My understanding is that the fortunes of a lot of already very rich white men across the West are tied-up with the transition to so-called renewable energy. And at the same time the superannuation of British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) employees is dependent on the success of renewables, also and especially wind.
Not surprisingly there is tremendous pressure to cancel those of us who rightly show that there is nothing unusual about the current climate.
More recently I see that those championing nuclear, as an alternative source of base load energy for Australia, are being maligned and/or cancelled.
And so, the Institute of Public Affairs recently hosted Robert Parker, an engineer with forty years’ experience and a masters’ degree in Nuclear Science, after he was cancelled by the Newcastle Branch of Engineers Australia at the beckoning of Simon Holmes a Court.
I have no doubt that Robert Parker is very knowledgeable when it comes to nuclear energy, it is just a pity that he can’t limit himself to this topic. And so, he makes a complete mess of the beginning of the presentation by showing temperature reconstructions that represent entirely remodelled data and follows on with comment about the recent exceptional El Nino. In fact, not only is there nothing usual about the current climate, but also the Southern Oscillation Index.
The Southern Oscillation Index or SOI is a standardised index of the barometric pressures over Darwin, Australia and Tahiti with reliable data back to 1876. The method of measuring, and then calculation of this index, remains unchanged. There has been no homogenisation, involving the remodelling of historical values, which is a persistent problem with ever changing historical temperature records. The more reliable SOI shows cycles accounting for perhaps 25 percent of year-on-year rainfall variability across Queensland. There is nothing unusual about recent SOI values, contrary to the claims of Robert Parker.
If only the Robert Parker’s of the world stuck to what they knew something about rather than having to genuflexion to the meme that is catastrophic climate change.
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The feature image shows the SOI index back to the beginning which is 1876. More information at Department of Primary Industries’ website, click here.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
My observations as well, in fact I turned off and tuned out at the same time. There is a word for it: ultracrepidarian. I noticed Hargreaves in his dislocated introduction also allude to climate change as though he had to feather the audience. The IPA does some good things but are too flaccid ( my intention) on too many subjects. The outright rejection of new technologies in coal fired sources is another. I have not resumed my membership after 30 years.
Since man-made carbon-dioxide-emissions global warming is just a Marxist world government agitprop scam, there is no reason to close down coal-fired power stations. We should continue to use them until perhaps we learn that nuclear power is more convenient for us.
There are three ENSO indices currently in use, the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) which Jennifer refers to, the NOAA Oceanic Nino Index (ONI) and the Japanese Meteorological Agency ENSO Index (JMI). They each have their pluses and minuses of what is inevitably a difficult feature to measure, let alone fully understand. But the lack of ‘homogenisation’ (or so often blatant data manipulation) that Jennifer mentions is indeed to be applauded. Without the availability of raw data it becomes more difficult to separate fact from fiction – and that of course is the intention of the authorities in charge of our destiny.
What is strange is that even though credited as a nuclear scientist one might have expected Mr Parker to have a grounding in basic science as well as, closer to his subject, quantum mechanics and the uncertainty of physics at both sub-atomic and supra-atomic levels (the fact that for instance, Einstein’s theory of relativity which assumes a constant speed of light is challenged, and that in turn raises questions about the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics). The recent El Nino was not the hot outlier that he claimed. Depending on which index is used 1983, 1998 and 2016 were almost certainly stronger and possibly also 1966 and 1973 (or very similar in strength).
His presentation of ‘lifecycle’ emissions and his comments seem to have completely neglected or at least glossed over the very significant emissions and toxic waste and de-forestation caused by the huge expansion of mining (more commonly surface strip mining than deep shafts) required to procure all the rare minerals needed to construct renewable technology. That might change the picture considerably. He throws out the comment about ocean acidification that shows he knows even less about biology. Perhaps he does not know. From what he presents the UN study is very clearly – as one would expect from the UN – heavily biased in favour of renewables but there is not enough information to know by how much. It certainly neglects the fact that modern coal plants are extremely efficient and produce very few pollutants.
His comment about the US having grid stability for instance suggests he has not informed himself of the many recent examples there of grid instability due to renewable failures and the increasing concern about the expectation of blackouts due to lack of grid capacity and lack of storage, in places like New York and other East Coast states if they manage to construct all the planned offshore wind farms (along with the completely unnecessary slaughter of hundreds of marine mammals) and foolishly shut down their oil and gas plants.
