Dr David Jones, Head of Climate Analysis at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, has claimed that over the past 11 years Melbourne’s rainfall has been about 20 percent below the long-term average.
It is common to refer to “the long-term average” when discussing climate data, but if the climate along the East Coast of Australia tends to be dominated by either El Nino or La Nina conditions, how meaningful is an average?
According to Associate Professor Stewart Franks, School of Engineering, University of Newcastle, when calculating a long-term average it is important to include an equal number of La Nina and also El Nino dominated periods.
Professor Franks is a hydrologist with an interest in understanding the risk of flooding. He has explained that if you take an annual maxima flood series for a northern New South Wales catchment, which is typical for the East Coast of Australia over the last 100 years, there have been two periods of El Nino conditions and a single La Nina.
So when a long-term average is calculated from this data it probably underestimates the real risk of a big flood event. In other words, if anything government policy and planning has underprepared us for big flood events.
In the opinion piece by Dr Jones entitled ‘Our hot, dry future’ published by Melbourne’s The Age newspaper recently, he claimed the below average rainfall in Melbourne was due to global warming and that there was worse to come.
But if the climate along the East Coast of Australia is a two state process dominated by El Nino or La Nina, then while Melbourne has experienced relatively dry conditions during the past 11 years, the expectation would be that at some point we will move back into a La Nina dominated phase. According to Professor Franks, it is probably a bit messier than that with periods that might not be dominated by either.
Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume the longer the El Nino dominance continues, the likelier it is to end.
So, rather than preparing for more drought as Dr Jones suggests, perhaps we should prepare for more floods? Indeed climate always changes and floods and droughts are a natural hazard.
******************************************
For more information:
D. C Verdon & S. W. Franks, 2006. Long-term behaviour of ENSO: Interactions with the PDO over the past 400 years inferred from paleoclimate records, Geophysical Research Letters, 33.
Part 1 of this series,
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/10/how-melbourne%e2%80%99s-climate-has-changed-a-reply-to-dr-david-jones-part-2/
Part 2 of this series,
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/10/how-melbourne%e2%80%99s-climate-has-changed-a-reply-to-dr-david-jones-part-1/
Part 3 of this series,
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/10/how-melbourne%e2%80%99s-climate-has-changed-a-reply-to-dr-david-jones-part-3/
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Jennifer says:
“So when a long-term average is calculated from this data it probably underestimates the real risk of a big food event.”
Must be a typo – big fLood event
“It is common to refer to “the long-term average” when discussing climate data”
err nope – not with rainfall data …
which is why BoM’s site is filled with information on medians, deciles and trend information. Come on ! I think we know that a few large events bias the mean. And strangely enough BoM know something El Nino, La Nina, PDO and IPO too. Funny that. Indeed having done pathfinder work themselves on decadal variability.
As usual for sceptics Franks has left out half the story for convenience – vigorously discussed here –
http://landshape.org/enm/recent-article-on-controversial-topic-drought-and-agw/
If you want to get away from the usual south-centric biases for Australian academia – indeed rainfall and runoff variability seems to be increasing for half the east coast (reef catchments – over 400 years)
Lough, J. M. (2007), Tropical river flow and rainfall reconstructions from coral luminescence: Great Barrier Reef, Australia, Paleoceanography, 22, PA2218, doi:10.1029/2006PA001377.
Data here: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/coral/west_pacific/great_barrier/queensland-riverflow2007.txt
The one concession I’d offer is decadal Pacific oscillations make for a complex story. But did any AGW proponent ever say natural forces disappeared once AGW was discovered or that the story was not complex?
Ignore the substantial literature (unquoted here in the lead of course) at your peril. Why do sceptics continue to avoid it?
Franks would do well to explain this graph here on page 16 (weakening Walker circulation over time – perhaps one also needs to include periods of this in one’s analysis)
http://www.garnautreview.org.au/CA25734E0016A131/WebObj/DrScottPower/$File/Dr%20Scott%20Power.pdf
Mainspring, Yes, it was a typo, fixed, thanks.
Luke, This series of blog posts is in response to the piece in The Age by David Jones in which he makes reference to “the long-term average”. So, we agree, it was misleading of him to write the piece in the way he did – basing it around the idea of a long-term average?
Well if he had said median most people would not have understood. An op-ed isn’t a science paper. Anyway the gist of what he said is spot on. I think as head of climate analysis David may know few things about rainfall stats.
And putting up a graph with a running mean when the issue if the end of the graph is uninformative and misleading.
Issue is that there is a significant rainfall decline over long periods which is the decile analysis story – how recent periods of years compare to other periods. And there is some good science (never discussed here strangely) as to contributing factors.
Jen – the issue is when will sceptics ever make a full discussion of the data and existing literature instead of playing with single cherries?
SEACI has just looked into all this southern Australian rainfall business and you guys never discuss the work !! Why?
And why do you think the Walker circulation is weakening?
Luke,
You can’t even acknowledge that the thrust of David’s recent public discussion has about decline from a long-term average and that this is not useful.
