A couple of weeks ago Aynsley Kellow, Professor and Head of the Department of Government at the University of Tasmania, gave a lecture in Perth. He said:
“I am pleased to present this lecture today in Perth.I am particularly pleased to find that Perth is still here. I last visited here in 2005 – the year that Professor Tim Flannery suggested that Perth could become the first ‘ghost metropolis’ due to reductions in rainfall because of climate change. I must confess that I was somewhat bemused by this statement, because my visit to Perth was to present a paper on water policy under climate uncertainty. I knew from my research for that paper that Perth was in fact better adapted to uncertainty in its water supply than any other capital city.
Perth and the south-west of the state have suffered a decline in rainfall, which appears to have shifted to the north-east. The cause appears to be not the gradual accumulation of greenhouse gases, but a sudden shift in ocean currents. This decline in rainfall has translated into a marked decline in catchment yields thanks to changed catchment management, and an increased yield can be obtained by thinning catchments.
Regardless, Perth has adapted to its natural environment with a number of responses: demand management; use of aquifers; the construction of the Kwinana industrial recycling plant; and now a desalination plant. Professor Flannery was, of course, talking nonsense – but, as sales of his book The Weathermakers and his subsequent selection as ‘Australian of the Year’ showed, this is popular nonsense.”
Read more here: The 2008 Harold Clough Lecture: ‘The Politics and Science of Climate Change: The Wrong Stuff’
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
A paleontologist, Flannery, predicting the future? Yeah, right. A guy who has spent his entire life studying conditions prior to the introduction of technology then holds himself out to the bimbosphere as an expert on the future consequences of the application of technology.
Of course, silly, thats why they call it the Bimbosphere.
Flannery doesn’t like Adelaide, Brisbane or Sydney either;
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/
index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/warming_causes_flooding/
Tim, Al, MBH, Kevin and GCMs.
Remember that song from the L’il Abner musical?
The country’s in the very best of hands
Hell what is Aynsley Kellow trying to say. Everyone know Flannery knows far more than anyone else including the IPCC. Didn’t he notice the sea level has rised 3 metres since 2005. Our job is to just believe, give money and ask no questions.
Aynsley is getting slicker by the day. Seems to have forgotten to mention the relevant science on the issue. Oh well … just more from the organised skeptic movement.
Generalising from Flannery outwards is also pretty tricky.
Perth has serious water problems. Doesn’t matter what Aynsley thinks.
Ast to Perth rainfall shifting to the north east – bollocks to that. The rains have shifted south, we get high pressure systems (in a summer pattern) lingering longer and presenting during winter. The increase in rainfall in the far north east is a result of an expansion southward of rain bearing systems. It’s a poleward movement of weather systems.
This statement also shows he doesn’t know what he is talking about:
“Perth has adapted to its natural environment with a number of responses: demand management; use of aquifers; the construction of the Kwinana industrial recycling plant; and now a desalination plant. ”
Perth has used groundwater for drinking for a very long time (it’s not a recent adaptation to declining rainfall), and all three aquifers are currently over subscribed – they are being used faster than they recharge.
Demand management and the construction of the desal and recycling plants are a consequence of the drying climate, but still have not been enough. The only way that Perth will be able to continue is by building more desal plants (and they just picked the site of the next one at Binningup) and/or piping water about 4000km from the Kimberley. All of the options for Perth make water more expensive, and will require large amounts of energy. This is not some trivial problem that has been ‘solved’ – it is a serious ongoing problem that will require more and more ‘solutions’.
I however doubt Perth will be a ghost town any time in even the far future – but Aynsley demonstrates a very poor understanding of the water situation in Perth.
Shifted to the North East looks pretty reasonable to me.
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/climate/recent.jsp?lt=wzstate&lc=wa&c=rain_decile&p=36mth
Janama, that’s becuase you just looked at a picture, without any understand of WA climate.
Perth’s rainfall largely comes from cold fronts in winter. those cold fronts haven’t moved further north.
The increased rain in the northeast is from more summer thunderstorm activity.
Why don’t you email BoM or look at satellite images showing the movement of systems across WA.
“shifted” – gawd – how many times have we been over this stuff …
http://www.csiro.au/news/ps2l5.html
http://www.clw.csiro.au/conferences/GICC/cowan.pdf
http://www.ioci.org.au/new/index.html
Look at these charts:
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDG00073.shtml
So the rain in Perth comes from those cold fronts to the South, and the rain in the the northeast and central areas comes from the north along the troughs.
If the cold fronts had moved north you’d get an oncrease in coastal rain up around Shark Bay, which we don’t see.
