“If we are to understand the real state of the world, we need to focus on the fundamentals and we need to look at realities, not myths.” Bjorn Lomborg, 2001
According to geological history the earth has been warming for about 18,000 years and over this period sea levels have risen over 100 metres.
While the overall temperature trend has been one of warming, there have been ups and downs due to natural climatic variations. So, if we consider the last 2,000 years of global temperature anomalies there was the Medieval Warm Period followed by the Little Ice Age and then a period of relative rapid warming during the 20th century, Figure 1.
Figure 1. 2,000 Years of Reconstructed Global Temperature Anomalies. Based on Loehle, C. 2007. Energy & Environment 18(7-8): 1049-1058. Thermometer data was added for 1850 -2007 by Roy W Spencer. From more information see http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm
It was not until the development of the thermometer that temperatures could be measured with accuracy.
The Central England Temperature Series is considered the world’s longest series; the monthly mean begins in 1659, during the Little Ice Age.
The Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in conjunction with the Hadley Centre of the UK Meteorology Office provide global temperature data going back only as far as 1850. This information is updated on a monthly basis.
It is this data set that is used by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology for global temperature trends, Figure 2.
Figure 2. The Global Temperature Anomaly for the period 1850 to 2007.
It is important to realize that Figures 1 and 2 show temperatures anomalies, not actual temperature. An anomaly is something that deviates from what is considered standard, normal or expected. The anomaly in Figure 2 shows the deviation from the mean temperature for the period 1961 to 1990.
We have become familiar with this representation of global temperatures but it is contrived to emphasis difference and in particular the extent to which temperatures have increased from 1850 to the present. When the same data is plotted just showing the actual global mean temperature for the same time period, the trend is no longer evident, Figure 3.
Figure 3. Global Mean Temperature from 1850 – 2007
The data from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in conjunction with the Hadley Centre of the UK Meteorology Office is generally accepted by those who subscribe to the idea that carbon dioxide is driving dangerous man-made global warming, as well as by the so-called climate skeptics. There are other organisations that collect information on global temperatures including the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in the US which claims to have the world’s largest archive of climate data.
Well known advisor to Al Gore, James Hansen, from NASA’s Goddard Space Institute has developed what is known as a GISS surface temperature analysis. This data set has shown more warming over recent years than the CRU data from the UK Meteorology Office and some argue that this is because the Hansen system overemphasizes temperatures at the North Pole.
There are ongoing arguments over the accuracy of the various data sets and methods of analysis. Ross McKitrick from Canada’s University of Guelph argues that 50 percent of global warming measured by land-based thermometers in the US since 1980 is due to local influences of man-made structures, also known as The Urban Heat Island Effect. When James Hansen recalculated temperatures in 2006 using a corrected algorithm, 1934 rather than 1998 was found to be the hottest in the last 100 years in the US. There have also been issues with the additions and losses of weather stations; for example many weather stations were lost in places like Siberia with the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, thermometer temperature data has only been collected in the polar-regions since the 1940s and calculating the mean temperature at the poles is still difficult because of the sparseness of ground-based weather stations and the freezing environment takes its toll on equipment.
Bill Kininmonth, former head of Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology’s National Climate Centre, has suggested that because of the difficulty of assessing surface temperatures over ice surfaces it is more realistic to consider sea surface temperatures in places like the south pole and exclude areas of seasonal sea ice.
Dr Hansen has explained the general difficulty of measuring surface temperatures, “Even at the same location, the temperature near the ground may be very different from the temperature 5 ft above the ground and different again from 10 ft or 50 ft above the ground. Particularly in the presence of vegetation (say in a rainforest), the temperature above the vegetation may be very different from the temperature below the top of the vegetation. A reasonable suggestion might be to use the average temperature of the first 50 ft of air either above ground or above the top of the vegetation. To measure SAT (surface air temperature) we have to agree on what it is and, as far as I know, no such standard has been suggested or generally adopted. Even if the 50 ft standard were adopted, I cannot imagine that a weather station would build a 50 ft stack of thermometers to be able to find the true SAT at its location.”
Given these difficulties an alternative is to use temperature data from satellites.
Since 1979, Microwave Sounding Units (MSUs) on orbiting satellites have measured the intensity of upwelling microwave radiation from atmospheric oxygen with the intensity proportional to the temperature of vertical layers of the atmosphere. The research focus has been on getting a broadly representative measure of lower atmosphere temperature.
The satellite record of temperature in Figure 4, is from Roy Spencer at the https://viagragener.com University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and corrects for previous errors including orbital drift. Dr Spencer is the US Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua Satellite.
Figure 4. Monthly globally averaged lower atmospheric temperature anomaly since 1979 as measured by NOAA and NASA satellites. For more information see http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm
Figure 4 is another graph showing the temperature anomaly; in this case the deviation for the period 1979 – June 2008 from the mean temperature for the period 1979-1998.
————-
Figure 3 is based on ‘Certainty clouds the IPCC’ by Sinclair Davidson and Alex Robson, IPA Review, March 2007, from page 7. You can read the article here: http://www.ipa.org.au/publications/898/certainly-clouds-the-ipcc
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Jennifer
Showing the satellite data plotted as temperature rather than temperature anomalies would be an interesting to study – one wonders whether it will be like the BOM one above? And what baseline might they have used?
error: should be …interesting graph to study…
hehehe, good one jennifer. I especially enjoyed the contrast between the anomalies graphs and the actual temperature graph. That’s gold. Keep that kind of stuff coming, hilarious!
Thanks also for the Lomborg quote. That’s insightful stuff, i never would have thought to look at “realities” instead of myths. Mind you, i find it disturbing that Lomborg chose to use plural “realities” instead of singular “reality”. What do you think he meant by that?
“While the overall temperature trend has been one of warming, there have been ups and downs due to natural climatic variations. ”
No, that’s not permitted. Global warming can only mean a continual warming, if it doesn’t then there is no warming.
“The satellite record used by NOAA is from Roy Spencer and John Christy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), and they are currently working on version 5.2, which corrects for previous errors including orbital drift.”
I thought the satellite data was impeccable and totally reliable. Apparently it’s not?
I do like fig. 3 but I think the scale for the y-axis should be a little narrower, say between 10-15 degrees C measuring intervals of 0.2 degrees. Still, I prefer it to measuring an anamoly.
Too clever Steve
Here’s all the bits that are missing.
Seasonal and decadal climate shifts already create havoc on human society – e.g. El Nino events
Big swings in past climate have meant grief to whole ecosystems – the rocks might still be here but lots of species are not.
Let’s here about the major bone crunching droughts of the MWP instead of just European cathedrals and growing grapes.