PS So, it is OK for the Head of Climate Analysis at the Bureau to talk about long-term averages but not climate change skeptics?
Nice duck and cover Jen. Doesn’t wash.
Sceptics don’t talk about long term averages – they talk about “cooling” since 1998. Any discussion of the full record is utterly rich coming from you guys – the exponents of the “truncated graph” game.
Anyway – what part of lowest on record don’t you understand?
The sequence of years in the last 7 or 12 are among the lowest if not lowest on record.
Franks stuff is irrelevant.
I’ll say it again – will be the day when sceptics do a full discussion not 10%.
We just had the La Nina. It’s been and gone, no big boost in rainfall, and all I got was this lousy T Shirt.
Tim Flummery, er sorry Flannery has made a prediction re Melbourne water quoted on Tim Blair’s Blog
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2005/s1389827.htm
Tim Flannery, 2005:
Melbourne’s also vulnerable to water deficits. It’s a large city, it’s in an area of quite dramatic climate change, and therefore will be vulnerable as well.
Whereas a Melissa Fyfe in today’s The Age, http://www.theage.com.au/environment/water-worries-temporary-report-20081025-58o7.html
Melbourne will have so much water in the next few decades it will no longer make economic sense to install rainwater tanks or greywater systems in new homes, a State Government-commissioned report has found.
Luke says: “Sceptics don’t talk about long term averages”
I’m sure you have watched or read Professor Bob Carter’s works. Here (introduced by our Jen)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOLkze-9GcI
he talks about 16,000 years.
I can find longer references for you if you like, Luke, but …sigh… you made another false statement
Could have something to do with a massive desal plant that is going to use huge amounts of coal fired power, not any improvement in rainfall.
SJT
I usually skip your comments, as they are mostly just nonsense, but it is hard to go past this one,
“Could have something to do with a massive desal plant that is going to use huge amounts of coal fired power, not any improvement in rainfall.”
While I try not to be rude, I have to ask this, is stupidity natural to you , or do you have to work at it?
Every time one of your more intelligent comrades makes a comment, you follow up with some of your inanities in reply to the response those comments.
Why?
So far I cannot think of one coherent useful thing you said.
I am here to listen and learn, you are here to enjoy seeing your nick on a blog???
God! man you have problems!
Geoff – yes yes – But Bob is also the arch-exponent of the 1998 truncation. You want to have it both ways?
So Geoff why don’t sceptics discuss the science? Why do they always leave major bits out?
Luke,
that is easy – it isn’t science but politics dressed up as science. Hence you ease with it since if it really involved science, we would have to throw you life belt after life belt.
I just love it when they wax lyrically over El Nino and La Nina and haven’t the foggiest, I mean, darndest clue what causes these El Ninos, or the La Ninas.
Is it usual scientific practice to base theories on natural phenomena which we don’t understand?
Pseudoscience does.
Luke
“So Geoff why don’t sceptics discuss the science?”
One the the world’s best know skeptics (sic) is The Viscount Monkton of Brenchley.
I know you like peer reviewed papers. In his open letter to John McCain, he distinguishes between reviewed and unreviewed papers. As Bob Carter does, he definitely discusses the science.
It is here: read; enjoy.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/an_open_letter_from_the_viscou_1.html
Alas both seem to have very selective palates.
And Moncky has had some considered analysis. LOL. http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/10/monckton_has_a_gold_nobel_priz.php
Louis – zzzzzzzzz
Luke,
Tim Lambert is all you can come up with to counter Monckton of Brenchley? That’s really getting to the bottom of the bucket.
And if you must snooze, so so quietly please, no sleep walking or sleep talking – after all it is Luke Walker, no? The ghost who can’t stop non sequituring.
Interesting reference, Luke. If you can’t attack the science, attack the man.
Why don’t AGWers discuss the science?
It is rather interesting when the engineers start contributing to the science that is purported to support AGW.
Engineers have to deal with physical reality and its from this stance that enormous problems can be recognised when trying to reconcile AGW theory and its support in virtual reality, with physical reality.
Put simply, it doesn’t.
What ever physical observation you wish to use, AGW is not supported by physical evidence.
That esoteric statistical contrivances need to be invoked to support AGW means nothing more than desperation on the part of the politically motivated climate scientists (Technicians might be a better description).
Monckton isn’t science. Come up with some science and I’d be happy to discuss it. Monckton is an ego in search of an audience.
So why DON’T sceptics discuss the science? And why DO ‘they’ talk about ‘cooling’ since 1998? This sceptic doesn’t actually – I’ve never made any such claim. But Roger Jones, one of CSIRO’s leading climate scientists, recently told readers of The Australian Higher Education that:
“According to NASA data, 2007 during a La Nina (normally colder than average) was similar in temperature to 1998. When we know that two events are similar, if one associated with temporary cooling occurs a decade after another associated with temporary warming, there must be an underlying trend. That’s science” (‘Countering a climate of scepticism’, 30 July 2008, p. 17).