NT,
Saying that the rain has moved to the NE only means that there is currently more rain in the NE.
When the PDO from 1976 that put the extra rainfall in the NE reverses, then possibly the southern patterns will return.
Actually NT, last time I looked, rainfall to the NE of SW WA was above LTA. And don’t verbal me: at no stage did I say that Perth did not have serious problems. I said it was adapting to them. And you misrepresent the choices for the future as further deasal or a Kimberley pipeline. This is the case only if they decide to continue catchment vegetation management approaches that allow thickening to reduce catchment yields and continue to forgo the substantial resource in the Yaragadee aquifer. Both these have been actively considered by water resource planners in WA and will continue to be so, along with desal and demand management. I know the new Premier was keen on a Kimberley canal, but this is unlikely to make economic sense.
“The increase in rainfall in the far north east is a result of an expansion southward of rain bearing sustems. It’s a poleward movement of weather systems.”
Already this has to be quote of the thread; splendid amphigory; so NT we are all going to be wintering at the South pole? Excellent; here’s the rainfall patterns for WA over the last 3 years;
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/rain_maps.cgi?map=contour&variable=anomaly&area=wa&period=36months®ion=wa&time=latest
Luke, Cowan is always a mixed bag; what does the graph in slide 7 mean? Congrats on a 50% correlation with reality at slide 10; this far surpasses the Mann standard of ‘skill’; and slide 12 shows the slight decline since 1976 is correlated with El Nino; or is SAM exempt from that?
It would be interesting to know how common it is for the NW of WA [the NE if you live in Perth] to have this rain pattern.
The Great Sandy Desert is not an area of many watercourses and when these big rain depressions dump on it, what happens?
This link may work;
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/rain_maps.cgi?map=contour&variable=anomaly&area=aus&period=cmonth®ion=aus&time=latest
So, Nt could you arrange a meet with Burkie?
A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point. But man’s resourcefulness goes beyond simply protecting a belief. Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally, suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view.
When Prophecy Fails, 1956
This particular source? You have to do some specific reading to work out where I extracted this from. It’s not hard.
Strange – debating about climate change – it always changes – wet to dry. It’s those who cannot adapt who try to stop climate change.
Anysley,
I am making it clear that the rain from the southwest hasn’t moved to the northeast, they are different systems.
The Yarragadee isn’t really an option as usage already exceeds recharge.
It’s also saline at depth so you can only use the top fresh layer, which is already being depleted. Water corp are keen on using it but it’s a short term solution and won’t last very long.
Devegetation in the hills is an option, but you also risk salinity incursion – that’s what happened when they removed large areas of vegetation around Mundaring Weir. The reason there is still large areas of state forest east of perth is actually to prevent salinisation. You should talk to Dr Ryan Vogwell at DEC. Or at least read some papers on groundwater around Perth.
Personally I can’t see any other option than desal.
Perth’s problems are also due to very high evaporation in the summer, using dams to store water here isn’t a particularly smart option.
Cohenite? What are you on about? What’s your point about the rainfall?
“so NT we are all going to be wintering at the South pole?” That’s just a stupid thing to say.
Spangled. The interior of WA has vast ancient drainage systems (from prior to the onset of glaciation around 35 million years ago). These drainage systems still operate underground, especially north of the Menzies Line, and it is along these courses that water flows over the surface. I think the river in the Great Sandy Desert is called the Percival Paleodrainage.
Cohenite,
yeah of course I can Burkie and I are neighbours.
Louis,
That’s how religion got so well entrenched.
Guess wot the new religion is?
Spangled look at the text above:”Perth and the south-west of the state have suffered a decline in rainfall, which appears to have shifted to the north-east.”
Ansyley does appear to be saying the rain has shifted…
Good to see Kellow has now become a big time denialist. So much for veiled scientific scrutiny. Following in Franks footsteps obviously – not what’s said – it’s what’s left out- make a diversionary case on a marginal player like Flannery as if that’s the main game. Shoddy stuff.
Cohenite – could it be that there might be “multiple” influences. Wow – how sophistamuckated – OMIGOD ! And might these effects also link across to the MDB? Nah ….
Anyway NT don’t bother doing the lit review for these turkeys – it’s a waste of time. You’ll only get stupid Hissink dross back.
NT,
Well the solution is sibyl, simply point paleo percy at the porcelain and Perth’s problem is solved.
But by the time the channel is dug, the weather will have changed.
Spangled, what a mangled metaphor 🙂
The paleodrainage systems of WA are actually fascinating. The size of the rivers that used to flow are amazing. Most in the south drained into what is now the Nullarbor Plain.
