoan region. It had no warning. How would the Gold Coast cope?

We are spending billions chasing a will’o'the’wisp gas called carbon dioxide which is essential to life on Earth, and which is driven by climate, not by puny man-made emissions, and ignoring real research as to how to predict and manage natural cataclysm.

Where are our priorities?

John McRobert
Brisbane, Australia “

In response to recent suggestions by Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre that the official reconstructions may have been fudged, Keith Briffa, from the Climate Research Unit associated with the UK Met. Office, has responded explaining that there was no cherry picking of data in the development of the reconstructions used by the IPCC and others, rather, the methodology is not yet robust.  

Given this admission from a leading UK climate scientist, it would perhaps be appropriate for the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri,  to now advise world leaders that there are potential problems with the methodology used in the development of key assumptions underpining the consensus view on anthropogenic global warming and that until further notice, the big meeting in Copenhagen should be postponed.

Following is Professor Briffa’s response:   

“MY attention has been drawn to a comment by Steve McIntyre on the Climate Audit website relating to the pattern of radial tree growth displayed in the ring-width chronology “Yamal” that I first published in Briffa (2000). The substantive implication of McIntyre’s comment (made explicitly in subsequent postings by others) is that the recent data that make up this chronology (i.e. the ring-width measurements from living trees) were purposely selected by me from among a larger available data set, specifically because they exhibited recent growth increases.

“This is not the case. The Yamal tree-ring chronology (see also Briffa and Osborn 2002, Briffa et al. 2008) was based on the application of a tree-ring processing method applied to the same set of composite sub-fossil and living-tree ring-width measurements provided to me by Rashit Hantemirov and Stepan Shiyatov which forms the basis of a chronology they published (Hantemirov and Shiyatov 2002). In their work they traditionally applied a data processing method (corridor standardisation) that does not preserve evidence of long timescale growth changes. My application of the Regional Curve Standardisation method to these same data was intended to better represent the multi-decadal to centennial growth variations necessary to infer the longer-term variability in average summer temperatures in the Yamal region: to provide a direct comparison with the chronology produced by Hantemirov and Shiyatov.

“These authors state that their data (derived mainly from measurements of relic wood dating back over more than 2,000 years) included 17 ring-width series derived from living trees that were between 200-400 years old. These recent data included measurements from at least 3 different locations in the Yamal region. In his piece, McIntyre replaces a number (12) of these original measurement series with more data (34 series) from a single location (not one of the above) within the Yamal region, at which the trees apparently do not show the same overall growth increase registered in our data.

“The basis for McIntyre’s selection of which of our (i.e. Hantemirov and Shiyatov’s) data to exclude and which to use in replacement is not clear but his version of the chronology shows lower relative growth in recent decades than is displayed in my original chronology. He offers no justification for excluding the original data; and in one version of the chronology where he retains them, he appears to give them inappropriate low weights. I note that McIntyre qualifies the presentation of his version(s) of the chronology by reference to a number of valid points that require further investigation. Subsequent postings appear to pay no heed to these caveats. Whether the McIntyre version is any more robust a representation of regional tree growth in Yamal than my original, remains to be established.

“My colleagues and I are working to develop methods that are capable of expressing robust evidence of climate changes using tree-ring data. We do not select tree-core samples based on comparison with climate data. Chronologies are constructed independently and are subsequently compared with climate data to measure the association and quantify the reliability of using the tree-ring data as a proxy for temperature variations.

“We have not yet had a chance to explore the details of McIntyre’s analysis or its implication for temperature reconstruction at Yamal but we have done considerably more analyses exploring chronology production and temperature calibration that have relevance to this issue but they are not yet published. I do not believe that McIntyre’s preliminary post provides sufficient evidence to doubt the reality of unusually high summer temperatures in the last decades of the 20th century.

“We will expand on this initial comment on the McIntyre posting when we have had a chance to review the details of his work.

K.R. Briffa
30 September 2009

Briffa, K. R. 2000. Annual climate variability in the Holocene: interpreting the message of ancient trees. Quaternary Science Reviews 19:87-105.
Briffa, K. R., and T. J. Osborn. 2002. Paleoclimate – Blowing hot and cold. Science 295:2227-2228.
Briffa, K. R., V. V. Shishov, T. M. Melvin, E. A. Vaganov, H. Grudd, R. M. Hantemirov, M. Eronen, and M. M. Naurzbaev. 2008. Trends in recent temperature and radial tree growth spanning 2000 years across northwest Eurasia. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 363:2271-2284.
Hantemirov, R. M., and S. G. Shiyatov. 2002. A continuous multimillennial ring-width chronology in Yamal, northwestern Siberia. Holocene 12:717-726.”

**************************************

Notes and Links

from http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2000/   [Thanks to Nick Stokes for the link.]

Yamal: A “Divergence” Problem, by Steve McIntyre, 27 September 2009
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7168

Also http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/09/leading-uk-climate-scientists-must-explain-or-resign/

Photograph of Professor Briffa from http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/photo/keith2007b.jpg

Mr McIntyre’s analysis of the data – which he had been asking for since 2003 – suggests that scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the Hadley Centre associated with the UK Met. Office  have been using only a small subset of the available data to make their claims that recent years have been the hottest of the last millennium.   When the entire data set is used, Mr McIntyre claims that the hockey stick shape disappears completely. [1]    

Mr McIntyre has previously showed problems with the mathematics behind the ‘hockey stick’.   But scientists at the Climate Research Centre (CRU), in particular Dr Briffa, have continuously republished claiming the upswing in temperatures over the last 100 years is real and not an artifact of the methodology used – as claimed by Mr McIntyre.     However, these same scientists have denied Mr McIntyre access to all the data.    Recently they were forced to make more data available to Mr McIntyre after they published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society  -  a journal which unlike Nature and Science has strict policies on data archiving which it enforces.  
 
