Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Black-headed Gull

Photograph of the Black-headed gull taken in Lymington, England about a month ago.

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Comments

  5. Neville says

    One of the best columns by the Bolter highlighting the waste and fraud involved in the CAGW industry. Alas also for a zero return on our wasted billions.

    http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/time-for-these-people-to-dry-up/story-fni0ffxg-1226664689499

    This quote is a beauty.

    “Sadly, there are countless more green carpetbaggers getting such handouts from a Government that never asks the basic question: for all these billions, how much will the temperature go down? Alan Moran, of the Institute of Public Affairs, estimates federal grants, taxes and subsidies to cut emissions now cost us about $20 billion a year more than the eventual full cost of the Government’s Gonski education changes and disability scheme combined.

    And what difference will this make to the world’s temperature? Warmist scientist Professor Roger Jones reckons 0.0038 degrees by 2100.

    And even infinitesimal change assumes the alarmist models of warmist scientists are correct about how much our gases are changing the climate.”

  10. John Sayers says

    He’s not a sceptic Otter, has never claimed to be.

    That’s why he gets his articles printed in the MSM.

    He’s an AGW is real but there are better solutions than cutting GHGs as we need them to survive. It’s cheaper to adapt than to try to reduce emissions.

  11. el gordo says

    “The duration and frequency of extreme hot days has increased across Australia and bushfire weather has increased in the populous southeast.”

    “Rainfall patterns have shifted, with food-growing regions in the southwest and southeast becoming drier.”

    Will Steffen is a lying scoundrel

  14. Neville says

    Cohers your article was linked to at the last open thread and you recieved at least two congrates.

    I thought little Lukey would have tried to rip it apart by now, but he’s been a no show so far.

    Otter, Lomborg has never claimed to be a sceptic as John pointed out. But he has appeared in debate on the sceptic side at least once. That was with Lord Lawson against Monbiot and the Canadian Greens leader.

    But his team of economists, scientists, maths and stats experts has helped the sceptic side as much as anyone.
    He is admired by the sceptic side all over the world and Bolt and Alan Jones have had him on their TV and radio shows to have a laugh at the silly antics of the warmists.

  15. Neville says

    Conformation that Steve McIntyre has been proven correct over the tree ring data samples.

    http://climateaudit.org/2013/06/16/briffa-condemns-mann-reconstructions/

    Looks like Briffa has thrown Mann’s bristlecone pine samples down the tube and these trees should not be used in the future. He also now admits problems with some other tree specimens over the years. Seems like Real Climate is in agreement as well. What a giant killer McIntyre has proven himself to be.

  16. John Sayers says

    Yes Neville, he’s a climate change ‘personality’, he even bleaches his locks to look the scandinavian part, and yes, he has been on Alan and Andrew’s programs.

    But he won’t nail it down and say – hey this is bullshit! because he knows his future and his university economic climate department or whatever will be superfluous, as it should be.

    All these academics get their funding from their climate change departments, take away climate change and their schools, and funding, mean nothing.

  17. Neville says

    John I think we’ve been over this before. My point is that Lomborg has been a plus to the sceptic side of the argument and the alarmists know this only too well.

    Using proper research he has proved that mitigation is just a fraud and a con. I believe he has done as much for the sceptic side as anyone.

    But then again if you pressure nongs like Flannery hard enough they have to admit that mitigation would make little difference as well.

    But who knows what ongoing R&D may deliver some time in the future? Sure if we found new cheap ways of delivering energy tomorrow temp and climate wouldn’t change for many hundreds or thousands of years,( if you believe AGW) but the poorest people could get cheaper energy inside a generation.

    BTW here’s more news about voting intentions at their ABC. Just incredible.

    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/abc_its_stickers_tell_you_what_its_boss_wont_admit/

  18. Neville says

    I should add to what I’ve written above that climate will certainly change naturally over the next hundred years and for thousands of years.
    And perhaps there may be a small AGW component in that change, who knows. I’m not a 100% sceptic on that point as you may understand.
    But then again we have Salby’s work for future consideration. Given time who knows?

    Let’s just hope that our holocene maintains its flat top and doesn’t take the plunge anytime soon.

  19. Otter says

    Thanks, everyone. I just wanted to get a better idea of him. Still reading his book- not something to be done when one is constantly tired.

  23. el gordo says

    ‘Let’s just hope that our holocene maintains its flat top and doesn’t take the plunge anytime soon.’