There are even old extinct deltas along the coast near Shark Bay and north east of Port Hedland.
Sadly the Percival drains to near Roebourne somewhere and there’s no real way they could use that water.
Apparently the inland Aboriginal groups used the water in these drainage systems.
Luke, yes it is hard… But it’s fun too.
I must admit I was wrong about the Yarragadee… I have read different papers, and the older data had much lower recharge figures and higher TDS. Newer studies show the recharge is higher and TDS is lower.
Apologies for any inconvience.
It’s just like home to have Luke describing his fellow-posters as ‘turkeys’, ‘big-time denialists’, etc. Back on 26 April, he was enriching the ‘Flannery – the Wrong Weather Maker’ thread with the claim that the ignorance of one poster was ‘a great example of the problem of the thickness of the denialist cranium’ and describing others as ‘denialist scum’, ‘denialist vermin’ and ‘old coots’. But Luke took the time to post a link to a paper in the ‘Australian Meteorological Magazine’ (AMM) as a model of ‘what serious rainfall analysis looks like.’
After nearly six months, the article in question remains available on the AMM website but with corrections having been made to six of the eight tables. At least three figures have been corrected in each of these tables, with south-west Western Australia taking the record with corrections to 25 of the 90 values, an error rate of 28 per cent.
However, no corrections have been made to the text of the paper so that, for example, the Abstract says that “In the Southwest, annual total rainfall has SIGNIFICANTLY decreased by 21 mm. per decade since 1910 …” (EMPHASIS added), but the table no longer shows this as a significant decrease at the 95 per cent confidence level; and the main body of the text says that the annual decreases in rainfall since 1950 have been “due to strong decreases during autumn, winter and spring”, but the table itself shows the trend decrease in summer to have been almost twice as great as the decrease in spring.
If the values in the tables are correct, there are at least five more uncorrected errors in the text of the paper, none of which is acknowledged in the Corrigendum just published in the June 2008 issue of AMM.
The paper under notice was co-authored by Kevin Hennessy, Coordinating Lead Author of the ‘Australia and New Zealand’ chapter of last year’s IPCC report and first-named author of the non-peer-reviewed Drought Exceptional Circumstances Report to which Aynsley refers in his lecture.
There are far more errors, and more serious errors, in this 17-page paper that Luke has held up as a model than were found in Bjorn Lomborg’s 500-page book, following massive efforts to find fault by the organised anti-sceptic movement – including a disgraceful attempt by 12 tenured US professors to intimidate Cambridge University Press and to claim, contrary to what they knew was the fact, that the book had not been peer-reviewed by scientists.
NT,
Thank you for the concession on the Yaragadee.
My understanding of the catchment issue is that catchment vegetation has been allowed to thicken with the cessation of active management to thin, and this has turned a small reduction in rainfall into a substantial reduction in catchment yields. Yes, there is always a risk of mobilising salt, but I don’t think this was a problem in the past, and the thinning option would involve returning to past management practices, rather than total vegetation removal.
Castles is back to his usual modus operandi of diversions and fireworks. Interesting how he always turns up at just the right moment to set a few off. Funny how you only ever represent one side of the argument and suffer selective amnesia on the other. No problems with “turds” and other such terminology? I wonder why? Must be something in the contrarian air. Can I help it if one of the debaters actually had named himself/herself “denialist scum”.
You should be more concerned about someone making an attack on Flannery without a fullsome disclosure of the recent relevant science on the matter.
NT,
Qld built a monster [costwise] R/O desal plant that sets us back $300,000 a day doing nothing.
This seems a crazy solution to a previously simple solution [dam building] but today you’re damned if you do and not dammed if you don’t and monetary cost does not rate with political cost.
You could get a cast-off oil rig [must be lots in WA] of say 1000 tons disp. and put a floating handle on it of 100 tons disp. and this bicycle pump would accumulate the constant 1000 psi required for R/O by wave action with no elec power required anywhere.
You could anchor dozens of them off the coast from Perth and let the Freemantle Doctor do the rest.
Who said I had no problems with ‘turds’ and other such terminology? I condemn such language out of hand. By all means tell us about ‘the relevant recent science on the matter’, but try not to describe other posters as turkeys and denialists: it really doesn’t help your argument.
There aren’t any more rivers near Perth left to dam… So dams aren’t an option here.
Ansley, thinning of the undergrowth near dams would help, yes. Large scale clearing would be bad, I can’t remember what year it was (early last century) but they noticed Mundaring Weir was salinising.