Have we had a major climate shift and/or sea level rise with 6 billion humans going to 9 billion before. With say 30 days food security, interlinked global finance system, and pan-global military powers?
Well for starters that 2000 year reconstruction “graph” is hardly solid evidence for anything other than a darned good try by a few diehards. I did the Google test writing to see if it got a run outside blog-sphere BTW as its been a while since we crawled through non tree ring proxies etc.
There is no way proxies from any source come any where near the mass of thermometer data despite the challenges from here and there.
Folks may recall I was into thermometers and a lot of other instruments an a daily basis for bread and butter over many years. I don’t recall using a dry stick for measurements except when we needed the length of something.
Changes since posting:
After posting, I saw a couple of formatting errors and have also added some text to clarify a couple of points, including for Louis …in Figure 4, the deviation for the period 1979 – June 2008 if from the mean temperature for the period 1979-1998.
Thanks.
Luke
Please explain how past climate swings caused ecological grief by explaining what precisely caused those climate swings.
Bad news for Luke.
Trends in rainfall associated with sources of air pollution
E.Keith Bigg
Trends in rainfall in the 35 years 1970–2004 have been calculated for all 350 available rainfall stations having sufficiently complete records that lie between latitudes 26–30°S and longitudes 150–154°E. The area contains two major urban centers, Brisbane with a rapidly growing population approaching two million and the Gold Coast with a population of ~500 000. Statistically highly significant negative trends were found in the vicinity of Brisbane, with decreases exceeding 40% of mean daily rainfall in the 35 years, and in a smaller area inland from the Gold Coast. The spatial distribution of trends was consistent with aerosol production from human activities, the prevailing winds and losses due to the topography. A previously published observation using satellite data showed that cloud properties were affected by urban aerosols in a way that is likely to reduce precipitation. The results of this study reinforce the suggestion made then that monitoring of aerosol concentrations and properties and in-situ observations of rain formation processes in the area should be undertaken as a matter of urgency.
Environmental Chemistry 5(3) 184–193
More bad news for Luke
Have Australian rainfall and cloudiness increased due to the remote effects of Asian anthropogenic aerosols?
There is ample evidence that anthropogenic aerosols have important effects on climate in the Northern Hemisphere but little such evidence in the Southern Hemisphere. Observations of Australian rainfall and cloudiness since 1950 show increases over much of the continent. We show that including anthropogenic aerosol changes in 20th century simulations of a global climate model gives increasing rainfall and cloudiness over Australia during 1951–1996, whereas omitting this forcing gives decreasing rainfall and cloudiness. The pattern of increasing rainfall when aerosols are included is strongest over northwestern Australia, in agreement with the observed trends. The strong impact of aerosols is primarily due to the massive Asian aerosol haze, as confirmed by a sensitivity test in which only Asian anthropogenic aerosols are included. The Asian haze alters the meridional temperature and pressure gradients over the tropical Indian Ocean, thereby increasing the tendency of monsoonal winds to flow toward Australia. Anthropogenic aerosols also make the simulated pattern of surface-temperature change in the tropical Pacific more like La Niña, since they induce a cooling of the surface waters in the extratropical North Pacific, which are then transported to the tropical eastern Pacific via the deep ocean. Transient climate model simulations forced only by increased greenhouse gases have generally not reproduced the observed rainfall increase over northwestern and central Australia. Our results suggest that a possible reason for this failure was the omission of forcing by Asian aerosols. Further research is essential to more accurately quantify the role of Asian aerosols in forcing Australian climate change.
Rotstayn, L. D., et al. (2007), Have Australian rainfall and cloudiness increased due to the remote effects of Asian anthropogenic aerosols?, J. Geophys. Res., 112, D09202, doi:10.1029/2006JD007712.
“Here’s all the bits that are missing.”
You forgot asteroid impacts, Luke.
With only 30 days food, over drawn Visa cards, pan-global (an oxymoron, btw) military powers, our cathedrals and grapes would be up Sjt-creek.
You’re right about one thing, the rocks would do OK.
Pity air pollution in Brissy is improving. Old rain makers never die eh?
Pity CSIRO already know why there’s a decrease in rainfall – it’s called on shore winds. Now Steve – it’s uncharacteristic of you to make a blue like this one ! Bad call. Wait for the paper. In fact the air has been so clean of late cloud seeding trial of 2007/08 couldn’t work properly. Seeders had never seen such clean air. BUT – no rain in the catchments of note?? Pollution – humbug ! Correlation ain’t cause and effect. In fact where’s the analysis for all the capitals ! And Mt Isa and Gladstone.
(But Rosenfeld’s stuff is fun to think about eh? But macroscale dominates mesoscale?
And yep know all about Rotstayn – in fact I told you guys. Part of the picture but not through nucleation. Why NW WA is wetter. All part of Cai’s rich anthropogenic picture I keep telling Cohenite about. Greenhouse + extra temperature + lower vapour pressure + stratospheric ozone depletion + NW Asian cloud + Indian Ocean + warming Tasman Sea + changing gyres & flow-throughs. They know what’s going down quite well. Oh yea – and some land use change.
Anyway back on the big science end of town – something to slow Cohenite down and stop him biting my ankles (for a while).
http://www.bom.gov.au/bmrc/clfor/cfstaff/jma/Alexander_Arblaster_11_02_08_revised_figs.pdf
And some free kicks.
Wes,
Luke’s swinging climate extinguishing species idea probably isn’t based on the extinction of mega-fauna in the America’s after the last ice-age when attributed to the Clovis People killing off the Mammoths and Mastodons.
Strange that their contemporaneous human tribes in Africa and India spared their elephant populations.
Of course popular myth has mammoths and mastodons protrayed as lichen eaters on the tundra steppes; describing it in a classical Charles Lyell’s literary style, redolent of a Constable pastoral scene oil painting, ” we may imagine the proboscideans quietly grazing on the tundra, tarrying here and there, to occasionally misjudge their footing and finding themselves in the stygian coloured frozen waters of some misfortunate tundra lake”.
Given that Lyell deemed the last ice age to have occurred 12,000 years ago, (well within the period Jennifer has used in this post), I will be quite interested in reading how our resident climatic catastrophists explain the extinction of the mammoth.
Luke
Very good – now how about scurrying back to the library and giving us the basic definition of a climate model, in particular their basic assumptions. Most of the sceptics labor (it is politics after all) under the impression that computer modelling of a weather system on a rotating sphere would take account of the basics, including diurnal factors.
I want to know what geometrical shape is used in the model. Is it a 2D circular surface, or a 3D rotating spherical surface, or no surface at all.
Assuming you understand all of this.
Come on, Look, Chop Chop (in his Robert Morley voice).
