THOSE committed to catastrophic global warming can keep finding new evidence for global warming while those sceptical keep attempting to debunk the new claims.
For example, the number of tornados in the US is increasing.
But the increasing count is due to better weather tracking technology recording more low intensity events, according to Alan Cheetam.
The charts are from Alan Cheetham’s website. Its a trove of information and data that helps puts the dire warnings about tornados and much more in some perspective. It can be accessed here: http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/
Tornado information here: http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/GW_4CE_Precipitation.htm
*********
Monday May 14th
After posting that those committed to global warming keep finding new things to scare us with, I wake up to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation claiming:
Heatwaves, bushfires predicted to hammer NSW
Updated May 14, 2012 08:18:14
The Climate Commission has released a report predicting record heatwaves, bushfires and rising sea levels in New South Wales because of climate change.
The report says the temperature in Sydney tops 35 degrees on just three days a year, but based on climate modelling, it will be 14 days per year by the end of the century.
Federal Climate Commissioner Professor Lesley Hughes says western Sydney is getting disproportionally hotter and drier than the rest of Sydney.
“If we compare western Sydney with the rest of Sydney, the number of hot days in western Sydney used to be three times as many as eastern Sydney, and now it’s four times,” she said.
“So what we are seeing is not only rising temperatures but some parts of the country are getting disproportionally hotter”…
The report, part of the Commission’s series titled “The Critical Decade”, predicts by century’s end that sea-levels will rise by 1.1 metres, putting more than 40,000 New South Wales homes and 250 kilometres of highway at risk.
Particularly vulnerable areas include Lake Macquarie and Wollongong.
Professor Hughes says there will also be more bushfires.
“The number of very high fire danger days could increase by over 20 per cent by 2020, by up to 70 per cent by 2070,” she said.
Chief climate commissioner Tim Flannery says some of the negative impacts of warmer weather in Sydney’s west are not immediately obvious.
“What happens when we get these very, very hot days is that elderly people and the very young particularly are vulnerable and people get a little bit confused because they’re heat stressed,” he said.
“People get angry as well, particularly if you’re sitting in a traffic jam and it’s stinking hot outside.”
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
This analysis shows quite clearly that there has been a significant decline in both the number and severity of US tornadoes since the 1970’s.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/us-tornado-report-2011/
The IPCC makes no claim on tornadoes
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-3-3.html
“Observational evidence for changes in small-scale severe weather phenomena (such as tornadoes, hail and thunderstorms) is mostly local and too scattered to draw general conclusions; increases in many areas arise because of increased public awareness and improved efforts to collect reports of these phenomena.”
Can’t see where Jen claimed it was the IPCC.
She wrote those committed to CAGW.
She also linked to the claims.
Lomborg covered all the extreme weather events in his book using all the Govts info and hurricanes, tornados, cyclones, severe floods, etc showed no change or change for the better.
Pielke Jnr has recently compiled his own info and graphs on extreme weather events and found no link to CAGW.
BTW Gaia Timmy has just claimed there will be more deaths because of heatwaves in western Sydney, because increased temps makes people cranky.
Geeezzz must be a real bastard living in Tonga or Borneo or Qld among all those cranky killers.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-14/heatwaves-bushfires-predicted-to-hammer-nsw/4009006
Chief climate commissioner Tim Flannery says some of the negative impacts of warmer weather in Sydney’s west are not immediately obvious.
“What happens when we get these very, very hot days is that elderly people and the very young particularly are vulnerable and people get a little bit confused because they’re heat stressed,” he said.
“People get angry as well, particularly if you’re sitting in a traffic jam and it’s stinking hot outside.”
Debbie thanks for the link.
I have spent much of my life living in the tropics and without air-conditioning. Now I’m living in Central Queensland, working from home, with no air-conditioning.
All these reports you and Neville mention come out of government office in much cooler localities with air conditioning set at a fixed and mild temperature all year round. Clearly they have no idea how we acclimate and adapt to the heat.