Spangled, I have heard of some solutions like this for WA. They were building R/O pumps from floating balls attached to a vertical shaft. The motion of the ball floating up and down would provide the power.
We do have a lot of opportunity for wind power here, but so far it’s baby steps. I guess we have so much cheap coal no one wants to build wind farms.
Well Ian – there is various IOCI and CSIRO research which gives some case for BOTH natural and anthropogenic influences at work in SW WA. (1) Has been mentioned many times before – changes in SAM being one such effect. (2) One becomes bolshy when having mentioned that work that the peanut gallery comments immediately start without any due consideration. (3) I look forward to you protesting the use of ungentlemanly terms by other contributors.
Given WA has gone to the trouble of setting up IOCI to explore rainfall issues in WA it might be worthwhile to at least review where they are at? Or is Flannery more exciting as a target?
luke; I’ve always insulted you in a most gentlemanly manner; the least you could do would be to reciprocate in a similar fashion; your crack about the peanut gallery is most insensitive; at my age peanuts can lead to kidney stones; now, are you going to explain the graph at slide 7 or not?
Dear Cohenite – of course my dear fellow I didn’t mean you.
But to your point – a negative correlation with SAM of -0.40 – pretty good actually. Nobody said it was a perfect predictor did they? And read on – or have a good old Google on Cai and Cowan in GRL etc for some more – you’ve had the list before.
It’s “an influence” that comes out in correlation but is also further explained by the modelling. God isn’t going to give up climate change simply is he now? Of course it’s going to be messy. As I have said before – there is a good case from “some” AGW influence at work in modifying southern Australian rainfall. And also in Europe’s Mediterranean, and the south-west in the USA.
The notion that AGW influences might restrict themselves to temperature effects is quaint.
Was more today in the Oz
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24474671-11949,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24478392-11949,00.html
But oh dear I’m banging on about drought again … and back on the same old same old … perhaps this time you might be more receptive (well at least to deny it explicitly)
Cohenite,
The reason we don’t get as much in the southwest of WA anymore is because the coldfronts that bring the rain tend to slide to the south as they approach.
SWWA actually had very predictable weather patterns – broadly speaking. We get much more rain in the winter than in Summer and most rain falls between May and September.
Two kinds of weather in the winter, the first with the crossing of a cold front (this lasts a few days, with cool and very wet and cloudy weather), and the second with the presence of a High pressure over southern Australia when we get very cold nights and cool sunny days.
What seems to have happened is the cold fronts don’t come as far north anymore, many slide away to the south and so instead of say 3 rainy days and 4 sunny days in winter we get about 30 sunny days instead as 3 cold fronts miss us altogether (this is what happened in August this year, I think it was June the year before and July the year before that).
We get basically two kinds of weather in Summer, hot and dry (when there is a high in the Bight and a trough east of us) with an Easterly in the morning and a seabreeze in the afternoon. Or hot and humid, when the trough stays west of us (preventing the seabreeze) and bringing moisture from the northwest.
Oops
That should read
“…3 rainy days and 4 sunny days each week in a winter month…”
http://www.csiro.au/news/ps2y3.html
Here you go Cohers – and our old mate Wenju again. Thinks like a GCM that boy.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL028037.shtml
NT; without commenting on how or if southern WA climate has changed, I have previously referred to the fact that the Hunter Valley has had no climate variation, apart from PDO phase related ones, and been taken to task by luke on the basis that regionalism of this sort proves nothing; it seems we have, arguably, some regions, MDB and the southern tip of WA, which are having some irregular climate, while the rest of Australia are undergoing business as normal, or slightly above average in the opposite direction. If AGW is manifesting in a regional fashion, at the very least this puts the lie to the AGW claim of the universality of AGW (with AGW concepts like average temp, greenhouse and radiative imbalance) and that AGW is univerally bad.
NT,
I didn’t mean the Freemantle Doctor for wind power but for wave power.
Ocean movement carries over from one wind to the next.
Cohenite,
The weather in SW WA has become drier, or rather the Winter rains have reduced (there may have been an increase in Summer rain).
I don’t know if AGW will be universally bad, not even sure what that means. Universally bad for humans? Or for life in general? What we have seen is that when we have had changes from icehouse to hot house it has been marked by mass extinctions and sea level rise, that is the main reason (I would suspect it’s the only reason) that AGW is seen as bad.
Spangled,
ok yes. Well the Freo Doctor is a pretty good source of wind energy too.
Cohenite, I should note that the reduction of rainfall in SWWA is universally bad for everyone who lives here.