Louis,
I dig the idea of a Constable pastoral scene which includes mammoths and mastodons. Still, Charles Knight was a pretty good artist.
Last I read, megafaunal extinction was being laid at the feet of Big Game hunters, but their Denialist Shills, of course, refute this, inspired by the example of the Tobacco corporations.
However, I doubt past climate change was as drastic as today. How could it be without the most important climate driving factor known to the consensus–anthropogenically produced CO2?
One must keep in mind that the climate rotates around humankind, not the other way around. Or you lose your AGW party membership.
Luke’s right, as usual, the rocks will do fine, either way.
I got as far as the attribution for the first graph (Energy & Environment), and stopped there. E&E is a non-peer reviewed journal with a poor track record for quality papers.
Sorry, but I will stick to peer reviewed literature for info on this critical subject.
Wes,
Lyell included grazing rhinos and other mammalia in his past pastoral scenes.
You have not remembered homo homo carboniceous, now extinct, who had enormous lung capacities, (a maga faunal hominiod) who, logically, must have emitted vast quantities of CO2 to precipitate the last mega faunal extinction.
Evidence of this can be found at Lake Mungo in western New South Wales, where solidified deposits of their exhalations can be found around dwelling places.
Arkologists have interpreted these carbon deposits as fire places, but they are wrong! These charcoal deposits are humanoid deposits of CO2 exhalations!
It is quite possible that an epidemic of Flu might have afflicted the Pleistocence mega-humanoids, and from their involuntary CO2 exhalations, caused a catastrophic rise in atmospheric CO2 levels which then, since Proboscideans breathe through their probosices, caused imminent cessation of the God given gift of equanimity and forbearance, and hence, the gift of life.
Actually forensic data on some of the mammoths studied in Siberia indicated death by suffocation, as evidenced by erect penises. The lungs were also bloodied.
We shall see how it Lukes.
Hear the Luke:
“Pity air pollution in Brissy is improving. Old rain makers never die eh? Pity CSIRO already know why there’s a decrease in rainfall – it’s called on shore winds. Now Steve – it’s uncharacteristic of you to make a blue like this one ! Bad call. Wait for the paper.In fact the air has been so clean of late cloud seeding trial of 2007/08 couldn’t work properly. Seeders had never seen such clean air. BUT – no rain in the catchments of note?? Pollution – humbug ! Correlation ain’t cause and effect. In fact where’s the analysis for all the capitals ! And Mt Isa and Gladstone.(But Rosenfeld’s stuff…..”
Whew! I reckon this feller could talk underwater!
This is what one gets when ‘literature research’ is reduced to a (mere) 16 frames per second ‘flickerfest’ flashing past a pair of very fast moving eyeballs………….now evidently also situated above a pair of very fast moving lips.
But, matey …..gotcha!
Environmental Chemistry 5(3) 184–193??????
PEER REVIEWED AND PUBLISHED BY CSIRO PUBLISHING!
ALMOST ALL REVIEWERS CSIRO OR BOM!
Lordy me Louis – are you that much of a drongo. They actually use an adaptive cubic conformal mesh to model the geoid.
Your mind is fascinating really – so you’re saying – computers cannot simulate spherical objects now. Wow. Off down to the Tavern with you. Maaaattteee !
Gabba
I take it you have little experience with peer review and its actual practice.
Peer review works well in sciences that practise the scientific method, (the empirically based ones).
It does not work too well, if at all, in those which don’t.
So how about listing the papers with poor track records in E & E?
Yes yes Steve – don’t blow a boiler plate – I know it’s CSIRO publishing. I did sus out the link. Wonder how he got it through? Mustn’t be enough dissent censorship that Wes insists exists. Lucky he’s retired – or he might have been sacked. LOL.
But you might think that this issue might be at least a decade old? Like deja vu. Aaron Gingis and Danny Rosenfeld have been on this before. If you were really good you would have come back with EPA don’t measure the right PD sizes to know. I reckon the synoptic explanation more of less cinches it but then what would an alarmist creep say other than that.
Luke,
There is no such thing as a “cubic conformal mesh”.
Only proves you are a scinetically illiterate nong.
What are you really, the BOM PR spokesidiot?
Louis thinks peer review = JORC. BTW how’s that analysis going for Steve?
“So how about listing the papers with poor track records in E & E?” – why list – the lot !
Ding dong dell – Louis is in the well – who put him in … was Luke !
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/e-print/open/2008/thatchermj_b.pdf
Check out figure 1 & 2 doofus nuts.
And thanks for allowing me to showcase another excellent piece of work. Great report.
Louis the difference between you and a computer is that you don’t have to beat the data into a computer twice. You’d think you’d learn by now when I’m bluffing. Bad call.
Louis – these guys don’t need PR – they’re hot, and unlike yourself highly intelligent, well mannered, good looking and youthful.
Luke
I don’t think peer review is JORC.
JORC standards is the mining industry equivalent of the ACCC standards.
Luke,
have you actually read the paper http://www.cmar.csiro.au/e-print/open/2008/thatchermj_b.pdf
?
Steve Short,
Very interesting post. I would like to add that in 1974, Brisbane and the Gold Coast had a one-in-80 year flood but since 1976 no tropical cyclones have crossed the coast of Qld south of the tropics whereas prior to this it happened up to several times a year.
At the same time cyclones increased in the Arafura Sea, off Darwin.
This climate shift happened suddenly-not progressively and is the reason for the lower rainfall.
Would a progressive build-up of Asian aerosols suddenly cause that shift in 1976?
Luke:
“Louis – these guys don’t need PR – they’re hot, and unlike yourself highly intelligent, well mannered, good looking and youthful.”
In other words intellectually bright but inexperienced with physical reality.
You are really a computer nerd – what is your real professional position at CSIRO – janitor? Are all these postings the dredgements of the wastepaper baskets?
Luke do you actually read your links? Seems you don’t have the capacity to understand so you have decided you must put your faith in a computer model. Problem there are lots of them. Some most definitely useless others just wrong. So how do decide which to believe or is it just that you have decided to believe them all. BTW thanks for a link in another thread. If you had read it you would have understood that it confirmed rainfall in OZ was lower from 1900 to 1940 than it is now. In other words the current rainfall is not unusual. Sorry that was empirical data and so not believable.
Luke,
Analysis for Steve?
I said I would do it for interest-don’t recall mentioning I would do anything else with it.
“If you were really good you would have come back with EPA don’t measure the right PD sizes to know.”
Actually, if you were really good you’d know that it is largely chemical composition and crystal form which dictates whether an aerosol can nucleate water e.g. silver iodide, sulfates, dry ice or is a cool reflective (mineral) or IR adsorptive (carbonaceous) non-water nucleating aerosol.