Is it now? Unfortunately for Roger’s argument, 2007 WASN’T a La Nina year. When it was just four days old, the climate change experts at the UK Met Office said that it ‘was likely to be the warmest year on record globally, beating the current record set in 1998’ (Met Office news release: ‘2007 – forecast to be the warmest year yet’, 4 January 2007). They explained that ‘The potential for a record 2007 arises partly from a moderate strength El Niño already established in the Pacific, which is expected to persist through the first few months of 2007.’ Katie Hopkins from Met Office Consulting said ‘This new information represents another warning that climate change is happening around the world. Our work in the climate change consultancy team helps businesses mitigate against risk and adopt at a strategic level for success in the new environment.’
In the event, thanks to the arrival of La Nina during the course of the year, the HadCRU3 global mean surface temperature (GMST) for 2007 as a whole fell 0.142°C short of the 1998 record. And for the year to September 2008 the GMST declined by a further 0.108°C, making the latter year 0.254°C cooler than 1998.
According to the Hadley Centre’s ‘Facts and Myths’ page, published on 13 December 2007: ‘1998 saw an exceptional El Niño event which contributed strongly to that record-breaking year. Research shows that an exceptional El Niño can warm global temperatures by about 0.2°C in a single year.’
So the year to September 2008 has been 0.054°C COOLER than the level that research shows 1998 would have been it hadn’t been for the exceptional El Niño event. That’s science.
You don’t need a scientist to debate someone who isn’t scientist. A layman like Lambert is more than capable of taking on a layman like Monckton.
Seriously, though, don’t you think Monckton describes himself thus.
Don’t you think that such sheer hubris and misrepresentation of the situation does him more harm than any of his critics? A Nobel Prize recipient? Not from the comittee, that’s for sure.
He calls himself a member of the House of Lords, but he’s not.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/09/moncktons_fantasy_world.php
Such self delusion should be a worry, shouldn’t it?
LOL. 🙂
I post the views of a skeptical scientist, Stewart Franks, with a link to a relevant peer reviewed paper (D. C Verdon & S. W. Franks, 2006. Long-term behaviour of ENSO: Interactions with the PDO over the past 400 years inferred from paleoclimate records, Geophysical Research Letters, 33.) and the warmaholics at this thread demand some science from the skeptics? Incredible.
“rather than preparing for more drought as Dr Jones suggests, perhaps we should prepare for more floods?
Well I don’t know anyone who is bothered by the idea of floods here or there in S E Aus except those with a shack on the beach.
Even our visiting landscape gardener who travels a bit, reckons you can read the landscape for clues and avoid the sort of discussion we have here. One of his signs was the absence of glaciers now in one of his retreats.
You can’t fool people by constructing doubts about droughts after changing your data rakes
What I want to know is who else is concerned by the long term average of flood peaks as an argument against present drought conditions and security of our water supply.
A few days ago Snowy Hydro said it would take years to fill storages in the Alps despite their apparent success with snow falls after cloud seeding experiments.
Somebody else it seems has a job waiting for the next flood in the MDB. That’s so tragic !
I see that the regular “cash for comments” warmaholics crowd dont have a response to Castles either.
SJT
Monckton is an hereditary Peer and is therefore automatically a member of the House of Lords.
I seem to have struck a url fairy – In any case Mexico doesn’t have any problems:
From at least the early 1940s to the end of the 20th century, it always rained more in the state of Jalisco, in central Mexico, than in its neighbor Aguascalientes. But in 2000, on a patch of parched pasture in Aguascalientes, workers from Mexico City-based Electrificación Local de la Atmósfera Terrestre SA (ELAT) erected a peculiar field of interconnected metal poles and wires somewhat resembling the skeleton of a carnival tent. Since then, about as much rain has fallen on the plains of Aguascalientes as on its more lush neighbor.
The brainchild of a fractious group of Russian émigrés, the poles and wires are in fact a network of conductors meant to ionize the air. If the technique is done properly, the thinking goes, the natural current between the earth and the ionosphere is amplified, leading—through a mechanism that is not fully understood—to rainfall. There are now 17 such installations in six states in Mexico, and in January, federal government agencies decided to back construction and operation of 19 more by 2006, potentially altering the weather in much of parched north and central Mexico. Meanwhile, by May, ELAT’s competitor Earthwise Technologies Inc., of Mexico City and Dallas, could win the right to establish ionization stations in southwest Texas’s water-starved Webb County, which would make it the first such installation in the United States.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/apr04/3808
They admit they are not sure how it works, but it does.
SJT
AS note above, you are a bletherer, especially when you post things that are not addressed to any one in particular, so no one really knows to what or whom you are commenting.
I am reasonably
….sure you don’t
Jennifer,
I think it;s called cognitive dissonance.
I find it incredulous that the warmaholics leap off their seats and attack a “science communicator” when he/she opposes the current dogma, but say absolutely nothing about that other “science communicator” namely Gore, when he is on their side, despite the litany of errors of fact and science contained in his major opus the AIT.
The level of hypocrisy coming out of white coat brigade, and their adoring acolytes is astounding.