It’s also interesting to observe the possible effects of land clearing on rainfall. There are some new studies (I think Pielke Sr might be involved) on the effect of vegetation east of the rabbit proof fence. It could also be that land clearing in the WA wheatbelt has enhanced the drop in rainfall.
“Thinks like a GCM that boy.”
LUKE!
GCM’s don’t think!
They calculate other people’s assumptions.
NT; according to luke’s Cai and Cowan link winter rainfall in SWWA has declined 20%, which is due to a seasonal specific SAM effect whereby, despite a 70% observational trend, 46% of this 20% decline is due to SAM and 50% due to AGW, and presumably the other 4% to Tim Flannery.
I am utterly amazed at you Cohenite. Why would you think that the impacts of AGW would be uniform. Any disruption to the energy balance is likely to start moving circulation systems around. Surely? And on top of/mixed with existing variability and oscillations like ENSO.
Regionalism is everything – if you’re dependent on fronts that are moved southwards – it’s rather a bit of regional bad luck old trout. Especially is that’s where your cities and good agricultural land is.
It actually matters a fair bloody bit in fact.
So what ya do is ya compare your observations, stats and models and see if you can make sense of it holistically. Like that’s the whole science gig dude ! Putting it all together.
Oh Spanglers – yes but just a bit of mirth at how you guys cannot hold a few concepts in your mind at once – which is why thinking like a GCM helps 🙂 errr joke mate…. sheesh …
The hypothesis is that a combination of factors are affecting SAMmy. http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2004…/2004GL020724.shtml
and http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/296/5569/895
And Susan Solomon ought to know being such a good IPCC lady.
Luke
Why don’t summarise the hypothesis in your own words so that you might indicate your understanding of the subject. As it is all you do is zealously point to chapter and verse in the Litany, and crowing about it to boot.
Luke,
Sorry, but when you’ve got that gun in you’re hand and that look on your face, it’s hard to think you’re being humorous.
However I’m very relieved about that.
Just want some respect spanglers… 🙂
Gee Louis – it’s weelly weeeely hard coz I just googled a few random links and posted them for fun.
Could it be something like – stwatosferric ozone depletion plus eensy weensy GHGs affects SAMmy seal which causes movement in the pressure belts and rain bearing systems to miss the said continent? Just taking a stab at it you know. Howzat?
Alternatively you could RTFPs.
Luke,
Right one cue. Thanks, and hey the fishing is good. 🙂
Actually you are as sharp as a sack of wet sheep brains.
Well pardon me, I have been discourteous
It’s Luke BSc. (Hons).
Boy!
“I am utterly amazed at you Cohenite. Why would you think that the impacts of AGW would be uniform. Any disruption to the energy balance is likely to start moving circulation systems around. Surely? And on top of/mixed with existing variability and oscillations like ENSO.”
Ah say, Ah say, Boy, it’s called GLOBAL warming Boy!, Y’all got a problem with that?
Youniform is global, Ah say.
Luke,
I mean I’m very relieved that you think that thinking like a GCM is a joke.
You have my respect….
Louis is exactly right luke; AGW is predicated on its global impact and all its indices are global; it’s one of the many contradictions of this mess; even if the AGW spruikers seem unaware of this glaring inconsistency;
http:www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/shindell_06/ (// excluded)
At a recent apocalyptic post by Glikson, he said that sudden and drastic climate change events were likely and would have a global effect; but even AIM and Dansgaard-Oeschger events are regionalised. I agree that there are likely to be regional losers when such changes occur, but there are also likely to be winners as well; the most salient point though, is that these changes have happened naturally before; AGW has not made a convincing case that there is an anthropogenic imput into the regional anomalies which may be occuring, as Koutsoyiannis has shown; but if you want to provide an analysis of the Vecchi and Cai papers, with Keenlyside thrown in, to argue otherwise, knock yourself out; I don’t mean literally, I’m speaking metaphorically.
Cohenite don’t be so utterly stupid. Do rant on.
Cohenite,
Glikson’s view is predicated by historical memories of past global catastrophes but disserved by the theory used to explain them – Lyellian Uniformism.
Until geology unshackles its chains from Lyellian dogma, little progress can be expected.
Of course the interactions of ozone hole recovery might be counter intuitive too.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080424113454.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080612141015.htm
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL033317.shtml
So, even when we do fix our ‘mistakes’ we still get a kick in the backside; well, that’s it then, we’re buggered.
Cheer up cohey,
Just remember, these are SUPER GCMs and therefore SUPER biased.