“the rocks will do fine, either way”
Umm, no, actually.
Changing weathering/erosion rates silt up mighty rivers and cuddly estuaries, whole ecosystems continue to evolve, clifflines recede, swamps cover dry land … quite natural variations.
Tremors block rivers, cause undersea slides, twist shorelines, split mountains. These affect climate (land use changes).
Where’s Chalko when he’s needed ?
Luke
Oh your cited paper is good – they start with an assumption of a gridded cube as a basis for modelling the earth.
They then project the cube grids onto a spherical surface, the earth I suppose, and develop the model from that.
What is the physical basis for the assumption of a cube in the first place? There is no physical basis for it, nor is it explained in the paper itself – it seems to be an accepted mathematical convention.
So on first principles the paper you quote can be rejected on this fact alone.
And there seem to be no recognition that the cube rotates either.
So the computer modelling, while internally consistent, has no analog with physical reality.
Error: is no analog with physical reality.
Oh this is not good – “analog for physical reality” (Using IE 8 beta 1).
Kowtows appropriately.
For spangled drongo
During the last three decades, pressure on the forests by mechanized logging and
massive transmigration has strongly increased in East Kalimantan (Kartawinata &
Vayda, 1984; Kartawinata et al., 1989; MacKinnon et al., 1996). Before 1970, human
populations had little impact on the forest ecosystem. Shifting cultivation was practised
around the villages but was still sustainable because population densities were small and
technical equipment was insufficient for large-scale operations. This situation changed
with the introduction of mechanized logging and the arrival of transmigrants from Sulawesi
and Java in the late 1960s and 1970s. Forest destruction by human activities was
no longer compensated for by forest recovery. Both the activities of logging companies
and the immigration of people have been steadily increasing since then and resulted in
a gradual degradation of the forests until the dramatic event of 1982–1983.
In 1982–1983, El-Niño caused an exceptional drought in East Kalimantan. At that
time, mechanized logging and additional destructive activities had created large areas
7 General introduction
of degraded rain forest that were highly susceptible to fire during dry periods. The result
was a fire unprecedented in human history, in which 3.5 million hectares were burnt
in East Kalimantan alone (Goldammer et al., 1996). Not only degraded forests were
subject to the fires, 0.8 million hectares of adjacent primary forests were burnt as well.
Logged-over forests accounted for 1.4 million ha, secondary forests for 0.75 million
ha, and peat swamp forest for 0.55 million ha. The famous Kutai National Park was
badly damaged with most of its forest severely damaged: 99% of the trees diameter at
breast height (dbh) 25 cm, and virtually all lianas
being killed in the burnt areas.
after some moderate enso events subsequently, the next exceptional enso drought
occurred in 1997–1998. The resulting fires surpassed even those of 1982–1983, with
5.2 million ha of land, including 2.6 million ha of forest, burnt (Siegert et al., 2001).
Lowland Dipterocarp forest accounted for 2.2 million ha (that is 40.5% of this vegetation
type in East Kalimantan), secondary forest for 1.7 million ha (75.5%), peat swamp
forest for 0.31 million ha (73%), and wetlands for 0.29 million ha (81%). Of the burnt
forests, 76% had severe or total fire damage, meaning that at least half of the trees
dbh > 20 cm were killed.
The lowland area of East Kalimantan was almost completely covered by tropical rain
forest before the 1970s, and most of it was severely burnt in 1998. In this region, very
few rain forests unaffected by the enso fires survive. In the Balikpapan–Samarinda
area, the area with the highest population density in East Kalimantan, the last patch of
a considerable size (approximately 5,000 ha) is in the Sungai Wain forest (Fredriksson
& De Kam, 1999).
Ianl
Desist from disrupting Lukes Arcadian Utopia with these facts!
(May the Great Proboscidean be with you)
Hissink – you’re an idiot.
Steve – well I do.
Steve Short
So one should expect to find satellite images of East Kalimantan showing showing a serious absence of vegetative cover via Google Earth?
If the reports are accurate, and the puppet masters are up to date in their machinations, then all satellite imagery of East Kalimantan should be obvious to any unwary Googler.
(I write this not having looked at Kalimantan via Google Earth, or my preferred program, World Wind).
Luke,
Thank you for confirming my suspicions.
Steve Short
Looking at Nasa’s World Wind imagery, I don’t get the impression that East Kalimantan has serious problems with vegetational loss due to fires and logging etc.
NASA’s imagery might be out of date but considering the political advocacy associated with this organisation, this would not be the case.
So, on the face of it, there is no evidence from satellite imagery on NASA’s World Wind site to support the idea that serious forest reduction is present on East Kalimantan.
Luke
BTW, PM size not PD size.
Steve and SD; Watts has a bit of a CO2 panegyric on how the earth’s plantlife is thriving, apart from Indonesia apparently;
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/surprise-earths-biosphere-is-booming-co2-the-cause
luke; regarding the Alexander and Arblaster paper; it purports to be an Australian Koutsoyiannis but makes several errors; it seeks to submerge regionalism into a national trend; Koutsoyiannis suceeds because he shows that CGM’s simply cannot handle regionalism; the paper admits this a number of times (p4, 12); the paper has no reference to PDO effect and relies for its data on Hadcrut’s 1961-90 base period anomalies; even with these Hadcrut sets there are glaring shortfalls in data coverage (p7, 11); in addition the model data is from AR4, GISS, and all the problematic (ain’t I diplomatic) issues with that; even with all the padding the model consistency with the fiddled data is hit and miss, with the best correlation being in respect of warm nights, of which we can expect more; bring it on!
Seriously, this paper is an attempt to marry obstensible climate data with CGM extreme weather scenarios; it achieves a patchy correlation with warm nights; I cannot see any justification for the paper’s assertion that extreme temps, heat wave duration and the like are on the increase, or, most inexplicably, that such increase is due to anthropogenic factors. And I remind you that when you look at particular BoM sites, anywhere, you just don’t see the data saying what these papers do.
But I just love stats, and this graph shows why;
http://plus.maths.org/latestnews/may-aug08/oilcricket/oilcricket.jpg
Louis
I can see plenty of very large cleared areas with Google Earth Plus, including even currently blackened areas following rivers. Try making sure roads, borders and place names are in place.
cohenite
rrrnnnggghhhhh, hehh hhheeehhhh!
10/10
Steve
Google Earth Plus?
Ok, another look, this time using GE+( means money)
Thanks
Louis
Steve
Ok, I looked at the freebiw Google and note that there is intensive land usuage within the flat lying areas in Kalimantan Timur region.
I don’t see any evidence supporting media hyperbole however.
Interestingly I did see some interesting linear cloud structures which might form a basis for further discussion.