This week’s claims by Steve McInyre that scientists associated with the UK Met. Office have been less than diligent  are serious and suggest some of the most defended building blocks of the case for anthropogenic global warming are based on the indefensible when the methodology is laid bare.    

This sorry saga also raises issues  associated with how data is archived at the UK Met. Office with incomplete data sets that spuriously support the case for global warming being promoted while complete data sets are kept hidden from the public –  including from scientific sceptics like Steve McIntyre. 
 
It is indeed time leading scientists at the Climate Research Centre associated with the UK Met. Office explain how Mr McIntyre is in error or resign.

***********

Notes and Links

[1] Yamal: A “Divergence” Problem, by Steve McIntyre, 27 September 2009
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7168

The above chart shows the difference when the entire data set (black line) as opposed to a subset (red line) is used to reconstruct temperature.   The chart is accompanied by the following comment from Mr McIntyre:  “The next graphic compares the RCS chronologies from the two slightly different data sets: red – the RCS chronology calculated from the CRU archive (with the 12 picked cores); black – the RCS chronology calculated using the Schweingruber Yamal sample of living trees instead of the 12 picked trees used in the CRU archive [leaving the rest of the data set unchanged i.e. all the subfossil data prior to the 19th century]. The difference is breathtaking.”

Mann, Michael E.; Bradley, Raymond S.; Hughes, Malcolm K. (1998), “Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries” (PDF), Nature 392: 779–787, doi:10.1038/33859, http://www.caenvirothon.com/Resources/Mann,%20et%20al.%20Global%20scale%20temp%20patterns.pdf  

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy#cite_note-17

CRU Refuses Data Once Again
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6623 

http://climateresearchnews.com/2009/09/the-hockey-stick-is-dead/

http://www.thegwpf.org/news/137-lord-lawson-calls-for-public-inquiry-into-uea-global-warming-data-manipulation.html

Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute puts it this way, “The melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan Plateau will deprive the Indus, Ganges, Yangtze and Yellow rivers of the ice melt that sustains their flow during the dry season and the irrigation systems that depend on them.”

But according to Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, it’s a case of cognitive dissonance.  He explains:

“In other words the supply of melt water from the melting glaciers is threatened by the melting of the glaciers. This is correct in that if the glaciers melt completely there will be no more melt water from the glaciers.

“What if the glaciers were not melting due to a colder climate? Then where would the irrigation water come from? How about if the glaciers were advancing 100 meters per year toward the villages that need the melt water for irrigation?  

“How does the logic of this situation escape these bright minds?

“It snows every winter in the Himalayas. When the snow melts it fills the rivers. Where there is net melting of the glaciers this adds additional water to the rivers.

“But they can’t have it both ways. If they want to have continued melt water from the glaciers then the glaciers must continue to melt.

“Seeing that the glaciers are finite in size this would eventually result in no glacier, and reliance on annual snow melt.”

*****************

Notes and Links

Read more from Patrick Moore, Greenspirit Strategies Ltd., at www.greenspirit.com

The UNEP report is ‘2009 Climate Change Science Compendium 2009’ which can be downloaded at http://en.cop15.dk/files/pdf/compendium2009.pdf [4MB] .

The report is summarized in the newsletter at http://en.cop15.dk/news/view+news?newsid=2193

Read Lester Brown at http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/plan_b_updates/2009/update82

The image of Bhutan glaciers melting is from http://pnb.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Glacial_lakes,_Bhutan.jpg  . Thanks Wikipedia.

And more on glacial lakes here: http://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/en/imgdata/topics/2008/tp080402.html

And so much more on melting glaciers at google:

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Himalayan glaciers ‘melting fast’
14 Mar 2005 … Melting Himalayan glaciers could lead to catastrophic water shortages, a conservation group warns.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4346211.stm  

Himalayan Glacier – Glaciers of Himalayas – Himalayas Famous Glaciers
It is the second largest glacier in the Himalayan region. Shigar River, which is a tributary of the Indus River, originates from this glacier. …
www.himalaya2000.com/himalayan…/himalayan-glaciers.html

Himalayan Glacier Melting Observed From Space
The Himalayan glaciers are melting under the effect of global warming. However, the extent of this melting remains difficult to assess from ground surveys …
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070327113346.htm

Himalaya Glaciers,Glacier in Himalayan Range,Glaciers in …
Glaciers in Himalaya – Provide information on various glaciers in uttaranchal region of india himalayan range, glacier in himalaya, himalayan glaciers and …
www.travel-himalayas.com/himalayan…/uttaranchal-glaciers.html

Himalayan Glaciers Seem to Be Growing: Discovery News
5 May 2009 … In the Western Himalayas, a group of some 230 glaciers are bucking the global warming trend. They’re growing.
dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/05/05/himalayas-glaciers.htm

“Dr Andy Derocher, the outgoing chairman of the PSBG and Professor at the University of  Alberta, wrote to inform Taylor that he was not welcome at the 2009 meeting of the PBSG.