Perhaps, as always, its a case of following the money trail–certainly would be the case with Big Al.
Now if only I could work out how to make money out of carbon trading with only 5 acres.
Yes Jen – and it’s the same old story – why don’t you discuss ALL the contemporary literature relevant to THIS subject. There is a whole raft of information out of SEACI and CSIRO in recent years. Lough’s paper on east coast runoff points to 20th century changes in episodic behaviour. And you’re making implication about the possibility of climate change without any consideration of this information.
Not good enough. I’m reading what you’re saying. I am reading what Franks is saying.
But IMO you’re severely truncating your input and discussion.
Why?
{In case you’re wondering – yes I think PDO/IPO is an influence in general but there is also a range of other information – see slide 5 of 25 here – http://www.mdbc.gov.au/subs/seaci/docs/ASM2008/ASM08_M112_131_141_Timbal.pdf
I HOPE you do look !!
If you do a 6 way split on the Australian 20th century records (spatially on a grid) of IPO warm phase and cool phase and SOI +ve, neutral, and -ve and look at the bins – historically the SOI +ve x cool phase probabilities are indeed wet. Doesn’t mean you don’t get dry periods in IPO cool but it’s the stand out one of the 6 maps !!
BUT what is interesting is the SOI -ve (El Nino-ish) x IPO cool map which shows high probability of Australian droughts.
This is historical record not modelling !
But you’ve been talking Melbourne and its water catchments – not everywhere …
So tell me how you see this interaction working with the current SEACI and CSIRO information.
Check the list:
(1) what Franks is saying
(2) the PDO has just flipped says NASA – and maybe IPO
(3) but SEACI says changes in STR and SAM have influenced southern Australian rainfall too.
(4) Walker circulation (part of ENSO) is slowing on a century scale
ALL THIS IS INTERACTING.
And as an aside – given you’ve called salt as over on the Murray and a beatup – you should learn your own lesson on PDO !!
Why – issues like http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/11/1295/2007/hess-11-1295-2007.pdf
Wanna be a serious sceptic ? Well don’t leave massive chunks of the story out.
Malcolm – instead of slagging – why don’t you give some modest consideration to my comments? Afraid of learning something?
Malcolm; IanC is all over GMST decline, but not a word on drought in S E Aust. or David J from BoM
We could wonder what Ian C thinks about this
“But if the climate along the East Coast of Australia is a two state process dominated by El Nino or La Nina, then while Melbourne has experienced relatively dry conditions during the past 11 years, the expectation would be that at some point we will move back into a La Nina dominated phase. According to Professor Franks, it is probably a bit messier than that with periods that might not be dominated by either”
either way we are hung out to dry in this part of the world
Erratum” “which shows high probability of Australian droughts. ” – sorry meant to say “Victorian dry periods”
Gavin – what Franks is saying is fair enough in general – but what about the other information SEACI and CSIRO have now provided and what is the exact implication for Melbourne and it’s catchments as opposed to El Nino and La Nina over the east coast in general.
ENSO varies in its impact spatially and seasonally in Australia. And no two EL Nino or La Nina events are the same.
Luke, send me a blog piece with a focus on Melbourne’s rainfall explaining the bits of the published science that have been left out – please.
Gavin,
Yes it’s a pity we haven’t had a word from David J from BoM on the matter I raised in my first post on the first thread in this ‘Melbourne’ series. I said then (14 October) that David was one of the authors of the ‘Drought Exceptional Circumstances’ report (DECR) that the Australian Government released on 6 July. I pointed out that it was now over three months since that report was released, over two months since Dr David Stockwell published his critical evaluation at ‘Niche Modeling’, and one month since Dr Andrew Ash, Head of CSIRO’s Climate Adaptation Flagship, advised Dr Stockwell that ‘we’ (I assumed that that meant the authors) ‘will provide a formal response to your [David’s] review of the Drought Exceptional Circumstances Report that was forwarded to me [Ash] (dated September 3).’ Yet another fortnight has now passed. I’m surprised that David and his co-authors remain silent, but perhaps Dr Ash is under direction from the Government not to deliver on his promise to give Dr Stockwell a formal response.
“Malcolm – instead of slagging – why don’t you give some modest consideration to my comments? Afraid of learning something?”
No Luke I am not afraid of learning something at all and have the track record to prove it.What I am averse to is waste time with someone who doesnt know what he is talking about.
Now kindly answer Jens question
Mr T (or is it MRS T or Ms T? It’s hard to tell when some-one does not have the courage of their convictions and hides behind initials) says: “Monckton isn’t science. Come up with some science and I’d be happy to discuss it.”
Monckton comes up with 571 PEER reviewed papers.
Science is there!
It doesn’t work that way any more.
Sounds like Steve Wrights sea shell collection.
Well Malcolm – I look forward to some intelligent comments for a change. Track record – LOL? Normally all we get are politico-quips. Jen will get something is due course.
I’d also like a dollar for every time I see Ian do a “dob-in” – “was one of the authors of the” is how it usually starts – is that how it’s done in Canberra? Given Stockwell’s preemptive hanging jury style of blogging why would you respond?