Steve – I lived in the Byron Bay area from 77 – 85. During that period we had a “wet season”. It would start raining around February and continue through to March, even April sometimes. Everything was permanently damp, your cloths would attract mildew, the ground was saturated. Then overnight you’d suddenly get 8″ (200mm) and Lismore would flood. It went under in 78, 80 and 84. previously it flooded in 72, 74, 75, 76. Later it flooded twice in 87, then 88 and 89 – then it stopped and didnt flood in the 90s which were totally different – no wet seasons.
jennifer
there’s a 3000 year temp history on page one of this report.
http://www.oism.org/pproject/GWReview_OISM300.pdf
we haven’t reached the 3000 year mean yet.
Janama
Your description sounds much like the climate of Wyndham some years back – pre 1990 – much like what you describe as well for Byron Bay area.
But Wyndham is in the, so called, tropics, but Byron Bay in the middle temperate zone.
My home town is Narrabeen, north of Sydney, and during the 1960’s summers were hot. Boxing day was the SLSC carnival at Narrabeen, and it was still hot.
Now it is cold and miserable – all within a 30 year period to boot.
I wonder if the CSIRO young bloods consider human remembered history in their computer models?
Jennifer,
Your point is well made, but it is arguable that the Global Mean Temperature graph should have the Y-axis expressed in degrees Kelvin rather than degrees Centigrade. That would emphasise how trivial the deviations from the norm are, in fact, and instead emphasise just how stable the system is.
PS, I checked: 0 deg C is 273.15 degrees Kelvin.
Interesting blog – if a little all over the place.
I too well remember what it was like in the 1960s – every Sydney summer a real scorcher – not made any cooler by the place crawling with Americans on R&R and prostitutes and spivs by the thousands. Later I lived in Tassie from 74 – 78 and the place was uniformly wet, cold and miserable mots of the year. The only issue in doubt amongst the farmers was whether summer would come on a Tuesday instead of a Thursday. Yet I have holidayed there several times in the last decade and the place now has a glorious climate.
Quite frankly I agree we should be concentrating on what we do know right now about the history of ENSO and the PDO as cohenite has highlighted, rather than paying any credence to the silly certainties of Luke who, by way of ‘rebuttal’ gets all worked up over a paper in which the abstract reads, in part:
In this report, we describe the results of a 2060-2090 regional climate projection over the tropical rainforest region of northern Queensland, assuming an A2 emission scenario (IPCC, 2007). The global climate was simulated using Mk3.0 at approximately 200 km resolution and then dynamically downscaled to 15 km resolution using CCAM. Regional climate projections for the average daily maximum (screen) temperature, average daily minimum (screen) temperature and average daily rainfall are made for each season relative to the results of the previous CCAM control run (Thatcher, McGregor and Nguyen, 2007). The statistical significance of projected changes in regional climate is estimated from the simulated interdecadal variability.
Wow, nothing like predictions of climate in 2060 – 2090 to inject a guarantee of certainty into the debate. What a hoot!
I wonder if the CSIRO young bloods consider human remembered history in their computer models?
good point – I’ve actually spent some time in Wyndham and I’ve noticed it’s actually got wetter over recent years and the Met confirms that.
I once spent a week in the Lismore base Hospital and it’s a good place to chat with all the old buggers in their 80s from the local district. The consensus appeared to be that the climate hadn’t changed in their lifetime – they’d had hotter days, wetter days etc, it was continual variation in their view.
“..but it is arguable that the Global Mean Temperature graph should have the Y-axis expressed in degrees Kelvin rather than degrees Centigrade.”
I like your thinking mondo45, but i will one up you:
Jennifer should chart temperature against “degrees Jennifer”.
LEts make 0 degrees Celcius = 273 degrees Kelvin = 1,000,000,000,000 degrees Jennifer.
And we can also make 0 Kelvin = 0 Jennifer.
Then you could have a graph scale of 0 to 1,000,000,000,050, and the graph of global temperature would be so straight and flat not even a microscope could notice the deviation.
Whaddya think?
Good point, Steve
But you can’t blame the trolls here for getting worked up over compelling prophecies. Our own PM Rudd is basing a multi-billion dollar economic experiment on rubbish:
“Garnaut’s draft report released on Friday predicted by 2100 a 92per cent decline in irrigated agriculture in the Murray-Darling Basin; a reduction of at least 7.8 per cent in real wages; and a $425 billion loss in potential gross domestic product.”
The utter mendacity or ignorance of pretending to even suggest what the economic metrics will be in 2100 down to the decimal point! My God. The audacity is stunning.
It’s ROTFL material, until you realize the laugh is on us. The saddest thing is that Garnaut and Rudd actually must think the Australian people are unsophisticated morons. Maybe we are, we elected this mob (our choices were rather ordinary.)
Our leaders are disrespecting us when they pretend this quality of due diligence is adequate when deciding the fate of our liberties and our lives.
I am beginning to see the light now on the coming AGW apocalypse. Garnaut prophecies might well come true much sooner than he reckons as result of the policies he recommends.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23984420-7583,00.html
No wait! Stop! Degrees jennifer isn’t going to work – it will just look the same as degrees Kelvin because in magnifying the scale on the axis i’ve magnified the absolute value of the change in temp too.
This graph axis manipulation is a tricky business. Maybe I should leave it to the experts.
I meant Steve Short, sorry Steve
Steve, just Steve, Steve, you’re a laugh a minute, pal.
“Steve, you’re a laugh a minute, pal.”
Nah mate, you are being too kind. You should have said that I was only one-sixtieth of a laugh per second. Don’t want to overstate my funniness now do you?
Steve Short,
Thanks very much for that. I recall those horrendous rain forest fires that smoked out the tropics for months.
What must they have contributed in atmospheric CO2 and destruction of long established eco-systems?
Cohenite,
Thanks. Interesting stuff. Those burnt Indonesian forests are now probably adding to all that and pulling their weight CO2 wise but the real problem there is an environmental one and that’s precisely what this AGW religion is not addressing.
They’re probably growing palm oil there now!
I don’t recall who hijacked this thread then got stuck into their local experience outside the MDB (we got rain BTW) however its time someone returned to measurements and predictions.
Steve S “nothing like predictions of climate in 2060 – 2090 to inject a guarantee of certainty into the debate”
Hey; what about fig.1 and looking backwards 2000 years?
C’mon Shorty; how good is that MWP & LIA stuff?
I suggest Wes,the Steves, Luke and others go and post a comment here: http://blogs.smh.com.au/urbanjungle/2008/07/actually_global.html
Please.
And Luke might let them know Jennifer Marohasy is really OK, really a nice person.