“Keep in mind as you read his comments (below) that Taylor had arranged funding to attend the meeting in Copenhagen, and has been at every meeting of this group since 1981. With 30 years of experience in polar bear research, it goes without saying that he has something to contribute to any discussion about polar bear conservation. This is the original email from Derocher to Taylor explaining why he was not invited:   

Hi Mitch,

The world is a political place and for polar bears, more so now than ever before. I have no problem with dissenting views as long as they are supportable by logic, scientific reasoning, and the literature.  

I do believe, as do many Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) members, that for the sake of polar bear conservation, views that run counter to human induced climate change are extremely unhelpful. In this vein, your positions and statements in the Manhattan Declaration, the Frontier Institute, and the Science and Public Policy Institute are inconsistent with positions taken by the PBSG.

I too was not surprised by the members not endorsing an invitation.

Nothing I heard had to do with your science on harvesting or your research on polar bears – it was the positions you’ve taken on global warming that brought opposition.

Time will tell who is correct but the scientific literature is not on the side of those arguing against human induced climate change.
I look forward to having someone else chair the PBSG.

Best regards,
Andy (Derocher) …

Keep reading here:  http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/exile_for_non-believers.html
Pdf here:  http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/Nova-Exile_for_non_believers.pdf

‘Exile for Non-Believers’, by Joanne Nova, published by the Science and Public Policy Institute, September 2009 

Photo Credit: Susanne Miller, United States Fish and Wildlife Service   http://www.fws.gov/home/feature/2008/polarbear012308/polarbearphotos.html

These are the conclusions from Willis Eschenbach who lives in Honiara, Solomon Islands.  He explains why:

“Much has been written of late regarding the impending demise of the world’s coral atolls due to sea level rise. Recently, here in the Solomon Islands, the sea level rise has been blamed for salt water intrusion into the subsurface “lens” of fresh water under some atolls. Beneath the surface of most atolls, there is a lens shaped body of fresh water which floats on the seawater underneath. The claim is that the rising sea levels are contaminating the fresh-water lens with seawater.

These claims of blame ignore several facts. The first and most important fact, discovered by none other than Charles Darwin, is that coral atolls essentially “float” on the surface of the sea. When the sea rises, the atoll rises with it, and when the sea falls, they fall as well. Atolls exist in a delicate balance between new sand and coral rubble being added from the reef, and sand and rubble being eroded by wind and wave back into the sea.

When the sea falls, more sand tumbles from the high part, and more of the atoll is exposed to wind erosion. The atoll falls along with the sea level. When the sea level rises, wind erosion decreases. The coral grows up along with the sea level rise. The flow of sand and rubble onto the atoll continues, and the atoll rises. Since atolls go up and down with the sea level, the idea that they will be buried by sea level rises is totally unfounded. They have gone through sea level rises much larger and much faster than the current one.

Given that established scientific fact, why is there water incursion into the fresh water lenses? Several factors affect this. First and foremost, the fresh water lens is a limited supply. As island populations increase, more and more water is drawn from the lens. The inevitable end of this is the intrusion of sea water into the lens. This affects both wells and plants, which both draw from the same lens. It also leads to unfounded claims that sea level rise is to blame. It is not. Seawater is coming in because fresh water is going out.

The second reason for salt water intrusion into the lens is a reduction in the amount of sand and rubble coming onto the atoll from the reef. When the balance between sand added and sand lost is disturbed, the atoll shrinks. This has two main causes — coral mining and killing the wrong fish. The use of coral for construction in many atolls is quite common. At times this is done in a way that damages the reef as well as taking the coral. This is the visible part of the loss of reef, the part we can see.

What goes unremarked is the loss of the reef sand, which is essential for the continued existence of the atoll. The cause for the loss of sand is the indiscriminate, wholesale killing of parrotfish and other reef-grazing fish. A single parrotfish, for example, creates about half a tonne of coral sand per year. Parrotfish and other beaked reef fish create the sand by grinding up the reef with their massive jaws, digesting the food, and excreting the ground coral.

In addition to making all that fine white sand that makes up the lovely island beaches, beaked grazing fish also increase overall coral health, growth, and production. This happens in the same way that pruning makes a tree send up lots of new shoots, and in the same way that lions keep a herd of zebras healthy and productive. The constant grazing by the beaked fish keeps the corals in full production mode.

Unfortunately, these fish sleep at night, and are easily wiped out by night divers. Their populations have plummeted in many areas in recent years. Result? Much less sand.

The third reason for salt water intrusion into the lens is the tidal cycle. We are currently in the high part of the 18 year tidal cycle. The maximum high tide in Honiara in 2008 was about 10 cm higher than the maximum tide in 1996, and the highs will now decrease until about 2014. People often mistake an unusually high tide for a rise in sea level, which it is not. There has been no increase in the recorded rate of sea level rise. In fact, the global sea level rise has flattened out in the last couple years.

What can be done to turn the situation around for the atolls? There are a number of essential practical steps that atoll residents can take to preserve and build up your atoll, and protect the fresh water lens:

1. Stop having so many kids. An atoll has a limited supply of water. It cannot support an unlimited population. Enough said.