Science advances by an alternative analysis – we look forward to Ian and Stockwell’s contribution.
Luke; imo having Franks here in response to that letter from Jones is like apples and oranges on the same tree.
Jennifer; our Dr Jones is best situated to find us the deeper files in Melbourne catchment records from BoM and others like the MMBW as it was then.
Ian; you have to account for the many, many people who now think they understand climate change and its likely impacts right here in the ACT. The election last week reflects changing public opinion on all these matters.
It wasn’t a secret report, Luke. The findings were published with great fanfare in Australia and overseas, and David Jones was named as one of the authors on the front cover. I recognise that David can’t properly reply independently of the others, but yes I think that the named authors ARE collectively responsible for the report and yes that was how it was done in Canberra during my 40 years in the public service here.
After dealing in good faith with the first-named author of the report for several weeks, David Stockwell received an email from the Head of CSIRO’s Climate Adaptation Flagship saying that the matter had been passed to him – and then another email saying that David would be receiving a formal reply in due course. In deference to Luke, I won’t dob in these two scientists by mentioning their names.
I will point out, however, that Luke dobbed in Mr Jock Laurie, President of the New South Wales Farmers’ Federation, on this blog. Luke made light of Laurie’s assertion of alarm by his constituents, and told us that ‘a friend’ who had ‘recently made a long trip through NSW found hardly any farmers who believed in AGW despite the drought’, so he (Luke) wasn’t sure how the farmers could be getting “stressed” if they didn’t believe.
Well, until Luke is prepared to dob in his friend and explain why this person knows more about the existence or otherwise of stress among NSW farmers, I’ll continue to take Mr Laurie’s word for it that the Association had received many calls from members who were ‘extremely agitated, confused and upset’ after our Prime Minister and the Minister for Agriculture had put their gloss on the Hennessy et al report. If the Ministers misrepresented the report’s contents, the authors should have said so. I realise that that wouldn’t have easy, but life wasn’t meant to be.
Sounds like Steve Wrights sea shell collection.
That’s better Ms T – a serious scientific arguement
Gavin, Thank you for your comment, but I don’t understand its bearing on what I’ve been saying. I haven’t said anything about public opinion in the ACT or anywhere else, but Luke apparently thinks he knows more than the President of the NSW Farmers Association about the opinions of NSW farmers.
Well Ian – you mentioned Jock Laurie. I don’t know if his his phone calls from concerned constituents (number of calls unknown) were due to concerns about future drought prospects in the report or future EC changes? My friend spent over 4 months walking and canoeing the Murray Darling from Toowoomba, through St George, Bourke, Mannum to Goolwa and spoke to many many landholders who were almost universally sceptical. Just part of a big cycle. We’ll hang in there. Tough resilient, salt of the earth, nice people he said. Perhaps too resilient. And differences in opinion between agri-politicians and those who they suggest they represent is not new. I am simply saying on a reasonable sample size of a close up tour through drought country I have formed a different view.
Indeed the committee on EC has reported. Drought is now a pervasive creeping “dryness”.
Could only happen in Canberra !
http://www.daff.gov.au/agriculture-food/drought/national_review_of_drought_policy/social_assessment/dryness-report
http://www.maff.gov.au/transcripts/transcripts/2008/october/transcript_of_tony_and_peter_kenny_launching_drought_panel_report
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24543889-2702,00.html Drought farmer aid to get strings attached
http://www.theage.com.au/national/farmers-told-to-harden-up-20081023-57gu.html?skin=text-only Farmers told to “harden up”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/23/2399458.htm “It’s not a drought – it’s dryness !”
Yes Luke, I did mention Jock Laurie. That was because you challenged me to produce ‘a reference for the frightened and disturbed landholders so traumatised by the DECR report.’ As you’d said that you ‘hadn’t seen anything in the papers about it’ and that ‘Post-DECR disorder sounds most traumatic’, I thought that you’d find the link that I posted helpful. I never suggested that most landholders were frightened and disturbed and neither did he.
The Government received the report of the independent panel looking at the social impact of drought on 30 September. Minister Burke said at that time that he ‘would take the time to consider the report before it is released to the public and the Government provides a response’, and the report was not released until three-and-a half weeks later.
The Government’s reaction time was very different in the case of the DECR. Mr Burke said on 7 July that the Government had received it on the previous day (Sunday 6 July). As his media release of 6 July described the report as the first of its kind in Australia, you’d think that he might have wanted a little time to consider it. Unfortunately the Prime Minister told viewers of the ABC’s ‘Insiders’ program at 9 a.m. that the new report from CSIRO and BoM that his Minister would release later in the day would make a ‘serious revision’ of the impact of climate change on drought, and that the Minister would make this clear. I don’t find it surprising that Mr Burke’s statement that some of the scenarios read ‘more like a disaster novel than a scientific report’ frightened and disturbed some farmers, but your friend’s sample may well be more representative of the farming community as a whole.