And just filing this here, not new:
http://ambit-gambit.nationalforum.com.au/archives/001640.html
http://ambit-gambit.nationalforum.com.au/archives/001704.html.
Since posting, I have been meaning to acknowlege that Figure 3 is based on a piece by Sinclair Davidson and Alex Robson entitled ‘Certainty clouds the IPCC’ which you can read here: http://www.ipa.org.au/publications/898/certainly-clouds-the-ipcc
I will add this link to the main post … now I have found it.
Cheers,
quote: I suggest Wes,the Steves, Luke and others go and post a comment here
yeah – it’s funny isn’t it – I’ve always classified myself as a greeny – I lived with solar power for 5 years, real solar with batteries, inverter, – had cold showers on cold days etc. not the connect to the grid and run off it at night. But now I find the people I support on the AGW bullshit are referred to as right wingers, like Jennifer.
I listened with great interest to her remarks regarding the Murray/Darling and was most impressed with her knowledge and her ideas on the subject. Much more knowledge about it than Flannery and Doyle bought to the table in their cute ABC program.
Interesting there is comment at Michael Duffy’s new blog site that people without training in statistics should be able to comment on temperature data.
Of course Michael Duffy can have an opinion on temperature data. It is really just like other data educated people are expected to be able to understand e.g. information on interest rates or petrol prices and how they have changed over time.
Along the bottom axis is time and along the vertical axis is the value.
I prefer information on interest rates, petrol prices and also global temperature as raw as possible ie. not too manipulated by statisticians.
sorry, I should have provided the URL again, its here: http://blogs.smh.com.au/urbanjungle/2008/07/actually_global.html
Hi Jennifer
First time long time
Figure 3 to me, shows, I suppose how little variation there actually is in the global average temperature over the last 150 years, but at the far left you have the Thames River at London freezing over (I know it was 1822 but it’s close) and at the far right you have our present balmy climate. To me, this shows that perhaps it doesn’t take all that much of a change in the global average temperature to adversely affect the weather, as far as the human population is concerned. It doesn’t really matter if it is AGW or the sun or anything else, a little change makes a big difference.
I guess the big question is, should any future changes be considered a faite accompli (the sun’s doing it, we’re past the tipping point, Kyoto, Bali etal will do nothing other than give sound bites and photo ops for politicians etc), so funds can be funnelled to areas around the world that may need assistance if disaster happens or should we throw good money after what seems to be bad, on carbon offsets (?) and other generally unexplained money pits.
And who, by the way, who gets their hands on this TREMENDOUSLY HUGE amount of money the likes this Ross Garnaut economist person is talking about?
savo
PS love your posts, very informative and wide ranging (the noise on this blog can be a little distracting though)
Jen – what’s the magnitude of an anomaly in SST that represents El Nino?
Savo,
Thanks for your post. Some food-for-thought there.
Of course it is important to distinguish between local and global temps, and actual temperature versus constructions. What I mean is it is important to realize that actual ‘temperature anomalies’ in London or somewhere on the Thames outside of London over the last 150 years may not be reflected in global temps as averaged by a group at some institution.
Luke,
I haven’t got on to sea temps yet. What about a guest post from you on sea temps and El Nino. please.
The temperature range under normal conditions is that the western Pacific is some 8 to 10 degrees Celsius warmer than the eastern Pacific. El Nino periods the temperature differential almost disppears, so the fluctuation in temperature is in the order of 8-10 Kelvins, at least an order of magnitude higher than the global temperature anomalies.
Source: BOM http://www.bom.gov.au/info/leaflets/nino-nina.pdf
luke; why don’t you figure it out for yourself? But you are getting close; I’m sure you know that Real Climate have addressed the ENSO issue by preparing a graph of recent temps with the ENSO effect removed; no more 1998; naturally they still found warming;
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/07/global-trends-and-enso/#more-577
Tilo has done a rebuttal and found flatness;
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/07/gavin-schmidt-enso-adjustment-for.html
I have asked Tilo to do a similar removal for the satellites, but he may be too busy. The crucial point still remains, the GPCS, which you now have to take seriously since it is peer-reviewed; the event took place at the same time as the last +ve PDO phase shift in 1976-77; the issue is; does the upwelling cessation play a part in the phase shifts, or was it coincidental?
Jennifer; I tried to post in your defence at Duffy’s, especially in respect of ezzthetic’s ad hom, but being a newbie, don’t know if I’ll get up; still Wes and Louis are holding the fort, and there was an excellent post by lemniscate about solar effects, which have been out of the news lately; but only 5 months to go before Hathaway has to make a decision about solar downturn.
Lucia has done what I asked Tilo to do, and yes, the satellites go down; of course GISS go up and IPCC projections are having the usual party by themselves;
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/gavin-schmidt-corrects-for-enso-ipcc-projections-still-falsify/
Jen – the issue is this – the tone of this whole post (IMO of course) is to show how teensy weensy any increase in 20th century temperature is on the scale of things. And all the discussions about scales and even plotting temperature above absolute zero. Yadda yadda.
Well El Nino events (and La Nina, PDO too etc) – 0.5 to 2.0C in SST can change global climate bringing droughts and floods. Heatwaves and cold weather.
So people called “climatologists” have worked this out. 🙂
And so small anomalies can make massive differences to circulation patterns.
You might do well to ponder such things. 🙂
I could also add comments like Mungo Brush becomes like Brisbane – climates shift – and what happens to the tails of climate distributions (extreme events) but let’s not get sophistmuckated as Wes might blow a valve.
And if Wes and Louis are holding the fort beware of friendly fire.
Is it just me or is the blog getting more rabid? I’ve had my shots.
cohenite,
How far above reality does that IPCC line have to get before we get a tipping point?
Luke
Even the BOm states that the La Nina is esssentially a 8-10 degrees Celsius swing in SST in the eastern Pacific\ and seems to be connected the underlying thermal state of the Pacific oceanic crust.
Perhaps climate science should incorporate some geological input rather than ignoring it.
SD; the answer is here somewhere;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
“Is it just me or is the blog getting more rabid? I’ve had my shots.”
An elementary case of projection. It is indeed you.
Louis – crap ! Show where the whole Pacific Ocean is affected top to bottom. How long now have you been an eccentric kook. Perhaps you ought actually have some publications and measurements to support your utter bull.
But at least poor old Louis had a go – everyone else did a runner.
luke; here’s a couple for you;
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/281/5374/240
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11832936
The 2nd, McPhaden and Zhang, paper also links to a de Garidel-Thoron, Rosenthal, Bassinot and Beaufort paper which puts another stake through CO2’s involvment in causing weather, as opposed to being a by-product of it.