2. Catch every drop that falls. On the ground, build small dams in any watercourses to encourage the water to soak in to the lens rather than run off to the ocean. Put water tanks under every roof. Dig “recharge wells”, which return filtered surface water to the lens in times of heavy rain. Catch the water off of the runways. In Majuro, they have put gutters on both sides of the airplane runway to catch all of the rainwater falling on the runway. It is collected and pumped into tanks. On other atolls, they let the rainwater just run off of the airstrip back into the ocean …

3. Conserve, conserve, conserve. Use seawater in place of fresh whenever possible. Use as little water as you can.

4. Make the killing of parrotfish and other beaked reef grazing fish tabu. Stop fishing them entirely. Make them protected species. The parrotfish should be the national bird of every atoll nation. I’m serious. If you call it the national bird, tourists will ask why a fish is the national bird, and you can explain to them how the parrotfish is the source of the beautiful beaches they are walking on, so they shouldn’t spear beaked reef fish or eat them. Stop killing the fish that make the very ground under your feet. The parrotfish and the other beaked reef-grazing fish are constantly building up your atoll. Every year they are providing tonnes and tonnes of fine white sand to keep your atoll afloat in turbulent times. You should be honoring and protecting them, not killing them. This is the single most important thing you can do.

5. Be very cautious regarding the use of coral as a building material. An atoll is not solid ground. It is is not a constant “thing” in the way a rock island is a thing. An atoll is an eddy, an ever-changing body constantly replenished by a (hopefully) unending river of coral sand and rubble. It is a process, wherein on one side healthy reef plus beaked coral-grazing fish plus storms provide a continuous stream of coral sand and rubble. This sand and rubble are constantly being added to the atoll, making it larger. At the same time, coral sand and rubble are constantly being eaten away, and blown away, and eroded away from the atoll. The shape of the atoll changes from season to season and from year to year. It builds up on this corner, and the sea washes away that corner.

And of course, if anything upsets that balance of sand added and sand lost, if the supply of coral sand and rubble per year starts dropping (say from reef damage or coral mining or killing parrotfish) or if the total sand and rubble loss goes up (say by heavy rains or strong winds or a change in currents) the atoll will be affected.

So if coral is necessary for building, take it sparingly, in spots. Take dead or dying coral in preference to live coral. Mine the deeps and not the shallows. Use hand tools. Leave enough healthy reef around to reseed the area with new coral. A healthy reef is the factory that annually produces the tonnes and tonnes of building material that is absolutely necessary to keep your atoll afloat. You mess with it at your peril.

6. Reduce sand loss from the atoll in as many ways as possible. This can be done with plants to stop wind erosion. Don’t introduce plants for the purpose. Encourage and transplant the plants that already grow locally. Reducing water erosion also occurs with the small dams mentioned above, which will trap sand eroded by rainfall. Don’t overlook human erosion. Every step a person takes on an atoll pushes sand downhill, closer to returning to the sea. Lay leaf mats where this is evident, wherever the path is wearing away. People wear a path, and soon it is lower than the surrounding ground. When it rains, it becomes a small watercourse. Invisibly, the water washes your precious sand into the ocean. Invisibly, the wind blows the ground out from under your feet. Protect your island. Stop it from being washed and blown away.

7. Monitor and build up the health of the reef. You and you alone are responsible for the well-being of the amazing underwater fish-tended coral factory that year after year keeps your atoll from disappearing. Coral reseeding programs done by schools have been very successful. Get the kids involved in watching the reef. Educate the people that they are the guardians of the reef. Talk to the fishermen.

8. Expand the atoll. Modern coastal engineering has shown that it is quite possible to “grow” an atoll. The key is to slow down the water as it passes by. The slower the water, the more sand builds up. Slowing the water is accomplished by building low underwater walls perpendicular to the beach. These run out until the ends are a few metres underwater. Normally this is done with a geotextile fabric tubes which are pumped full of concrete. In the atolls the similar effect can be obtained with “gabbions”, wire cages filled with blocks of dead coral. Wire all of the wire cages securely together in a triangular shape, stake them down with rebar, wait for the sand to fill in. It might be possible to do it with old tires, fastened together, with chunks of coral piled on top of them. It will likely take a few years to fill in. Here’s a before and after picture of the system in use on a beach (not an atoll), taken three years apart. Note the low height and triangular shape of the wall extending out from the beach and continuing underwater (made of 3 concrete-filled geotextile fabric tubes). This  triangular shape does not attempt to stop the water currents. It just slows them down and directs them toward the beach to deposit their load of sand. Eventually, the entire area fills in with sand.

Of course to do that, you absolutely have to have a constant source of sand … like for example a healthy reef … with lots of parrotfish. That’s why I said above that the single most important thing is to protect the fish and the reef. If you have beaked fish and a healthy reef, you’ll have plenty of sand and rubble forever. If you don’t, you’re in trouble.

Coral atolls have proven over thousands of years that, if left alone, they can go up and down with any sea level rise. And if we follow some simple conservation practices, they can continue to do so and to support atoll residents. But they cannot survive an unlimited population increase, or unrestricted fishing, or overpumping the water lens, or unrestrained coral mining.