I would have been interested to see the original version of the DECR that DAFF thought was too technical for the target audience of lay-people (I suppose that includes the landholders), but I accept that that’s probably too much to hope for. Kevin Hennessy explained to David Stockwell back in July that ‘we’ (by which he presumably meant the authors of the DECR) ‘had to spend considerable time simplifying the language, diagrams and tables’, and that ‘Therefore, statistical tests and results from individual climate models were not presented’ in the final version.
You’ll remember that CSIRO initially refused Stockwell’s request that they provide results from individual models because of concerns about ‘Intellectual Property’, but subsequently advised Andrew Bolt by telephone that they would release the information. I suspect that David would still be waiting if it had not been for the support for release of the data from Andrew Bolt and Climate Audit. But it seems that we won’t be seeing the outcome of the statistical tests that were performed before the report was finalised. Any thoughts about why CSIRO and BoM won’t release this information?
>Yes it’s a pity we haven’t had a word from David J from BoM on the matter I raised in my first post on the first thread in this ‘Melbourne’ series. I said then (14 October) that David was one of the authors of the ‘Drought Exceptional Circumstances’ report (DECR) that the Australian Government released on 6 July. I pointed out that it was now over three months since that report was released, over two months…..
Ian I see many sceptics pieces, some with very obvious flaws (such as most that appear here, which are written by non-experts for a non-expert audience) and others which are hidden by sophisticated analysis but which are no less flawed. The basic hurdle these must survive to be taken seriously is that of peer review in a serious science publication (not some obscure hide out or sceptic rag). They are then subjected to continued peer review – which can take the form of simplying being ignored and never getting a serious cite or are subsequently corrected.
Are you suggesting that science (including climate science) should progress by means other than peer review?
David,
On 9 September Mr Gary Foley, Acting Director, Bureau of Meteorology and Dr Andrew Ash, Director, Climate Adaptation Flagship, CSIRO advised Dr David Stockwell that the authors of Hennessy et al would be ‘submitting a more technical version of the DECR to a scientific journal, which will include more detail on model evaluation.’ I assume that your intention is to submit this more technical version of the consultancy report to a serious science publication (not some obscure hide out or sceptic rag). If the paper is accepted, it can then be subjected to the continued peer review that you mention, which might take the form of simply being ignored and never getting a serious cite or being seriously cited. I commend the peer review process to which you intend to subject yourselves.
In the meantime, however, the Federal Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, announced on 7 July that ‘we’ve decided today, in the light of the information we received yesterday, … to more than triple the $15 million commitment to research and development in agriculture.’ Assuming that it is the case, as the Minister said in his media release on the previous day, that the DECR was the first study of its kind in Australia, I do not believe that the ‘information’ therein should have been used as the basis for policy. If you see science as progressing by means of peer review, I would have thought that you would agree with this. I realise that you are not in a position to say so publicly, especially when the CSIRO has stated that it ‘unequivocally stands by its scientists’ even if, as in this case, their work has not been subjected to peer review.
Ian – I’m not in possession of any more information on DECR than what is in the public domain. I don’t have access to any internal documents which may or may not exist. Given Stockwell’s pushy posture on the DECR issue I can only presume CSIRO are acting on advice of their management. IMO Stockwell has hardly fostered an environment for any cooperation. Let’s face it – the atmosphere is highly adversarial. You might read conspiracy theories into this or perhaps simple umbrage. Perhaps they have other more pressing tasks at hand?
Thanks for your reply David. BoM’s logo is on the publication and there’s no disclaimer saying that the opinions expressed therein are those of the authors and don’t necessarily reflect the views of the organisation(s) with which they are affiliated. In this case it seems that, at the behest of DAFF, some of the CSIRO authors ‘had to spend considerable time simplifying the language, diagrams and tables’, and did so without consulting the BoM members of the team. If DAFF asked for the results of any statistical validation tests, these too were apparently provided to the Department without consulting BoM. As a foundation member of its Advisory Board I’m saddened by the BoM’s apparent loss of independence.
Even if CSIRO believes that it has good reason not to co-operate with David Stockwell, this does not excuse their failure to involve BoM in key aspects of the consultancy task. The Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research (CAWCR) presents itself publicly as ‘a partnership between CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research and the BoM’, but in practice its purpose seems to be to entrench and strengthen CSIRO’s hegemony in climate change research in this country. It’s revealing that Dr Stockwell’s correspondence with the heads of CMAR and BoM (both Melbourne-based) was abruptly terminated by a letter from the (Brisbane-based) Head of CSIRO’s Climate Adaptation Flagship – and that the (Canberra-based) Bureau of Rural Sciences, which does not rate a mention in the published report, was named as the client in the citation that all users had to recognise in order to get access to the detailed data that was finally provided. This confusing dispersal of accountability for the study presumably serves some arcane bureaucratic purpose, but Australia’s national interest comes a bad second.
Ian there is a very long history of scientific publications which sit under the drought report.
In the meanwhile, let us not preempt or rush the scientific process by getting too carried away with debates about non-peer reviewed blog entries.