Oh cohenite; I was just thinking you had become quite dependent on blogsphere!
Been wondering why nobody had a go at verifying the WMP or LIA in defence of fig 1 by looking backward instead of forward from current instrument data
Luke
Copied from BOM
“The La Niña signal in the sub-surface weakened further in June, with positive anomalies present along the entire thermocline. Only a small area of weak negative anomalies persisted in the mixed layer near the date-line. The large area of positive anomalies present in the western Pacific weakened further since May. There has also been a continued decrease in June of the strength of the negative sub-surface anomalies in the central Pacific mixed layer, with all anomalies now above −1°C. A recent map for the 5 days ending 30th June shows a weakening of positive anomalies in the sub-surface of the central Pacific, with no anomalies greater than +1°C, and only a small area of anomalies greater than +2°C in the western Pacific. Anomalies greater then +3°C remain in the sub-surface in the eastern Pacific. An animation of recent sub-surface changes is available.”
Anomalies up 3 deg Celsius are an order of magnitude larger than MGT anomalies.
And the quote from the BOM leaflet:
“Under the influence of the equatorial trade winds, this cold water flows westwards along the equator where it is slowly heated by the tropical sun.
These ‘normal’ conditions mean the western Pacific is 8 to 10°C warmer than the eastern Pacific. That is, while the ocean surface north and northeast of Australia is typically 28 to 30°C or warmer, near South America the Pacific Ocean is close to 20°C. However, in ElNiño years, the normal cold water flow along the South American coast and in the eastern Pacific weakens or may even vanish completely, and the central and eastern Pacific may become almost as warm as the western Pacific.”
Source: http://www.bom.gov.au/info/leaflets/nino-nina.pdf
Gee thanks Louis ?? ENSO and anti-ENSO events change SSTs across large areas with anomalies of 0.5 to 3 C. These changes have massive global repercussions. So a 0.5 to 1C over a century in MGT is QUITE significant. The teensy weensy argument is stupid. Order of magnitude – bunk – and the Arctic is many degrees.
And what laziness is this Louis – you’re now quoting BoM as source – have you sold out?
Cohenite – how some bit of trivia elsewhere in the world “puts stakes though hearts” I don’t know. Are you a silly. Read the full paper – has so many caveats in the conclusion you don’t know whether you’re coming or going.
The second paper is an advert for AGW:
“Results of some numerical coupled ocean±atmosphere model
studies suggest that the response of the tropical Pacifc to greenhouse- gas forcing resembles a permanent El Nino-like condition35,39. Thus, it is conceivable that climate fluctuations in
the tropical Pacific over the past 50 years, including the recent slowdown of the meridional overturning circulation, may have
been in¯uenced by global warming as well as by natural variability.
Unfortunately, separating out the putative effects of anthropogenically
forced climate change from natural variations is not possible with relatively short data records. Our analysis can, however, provide an important dynamical constraint for model studies that attempt to simulate recent observed decadal changes in the Pacific basin.”
Off you go now. Read the full paper and think about it. McLean’s paper is a treasure trove of trivia isn’t it 🙂
Fascinating that you’re off in the Galapagos Islands yet you can’t bring yourself to read the local literature.
Luke
I have not sold out, just throwing back your own unexploded intellectual hand grenades.
Giggle – it was a cream puff.
Luke
Moving right away from the cream puffery, I’m curious to hear your considered mathematical response to Dr. David Stockwell’s comments at Niche Modeling on the lack of (statistical) significance of results of the Drought Exceptional Circumstances report ‘findings’?
Jennifer –
Figure 3 is hopelessly useless. If you contend that it isn’t, I hope the next time you complain to your husband/partner about having a fever, he pulls out a similar time-series chart of your body temperature and tells you to shut up.
Not particularly – just another up himself denialist who thinks the world revolves around him. Now he’s drumming up some conspiracy theory as they’re not on tap 24 x 7 to respond to his whims. In any case it’s a discussion document suggesting in a high end scenario, significant changes are quite possible building on a current situation. It’s not a final report. Begs the case for a detailed study with limited available resources. If he goes hunting after CSIRO & BoM hope he packs a really big knife. CSIRO can respond in their own good time.
Perhaps you’d like to comment about the lack of statistics in Archibald’s and McLean’s papers? Or indeed this post?
And given the gad-flies already in the comments – looks like an organised hit by the friendly society.
“Steve and SD; Watts has a bit of a CO2 panegyric on how the earth’s plantlife is thriving,”
Don’t have to ask a weatherman to know which way the wind’s blowing? Don’t ask him about the biological world either, apparently. I’d be happy to indtroduce mr Watts to the Murry Darling basin.
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/dire-outlook-for-sick-murray-as-inflows-drop-20080710-3d6x.html
And he doesn’t mind telling blatant lies. “CO2 is a pollutant!”
The only issue is excess CO2, not CO2 itself. When people have to lie so blatently to make their case, you know they are morally bankrupt and idiots.
SJT; there is another side to this debate. Over the past few days ABC radio talkback has been abuzz with global warming, climate change and emissions trading type debate. People seem to want to shoulder these issues even if the outcome is uncertain. I’m reminded of the teamwork in the big bike race on SBS.
Meanwhile 40 international scientists have published on ocean acidification and corals.
They know where the excess CO2 is going.
“Not particularly – just another up himself denialist who thinks the world revolves around him. Now he’s drumming up some conspiracy theory as they’re not on tap 24 x 7 to respond to his whims. In any case it’s a discussion document suggesting in a high end scenario, significant changes are quite possible building on a current situation. It’s not a final report….”
That’s a bit rich, dontcha think?
(1) David is using exactly the same methodology Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate is using to define significance.
(2) The predictions of the Report for your favourite area (and one of mine) i.e. MDB are showing no significance, by the above criterion, for (i) soil moisture, AND rainfall, but IS showing significance for temperature. This seems to confirm yet again that RCMs like CSIRO Mk4 etc (or if you will GCMs tuned up regionally) don’t perform very well at all. Of course there is a host of papers showing this is the case over land, now even a good review showing they also fall over right out in the middle of oceans where you’d think boundary conditions/fluxes were easier to constrain/define (always a major problem of finite element or finite difference modeling – as I can attest from 20 years of MODFLOW and FEMWATER groundwater/surface water system modeling).
(3) I have a copy of David’s book Niche Modeling and, for the field it is focussed-on, I think it is rather good. I also note that David’s blog Niche Modeling consistently gets high ratings for intelligent discussion, is very well organized and managed with a lot of intelligent bloggers posting on the number of (technically) very interesting threads, a few of whom grace this blog with their presence. Although too modest to post myself (I try to stick to what I know best), I particularly liked the integrity of threads associated with Katsouyiannis (who is a very interesting fellow), Miskolczi and Rahmsdorf.