Willis Eschenbach
Honiara, Solomon Islands

*******************************

Further Reading:

On sea level rise in Honiara: Pacific Country Report Sea Level & Climate: Their Present State Solomon Islands June 2006, http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO60031/IDO60031.2006.pdf

On global sea level rise levelling off: University of Colorado at Boulder Sea Level Change,  http://sealevel.colorado.edu

On Darwin’s discovery: Darwin, C., The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882, 1887

“No other work of mine was begun in so deductive a spirit as this; for the whole theory was thought out on the west coast of S. America before I had seen a true coral reef. I had therefore only to verify and extend my views by a careful examination of living reefs. But it should be observed that I had during the two previous years been incessantly attending to the effects on the shores of S. America of the intermittent elevation of the land, together with the denudation and deposition of sediment. This necessarily led me to reflect much on the effects of subsidence, and it was easy to replace in imagination the continued deposition of sediment by the upward growth of coral. To do this was to form my theory of the formation of barrier-reefs and atolls.” (Darwin, 1887, p. 98, 99)

On the results of coral mining and changing the reef: Xue, C. (1996) Coastal Erosion And Management Of Amatuku Island, Funafuti Atoll, Tuvalu, 1996, South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC), http://conf.sopac.org/virlib/TR/TR0234.pdf

On the same topic: Xue, C., Malologa, F. (1995) Coastal sedimentation and coastal management of Fongafale, Funafuti, Tuvalu, SOPAC Technical Report 221

On parrotfish creating sand: http://www.seacortez.com/fish/scaridae.html

On the cause of erosion in Tuvalu: Tuvalu Not Experiencing Increased Sea Level Rise, Willis Eschenbach, Energy & Environment, Volume 15, Number 3, 1 July 2004 , pp. 527-543

On expanding island beaches: Holmberg Technologies, http://www.erosion.com/

On the dangers of overpopulation: Just look around you …

Photograph via Walter Starck.

“Since the IPCC’s task is to prove any global warming is due to human CO2 emissions, they decided to proclaim that carbon dioxide was long-lived in the atmosphere – a fabricated assumption.

“They did this despite the overwhelming majority of peer-reviewed studies (and corroborating empirical measurements) finding that CO2 in the atmosphere remained there a short time. Literally, a fabricated assumption, driven by political agenda, became a cornerstone of fraudulent climate model science. As a result, billions spent on climate models that are unable to predict climate with any accuracy…

Via  http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a5e507c9970c-pi

and via Alan.

From ‘The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud**And those who are too fearful to do so’ by Lawrence Solomon
http://www.amazon.com/Deniers-Renowned-Scientists-Political-Persecution/dp/0980076315

This is circular logic and the output of a computer cannot be used to prove the validity of its programming inputs.

The only way an empirical formula can be validated is by experimental results or by strict mathematical proof based on accepted scientific laws.

Not one of the predictions made by some 29 computer programs in the past 10 to 15 years even remotely resembles the climate of the past 10 years.  

The IPCC assessment reports do not contain any mathematical analysis based on the laws of physics to support their formulae or hypothesis.   We are reduced to statistical correlation between the CO2 content of the atmosphere and the average global temperature. 

Yet consider the number of factors that can affect the global temperature:
1. The suns radiation entering the top of atmosphere (TOA)
2. Infrared radiation leaving the TOA.
3. Cloud cover which has 3 different components – high, mid and low level cloud.  These three components have a distinctly different effect on the incoming and outgoing infrared and visible light energies.
4. Ocean surface temperature.
5. Volcanic ash suspension in the atmosphere.
6. Smoke from forest fires, human emissions and fly ash.
7. Carbon dioxide content.
8. Water vapour content.
9. Other trace gasses with resonant frequencies in the IR spectrum.
10. Cosmic radiation that influences low level cloud formation and stratospheric trace gases.

Listed above are 13 variables and this is not a complete list.  But it does demonstrate that the average global temperature is a result of many different factors some of which vary significantly in a short period of time (weeks) some in a medium period of time (years) and some long term (decades). In addition many of these factors are interrelated.

In order to separate any one of the factors statistically and determine its effect one must be able to quantify all the others.  Of course we are not even close to being able to do this, so to determine the effect of CO2 is mathematically impossible by statistical analysis.

In fact we only have data on some of the above variables since the weather satellites started to orbit the earth in 1979 and sea temperatures have only been accurately monitored worldwide since the Argo buoy programme became fully operational in 2003. 

According to the satellite data, since 1979 there has been no significant increase in global temperature.  We have had 20 years of increasing temperature and 10 years of decreasing temperature, while the CO2 content has shown a uniform increase.  Hence there is no correlation.  If there was, I would ask the question: “Is the CO2 causing a temperature change or is the temperature change causing a CO2 change?”

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Barry Moore lives in Calgary. 

Originally from the UK, Mr Moore graduated in London in 1960 with an honours degree in mechanical engineering before working for 13 years in nuclear research in eastern Canada. In 1981 he moved west to Calgary and joined the oil industry becoming an instrumentation and controls specialist.   

Mr Moore became interested in the Kyoto Accord about 12 years ago – just wanting to find out the truth.  In the process he has read thousands of technical papers and articles covering the full range of technologies, political and economic aspects of this very diverse and complex subject.

Read more from Mr Moore here: http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/author/barry-moore/

[If you would like to tell us why you are an AGW Sceptic email me at jennifermarohasy at jennifermarohasy.com ]

1.  The AGW movement claims there has been a global temperature rise of 0.5C over the last 60 years and that this is due to increasing CO2.  Both AGW proponents and sceptics accept that the relationship between energy retained and CO2 concentration is logarithmic (a constant increase in retained energy for each doubling of CO2).  The AGW movement data also shows that since 1900 CO2 has risen by very close to half a doubling  over this 60 year period.

IPCC have claimed in their 4th assessment report (summary for policy makers), that the most likely temperature rise by 2070, when CO2 will have risen by a further half doubling to twice the level in 1900, is a further 3C rise  (page 12).  Why would the first half doubling give 0.5C rise while the second half doubling gives 3C or 6 times as much rise?