To misrepresent the temperature and ENSO data so badly rather makes one think that he has remained in a very niche environment and not tried to inform himself about climate or biology. Yes nuclear has a very important role – or could have – and he should have just stuck to the technical and economic merits. All in all a disappointing lecture, but worth Jennifer sharing with us.
A coming climate crisis is a prediction needed to sell government and private investors on funding more nuclear power plants. Without that unjustified fear of CO2, new natural gas power plants are much better investments.
“Tuxedo Park – A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of WW II”
– Jennet Conant
A good read about a man, Alfred Lee Loomis, who cashed out of electrification of the US before 1929 and went on to finance science including Radar. Sometimes it just takes one man with the vision and the capital.
Buy it cheap on ABEBooks.com
The Americans have introduced a ‘get-out’ clause into the AUKUS agreement.
They will NOT be allowing Australia to access their nuclear secrets. They will provide nuclear defence capability strictly on their terms. Darwin Harbour is available apparently.
Nuclear Fission as a power source is obsolete technology. It was only developed as a deterrent, to maintain the West’s ‘slice of the pie’. Unfortunately they could not control or contain the enrichment process, or the distribution of weapons – capable technology.
Which of the current,(and future) political geniuses will be entrusted with the downstream enrichment process – and the distribution of by-products,(Polonium)?
What happens when all the existing ‘yellow-cake’ is consumed?
The parroting of the mantra that Nuclear Power has no emissions, neglects to mention that ‘yellow-cake’ is radioactive. Marie Curie and her husband were killed from working with relatively mildly radioactive Pitchblende and it’s derivatives. There is already enough radioactivity occurring in the natural environment, without loading it with more.
Build Coal and Gas Power stations, make them more efficient – and reject the stupid vilification of that essential building-block of Life, Carbon Dioxide.
“Build Coal and Gas Power stations, make them more efficient – and reject the stupid vilification of that essential building-block of Life, Carbon Dioxide.” Right on !!
I don’t know the future of nuclear power.
Jenn, you should have tagged this post with misinformation as well as disinformation, because it is full of both.
Perhaps Karen would elucidate, as to what she considers to be ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ in this post……?
@Don Gaddes, facts, data, analysis and peer-reviewed publication are important, please read this instead of being manipulated by conservative, fossil fuel-funded fake news commentators and websites…. (ie follow the money)
“The Australian Climate Observations Reference Network – Surface Air Temperature (ACORN-SAT) is the dataset used by the Bureau of Meteorology to monitor long-term temperature trends in Australia. ACORN-SAT uses observations from 112 weather stations in all corners of Australia, selected for the quality and length of their available temperature data.
Over time, a lot of these sites have undergone changes in the way temperature has been recorded. Most weather stations have moved locations within townships as a result of development, and improvements in technology means the equipment used has been upgraded; these changes can and do artificially influence temperature trends.
For example, imagine if a weather station in your suburb or town had to be moved because of a building development. There’s a good chance the new location may be slightly warmer or colder than the previous. If we are to provide the community with the best estimate of the true long-term temperature trend at that location, it’s important that we account for such changes. To do this, the Bureau and other major meteorological organisations such as NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the UK Met Office use a scientific process called homogenisation.
Homogenisation is the method of analysing and adjusting temperatures to remove the artificial influence of things such as site relocations and upgrades to equipment. The process of homogenisation seeks to answer a very simple question: what would Australia’s long-term temperature trend look like if all observations were recorded at the current sites with the current available technology? Homogenisation means we can compare apples with apples when it comes to temperature trends.
The Bureau’s methods have been extensively peer-reviewed and found to be among the best in the world. This is crucial, as it means the community can have confidence the Bureau is providing an accurate estimate of Australia’s true temperature trend.”
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/acorn-sat/
Peer reviews are increasingly worthless as they can easily be manipulated as the 2009-11 Climategate scandal demonstrated most vividly. Even the editor of the Lancet, Richard Horton, (who was involved in the Climategate investigations and subsequent whitewash of criminal behaviour) complained about a drastic decline in peer review standards, before he and that once august journal succumbed to the siren calls of the climate establishment and began publishing highly questionable papers.