And because the humidity never really climbs that high in western Sydney, it doesn’t really ever get that hot compared to many localities in Queensland.
What’s even sillier is that observation of Flannery’s has no scientific or evidence base whatsoever yet the story is generated from a scientific report.
And just for some anecdotal balance…..
It was absolutely freezing here this morning….when I had to stand out in the cold to manage the gates as we were moving machinery, I got a bit frustrated when they were too slow getting everything started up and moving (that was because it was so cold and a couple of the machines weren’t that interested in starting). I got frustrated (actually towards the end it was probably close to angry) because my little toosh was getting frozen!!!!
Does that count?
Maybe neither your point or mine counts because we don’t fall in the sample group?
I don’t think either of us are ‘elderly people or the very young’ and of course neither of us live in Sydney.
I’m not too sure who I’m laughing at more?
Flannery and the Govt dept who generated this or the ABC who have taken it so literally and so seriously????
“The report says the temperature in Sydney tops 35 degrees on just three days a year, but based on climate modelling, it will be 14 days per year by the end of the century.”
I understand that over the summer 2011/12, Sydney’s max temp topped 30C (not 35C) just three times. Weather, not Climate, I know.
And is the Commission now rejecting the “consensus” from the IPCC on sea-level rise by going with a higher figure (1.1 metres)?
Jennifer/Debbie
You’re not paying attention
The ENSO oscillation is turning and likely to become a full Nino event over the next few years
The God-botherers will then say: “See, we told you so”
QED
Well that’s true,
They have certainly had a go at covering those bases and laying claim to whatever happens:
But a climate scientist with the University of Newcastle, Stewart Franks, says the report tends towards scare mongering.
“The whole thrust of the report is what the climate’s going to be going into the future,” he said.
“Unfortunately we know that the climate models that are used to actually do that job actually don’t represent key modes of climate which are very important. I’m thinking specifically things like El Nino and La Nina.”
Again Debbie you need to check facts
“Unfortunately we know that the climate models that are used to actually do that job actually don’t represent key modes of climate which are very important. I’m thinking specifically things like El Nino and La Nina.”
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8s8-4-7.html says otherwise in great detail.
Now how well they are simulated a moot point but it’s not what you have reported. It’s so easy to become indulgent with op-ed quotes – need to check source guys.
And it is not about covering bases – this is just more nonsense ruse argument. And not supported by the literature which you lot do not peruse.
Off the cuff comments and op-eds are not a seriously considered science position.
In terms of possible AGW influence there is considerable interest in changes to the Walker circulation (not SOI) and perhaps changes towards more El Nino Modoki events (central Pacific warm anomalies vis a vis eastern Pacific). The 1990s El Nino clustering still remains as somewhat anomalous.
However at time of the writing the IPCC said the situation ENSO was unclear.
In fact the whole term CAGW is offensive. When does AGW become CAGW? And sez who? Probably invented by sceptics in retaliation to the term denier.
P.S. I didn’t say Jen mentioned the IPCC – she didn’t – but their position needs to be stated and not assumed.
Luke you were correct to point out that the IPCC never claimed increasing numbers of tornadoes was an AGW issue.
Debbie was correct to point out that I never claimed they did.
But Luke my position doesn’t need to be any more clearly stated than it was in the original post… and my opening paragraph in the blog post was then reinforced by the ABC news this morning. In particular the news quoted someone who believes in catastrophic global warming (Tim Flannery) inventing more evidence for AGW (more hot days in western sydney).
What I would be interested in knowing, is the best evidence for such a claim?
Then there is the so what angle… already raised by Neville and myself.
But perhaps we should take a step back here and now and ask: on what evidence is this new claim based?