2.  One claim I have heard is that it takes the climate a long time to respond to the change in CO2 concentration and we have not yet seen the entire rise from the first half doubling.  The same IPCC 4th assessment report (page 12, 13 and 14) indicates that if CO2 were stabilised at the current level, the temperature would rise by a further 0.2C over 2 decades stabilising at 0.7C above the 1900 level. 

If the current temperature rise is not yet at the equilibrium level then for the business as usual scenario the temperature rise by 2070 will also not be at the equilibrium level.  Yet the IPCC data suggests the equilibrium rise from the first half doubling is not even one quarter of the less than equilibrium rise from the second half doubling.  To me this is illogical.

3.   IPCC claim an increase in retained energy of around 3.7 watts/sqM for each doubling of CO2 (1.66 watts/sqM for the current rise page 4).  They admit this is much too small to result in a 3+ degree temperature rise.  The large temperature rise is based on claims of very large net positive feedback in the climate system.  

Yet, every natural stable system I can think of exhibits net negative feedback.   Indeed the terms stability and negative feedback are synonymous since negative feedback is what causes stability.  By contrast, positive feedback causes instability (such as tipping points where a large change in output occurs for a small change in input).   Stability does not mean zero change, it means the response to changes in input are small enough and sufficiently controlled so as to not cause system destruction or runaway.  If you want to argue that the climate system is not stable then I would why it has remained conducive to continued life on this planet for billions of years.  This is despite all the change in CO2 levels, volcanic eruptions, changes in solar output and orbital changes over the millennia.  To me, that is a very good definition of climate stability.

4.  The AGW modellers claim cloud feedback is positive.   AGW advocates seem to divide clouds into two categories, low clouds and high clouds.  Every report I have read acknowledges that low clouds cause cooling.  With regard to high clouds there is some dispute but the AGW modellers claim they cause warming.  Further they claim a warming planet results in a bias away from low clouds and towards high clouds thus exacerbating  warming, hence contributing to positive feedback.

At the same time they claim constant relative humidity in their models.  This means that as the temperature rises, more water must be evaporating.  Now unless we want to predict that the amount of water in the atmosphere is going to continuously rise until the oceans are suspended over our heads, more evaporation must imply more precipitation ie: more rain.  However, rain only comes from low clouds not high clouds, so more rain means more low cloud mass not less low cloud mass.  This contradicts the previous position.  If the claim is that both increase, then that means significantly more cloud mass in total.  Clouds are the biggest contributor to Earth’s albedo (the fraction of incoming solar energy reflected back out to space).  Rising total cloudiness means increasing albedo and the albedo is very strongly cooling.  The albedo already causes 100 watts/sqM to be reflected away from Earth.  To cancel out the entire impact claimed by IPCC for doubling CO2 only requires an increase in cloudiness from 60% to 62.4%.

An increase in temperature, leading to more evaporation, in turn leading to more cloudiness which reduces the solar input to Earth thus reducing temperatures is a description of negative feedback not positive feedback.

5.  The claimed “proof” of positive feedback is a model prediction of a hot spot in the tropics at mid troposphere levels.  However all the experimental evidence from many, many measurements has failed to find any evidence of such a hot spot.  In science, a clear prediction that is falsified experimentally means the underlying hypothesis on which the prediction is based is wrong.

6.  The reports documenting man’s CO2 emission use some scarily large numbers but these have to be viewed in the light of the overall system size.  For example, a million dollars is an extremely large amount of money for a private individual but it is almost petty cash for a government.  If we want to put the numbers into perspective we need to relate them to the size of the system.  Why not express CO2 quantities in terms of how many PPM 1 year’s emissions will raise or lower the atmospheric CO2 level (if all of it stayed in the atmosphere).  We could call that PPM equivalents.

In those terms, human emissions amount to about 2.7 PPM equivalents.  Now NASA have published a diagram showing annual CO2 transfers for the planet.  This shows terrestrial plants absorbing about 61 PPM equivalents.  We know that both rising CO2 and rising temperature favour faster plant growth.  That’s why horticulturalists artificially raise CO2 levels in glass houses to about 1000 PPM.  It is also why plants grow faster in the tropics than in cooler locations on earth.  More to the point, a recent study showed average plant growth has accelerated by about 6% over the last 30 years.  A 6% increase in plant growth means a 6% increase in absorbed CO2, from 61PPM equivalents to 64.7 PPM equivalents.  This means that human emissions have increased by 2.7 PPM equivalents but plants have increased their absorption by an extra 3.7 PPM equivalents over the same period.  The increased plant growth is consuming more than 100% of human emissions.  Is there another (natural) factor contributing to CO2 increases?

This response, more CO2 leading to faster plant growth which in turn consumes more CO2 is another example of the widespread bias towards negative feedback I alluded to earlier.   Apart from which, is increased plant growth and thus agricultural productivity bad?  I would have thought it was highly desirable.
 
7.  The AGW hypothesis is based on temperature rises between about 1975 and 1998 or about 25 years worth of data.  This is claimed to be definitive yet the last 10 years worth of data shows falling global temperatures.  This is claimed to be a short term aberration and of no consequence.  I do not see how 25 years can be considered definitive beyond dispute while 10 years of data is a short term aberration, too short to be significant.  I would have thought at least a 10:1 ratio would be necessary to make such a claim.