Freedom of Information (FoI) inquiries to the UK Met Office by investigative journalists in February 2024 revealed that 77.9% of the 380 UK temperature measuring stations have margins of error between 2 deg C and 5 deg C. World Meteorological Organization (WMO) international standards have five classes of error (CIMO): Class 5: 5 deg C error; Class 4: 2 deg C; Class 3: 1 deg C and Classes 2 and 1 less than 1 deg C. Met Office records show that 29.2% of sites are Class 5, 48.7% are Class 4 and 8.4% Class 3. All data from these are suspect. In other words, only 13.7% of the stations are fully reliable. And that is before considering the impact of UHI (artificial heat from buildings, roads etc.)
Using figures with a precision to 0.01 deg C, despite almost 78% of sites having error ranges between 2 and 5 deg C , the Met Office declared that 2023 was the second hottest in the U.K., coming in just 0.06 deg C lower than the ‘all-time record’ of 2022.
The UK’s ‘record’ temperature of 40.3 deg C was reported on 19 July 2022. A Freedom of Information request revealed: the temperature was recorded at 15:12 from a probe on the tarmac of the runway at the RAF Coningsby base. Three Typhoon jets landed within minutes either side of 15:12, with the probe registering a roughly 60 second spike of 0.6 deg C at 15:10 and then falling back after 15:12. The existence of tarmac and jet engine exhausts means that temperatures were routinely subject to artificial raising significantly above those of the surrounding countryside where more natural conditions prevail.
In addition to that the Met Office have consistently gone back and ‘homogenised’ their HadCRUT 3, 4 and 5 global temperature series having ‘discovered’ that their painstaking work even within the last decade was wrong and temperatures must be miraculously increased by 0.2, 0.4 deg C and more. NASA, NOAA, and the BoM have similar issues of reliability and corruption of data, sometimes through ignorance and sometimes deliberate as has been demonstrated by numerous researchers not in hoc to the authorities.
Perhaps those who fervently believe in the sanctity of official data can explain how to properly ‘homogenise’ data from gauges with error margins of 1 to 5 deg C and can be confident in the accuracy of average temperatures, by country, by region or global to within 0.1 or even 0.01 deg C as is so often paraded by those of limited intellect who claim to know best and that every claimed increase of even 0.1 deg C is ‘catastrophic’? Do those claiming such sanctity have any idea of how unrepresentative global averages are and how much contrary information is hidden by such averaging and smoothing and the statistical sleight of hand that takes place? Probably not.
A good place to start learning would be to read Stephen McIntyre’s painstaking demolition of Michael Mann’s statistically manipulated ‘Hockey Stick’ temperature claims (or more recently Neukom and Porter in the 2021-23 AR6), or his exposure Lobell’s schoolboy statistical errors in claiming a decline in agricultural yields when the opposite is actually case (despite their claims having been shown to be either false or so exaggerated as to be worthless, Mann and Lobell are regularly used as references by the IPCC).
“limited intellect”… really?
Just for you Karen….
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TFFDXyhe5b0ZfLCiFt23W4PbubQaQfQo/view?usp=sharing
Just for you Don…
https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Hansard/Hansard_Display?bid=committees/estimate/26894/&sid=0006
I do not see any explanation of how the BoM achieves a legitimate ‘average temperature’ – and yes, I did watch Mr Stone’s ‘stonewalling’ appearance at the parliamentary hearing.
The purported ‘El Nino’ did not eventuate in 2023 – but the BoM declared it anyway and insisted on its continued presence. When the temperature and precipitation levels still refused to be anything other than ‘normal’ in 2024, they decided a ‘La Nina’ phase was imminent – but that didn’t occur either. All the time we were regaled by a constant propaganda of ‘hottest day/month/year ever’ from ‘useful idiot’ media presenters.
This false forecasting cost the farm sector,(and the consumer) millions of dollars.
Jennifer’s posted image of the SOI Index is very instructional in its display of status quo.
I hope you will find what I sent you, also instructional.
“The 2023–2024 El Niño was regarded as the fourth-most powerful El Niño–Southern Oscillation event in recorded history, resulting in widespread droughts, flooding and other natural disasters across the globe. The onset was declared on 4 July 2023 by the World Meteorological Organizations. It was estimated that the most significant meteorological effects would occur between November 2023 and April 2024”
The estimations of the World Meteorological Organisations (whoever they are,) do not correlate with observed reality.
They might indeed be classified as misinformation/disinformation.
A major Solar-induced Orbital Dry Cycle, began over 50 degrees E longitude, (circa Madagascar,) on or about August 1, 2024. The vanguard is moving Westward, simultaneously over both North and South Hemispheres, at 15 degrees of longitude per 30 Day/Night Interval Month.