Yes, David, I’ve read all of the peer-reviewed papers cited in the DECR to which I could get access, including the Mpelasoka, Hennessy, Jones [Roger] and Bates paper which is cited at the wrong location in the ‘Journal of Climatology’ in footnote 25 of the paper. I’ve also read the following statement from Professor Graham Farquhar of ANU on the Australian Science Media Centre website on 25 September 2008 (yes, just one month ago):
‘We have very limited ability at present to make regional forecasts, but there is concern that storm tracks could move further south and reduce rainfall in southern Australia. However, different models give different results, some showing Australia wetting up and some showing drying, and the same models with slightly different starting conditions, often give different results. We do not know the limits placed on regional forecasts by the “butterfly effect”. We also have only a limited, and in many cases declining, ability to monitor the changes in key drivers, like the energy balance of the earth’s surface, like the functioning of ecosystems, like the amount of water stored at large scale in soil and in aquifers. Our ability to predict is hamstrung by our ability to observe. We need to make an effort to better understand our climate system.’
Graham already had 171 peer-reviewed papers in his ‘Highly Cited Author’ list published by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) at the time that he stopped updating the list in 2002, but he’s since published scores more papers (including many in co-authorship with CSIRO scientists). So I don’t think that he can fairly be accused of preempting or rushing the scientific process. In fact, it could be argued that that accusation could more properly be levelled at CSIRO and the BoM.
Incidentally, after sending off my previous post, I read an op-ed in this morning’s Canberra Times by Professor Richard Mulgan of the ANU (‘Take responsibility, Rudd’). Mulgan argues that ‘‘Responsibility divided is always accountability denied’ – a very apt description of what has happened with the DECR. On the ABC’s ‘Insiders’ program on 6 July, the Prime Minister told viewers that “when it comes to exceptional or extreme drought, … the historical assumption that this occurred once every 20 years has now been revised down to between every one and two years.”
Those were Mr Rudd’s exact words. I’m surprised that Luke is surprised that this statement disturbed some farmers. Clearly the Prime Minister was categorically wrong, but whose responsibility was it to say so? Minister Burke? The Secretary of DAFF? The head of the Drought Policy Review unit within the Climate Change Division of DAFF? The Director of the Bureau of Rural Sciences? The Executive Director of CSIRO? The Director of the Centre for Australian Climate and Weather Research? The Director of CSIRO’s Climate Adaptation Flagship? The first-named author of the DECR? The Director of the Bureau of Meteorology? The head of the responsible unit within the Bureau of Meteorology (Climate and Ocean Services, according to p. 33 of the Report)?
Well, in the end no one corrected the Prime Minister – and when the President of the NSW Farmers Federation tried to reassure farmers in an article in ‘Stock and Land’, he was accused of playing agri-politics. Actually, Mr Laurie has every right to look after the interests of his constituents, but governmental research organisations owe a responsibility to science as well as to the government of the day.
My apologies. The Mpelasoka et al paper cited in footnote 25 of the DECR was published in the INTERNATIONAL Journal of Climatology (not ‘Journal of Climatology’). But, as I said, the citation in the DECR is wrong. Perhaps it could be corrected in the electronic version. This would save the time of those trying to track down the article.
Ian – governments state and Federal have spent billions of dollars on drought aid, EC, “Save the Murray” and climate related issues since the 1990s. So it seems many people have had their next 200 years worth of EC already.
So it’s a reasonable question is it not for individual farmers, agribusiness, water resource managers, policy wallahs and Treasury to know if the climate probabilities we have calculated on the last 110 odd years of measured rainfall will stand us in good stead in the future.
Indeed the decision is to invest/withdraw/support/diversify/adapt/move at all levels.
The drought policy reforms of the early 1990s were to move to a model of “self-reliance”. Don’t think we’ve come too far given the outlays.
The other phenomenon is the “hydro-illogical cycle” – as soon as it rains all the climate risk/climate science focus disappears and the issue is revisited again at the next drought – err sorry – period of “dryness”.
So the issue of future climate is of some pith and moment for many of us.
Do you have a path forward?
Luke,
It might be a reasonable question to ask whether the climate probabilities that have been calculated on the experience of the last 110 years ‘will stand us in good stead in the future’ but the whole point of Graham Farquhar’s view is that, as of now, we simply don’t know the answer. It’s one thing to empathise with farmers who are in the unenviable position of having to decide whether and how to ‘invest/withdraw/support/diversify/adapt/move at all levels’, but they’re not helped by Governments that think they know.
The Terms of Reference (ToR) of the DECR, drafted before the exercise began, say that ‘Climate change is expected to increase the frequency, severity and length of drought in the future.’ But if, in Farquhar’s words, ‘some [models are] showing Australia wetting up and some show drying, and the same models with slightly differing starting conditions often giv[ing] different results’, how can such statements be made in advance? (I know why they are, but I don’t think they should be).