Cohenite:
” agree that there are likely to be regional losers when such changes occur, but there are also likely to be winners as well; ”
This is not demonstrated historically. The expected change due to AGW is more in the scale of the PETM, so would involve a large extinction event. Remember Homo Sapiens has only ever existed in the current ice-age, we depend on ice-age sources of food (such as grasses), it would require a major adjustment not just by human’s but also by our food sources.
There could be winners from this, but what is the likelihood the winners will be human?
Louis, have you read your crustal contamination work yet? What about the Hawaiin Island chain? As to Uniformitarianism, what else can we assume? Is there any evidence that physical laws that govern processes was different in the past?
Luke,
I object to your abusive attacks on blog contributors and I’m entitled to say so without being obliged to single out other offenders. Please try and be civil to the rest of us. Many readers of this blog may not know about your recent performance at the “Niche Modeling” blog (‘Recent Article on Controversial Topic – Drought and AGW’ thread).
In your opening salvo on that thread you criticised the host, David Stockwell, for posting an article by Professor Stuart Franks, and charged that he (David) was having his leg pulled by ‘the organised sceptic disinformation unit.’ Following David’s efforts to make the peace by telling you that ‘You are a worthy adversary and contributor’, you pounced on him for citing with approval a paper by two CSIRO researchers: ‘Now Stockwell is quoting CSIRO as source yet attacking them on the main thread.’ Well I suppose that only gullible people who get sucked in by disinformation units would be so naïve as to think that CSIRO scientists would have reported their findings rather than repeat the party line.
Then you told a contributor that he was ‘a big head know it all’ and ‘a flogger of flash kit which you’ve bought [but] don’t know the limits of’ – and offered him the gratuitous advice to ‘wank on – I [Luke] have known all this stuff for years – funny how whirl-wind blowing through a junk yard builds a 747 – and even funnier how a smart arse like you is being dragged around in the wake …’
You also said on the ‘Niche Modeling’ blog that the public “need a fullsome explanation as plain and vanilla as possible”, and on this thread that I “should be more concerned about someone making an attack on Flannery without a fullsome disclosure of the recent relevant science on the matter.” You might want to check on the meaning of ‘fulsome’ before using the word again. And why do you say that Aynsley Kellow’s comments on what Tim Flannery said are an attack on HIM? What about YOUR attacks on individuals, as exemplified by the comments quoted above and (especially) your allegation that Professor Franks and others are operating a ‘disinformation unit’ – while you’re looking at the dictionary, check on ‘disinformation.’
The IPCC alleged that I was spreading disinformation in a media release in 2003, but I couldn’t sue them for defamation because international organisations have immunity from such actions. But you have no such immunity so I think that you’d better be careful.
Finally, could I suggest that you give your support to David Stockwell’s efforts to try and get more information about the Drought Exceptional Circumstances Report (DECR) that the Australian Government received, accepted and frightened the nation’s farmers with on 6 July? Wouldn’t it be valuable if experts such as yourself could see the draft of the report that went to DAFF but that the Department thought was ‘too technical’. Now that David has learned that the authors ‘had to spend considerable time simplifying the language, diagrams and tables’ in that draft, it is clear that the DECR was ‘dumbed-down’ before publication. Some of us might wonder whether it was also ‘sexed-up’, but the issue could be quickly resolved if the draft were released. Do you support this?
NT;
Stop patronising me please.
And apart from uniformitarianism what else could we assume?
There is no evidence that physical laws were different in the past – who said they were? Probably as a result of your incomplete understanding of the topic.
Just remember that nuclear decay is not invariant so that fact alone renders geochronolgy problematical.
The alternative to unformitarianism includes the most powerful force in the universe adding the laws of Maxwell and Lorentz to the existing ones.
Ian Castles; IPCC is not immune from defamation proceedings; if you want a detailed advice feel free to contact me.
Ian well there you go you see – ramping up my concerns yet again. As I was saying on the theme here – it’s not what’s often said – it’s so often what’s not said. And you’ve been most inhospitable to me and quoted out of context of the more fullsome discussion. You know it makes my blood boil when people don’t give a full account. One could become most angry and animated and use harsh language.
So let’s table the full discussion (irrelevant to the thread that it is) – http://landshape.org/enm/recent-article-on-controversial-topic-drought-and-agw/#comments
And interesting too as I can see Steve is still having a go. I didn’t realise I owed him anything but gee I can’t please anyone.
And yes indeed I support the excellent work that CSIRO and BoM have done on DECR. But as Steve has said – I’m no expert and don’t measure up to his stringent specifications, so my opinion would be of little use to DAFF.