I lived a couple of years in Rockhampton, in a lovely old Queenslander and no screens on the windows. Some of the windows were rusted open, but the eves were so broad that the rain rarely blew in. No one in the neighbourhood had any ACs so at night there was no AC buzz, just the music of tree frogs, fruit bats and possums playing and the occasional revhead hooning in the distance on Yaamba road.
It was hot and humid in the summer, but you adapt. Queenslander architecture designed for the tropics, combined with ceiling fans made it quite comfortable. Extra fans were needed sometimes to keep the computers from overheating.
In July the locals would complain about the bone-numbing cold (lows of 13c) and by April were using the first chill in the air (19c) to break out the winter fashions, leather jackets and ugg boots, etc.
Now I live at 1100 meters in New England. Last night it was -4.5c. No one complains about the cold in town, but even though we only got one day this summer above 29c, the locals are forever whinging about the heat the way they do about the cold in Rocky.
It’s interesting. I came up with the term CAGW because I was sick of being asked if I believed in climate change, global warming, AGW, climate disruption etc. Because it is impossible not to believe in those things, adding the C gave a bit of point and direction to an otherwise senseless discussion. Surprisingly, I found other skeptics, no doubt interested in clarity of terms, came up with the same thing! One thing alarmists don’t want is clarity of terms.
Another stunt of alarmists is to create comparison-by-implication, where it is obvious no real point of comparison exists. A perfect example is talk of the “increasing frequency” of “extreme” events, where no means of efficient reportage or exact calculation existed in the past. Fresh emotion and visual effect are relied upon to fill in the gaps. Send in the polar bears! Colour that Antarctic peninsular red! Cue the sea swallowing Lake Cathie (artist’s impression only, Fairfax takes no responsibility etc.)
Of course, there are always those proxies, for anyone who wants their End Days theology scienced up a bit. Anyone for hockey?
Luke,
You keep defending IPCC as if I (and also Jen) am specifically aiming criticism at them.
Why?
The report is specifically named….it doesn’t come directly from the IPCC….or is there a link to them that I have missed somewhere that has caused you to respond this way?
Also…as is pointed out in this particular ABC article….there is an element of ‘scare mongering’ attached to this work:
“But a climate scientist with the University of Newcastle, Stewart Franks, says the report tends towards scare mongering.”
It is that element of ‘scare mongering’ that has been created by the current agenda (which has hijacked the science) that is at the base of the term CAGW.
Also….I quite specifically criticised comments made by Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery….and so did Jen…and Neville
Do you think that he has some valid scientific basis or evidence base to make such comments?
Luke’s offended? That’s rich. (cue the world’s smallest violin playing The Hypocrite’s Concerto in E minor, by Hadyn)
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) describes perfectly what James Hansen, Tim Flannery, Al Gore, Matthew England, Peter Gleick, James Lovelock, Gavin Schmidt, Clive “Il Duce” Hamilton, Penny Wong, Bob -one-world-government- Brown and a sanctimonious choir of thousands absolutely believe.
CAGW is not a strawman like the constantly repeated lie that skeptics “deny climate change,” as Robert points out. Quite the opposite.
Personally, I think CAGW should be called “Climate Creationism” because mythopoetically it’s based upon the pious Green fantasy that the climate was at perfect stasis, then Enlightenment science committed the original sin of industrialisation and we fell out of a climatic Garden of Eden into “unnatural” rapid climate change.
This is what the Mann’s Hockeystick was all about, an effort to disappear past climate variation before the original sin of industrialisation to support the myth of modern CATASTROPHIC AGW.
If you believe that “Climate Change” is an unnatural fall from grace caused by sinful human greed this logically implies a natural climate stasis must have existed. So it’s not surprising that all Greens share the awful fantasy that human institutions – if given enough power – could literally stop climate change and provide a lovely climate stasis in which we could live in a Green utopian paradise, perfect one day, beautiful the next.