8.  If I adopt this 10:1 ratio by looking at the last 100 years worth of data I find 1910-1940 temperatures rising while CO2 was not.  1940 to 1975 temperatures falling while CO2 rising, 1975 to 1998 temperatures rising while CO2 rising and 1998 to 2009 temperatures falling while CO2 rising.   Three quarters of the period shows no correlation or negative correlation with CO2 and only one quarter shows positive correlation.  I do not understand how one can claim a hypothesis proven when ¾ of the data set disagrees with it.  To me it is the clearest proof that the hypothesis is wrong.

9.  For the last 10 years the global temperature data shows either no atmospheric temperature rise or indeed a falling global temperature.  Recently this has been claimed to be due to a combination of a quiet sun and changes in ocean circulation superimposed on the underlying warming trend.  The further claim is that when these effects reverse, warming will start again with a vengeance. 

If these natural processes can cancel out the impact of AGW then they are as powerful as AGW.  If they can overwhelm the impact of AGW to cause cooling they are more powerful, yet IPCC and other AGW proponents have claimed in previous assessment reports that solar influences are only a minor contributor compared to CO2. 

The  sun was unusually active during the latter half of the 20th century in contrast to its current inactivity and the ocean circulation was the opposite of what is now happening.  Thus the natural effects claimed to be causing cooling now would have been causing warming in the late 20th century.  If these natural effects are as large as the AGW impact then they would have caused half the observed 20th century warming.  If the natural effects now outweigh the AGW impact to cause cooling then they would have been responsible for more than half the observed 20th century warming.

This is not only in contradiction of the earlier IPCC claims, it also means that the actual impact of CO2 increases since 1900 is much less than the claimed 0.5C.  At most 0.25C and possibly much less even than that.

If in fact the temperature returns to the long term average over the next few years (as seems to be increasingly likely), it suggests that these natural processes were responsible for essentially all the observed temperature changes over the 20th century with negligible impact from CO2 changes.

10.  I have looked at the raw temperature record for the USA (USHCN data) and the Bureau of Meteorology data for Victoria, Australia.  Both show fluctuations of temperature with time but zero underlying trend for the last century.  By contrast, the official IPCC endorsed data shows a strong underlying upwards trend.  When I investigate why the difference, I find that the raw data has been adjusted for several supposed factors and every one of these adjustments created a warming trend.  This implies that the claimed warming trend is due to the adjustments, not the raw data.  In any less controversial scientific issue, such a result would be viewed with the greatest possible scepticism and would be extremely unlikely to be accepted.

When I examine the raw temperature data record for cities compared with nearby suburban or rural areas, I  find an extremely high signature of urban heat island effect.  Yet the people doing the temperature adjustments claim that urban heat island effects are negligible and do not require correction.  This is despite the fact that a significant proportion of the measurement stations are in cities. 

Such a clear factor not corrected for while other more subtle claimed factors are corrected casts further doubt on the correction protocol.  If there is an upwards bias in the corrections, it means the claimed warming trend is exaggerated and may in fact not exist at all.

11.  The mainstream media keep reporting that the current situation is increasingly dire and is much worse than even the previous pessimistic projections.  When I examine this statement I find that previous projections predicted rapid atmospheric warming during the last 10 years whereas in fact we have had cooling.  They predicted rapid increase in rate of rise of sea level when in fact the rate of sea level rise has recently declined.  They predicted a very rapid increase in Arctic summer sea ice loss whereas in fact, for the last 2 years, it has been increasing.  They predicted a rapid rise in hurricane incidence and severity when in fact there has been a decline.  To me the media’s many claims are not supportable.  I also consider it to be beyond simple error.  At best it is unpardonable gross carelessness in checking the data they are reporting and at worst it is deliberate bias in reporting.

12.  More recently, in response to the data showing no warming for the last 10 years, I have seen new claims that global land temperatures are now deemed irrelevant.  The newly discovered measure of importance is the rise in ocean temperature, since it is now claimed that this is by far the largest planetary heat sink.  If that claim is true, it makes all the previous data claiming to show strong global warming over the period 1975 to 1998 also irrelevant.  To suggest that from 1975 to 1998, the energy went into warming the land and air and then abruptly in 1998 it stopped doing that and the heat instead went into heating the oceans is, to me, completely absurd.  Nature simply does not work that way.  It is like claiming you put the kettle on, for the first minute the energy goes into heating the water and then abruptly it stops heating the water and starts heating the room instead.

13.  Looking further at the claim of warming ocean temperatures.  Late last century it was realised that the method of measuring ocean temperatures was extremely inaccurate and unreliable.  To overcome that, a sophisticated, global system of buoys was designed and implemented at very considerable cost and effort.  These buoys repeatedly dive down to measure temperatures  and then resurface to report back findings  This network is called the Argo network and it became operational in 2003.  Since becoming operational, it has shown ocean cooling.  Yet the scientists who claim ongoing ocean warming exclude the Argo data and the satellite data instead relying entirely on the earlier poor reliability methods.

The same scientific community which claimed a method was inaccurate and unreliable, designed and implemented  a new high accuracy measurement system, are now rejecting the new high accuracy data in favour of the older data they themselves viewed as unreliable.  How can that be justified?  Why is the data from the older less reliable method correct, while results from the new, high accuracy methodology are wrong?  What does that say about the scientists who designed the Argo system but apparently don’t trust its output?  To me it suggests selecting data to prove a favoured hypothesis, commonly called cherry picking.

Some sites are talking about “correcting” the Argo data.  Why should a carefully thought out, brand new, high accuracy system already require adjustment to its outputs?  Was a mistake made in the design?  Why are the proposed adjustments again in the direction of exacerbating the claimed warming?  When the raw data contradicts the hypothesis yet the “adjustments and corrections” all reverse that result so as to support the championed hypothesis, it’s time to start worrying.