BTW do you have a reference for the frightened and disturbed landholders so traumatised by the DECR report – I hadn’t seen anything in the papers about it. Post-DECR disorder sounds most traumatic.
I also note that a Stewart Franks seems to be a signatory – the famous Bali Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations Dec. 13, 2007 publicaly expressing of course some scepticism. Would that also be the same person whom the Lavoisier Society has promoted a recent drought article in the Australian newspaper at their web site, and who also appears in a Youtube video at a certain meeting. I must say I thought in the main, the presentation was quite good.
So Ian would you recommend the Lavoisier web site to be a quality source of “information” in the main? And do you think the Society is “organised” or perhaps is it simply a friendly society of debate?
And I did do some research of “disinformation” – apparently different to “misinformation”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation
“Disinformation should not be confused with misinformation, which is merely false information spread by mistake.
Disinformation techniques may also be found in commerce and government, used by one group to try to undermine the position of a competitor. It in fact is the act of deception and blatant false statements to convince someone of an untruth. Cooking-the-books might be considered a disinformation strategy that led to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
Unlike traditional propaganda and Big Lie techniques designed to engage emotional support, disinformation is designed to manipulate the audience at the rational level by either discrediting conflicting information or supporting false conclusions.
Another technique of concealing facts, or censorship, is also used if the group can affect such control. When channels of information cannot be completely closed, they can be rendered useless by filling them with disinformation, effectively lowering their signal-to-noise ratio and discrediting the opposition by association with a lot of easily-disproved false claims.
A common disinformation tactic is to mix some truth and observation with false conclusions and lies, or to reveal part of the truth while presenting it as the whole (a limited hangout).”
But it has been said on here that Wiki itself is a source of disinformation, so we need to be careful.
And so the need to pin the tail on CSIRO seems very strong – but as I’ve said to David Stockwell on other threads – where do these witch hunts lead? Indeed we would be better served by someone getting on with an alternative analysis.
Landholders out there may indeed by frightened – but not by the DECR – but what to do next? And so Ian – our answer to those folks is?
Luke,
“Landholders out there may indeed by frightened” and by whom?
Climate sceptics?
Ah say, I could have also wrote “but by whom”.
Assuming the boy is a bit taller than a dwarf running a giraffe riding competition.
Luke, you quote Wiki as identifying a ‘common disinformation tactic’ of revealing part of the truth ‘while presenting it as the whole (a limited hang-out)’. This is in fact exactly what Steve McIntyre suggested that CSIRO may have done in the case of the DECR. In a post of 24 July headed ‘CSIRO: A Limited hang-out??’, Steve wrote as follows:
“I’ve now done a quick look at [CSIRO’s] supposed data archive … and it is far from clear that this is … adequate … It may be more like the sort of limited hang-out that we often see when climate scientists grudgingly release a little bit of data to comply with pressure, but without a commitment to an ‘open and transparent’ process …
“In order to build a true ‘consensus’ to deal with important problems, it’s necessary for climate scientists to be thoroughly committed to an ‘open and transparent’ process. This means more than IPCC authors taking in one another’s laundry. It means more than a bunch of IPCC scientists telling everyone else what to think – even if they’re right and perhaps especially if they’re right. It means that data and methods to support articles used for climate policy must be routinely available concurrent with the publication of the article. Not after the fact.”
That was written three weeks after the DECR was published. Now it’s over three months and there’s been virtually no progress. How can you say it’s an excellent report when it has been heavily criticised and its authors won’t engage with their critics?
You remark flippantly that ‘Post-DECR disorder sounds most traumatic’ and ask me whether I have a reference ‘for the frightened and disturbed landholders so traumatised by the DECR report.’ Yes, there’s a link in my On Line Opinion article at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7865 . The NSW Farmers and Graziers Association President reported that the Association had received many calls from members who were “extremely agitated, confused and upset about the reports of drought every second year in future”.
My apologies if you believe I misrepresented you. I wasn’t trying to report the substance of your argument but to highlight your violent language. If you don’t like that, stop using such language. Your link to the ‘more fullsome discussion’ enables readers to judge for themselves (but why ‘fulsome’, which means ‘excessive or insincere, esp. in an offensive or distasteful way’?)