Few intelligent, thoughtful people actually admit to consciously believing in Climate Creationism, but it’s the magical millenarian zeitgeist upon which the whole Climate Change meme floats. Drain the swamp of this fantasy and all you’ve got is a handful of oversimplified computer models that have failed to predict anything useful based upon a now falsified hypothesis.
Debbie (and also Jen) – I wasn’t defending the IPCC – moreover simply pointing out what the last IPCC science consensus statement said. You then might even ask your alarmists of choice why they do not support the IPCC’s considered (hopefully) position ( free kick)
Flannery – well blaze away. Although I do like his docos and he seems like a nice guy but needs to keep away from microphones on the topic of AGW.
(Jen’s got me on a niceness diet which is very hard when you really want to snot someone or kill a rabbit or something – that’s a partial joke Debbie – increasing pile of snapped pencils too)
grrrr – I mean – may I add to Wes’s interesting (really want to stab it… sorry Jen…. better now) comments – that any sensible AGW practitioner doesn’t think the world is a perfect climate statis. Moreover bad things already happen (droughts, floods, hurricanes etc) – does souping up the planet’s energy balance in the blink of a geological eye change circulation systems enough to make these variations worse or make them semi-permanent. The geological record shows cause for such concern.
May not have mattered when human populations were small but with 6B humans going 9B, 30 days food supply, and a nuclear armed world resource access does now matter. Winners and losers.
Thank you Wes for your most excellent and thoughtful contribution.
Here’s Bolt’s take on this story with more links to show it’s nonsense.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/flannery_right_in_a_way_global_warming_will_make_us_mad/#commentsmore
I liked ‘two men in a tinny’ but the sequels did not get a tick from me….they became increasingly misanthropic from that point onwards.
I actually fell down laughing when I watched part of one of the recent ones where we had a biologist calling southern bell frogs and Tim Flannery was fascinated that he could call them.
‘HEEERRRRE FRROOOG”
He then made a really crazy comment about there only being 50 left in that location.
I wonder if it had occured to them that perhaps there were only 50 partly domesticated frogs that had been taught to answer when called?
Or maybe….conditions at that time in that location, were not suitable for a plague of frogs (like they are here at the moment)?
Or maybe….the frogs had moved elsewhere because frogs don’t actually build permanent houses like humans do?…or….many other perfectly valid explanations (except the first one because that was partly a joke)
Luke,
Why would it be up to me to ask my alarmist of choice why they have seriously overstated the IPCC consensus statement ? (I deliberately misquoted you BTW, not to offend you but to make the point a bit more relevant to this discussion) .
I don’t even believe AGW and projective modelling being used as a means to create social policy is a good idea in the first place….because the results from the attempt to do so have been overwhelmingly counter productive.
That needs to be qualified with me saying that I don’t have a problem with climate research and the collection of climate data…..or genuine scientists who are not attempting to be AGW celebs.
The Climate Commission report recognises the urban heat island effect, as does Flannery, but he still pushes his AGW theme by not bothering to mention it when it suits him.
“People get angry as well, particularly if you’re sitting in a traffic jam and it’s stinking hot outside.”
People sitting in a traffic jam can get stressed and angry if it’s stinking hot INSIDE.
For a remarkably balanced report (for an Australian newspaper):
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/climate-commissioner-professor-tim-flannery-said-temperatures-on-rise-in-sydneys-west/story-e6freuy9-1226354331959
… including this “inconvenient fact”
“The horror predictions in the report come after a cool summer with the longest run of days under 30C in 15 years.”
…. and this little gem from Prof Lesley Hughes:
“Prof Hughes said the cooler, wetter summer was a case of day-to-day weather.”
I see, seasonal weather is weather when it doesn’t suit your argument, and “climate” when it does (We can’t say that any particular event…., but hey, we can all “join the dots”). You can bet your bottom dollar that they’d all have mentioned the “day-to-day weather” if the summer had been hot, with of course the usual after-the-fact caveat “of course, this doesn’t mean…”. If that’s the case, why mention just a single season at all, as is routinely done these days?
http://www.news.com.au/national/climate-commissioner-professor-tim-flannery-said-temperatures-on-rise-in-sydneys-west/story-e6frfkvr-1226354676536
Yep,
Just spotted that one too.