The Two Year extent of this Cycle will mean severe drought conditions for Europe and Africa over this time period. The grain belts of North America and Eurasia will also be severely affected over 2025. This Cycle will affect Australia from early January, to mid-May, 2026.
A One Year Solar-induced Orbital Minor Dry Cycle, will start over 140 degrees E longitude,
(Central Australia) in early November, 2026. The vanguard will move Westward at 15 degrees longitude per 30 Day/Night Interval Month – and affect Australia until July, 2027.
These Cycles are not instigated or driven by temperature fluctuations, or the Oceans. They are a result of the destruction of Water Vapour Albedo in the upper atmosphere, by charged Solar Particles.
The passage of these Cycles means a rise in surface temperature under the influence of decreased reflectivity from Water Vapour Albedo. This rise in temperature is cancelled on the passing of the Cycle and a return to the default Wet/Normal state. ( pp191-192, of ‘Tomorrow’s Weather’….thirty years on.)
There is no ENSO – and never has been.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TFFDXyhe5b0ZfLCiFt23W4PbubQaQfQo/view?usp=sharing
Be careful what you say Don, Peter Etherington-Smith might put you in his “limited intellect” group.
I will be happy to answer any queries Peter,(or anybody else) might have, after reading ‘Tomorrow’s Weather – thirty years on….’.
For those with a genuine interest there is a paper published on 14 August 2024 that describes a reconstruction of Pacific Ocean temperatures from Fijian coral cores dating back to 1370 AD. The data suggests that Pacific Ocean temperatures around 1400 were at least as high as they have been in recent years – without the influence of CO2. The paper mentions ‘anthropogenic warming’ since the 19th century but beyond a few relatively mild comments such as:
“the 20th century conditions of concurrent Pacific basin-scale warming, and weak tropical Pacific temperature gradients are atypical for the past six centuries”
and:
“The question remains as to how ongoing global warming and predicted Pacific Walker Circulation weakening may reinforce those IPO swings toward further drying during the remainder of the 21st century with potentially adverse effects for the inhabitants of vulnerable Pacific Islands and their ecosystems”
does manage to avoid too many politically correct statements.
It also uses the IPCC CMIP6 climate models which are, as most researchers know, unreliable and generally worse than their predecessors. But to their credit the authors do note some weaknesses in the models.
Proxy data can contain errors and a wide range of uncertainty but the paper is nevertheless interesting and is yet another paper that veers indirectly towards de-bunking Mann’s hockey stick farce.
https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/sciadv.ado5107
Slight correction: to be clear, should have read: “without the influence of higher concentrations of CO2”
I thought the discussion here was to be about nuclear power and looked up the proper name of the facility 75 miles south of me. Then the comments appear to be about measuring temperature. Horror! A boring and sicking worked-over topic getting nowhere fast.
Anyway, here is a link to a nuke that began commercial operation in December 1984. If you think it is misinformation or disinformation or a conspiracy, why not just have a beer or glass of wine and chill.
If you read Jennifer’s blog you will see that it was about both nuclear and ENSO which refers very specifically to temperature. Either topic therefore merited comment.
Can we please stop with the anti white man racism and sexism. I am sure there are also many rich Indian and Chinese men making a fortune out of this nonsense. The minute somebody starts up with this woke identity politics I stop reading.
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Thanks Cameron. It’s the Bill Gates et al. that are impacting my world, including insisting that I be vaccinated against Covid, and that my government close down the most reliable sources of energy. This nonsense has its origins with rich white men of my generation, not in India or China.
I have been monitoring the world’s daily precipitation radar, (AccuWeather Mapping,) since June 30, 2024 – and continue to do so.
It is apparent (from observation of these maps,)that the current prevailing Solar-induced Orbital Regional Dry Cycle Terrestrial Footprint, commenced from 50 degrees E, (Madagascar) circa August 1, 2024 – and the vanguard is now moving at 15 degrees per thirty Day/Night Interval Month from East to West. This longitudinal vanguard is currently situated at circa 35 degrees E, (midway across Turkey and just past Moscow,)
The last time this particular repeating ‘Regional Dry Cycle’ occurred was 81 years ago,(1943) – therefore, the time before that was 1862 – and the time before that was 1781.
There is no way the BoM,(or any other meteorological organisation,) can possess any relevant, accurate information, to produce ‘average’, or ‘normal’ precipitation and temperature data for anywhere on the planet.