    The Holocene is coming to an end and we’ll have to adapt, remember the ‘flat top’ is actually a gradual slope downwards.

  24. Neville says

    Here’s former defence force chief admiral Barrie at the launch of the latest Climate commission’s latest BS report.

    http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/the_guilty_party/

    This drongo thinks there is a one in two chance that humans will be extinct by 2100.
    Just think of the sort of delusional looney we’ve had at the very top of our defence force and be very afraid.
    And they wonder why we don’t take these barking mad fools at the climate commission seriously?

  25. toby says

    thx for the link to nova there Neville, it really is horrifying how much is being wasted and its consequence on living standards. One day soon I suspect the world will wake up and wonder what the hell has happened. it amazes me that anybody can support wind energy. I can see that it may be a viable source of power if an individual lives in a remote windy area and uses a wind generator in conjunction with batteries to generate their own base load power. But let them do that at their own cost, if it works brilliant, if not only they will suffer. making everybody pay is quite outrageous!

  26. Graeme M says

    I went to the Climate Commission presentation in Canberra last night. It was OK, the Commissioners spoke well enough and there was a long Q+A session. Tim Flannery did a sort of intro and then Steffen and a couple of others did a summary of the ‘science’ and confirmed to all there that it really was settled. Only trouble was that many of their slides are somewhat misleading.

    For example they dealt with the rainfall issue by showing a graph of the trend since about 1900 which showed a relatively stable trend. Then they showed one from 1970 which showed a drying trend in SE Australia. This was evidence that things are indeed changing.

    Funny though how the same technique of choosing an arbitrary starting point to illustrate a short term trend is howled down if it’s a skeptic talking point. When it’s temps it’s the long term trend that counts, but not when it’s rainfall, eh?

    However, something occurred to me which I have never seen discussed. Apparently the world has to completely move away from fossil fuels. By 2050 I think they said. But they also noted that the best options for now seem to be solar and wind. And renewables represent about 4% of the current energy mix.

    So… if we phased out fossil fuels over the next 40 years and replaced it with largely wind and solar, what would the impact be? Resource utilisation to build the things, especially rare earths. Environmental impact of the mining and production to make these things (wouldn’t we need a HELLUVA lot of them?). Costs of maintenance. Disposal of old or discarded units (how long do home solar panels or wind turbines last?). Land usage for wind farms etc?

    Has anyone ever quantified the actual cost and impact of a purely renewable mix in today’s technology?

  29. Avatar photojennifer says

    Graeme M

    Thanks for the summary of the meeting.

    There had been a declining trend for rainfall if one started in 1960 or 1970 and finished during the recent drought. But with the very heavy rainfall, particularly in 2010, the trend line was again very flat at least for East Coast, Murray Darling Basin, Queensland and the total for Australia.

    But you are suggesting that even with the big totals in 2010 and then again in 2011 there is declining trend for the SE… or were these years omitted?

    Best, Jen

  31. Graeme M says

    Jen, I think the graphic in question covered the period 1900-2012. And it shows a clear drying trend for the period 1970-2012. Which I found surprising but I don’t dispute. Rather the question for me is whether or not a 30 year trend is sufficient to evidence a real trend when a 60 year or longer period should give us a better idea, and sure enough, the 112 year one shows no noticeable change. Sure something could have changed since 1970, but the same argument regarding temps since say 1997 or 2000 are claimed to be cherry picking.

    They also showed a graphic illustrating that temp trends to 2012 were in line with climate model projections and if anything are to the high side of projections, which as I understand it is not exactly correct.

    Cohenite, I meant it was a reasonable presentation in content, style, structure etc. But I think it was rather misleading on the whole, and decidedly alarmist.

  32. John Sayers says

    Here’s the recommendations for the GBR

    WWF Great Barrier Reef spokesman Richard Leck says the World Heritage Committee has adopted three of the four recommendations made to the committee by UNESCO.