He doesn’t seem to be taking your advice Luke?
This one has a delightfully whimsical picture of Tim Flannery.
Good point Tony re the traffic jam statement.
My thought was…’well why wouldn’t they turn on their air conditioner?’
And after that I thought….well I hate being stuck in a traffic jam whatever the temperature is outside….what’s the temperature got to do with it anyway?..It’s the bloody traffic jam that makes people cranky…not the temperature!
Apparently Christine Milne has just weighed in on this one too. She is claiming that we should all just trust and do as we’re told or something similar….. she reminds me so much of Professor Dolores Umbrage in the Harry Potter movies (apart from the physical resemblance and the general way she presents herself) ….just insert people in general and particularly people who want to think for themselves and who dare to exercise their right to ask questions…..for Umbrage’s treatment of Harry Potter and his fellow students in the movie….and the resemblance becomes even more remarkable.
Of course, as per usual, this has precious little to do with the science and everything to do with the politics.
Where is one of the areas that decide who wins/loses elections???? Oh…that’s right….Western Sydney!
So even though even Western Sydney experiences a relatively temperate climate compared to even most of the other capital cities, let alone the rest of the country…..all the alarmism is aimed directly at them.
Go figure????
According to data from Sydney Observatory, there were 5 days a year with temps over 35C (49 over the decade) between 1921-1930. During the past decade there were only 35 days despite the bad drought.
Over a 30 year period from 1921-1950 there were 20 percent more days above 35C than the 30 year period from 1981-2010, including the hottest day of 45.3C in 1939.
Between 1971 and 1980 there were 40 days of +35C, 5 more than this decade.
So for Sydney at least, the number of ‘hotter days’ has decreased.
Why thank you, Luke, I enjoy your insightful examples of the psychological and rhetorical evasions of the CAGW faith as well.
In fact, I owe the identification of the Climate Creationist archetype to you. So thank you again, my little lab rat.
Back several years ago when you brought up your belief in the oxymoron of a past “climate stasis” in some thread it occurred to me that the motif of unnatural Climate Change due to human greed at some level assumes an ideal past Garden of Eden where we lived in a Rousseauian perfection as well as the promise of a future utopia if only we should repent and submit. It’s really just a secular pseudo-science version of the oldest stories ever told.
The great irony of the climate debate is the only people who wish to deny climate change are the Warmists!
I too lived in Rockhampton in the 50s – pre any air-conditioning. I hated it because of the humidity – you could never get dry enough to get dressed after a shower. But, I had moved from Victoria where summer is usually dry, so everyone’s history affects how they perceive things.
All this hoo-har about unprecedented anything is also ridiculous. I would guess that there is nothing happening on earth now that did not happen at an earlier time.
42C in Perth is easier to bear than 32C in Rockhampton.
Tim Flim-flam really is scraping the barrel with silliness when talking about traffic jams and heat when most people are sitting in air-conditioned cars. He is a disgrace to whatever science he was trained in – NOT climate, meteorology etc.
The IPCC has indeed warned of an increase in extreme events:
“Since 1950, the number of heat waves has increased and widespread increases have occurred in the numbers of warm nights. The extent of regions affected by droughts has also increased as precipitation over land has marginally decreased while evaporation has increased due to warmer conditions. Generally, numbers of heavy daily precipitation events that lead to flooding have increased, but not everywhere. Tropical storm and hurricane frequencies vary considerably from year to year, but evidence suggests substantial increases in intensity and duration since the 1970s.In the extratropics, variations in tracks and intensity of storms reflect variations in major features of the atmospheric circulation, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation.”
—IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC, 2007)
According to the US EPA:
“The IPCC projects the following likely, very likely, or virtually certain changes in extreme events and associated effects between now and 2100…”
See the table at:
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/effects/extreme.html#ref
No word on tornadoes from the IPCC. Again from the US EPA:
“There is large natural variability in the intensity and frequency of mid latitude storms and associated features such as thunderstorms, hail events and tornadoes. To date, there is no long-term evidence of systematic changes in these types of events over the course of the past 100 years.”
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/recentpsc.html
So I guess that means that no sane honest person would ever make the claim that tornado incident and strength are increasing due to CAGW. Right?
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/07/an-era-of-tornadoes-how-global-warming-causes-wild-winds/241639/
Well….if nothing else it has created a lot of media today!
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sydney-news/climate-change-alarmist-warnings-all-hot-air-says-british-scientist-james-lovelock/comments-e6freuzi-1226337509756?pg=2
This one has heaps of comments as well.
Ian,
I can verify your assessment of the hot days for Sydney Observatory. I notice in the Climate Commission report they only show the trend of the number of hot days from 1970-2011. This is not a true representation of the observational data and your quick decadal analysis shows the errors in their interpretation. If you use all of the hot days data back to 1890 it is clear there is a different long term pattern in play.
The year with the greatest number of hot days for Sydney is 1926 (12 days) and this has not been beaten since. If you look at the longer term pattern it is not plausible to achieve an average of 14 hot days per year by the end of the century. It is also doubtful that the projection of an average of 4-5 days per year on average is achievable by 2030 and certainly not 9 days per year by 2070 as claimed in the report (since 9 days has only been achieved once in the last 60 years). A simple spreadsheet plot of the observational data from Sydney Observatory site can confirm all of this.
Alas dear Wes – yes I know you did – but you verballed me on climate statis. May I respectfully protest.
This Flannery is a first class fool and just doesn’t seem to have any shame at all. In this interview with Fordham today on 2gb radio at 11 mins he states that SL could rise by a metre in a decade or so.
He then won’t deny that he likened sceptics to the nut who killed scores of people in Norway.
I suppose he’s the joke that keeps on giving but he’s also a clueless embarrassment for the Aussie nation to have to endure.
BTW this is Juliar’s chief CC commissioner, what a useless mob of donkeys.
http://www.2gb.com/index2.php?option=com_newsmanager&task=view&id=12768
“The report, part of the Commission’s series titled “The Critical Decade”, predicts by century’s end that sea-levels will rise by 1.1 metres, putting more than 40,000 New South Wales homes and 250 kilometres of highway at risk.”
The pesky inconvenient tide-gauges in NSW continue to record lower rates of rise than the later decades of the 20th. century, putting more than 25,000 scientists and 1500 blogs at risk of ridicule.
The CSIRO found a convenient way of excluding all the inconvenient gauges by just using data from a small non-representative subset, those monitored by the Australian Baseline Sea Level Monitoring Project, which explains their vague “since the early 1990s” qualification. The gauges were installed between 1990 and 1993. The CSIRO even ignored the gauge they can “very likely” (>90% certain) see from the windows in CSIRO Mansions on the waterfront in Hobart, which gives a whole new meaning to “overlooking inconvenient data”.
http://mostlyharmless-room-101.blogspot.com/2012/02/australias-csiro-truth-but-not-whole.html
I heard Will Steffen talking about climate on steroids and predicted 1.1m SLR on tonight’s news in his usual scientific fashion.
I recently met up with a cousin I used to spend a fair bit of my childhood with at their home which they bought in 1946 at Cleveland Point, Moreton bay and the house was the second from the end of the point, close to that historic old lighthouse.
There was no reticulated water in those days so they used rainwater tanks while they could and well water when that ran out.
I remember during the Christmas holidays tank water would be getting low as the wet season hadn’t started but this was also the time of king tides and these tides would sometimes come right up and cover their lawn and a levy had to be maintained to prevent the salt water from getting into the well.