14.  What mankind is doing by consuming fossil fuels is recycling CO2 that used to be in the atmosphere but got trapped in the distant past.  Is there a “correct” level of CO2?  What I have read suggests that the Earth was a more verdant place before the CO2 got locked up in fossil fuels.  Would the Earth be more or less pleasant a place if the carbon currently locked up in fossil fuels were again available to the biosphere.  Not just for humans but for all living things, plants and animals.  Surely we should consider that before we pick some arbitrary recent point in time and declare that the CO2 level at that time is the ideal to be maintained at all costs.

FROM a slightly different but related perspective, I see the AGW story continuously changing.  When one measure no longer trends the wanted way, a change is made to a new measure (change from surface to ocean temperatures and ocean acidity).  In one report, an effect is claimed to be negligible when that suits the hypothesis yet the same measure is later used as a reason to explain away embarrassing trends (Solar influence and ocean currents).  All the observed effects are very moderate (less than 0.5C) if present at all yet hysteria is generated on the basis of hypothesised extreme future outcomes (up to 6C rise and 10 meter sea level rises).  Outcomes far enough in the future so as to be un-testable yet close enough to impact people being born today.  Claims based on abstract models that fail even short term validation tests.   As a practicing scientist, I have seen this scenario more than once before, changing benchmarks and indicative parameters, rewriting predictions and predicted causes after the event, excusing erroneous predictions.  These are clear signs of propping up a false hypothesis.

There does seem to be clear evidence that temperature changed several times over the 20th century both up and down.  There is far less evidence for any underlying upwards trend due to CO2 and many reasons to question the data analysis that tries to demonstrate such a trend.
 
One of the arguments I often hear is “well even if AGW is not absolutely proven we should take action just in case its correct” – the precautionary principle.  I see two reasons to disagree with that. 

Firstly, if rising CO2 should bring about some warming it is by no means certain that this would be catastrophically bad or for that matter whether it would be bad at all.  It seems quite likely to me that the cure would be worse than the disease. 

Secondly, and to me much more importantly, there is another issue we need to consider and that is the law of unintended consequences.  Briefly this states that whenever you take action there will always be consequences you did not consider in advance and did not intend.  Since there are many more ways to be wrong than to be right there is a better than 50:50 chance that these consequences will be bad.  If the original action is based on a false premise it greatly increases the risk of bad unintended consequences.  The precautionary principle is based on the belief that there is no down side to taking action.  The law of unintended consequences tells us that there is always a down side and the cost versus benefit always needs to be carefully evaluated before acting. 

We are already seeing some very bad unintended consequences of the action taken so far over global warming.  The government driven initiative to use less fossil fuel by diluting it with ethanol is causing massive forest clearing the Amazon basin (to grow the ethanol feedstock) and is very significantly raising food prices causing even worse starvation in 3rd world countries.  Terrible as it is, this has not greatly impacted on western society but the next phase most certainly will.

There is another very serious unintended consequence that I would like to raise here; one that concerns me very deeply.  When I listen to the public AGW debate  I hear very high profile politicians and prominent public figures calling for people who openly disagree with AGW to be put on trial for treason.  I hear many cases of people losing their jobs because of voicing sceptical opinions.  I hear prominent global warming advocates refusing to enter into debates or trying to avoid debates by claiming the science is settled, and by claiming we do not have time, we have only weeks to act.  I hear AGW advocates resorting to personal attacks against people who disagree rather than addressing the technical issues they raise. 

I hear AGW proponents claiming to be the under funded underdogs, fighting to protect the planet against greedy capitalists, yet the reality is their funding is at least 1000 times greater than the sceptics funding.  I see many reports of scientists refusing to release their workings, thus preventing review of their methodology, despite the fact that their work was funded by public money. 

I see how the established media abandons balance in reporting by strongly favouring proponents of AGW, ignoring or denigrating sceptics and forcing most onto blog sites like this one.  I hear some environmental groups and activists publicly claim that its OK and even necessary to exaggerate the threat so as to get the public to engage. I see the courts condoning acts of vandalism and even violence against essential public infrastructure.  I see high profile public figures supporting such acts and claiming them to be reasonable and justified. 

In short I see our society abandoning some of our most vital democratic freedoms over this hysteria:  Free speech, impartial enforcement of the law, balance in reporting, freedom of information.  These are freedoms our forebears gave their lives to bequeath to us, they are our most valuable inheritance and we seem to be throwing them away over an unproven hysterical hypothesis.

More recently I have read articles from England advocating individual ration cards for petrol, heating oil, gas, electricity.  Is water and food next?  War time austerity as an ongoing future way of life?  A return to the agrarian poverty of the middle ages?  I note the new film “Not evil just wrong” has had to be distributed via the internet rather than traditional media.  One step from distribution through an underground network?  Will that apply to all future sceptical writing?   What about other writing contrary to the popular opinion of the day?

These are the issues that differentiate between a free democracy and a totalitarian regime and the further one goes down this path the harder it is to pull back.  History has shown us that the disease is far easier to acquire than to get rid of.

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Notes and Links

Michael Hammer graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering Science and Master of Engineering Science from Melbourne University.  Since 1976 he has been working in the field of spectroscopy with the last 25 years devoted to full time research for a large multinational spectroscopy company.

To read more from Mr Hammer click here and scroll down:  http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/author/michael-hammer/