    The recommendations adopted, according to Mr Leck, are:

    ♦ No new developments that impact the reef be approved

    ♦ No developments outside existing port footprints be approved

    ♦ That environmental laws protecting the reef be strengthened

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/world-heritage-committee-puts-development-bans-on-barrier-reef/story-e6frg8y6-1226665732946

  34. John Sayers says

    Graeme – yes some one has done the figures:

    The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) recently released its World Solar Atlas report reckoning that the world’s entire projected needs in 2050 of something beginning with “e” could be met with solar panels on less than one percent of the planet’s surface. Pundits covering the report suffered some confusion about whether the ‘e’ was ‘electricity’ or ‘energy’, but none bothered with the obvious implication that covering one percent of Australia, for example, in solar power stations would require trucks as well as panels and land. Extrapolating from the proposed Moree Solar Farm project shows that this “one percent solution” would keep our entire 81,000 strong articulated truck fleet busy lugging stuff out into the bush for a minimum of four years and involve some 50 million round trips. That’s right, all the semi-trailers, all the B-Doubles, and all the road trains. All diverted from goods transport, food harvests and whatever else they do and all doing nothing else but carting solar stuff for four full years. Allocating 8,000 of the fleet to the build would see it stretch out to four decades.

    http://bravenewclimate.com/2013/03/14/81000-truckers-for-solar/

  35. John Sayers says

    It’s interesting – I downloaded the raw data and if you run a linear trend from 1970 it is down 100mm but if you run it from 1980 it’s flat. As Jen says, the overall trend is flat.

  36. John Sayers says

    I checked further and the only downward trend is from 1970 – 1980. From 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960 are all flat. So they really have cherry picked the one decade that shows a downward trend and used it in their chart.

  37. Neville says

    Haven’t you got something better to do with your time Graeme? I mean do you really believe anything these fools tell you anymore?

  38. Graeme M says

    Haha Neville. I went with a greenie mate that I always argue with, he’d hoped it would change my mind. He’s a first order catastrophist 🙂 He was disappointed it didn’t have any effect, but to me it was a shallow treatment with misleading info. I pointed out the cherrypicking aspect of the rainfall data and compared that to the similar skeptic tactic and he was taken aback, not having noticed that. He simply takes at face value EVERYTHING that agrees with his world view. I guess we all do. But it seems to me people of the left are more prone to that.

    That said, I don’t think people like Flannery are any more fool than I am. They obviously believe in what they are doing, and like my mate can’t understand why everyone else just doesn’t agree.

    John Sayers, great figures. Yes, that’s exactly my point. What is the real one time and ongoing total cost for a fully renewable solution? Not something I’ve seen tossed around…

  39. Graeme M says

    Here ya go.

    http://climatecommission.gov.au/effects/droughts-rainfall/

    And check this one:
    http://climatecommission.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/Storm-surge.jpg

    That particularly gets my goat. I argued about this at Deltoid. This is quite disingenuous. The arrival of a storm surge is a random event and could occur at any time in the tidal cycle. The only way a surge could have an impact beyond the historical range would be if it struck at exactly high tide at a point when the high tide of the day is higher than historic norms due to SLR. Otherwise the surge will be within the historic range. And even then, there are so many other factors at play that could take a surge beyond the historic range.

  40. Neville says

    I’m sorry if I sounded rude Graeme, but the nonsense about renewable energy is easily the most obvious fraud in the mix.
    The percentage of renewables projected to 2035 is little different than the present day and couldn’t make a scrap of difference to climate or temp for thousands of years.

    But co2 emissions are expected to grow by 73% in the non OECD( China, India etc) and only 6% in the OECD by 2035. And non OECD from a much higher base.
    What is it that the Climate commission doesn’t understand about these simple sums? All the money invested ???? in renewables is a 100% waste of time and money.

    But it does have a huge impact on poor people’s hip pocket nerve. Why is Germany now building more new brown coal stations after wasting over 100 bn on useless solar and wind?

    Your opinion on Flannery is very generous, but I can’t stand the stupid fool. During the drought we were not going to get enough rain to fill our dams but now its more projections about floods in the MDB etc. These two predictions were only a few years apart.

    He also thinks we’ll have SLR of 24 metres by 2100 or 4 times Gore/ Hansen estimate. Then we have his thoughts on the planet growing a brain.
    The bloke is a first class fool, but he’s also very dangerous because so many other fools believe every delusional tit bit he throws at them.

    But Graeme, simple sums disprove the whole mitigation con. It’s just a stupid new PONZI scheme throwing billions $ down the drain for a zero return.

  41. Neville says

    Graeme here is Alby Shultz’s wind energy fraud speech in house of Reps feb 2013.

    http://www.albyschultz.com.au/News/Speeches/tabid/75/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/2324/Wind-Turbine-Industry-Fraud–speech-13th-Feb-2013.aspx

    He quotes Dr Alan Watt’s work on this fraudulent industry and some of the numbers are staggering.