Tell me, Luke, on the level, mate, just for the record what is your level of background training and experience in math and stats? How much/often are you using such stuff every day in your chosen career? I’ve hardly ever read you getting right down and dirty into discussing issues/equations/parameters quantitatively (as opposed to throwing references with inherently loose references to THEIR authority). Perhaps you don’t grasp how well schooled and mathematically sharp (e.g. Jan P) some of the people blogging here may be?
BTW, please don’t give me any of that ‘appeals to authority don’t work’ crap by way of reply. That is what you do routinely do by proxy.
Gavin
“Meanwhile 40 international scientists have published on ocean acidification and corals.
They know where the excess CO2 is going.”
Yes, I’ve read it. But I’m totally mystified by the claims. I’d love someone to explain to me, in plain english, just why ocean acidification is now urgently threatening modern corals (by inference in a widespread way) when:
(1) the surface layers of the ocean would have to equilibrate with an atmospheric CO2 partial pressure (concentration) of 2455 ppmv (presently 384 ppmv) to drive the Saturation Index of aragonite (the form of calcium carbonate in corals) down from its present +0.61 to zero. The pH of the water would then be 7.52 @ the standard 25 C i.e. not even ‘acid’. But, until this occurs it is simply thermodymically impossible to start dissolving aragonite! This is nothing this side of an SI of 0.0000 which can increase this – not kinetics – nothing, NADA!
(2) The present rate of increase of CO2 (which admittedly may well rise) is 0.45% per year. This means that at present projections, unless something changes, the atmosphere would not reach a concentration of CO2 of 2455 ppmv until the year 2438 – some 430 years from now.
(3) Numerous studies have established that over the last 300 million years there is an almost continuous record of the existence of corals. Yet atmospheric CO2 levels have been during that period possibly as high as 15 times the present level i.e. 5760 ppmv. The best estimates suggest that levels got as high as about 7 times the present level i.e. about 2700 ppmv – coincidentally close to, or a bit above, the thermodymically limiting 2455 ppmv value shown above. Yet this was clearly not enough to render all genera of corals extinct in all refugia.
(3) Numerous studies of the morphological diversity of fossil corals over the last 150 million years actually show that the number of species (the origination rate) actually increased, proportionally to CO2 levels up to at least 2000 ppm – not inversely.
So, the bottom line is that these 40 scientists have a lot of explaining to do. How do they reconcile there assertions with:
(a) the basic facts of the solution thermodynamics of aragonite, measured thousands of times in laboratories?
(b) the well-demonstrated concordance of that thermodynamics with the paleological record of the incidence of corals over 300 million years? and
(c) the strong paleoclimatic evidence for the increasing abundance of coral species up to at least an atmospheric CO2 level of about 2000 ppmv?
How can these ’40 scientists’ in effect simply ‘urinate on the findings’ from the hard work of 100s of their own fellow scientists over the last 200 years?
Someone, please, please, put this poor geochemist out of his misery!
I’m not even certain you can do relevant statistics on individual runs from different GCMs if that’s what they have done. Why even weight the GCMs equally? Who says it’s a pdf?
And why pick 95% – it’s quiet arbitrary.
Speak Swahili why dontcha. I might have a better idea of what the hell you think you are saying.
I found this in response to Shorty, leaving creationism and flood geology right out of it
“Suddenly, 530 million years ago, something triggered an explosion of complex life. These original basic forms are the first and largest classification of animals called the phyla” from The Second Ring of Life; The Vesica Attractor
by Christopher Humphrey
http://www.iscid.org/boards/ubb-get_topic-f-26-t-000007.html
further on
“The world is mostly nonlinear. The science of nonlinear dynamics was originally christened “chaos theory” because from nonlinear equations unpredictable solutions emerge.
A very useful abstraction to describe the evolution of a system in time is that of a “phase space”. Our ordinary space has only three dimensions (width, height, depth) but in theory we can think of spaces with any number of dimensions. A useful abstraction is that of a space with six dimensions, three of which are the usual spatial dimentions. The other three are the components of velocity along those spatial dimensions. In ordinary 3-dimensional space, a “point” can only represent the position of a system. In 6-dimensional phase space, a point represents both the position and the motion of the system. The evolution of a system is represented by some sort of shape in phase space”
howzat?
Multi dimensional physics is where I cracked up and mere language can’t describe what I saw so let’s leave the damned math out of it hey.
btw I first got interested in all things natural here
http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.airpod.com.au/airpod_photos/tasmania/fossil_bluff_aerial_be1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.airpod.com.au/tasmania_free_aerial_photos.htm&h=525&w=700&sz=132&tbnid=nKDxjHpfJesJ::&tbnh=105&tbnw=140&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfossil%2Bbluff%2Bphoto&hl=en&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=2&ct=image&cd=1
Sisters Beach, Boat Harbour, Fossil Bluff – luvverly. Lived in Ridgley myself 78 – 82 (Environment Officer stinky Burnie Mill 79 – 82) before I saw a light on the hill and went back to the mainland to do my doctorate. But seriously, the northwest coat of Tassie does have a rugged, in yer face charm.
Vesica Attractors ????? 6-dimensional phase space??? You’re talking to the wrong guy. I’m yer old fashioned, nitric acid stains on the fingers, elementary my dear Watson type.
Steve
Ooh err, I had to assay the heavy mineral samples from Planet Metal’s Tweed Heads offshore mineral deposit using bromoform. My liver seems to have survived.
(In other words Luke, you and your cohort are ignorant young twits).
🙂
Oh Shorty, you missed a treat earlier. In the early 60’s they had me transfer from Papermakers to APPM’s continuous digester project and installing controls for paper machine No 10. I got a good sniff of the old Board Mill on the way.
At that time we still had the acid treatment (parchment) running on No5 up the hill. My apprentice mate’s old man was the chief lead burner on the dipping baths there. I got to play with mercury mostly every other day in the instrument shop. That’s the place that introduced me to water treatment and monitoring systems.
More importantly Steve; those photos in my link above show tide marks on particularly flat beaches (keen eye), also a previous coastline inland and a sea cave at the end of Boat Harbour Beach. However there’s no way SL is falling currently as many beaches are growing inland again, see the base of Fossil Bluff.
The tiny inlet at Sisters Creek is of particular interest as I have watched the salt water pushing the black water back past the council facilities on high tides over decades. Waves have lost their crest by this time and all you see is the surge of clear water up in the inner swimming hole.
Folks may be aware that fresh water in some regions of Tasmania is tea coloured in the glass and black in the rivers. It makes streams on the beach and estuary watching very interesting for both children and adults.