Yes the Stewart Franks who wrote the article in The Australian that was the subject of David Stockwell’s post is presumably the same person who signed the letter to the UN Secretary-General to which Don Aitkin, Bob Carter, Cliff Ollier, Garth Paltridge, Ian Plimer, Reid Bryson, Freeman Dyson, Chris Essex, Nigel Lawson, Richard Lindzen, Ross McKitrick, Alex Robson, Roy Spencer, Edward Wegman and nearly 100 others were also signatories – so it seems that Ian Lowe’s 2005 estimate that there were only five climate change sceptics in the world may have been a bit on the low side. And yes this Stewart Franks could well be the same person whose drought article in The Australian was published on the Lavoisier website. And yes he might even be the same person who appeared in a YouTube video at ‘a recent meeting.’ I’m really shocked about that.
It’s fine for The Australian to publish articles by experts such as Stewart Franks, and Roger Jones of CSIRO – though I must say I found Roger’s recent claim to speak for ‘the science community’ presumptuous and his reference to ‘the denial community’ offensive (Australian Higher Education, 30 July, p. 23). And I object most strenuously to the newspaper’s sub-editor’s outrageous byline to Jones’s article (“Silly Sceptics: The Case Against Climate Change Deniers”, ibid, p. 19) and the Australian Government spending our money buying space in The Australian for its tendentious advertisements promoting the so-called ‘Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.’
I’d certainly recommend the Lavoisier site as a quality source of information in my own (admittedly limited) field of interest. In fact, Lavoisier published the Castles/Henderson articles that the AGO refused to publish. Lavoisier doesn’t pretend to present all sides of the argument, but their website is useful as far as it goes. If you want to know whether the Group is ‘organised’ or not, please ask them or one of their members. There’s no point in asking me. Australia’s first professor of public ethics, Clive Hamilton, appears to be very knowledgable on the subject – he tells readers of the October 2008 issue of ‘The Monthly’ that:
“They [sceptics] meet together at the Lavoisier Group, where they engage in mutual reinforcement, convinced that they possess a special knowledge that the rest of the world needs urgently to hear. The truth has been revealed to them because they are more rational than others, and are therefore able to resist the lies of the climate scientists” (p. 59)
Clive Hamilton must be writing about the Real Climate Group because his description of the activties of the Lavoisier Group cannot be based on personal experience.
Ian – you might have decided to isolate the debate to my turns of phrase – but why would you want to do that? Those comments at Niche Modelling are unrelated to the topic here.
As for violent – well humbug – what nonsense.
Have I threatened anyone with litigation, suggested they be reported or informed on, or taking a sample from this blog – “mass sackings, taking people’s houses off them, comments on Garnaut’s hair style, suggested arson, assaulting State govt staff, or engaging in a bit of fisticuffs with one’s fellow Australians”. Don’t think I’ve accused anyone of genocide either. I think it’s apparent which side has the monopoly on threatening behaviour.
You have failed to mention that my robust words quoted above were as a result of a protagonist personalising the debate as to what my scientific abilities may or may not be. Instead of leading or contributing to the debate he was simply ragging me. Why didn’t you add that Ian? Telling half the story – is the theme that I’m exploring here.
So you do seem happy and content to confine your chastisement of robust language for myself only. Unimpressed I’m afraid.
Again to the point – if sceptics are so concerned they would be making more serious attempts to engage to fairly and formally engage the institutional science. Not running societies dedicated to quasi-political ends.
However the entire separate nature of the discourse is to set up as an alternative political force. And to link the science debate to political persuasion and broader environmental politics. A distaste for mitigation policy seems to imply a knee-jerk response that one must also automatically bag the climate science as incorrect.
The attitude to institutional scientists is provocative and combative. Frankly I wonder why they persist in engaging sceptics given the vulgarity displayed on here and other blogs by protagonists. And you criticise my choice of words !! sheesh !
As for Jock Laurie’s assertion of alarm by his constituents, my own personal experience seems to be at odds with his. A friend who recently made a long trip through NSW found hardly any farmers who believed in AGW despite the drought – so not sure how they could be getting “stressed” if they don’t believe. Perhaps he gets out more than us. Or another explanation is to shore up the EC scheme against any possible evidence of a “changed climate” which might necessitate a review of EC terms and conditions.
But to return to essential point of my concern with Kellow’s and Frank’s articles is the lack of discussion of the recent science undertaken on the possible influence of AGW on southern Australia. Why have they not mentioned it ? Gets back to your quotation of ” revealing part of the truth ‘while presenting it as the whole (a limited hang-out)”.
As for CSIRO – Stockwell has played the provocatively and with partisan bias from day one – I imagine CSIRO might be unimpressed with the style. But their response is up to them.
Science progresses by someone undertaking an alternative analysis – which is why auditing is so tedious.
Surely the public interest here is served by science which informs decision making by farmers, agri-business, water resource managers, and Treasury. At what point do we move on constructively?