Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Open Thread

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From the poem Desiderata:grass flower

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.

by Max Ehrmann, 1927.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Siliggy says

    Lets go troving.
    Mr Russell condems the Bourke herald for reporting 127 Degrees there, prases the careful observations of Mr Tebutt and warming is thanked for helping to eradicate small pox. .This can be read after a discussion of Temperance vs Publicans here.
    http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/11532948?zoomLevel=6

    A fortnight of temperature terror in Bourke during December 1899. The 25th being above 110 F for the whole of its daylight hours with a max of 119.5F.(48.6 C).
    The BoM raw record has that day as 44.4 C.
    http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/127378282?

    Something to listen to while you read.
    http://youtu.be/vXqflrkJiO4

  3. Neville says

    Sliggy thanks for that info about Bourke and the Guthrie song. Mildura had terrible heat blizzards during the early years in the 1890s and the Mallee had terrible dust storms during the 1940s that covered fences as well.

  7. kuhnkat says

    I noticed on the previous open thread that no one mentioned the new USCRN (United States Climate Reference Network). This is a relatively new network of high quality redundant stations spatially correct and not requiring adjustments. It has now been in operation for more than ten years and NOAA/NCDC has now made data available for the last ten years since there have been sufficient stations active.

    Over this period the US has cooled over .4c. If that is compared to what GISS, Best, and the rest are showing we see a severe discrepancy as is seen between the Official Australian and sceptics records!! In other words it would appear sceptics have been right all along. GISS, BEST, HADCRUT, etc. are biased pieces of junk and the earth is currently COOLING!!!

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/07/noaa-shows-the-pause-in-the-u-s-surface-temperature-record-over-nearly-a-decade/

    http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/

    It would appear that there is some question about the reliability of the tools on their website. Best to use the data for your own analysis.

    I also have a question for the smart ones here. Many sceptics have accepted the Satellite series as reasonably accurate. They both show a trend of less than one tenth of a degree for the last ten years, one positive one negative.

    Why I bring this up is that not too long ago NASA announced that satellite missions were being substantially extended as they were not using as much station keeping fuel due to decreased atmospheric drag. I am no expert so maybe someone else could come up with some numbers as to how much the whole atmosphere would have to COOL to decrease its density at that height to account for the actual physical change the satellites are experiencing. Note, this would be a sanity check on the ADJUSTMENTS made to the satellite record early in their implementation when the surface record was rising so fast!!

    Basically I think Cristy, Spencer, and the rest were forced into less than reasonable adjustments by the powers that be back then!! Of course, that might be settled by the atmospheric contraction computations if any one is able to do them!!

  8. Neville says

    It looks like Trenberth’s so called missing heat is MISSING in the deepest oceans as well. But will the MSM now start telling the truth and stop this charade of very recent co2 increases causing CAGW? The so called missing heat has probably left the planet and has disappeared into the abyss of space as some of the latest studies seem to find.
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/21/deep-oceans-are-cooling-amidst-a-sea-of-modeling-uncertainty-new-research-on-ocean-heat-content/#more-113270

  11. Larry Fields says

    World’s largest—and most gross—aquatic insect discovered in China

    Omar Kardoudi

    “A new specimen of an insect was found this month in a mountain in Chengdu, Sichuan province, China. The insect belongs to the order of Megaloptera and has a wingspan of 21 centimeters—8.3 inches.”

    Larry’s comment: This is the Godzilla of aquatic insects.

    Check out the cool pics here.
    http://sploid.gizmodo.com/worlds-largest-and-grossest-aquatic-insect-discovered-i-1608220936

  12. Neville says

    Jennifer somebody is telling porkies, but I guess we’ll just have to keep a watch out for the latest temps on the various data bases as they are updated.

    Brozek and JTFs have checked for years and certainly can’t find any obvious warming since 1998 and ZIP SS warming since 1992 RSS and 1996 UAH and 1994 HAD 3. And that’s using Stoke’s SS tool.
    Thanks for that reminder Kuhnkat, I had read that post, but forgotten it after posting it here somewhere at the time. As I said somebody is telling porkies.
    Larry makes you wonder how such a big guy like that wasn’t seen before now?

  15. Neville says

    Here’s Werner Brozek’s factual info on 2013 being the hottest year etc. This from the WUWT blog today and clears up all the silly BS from some alarmists.

    Werner Brozek says:

    July 21, 2014 at 7:58 pm

    Steve says:
    July 21, 2014 at 5:19 pm
    what’s up with all the latest hoopla this week about 2013 being the hottest on record?

    I saw something about 2013 being from 2nd to 6th warmest. However it ranked 10th on RSS and 8th on Hadcrut4.

  16. spangled drongo says

    Not much happening anywhere, climate or SLR-wise:

    “As such, the authors are able to confirm there is no trend. All measured changes in sea levels can thus be attributed only to a natural origin consistent with the ongoing glacial retreat our planet has been experiencing since the onset of the Holocene Period around 11,000 years ago.

    To read the full report vsit http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu“

  20. DaveW says

    Larry Fields July 22, 2014 at 9:33 am #

    That’s pretty cool. The species in the Eastern US, Corydalus cornutus, only has wingspans up to 14 cm, vs 21 claimed for this Chinese species, although I assume this is an Acanthacorydalis species.

    Megaloptera for the order – giant wings – and that rare scientific name that is more or less true to form.