In other words, 66 years ago that property was awash with sea water during a king tide.
Today,I understand that property is proposed for home unit development and it hasn’t been raised. All the houses along the point are still at the old level. Sea levels there are no different than they were 66 years ago.
The only thing on steroids is Will Steffen’s imagination.
SD
But that is just an anecdotal, localised, non representative example, according to Luke.
Or your surveyor is wrong, just ask one of his mates as he recommended before.
Brisbane Bar, QLD. 1966-2010, trend 0.23 mm/year
That period includes three large El Ninos each of which reduced sea-level over about a year, and pulled the trend down a bit. Current levels much the same as in 1966. Confirms what SD’s “anecdote” says, but of course, this is entirely a localised phenomenon, as at
Newcastle. 0.98 mm/year 1966->
Sydney (Fort Denison), 0.89 mm/year, zero 1999->
Melbourne, 2.10 mm/year 1966->, -1.01 mm/year 1999->
Fremantle, 1.52 mm/year 1897->, -1.88 mm/year 1999->
Hobart, -0.438 mm/year 1967->
There are past and current rates similar and some much higher than these at other locations of course, but this balances the CSIRO and Climate Commission’s plucking of stoned fruit. They’re giving Australia piles, and you know where that physical condition is located.
You’re being unfair to Steffen. He said explicitly on ABC Breakfast that the 1m was “high end” scenario. And depended on ice sheet stability. Which it does. He said therefore that “risk” had to be factored in a risk assessment framework.
Current wiggles in tide gauges are probably irrelevant in the final big scheme of things.
But anyway assess the information as it strikes you. It seems you’re saying there’s no risk.
“Current wiggles in tide gauges are probably irrelevant in the final big scheme of things.”
Current wiggles in thermometers are probably irrelevant in the final big scheme of things.
It’s become very popular to quote “high-end” scenarios, and then add caveats and uncertainties well AFTER the message has sunk in. If your doctor said “You’re gonna DIE”, and then added sotto voce “.. in forty years”, you’d be miffed I suspect.
Luke,
there is always risk.
You seem to have confused the concept of risk management entirely.
The ocean will be sucked down 1 metre. (Note: That’s a low end scenario depending on whether or not we have an Ice Age or some such thing. Don’t hold me to it, just give me a Nobel or whatever for saying it. Even some money would be nice.)
It could happen, Robert, it could happen. However, your figure of 1 metre is not backed up by pier-reviewed data, and will be of little comfort to gullible Westies who swallowed Flannery’s flannel hook, line and sinker. Something those folks can get their head round, something tangible, something graphic, like the length of a hockeystick with a very long blade, would be suitable to illustrate the magnitude of such a change.
I won’t believe in catastrophic sea level rise until it’s over Flannery’s head, above which most truth and factual data seem to be these days.
So Luke if the top govt man for CAGW explanations says we could have a metre rise in a decade or so, then that’s OK is it?
BTW the temp increases as stated above in this latest report is the exact reason it should be called CAGW.
When I get the time I’ll check and present the official UHI effect and temp increases for Tokyo and some of US big cities. Some of the temp increases are huge and yet death rates have dropped over many decades.
Neville – it’s what the high end scenario says. To be factual they should give the range and any additional information e.g. “needs ice sheet collapse”.
And Robert is right – it might need be pier-reviewed indeed. Piers might be quite useful for measuring sea level….
Luke,
Piers are quite useful for measuring sea level….obviously that would be at a local level…there really doesn’t need to be a ‘might’ involved.
Besides the outrage that the AGW extremists are stealing the past, we also have the rich irony of the theft being done by those who so loudly claim they are the defenders of science.
We also have a group of doctors claiming they can determine that frakking is dangerous by studying a few years of health records in one small region. They offer no mechanism for the determination. But in the age of big green extremism, why bother with truth ethics or fact?