    Remember Prof Roger Jones estimate of OZ reducing emissions and the impact on temp by 2100. Just 0.0038C or about 4 thousandths of 1 degree C.
    Not much of an investment for another 87 years for zip change to temp.

  42. Debbie says

    Very interesting Graeme,
    As John &Jen & you point out. . . unless we ‘cherry pick’ there is no long term drying trend.
    That trend was also supposedly most noticeable in Autumn.
    2010/11/12 were the 3 wettest Autumns on record for SE Oz. . . if you want to ‘cherry pick’.
    Tim’s rhetoric and predictions have somewhat altered in the last couple of years.
    So no sneering this time?
    He was rather prone to sneering when the drought was prevalent.

  43. Neville says

    It’s official the co2 tax hurts Oz jobs.

    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/carbon_tax_hurts_holden_jobs/#commentsmore

    Talk about stating the bloody obvious, Oz jobs are being sacrificed because of a delusional belief in CAGW.
    Zero change to climate or temp and we still expoprt millions tonnes of coal, gas and iron ore to any country that wants to buy.

    Yet we can’t use this cheap reliable energy here in OZ to save jobs and create new jobs in the future. How mad are we?

  44. el gordo says

    ‘That said, I don’t think people like Flannery are any more fool than I am.’

    He’s the biggest fool on the planet with his failed alarmist predictions and is personally responsible for brainwashing millions. Flummery is a deluded fraudster.

  45. Graeme M says

    Debbie:
    “Tim’s rhetoric and predictions have somewhat altered in the last couple of years.
    So no sneering this time? He was rather prone to sneering when the drought was prevalent.”

    He was generally fairly low key in his presentation, and fielded mildly sceptical questions in a measured way. No sneering. But definitely over confident that he is right. The overall tone was that there is no room for doubt.

    I agree he has altered his rhetoric some. Best bit for me was when he said that although air temps have increased, these are affected by natural variability. No, what scientists REALLY pay attention to is ocean heat content…

  46. Debbie says

    Thanks Graeme,
    No room for doubt about what?
    As EG says above….there are a gathering number of failed predictions….the most glaring (IMHO)… the drying trend in SE OZ which meant that dams would hardly ever fill again…and the no snow by 2012.
    Those comments from the likes of Tim Flannery did indeed lead to panicked policy decisions, a rather horrendous waste of tax payer money and an equally horrendous waste of productive water.
    Did he happen to mention where this ocean heat content…that scientists REALLY pay attention to… is being found?????

  47. FarmerDoug2 says

    EG
    No I don’t think Tim is a fool. He’s doing alright thank you, as in plenty of followers and finance.
    He is just another fraudster taking us for the fool.

    Doug

  49. Graeme M says

    Debbie, I think the chart he used is something like this one:

    http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content55-07.png

    I just found it interesting that the focus is now on the only measure that shows temp rise whereas but a few years ago it was the air temps… I went to a presentation at the ANU about 5 years ago and they used temp graphs up to about 2002 or so which didn’t show the flat trends that you’d see nowadays. Damned inconvenient that.

  50. Debbie says

    Hmmmmm?
    That one is ‘cherry picked’ too. . . is it not?
    I’m very safely guessing there are plenty of graphs available that would show that is nothing alarming or unusual? ? ?

  51. Graeme M says

    Well, yes that’s true, it does cover only a select period. For example, if we had the same data from say 1880, what would it show?

    But I’m not sure that the data for 1960 to present can be made to show something else. That graph comes from here, plenty of other graphs to look at:

    http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/

    They all agree that there is a warming of the global oceans. But it’s not a uniformly global phenomenon as far as I know. Does it indicate something unusual is occurring? I can’t comment cos I just haven’t done the research. But it really is warming as best we can tell.

  52. el gordo says

    ‘The West Australian government has refused to confirm opposition claims it has spent $250 million reviving a moth-balled power station in the south-west.’

    Fin Review

  53. el gordo says

    ‘Global sea surface temperatures are at about +0.15 deg C for the week centered on June 12th, compared to the base years of 1971-2000. Sure does look as though global sea surface temperature anomalies are going to need another very strong El Niño event to get them to warm.