In an excellent opinion piece in yesterday’s Canberra Times, Robert Skidelsky recalled John Maynard Keynes’s description of economics as ‘one of those pretty, polite techniques which tries to deal with the present by abstracting from the fact that we know very little about the future.’ Skidelsky went on to say that such aphorisms, ‘which seem so apposite today, were for years dismissed with a pitying smile as the product of a primitive state of economic thinking that had been rendered obsolete by powerful desktop computers and PhD maths unavailable to Keynes’s generation’ (‘Keynes a man for our time’, CT, 27 October 2008, p. 13).
Of course I’m biased in favour of Skidelsky’s views, because he was a member of the all-Party Select Committee of the House of Lords which unanimously concluded that David Henderson and I had ‘helped to generate a valuable literature that calls into question a whole series of issues relating to the IPCC SRES’, and that we had ‘performed a valuable public service.’ I admire the polite but probing questions that his Lordship put to some of the IPCC’s leaders during the Committee’s hearings, and I’m sorry that Australia’s IPCC milieu have not been subjected to similar scrutiny.
I’m not a good person to be asking about a path forward, because it would be the kiss of death for any such path that it had been suggested by me. So far as I know, I’m the only Australian who’s been personally attacked by the IPCC – and earlier this year Dr Clive Hamilton described me, in an article elegantly styled ‘Death rattles of the climate change sceptics’, as one of Australia’s foremost examples of the species. He also claimed that I was ‘associated with the denalists of the Lavoisier Group.’ I don’t know why he thinks so, or why he supposes that this excuses him from engaging in discussion with me even if I did have such an association. Nor do I know why Clive thinks that labelling people ‘denialists’ advances public understanding, but as he was appointed Australia’s first Professor of Public Ethics very soon afterwards it seems that a readiness to heap personal abuse on those who disagree (or ‘deny’) has become a pre-requisite for advancement in some areas of Australian academia.
All of this make me less optimistic about the prospects of finding a path forward than I was some years ago. So the short answer to your final question is “No”.
Ian – the issue is still before those needing to make a decision which might be to stay or go on the farm. Whether to keep supporting producers with EC or not.
All one can do is patiently and carefully weigh up the information and data available. I find more contemporary research such as http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/116330641/abstract quite sobering.
But decisions do need to be made. Not doing anything is still a decision to maintain the status quo.
Recent work by SEACI – BoM andCSIRO (not the DECR modelling) would give me cause to attribute “some influence” to global warming. That’s enough to bias one’s risk assessment to think that the last 110 years is not good enough as a representative sample.
However I also have cause to also ponder that the PDO has just flipped too. And that wet years may be wetter. Stewart Franks comments are not ignored.
Having just witnessed Dr Henry’s disdain for the collective concerns and need to know of the tax-payers, ‘David’s’ disdain for said tax-payers should come as no surprise; if said government subsidised scientific organisations cannot respond to critiques of the highest order such as those by David Stockwell, then I suppose it is too much to expect that lowly bloggers/rags should be responded to; but if ‘David’ wants obvious flaws maybe he should get off his highly paid, taxpayer funded backside and inspect some real flaws such as in the Amman and Wahl effort, everything by Mann and the Koutsoyiannis revealed ‘flaws’ in the whole IPCC GCM apparatus; flaws my pumpernickel; this ‘debate’ about AGW has been shanghied by a subservient msm, with a few honourable exceptions, and has been conducted by bloggers with no other choice but to blog.
Luke; the Timbal paper says at Figs 6 and 7 that rainfall is no less and temp no higher but runoff to the MDB is less; query the early records? How else to explain, except by the McNeil and Cox effort which notes that IPO variation and landuse change are the determinants, with no space for AGW; are you ever going to give me an unequivocal AGW supportive paper?
“critiques of the highest order” – oh Cohenite – what a toss. Some unpublished bloke at Emerald with a blog?
Cohenite – McNeil and Cox isn’t a climate change study – lordy me. Did you read the stats qualifier BTW on the Queensland study – of course not.
Definitive paper – tell me – what would a signal emerging out of the noise look like?
I enjoyed Rabett’s rubbishing of Mislowski’s dross too. Ya got nuttin’ ….
“got nuttin'”; from you yet, but I live in hope.
“a signal emerging out of the noise look like.” The opposite of what Mann, Amman, Sherwood, Santer etc produce I guess.
“McNeil and Cox isn’t a climate change study” Abstract: “This study presents an approach which explores the rate of change in the IPO, in addition to its value, to define an indicator for the climate component of ambient shallow groundwater levels and corresponding stream salinity.”
“Stats qualifier”; I presume you mean p4? Refreshingly honest, isn’t it?
“got nuttin'”; from you yet, but I live in hope.
“a signal emerging out of the noise look like.” The opposite of what Mann, Amman, Sherwood, Santer etc produce I guess.
“McNeil and Cox isn’t a climate change study”; Abstract: “This study presents an approach which explores the rate of change in the IPO, in addition to its value, to define an indicator for the climate component of ambient shallow groundwater levels and corresponding stream salinity.”
“Stats qualifier”; I presume you mean p4? Refreshingly honest, isn’t it?