  21. Larry Fields says

    Hi Neville,
    You wrote: “It looks like Trenberth’s so called missing heat is MISSING in the deepest oceans as well.”

    Thanks for the link. This is a very important topic. And Jim Steele has written some great articles for WUWT. Unfortunately, this one is not up to his past standard of excellence.

    The article appears to be written for specialists. But for a typical science buff, the intelligible information density is far too low.

    Yes, there are some juicy parts for readers who don’t mind running the risk of mistakenly taking stuff out of context. But I’m not comfortable with that.

    There really should have been some kind of gobbledygook disclaimer at the beginning. I’m reminded of a terrible old joke:

    Have you heard about the Polish Mafia?
    They make you an offer that you cannot understand. 🙂

  23. Robert says

    The long-term effect of all this premature investment in laughably bad energy schemes is that it has gobbled the money and resources which might have been tipped into useful alternative energy. Even wind and solar have value and potential, but pretending that they can be just tacked on to the mainstream technologies – or even replace them – has soured the taste for innovation and emptied the piggy bank.

    The problem is that our urban/green New Class has no concept of conservation. None whatsoever. Their final victims looks like being the very things they were out to promote: improvement, diversification and innovation in the field of energy.

  24. Larry Fields says

    Neville,
    I enjoyed Dr. Spencer’s article on the Precautionary Principle. Thanks for the link.

    There’s an interesting parallel between the PP and Murphy’s Law. In both cases, it’s reasonable to ask: Does the idea apply to itself?
    In the case of ML, one cannot expect the act of washing their car to end a serious drought. IOW, one cannot use ML to their advantage.

    The late Michael Crichton pointed out that the strong version of PP is an oxymoron. Is the application of the PP 100% risk-free, 100% of the time. Obviously not. Then the the PP forbids the use of the PP! 🙂

  25. Neville says

    Larry if you mean that there is still a lot to learn about deep sea temps (also available and changing heat content) then I agree.
    Wunsch and other experts always make the point that the oceans ( and ice) have a very long memory, certainly hundreds and probably thousands of years. IOW we may be experiencing the results of temps and heat stored from the Med wp or the RWP or even mid Holocene etc.

    Robert perhaps one day with proper storage technology solar and wind may be viable, but in the interim we should go with what WORKS. Like coal, gas or new safe nukes etc. Who knows within the next 50 years cold fusion may be a reality? Many scientists think so, but other forms of energy may be found that could take over as well.
    That’s why we should be using our scarce funds on more R&D into other forms of energy and adaptation to changes in climate whether natural or some AGW.

  27. Larry Fields says

    Neville July 23, 2014 at 8:41 am #
    “Larry if you mean that there is still a lot to learn about deep sea temps (also available and changing heat content) then I agree.
    Wunsch and other experts always make the point that the oceans ( and ice) have a very long memory, certainly hundreds and probably thousands of years.”

    One of my specific gripes about the quality of writing in Jim Steele’s article is that he mentions Wunsch and others, in passing, in the first paragraph. And that set off my McGufffin detector. That’s a major distraction for me. In a later paragraph, Jim mentions what the Wunsch study was all about. Then I was able to reset my McGuffin detector.

    Serious Earth Science boffins reading the article would already know about Wunsch. But I had to mentally carry the Wunsch baggage until the delayed clarification later on. I’m sorry, but sending the reader on a treasure hunt is a sign of poor writing. And letting Jim get away with resting on his laurels is a sign of poor moderation.

    I can put up with occasional Technobabble and arcane acronyms. But when I see disorganized gobbledygook in a blog that’s supposedly written for scientifically literate nonspecialists, I tend to assume that the writer doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.

  28. handjive of climatefraud.inc says

    So, the weather we are having now is caused by “the coming” El Niño.

    BoM:
    Record Hot June For The World
    “Blair Trewin, a climatologist at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, says the record temperatures have to do in part with the coming El Nino, which raises global ocean temperatures, meaning bigger tropical storms in the Pacific.”

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-23/nrn-record-hot-june-worldwide-23-07-14/5618116

    Bookmark it.
    I put my money on Joe Bastardi and his methods. Quote notrickszone:

    “Secondly at the 7:55 mark, he debunks the claims of the upcoming “super El Niño” that the “Church of Super El Niño”, who want to see high temperatures, were ballyhooing earlier this year.
    Again Joe presents charts that show the current development resembles nothing you’d expect from a super El Niño and that the current situation looks more similar to 2002/03 or 2009/10. All models have long since downgraded their forecasts. The missing heat remains missing.

    At the 10:00 mark Joe shows how the leading weather services are diametrically opposed when it comes to their forecasts using the Madden Julian Oscillation.
    While the European model shows the MJO will be in Phase 6, meaning US temps will be cool in July, the US models show that it will be in Phase 1, which means it will be warm over the US in July.

    http://notrickszone.com/2014/06/23/weatherbell-saturday-summary-debunks-6-climate-alarmism-falsehoods-in-less-than-10-minutes/

  29. Joseph A Olson, PE says

    “When your opponent refuses reason, resort to ridicule”

    When i could no longer take the Darth BIG Warmists seriously, i wrote a few bits of irrevernt humor, posted under the Satire tab at my website,

    http://FauxScienceSlayer.com

    May i recommend for a comic break from the climate wars….

    “Modern Phrenology Society Newsletter”

    “New ! Amazing ! Wrongco Proxy Crock ! ! !”

    “Piñata Planet Syndrome”