    ‘Other than the rises and falls in response to El Niño and La Niña events, it doesn’t look as though global sea surface temperatures have wandered very far from an anomaly of +0.2 deg C over the past 12-plus years.’

    Bob Tisdale

    June 17, 2013

  54. Neville says

    Good post from Willis Eschenbach at WUWT on the tiny forcing shown in ocean heat content data.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/19/forcing-the-ocean-to-confess/#more-88429

    The significance is not much different than zero down to 2000 metres. When measured in joules this looks impressive but is really just 0.1C or so if you really believe that can be measured accurately down to 2000 metres.
    Does anyone seriously believe they can make such accurate measurements at such great depths?

    Roy Spencer, Bob Tisdale, Anthony Watts etc all make comments backing Willis’s conclusions.
    Then you have to convince yourself that this tiny uptick is somehow caused by AGW and that we can actually fix that change by solar and wind energy. Good luck with that.

  55. Neville says

    Just to try and bring a bit more common sense to the argument about renewables and this time using Lomborg’s info from the IEA. Page 172 “Cool It”

    Today wind and solar make up about 1.7% of the mix and this might increase to 2.4% by 2030. Remember in 1990 total human emissions of co2 were 21.6 billion tonnes, 11.6 bn tonnes from OECD and 10 bn tonnes non OECD.

    By 2010 that total was 13 bn tonnes OECD and 18.8 bn tonnes non OECD. By 2035 the projections from the EIA are 14.3 bn tonnes OECD and a whopping 28.9 bn tonnes from the non OECD or at least double the OECD countries.

    So the hoped for renewable numbers of 2.4% ( solar and wind) are just a farce when we consider the huge increase of co2 emissions by 2035.

    All that money is a criminal waste and we should have people all over the world roundly condemning this madness.

    What is it about these simple sums that people find so difficult to understand? There is only one answer and that is adaptation and more R&D, anything else is just nonsense.

  57. Graeme M says

    Thanks for that comment Neville. I’ve read that before – that the heat content expressed as joules tends to emphasise the warming whereas expressed in actual temperature terms it’s far less significant. Or at least, far less worrying looking. And that’s what I mean about the Climate Commission presentation – it was misleading and geared to exaggerate the true situation.

    I don’t disagree there is some warming evident in the oceans, but is it significant, and does it represent something out of the ordinary if we could review the same data for say the past several centuries?

    All of that said, I also note the argument that while heat content expressed in joules shows a more noticeable trend or effect than expressed as temp anomalies, it does reflect a real significance in that the oceans are vast and an increase of that magnitude suggests substantial additional heat. But of course, is that an issue? Is it unusual? Are those OHC variations managed within the normal heat exchange systems with no great effect?

    Still, disingenous on the part of the Climate Commission in my view!

  58. Neville says

    Remember all that twaddle about future lack of snow and the poor kiddies who wouldn’t know what snow was anymore.

    That’s been the mantra for many years, but the trouble is the trend seems to going the other way. At least in N America and I’d guess elsewhere as well.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/19/vanishing-snow-should-there-be-a-law/#more-88441

    I can recall that Robert Kennedy Jnr fool debating this point a number of years ago. He didn’t instill me with much confidence then but his mad prophecies will hopefully come back and bite him on the bum.
    Then there was the Viner loon in the UK with a similar message.

  59. Neville says

    We know that our Holocene interglacial is cooler than the previous 4 IGs as shown by the antarctic ice cores. Or the last 500,000 years.
    Recently we’ve had the Eemian IG results from Greenland ice cores and this shows temps to be 8C higher and SLs 4 to 8 metres higher than today. That’s just 130,000 to 115,000 years ago.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/24/first-complete-ice-core-record-of-last-interglacial-period-shows-the-climate-of-greenland-to-be-significantly-warmer-than-today/

    Once again why is it that we never see these facts front and centre before the Aussie people. How come our Holocene is the coolest, yet we are told repeatedly that humans have caused dangerous climate change. What a load of BS.

  60. el gordo says

    ‘The national forecasters called a summit to discuss the strange seasons in the UK after the freezing winter in 2010, followed by the soggy summer 2012 and this year’s cold spring.

    ‘The high level meeting concluded that climate change is a major factor in colder winters.

    ‘A new pattern identified by the University of Reading was blamed for making wet summers more likely.

    ‘The meteorolgists noticed a warming of the North Atlantic Ocean in recent years.’

    Louise Gray in UK Telegraph