Carbon Credits almost worthless

As Luboš Motl points out, the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS), the largest emission market in the world, has reported it's price of carbon credits has fallen from 30 euro per ton of CO2 emissions to now 9 euro cents per ton. The price has plummeted to more than 300 times less it's value, and Luboš hypothesises what will happen when the price falls to zero.

More not to measure temperature

This picture, taken by www.surfacestations.org volunteer Don Kostuch is the Detroit Lakes, MN USHCN climate station of record. The Stevenson Screen is sinking into the swamp and the MMTS sensor is kept at a comfortable temperature thanks to the nearby A/C units.

The complete set of pictures is here

From NASA's GISS, the plot makes it pretty easy to see there was no discernible multi-decadal temperature trend until the A/C units were installed. And it's not hard to figure out when that was.

But hey, thy can "fix" the problem with math and adjustments to the temperature record.

Whatt's up with that?

Meet Blackle - (not to be outdone by Crapple)

Meet Blackle (I'm sure they love me giving them free press) - an energy saving google search engine.

According to their website

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. "Image displayed is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen."

also

Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year

Wow that's impressive. Nice work. Their webpage currently has them at saving 112,427.811 Watt hours. So they've saved just over a tenth of a megawatt. Good stuff.

So what does this all mean?

Well 0.11 megawatts or 112 kilowatts saved, means that they have stopped the release of about 48kg or 0.048 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Incredible.

Given that the world puts about 27,500,000,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year - if every single person in the world uses Blackle instead of Google, we will reduce green house gas emissions by 0.00000000192%

If we assume that 100% of greenhouse gases cause the raise in temperature that we are currently observing (very unlikely), then if everyone uses blackle we will save the warming of the planet by approximately:

0.0000000000001152 degrees per year.

Wow! I wonder if the climate scientists have allocated a variable in their climate models for this?

Floods of warming excuses

Andrew Bolt is back:

New Prime Minister Gordon Brown - under fire for reacting too slowly to Britain's devastating summer floods - goes all holier than though, evoking the usual scaepgoat of the bungling New Age politician:

Obviously like every advanced industrial country we’re coming to terms with some of the issues surrounding climate change.

Great spin! Instead of being just the leader of a Labor Party that's failed to fix ageing flood defences, Brown poses as an apostle of the new faith.

Small problem.

All the climate change models actually predicted less summer rain in Britain, not more.

Just check what the usual suspects were saying before these floods…

From the BBC weather centre:

In April 2002 a new report, called UKCIP02, was released showing climate scenarios for the UK. These scenarios present four different possibilities of how our climate might change. The scenarios were based on four different scenarios produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change following new information about predicted global emissions;

The summer will see less precipitation than we see now and will therefore be much drier.

From the Guardian:

Geoff Jenkins, head of the Hadley Centre, released the figures at the climate change convention meeting in Milan, where politicians are still trying to reach agreement on the Kyoto protocol to start legally binding reductions in greenhouse gas releases to the atmosphere;

Winters will become wetter and summers may become drier across all of the UK. The largest changes will be in the south and east, where summer rainfall may decline by up to 50% by the 2080s.

From Britain's Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, just four months ago:

For the UK, climate change means hotter, drier summers (more heat waves), milder wetter winters , higher sea levels and an incresed flood risk to coastal areas.

From Britain's Energy Saving Trust:

The effects of climate change can be seen in our every day lives. During the last 40 years, the UK's winters have grown warmer, with heavier bursts of rain. The summers are growing drier and hotter - one of the starkest changes over the last 200 years is our summers have become drier causing widespread water shortages.

From Britain&'s WWF-UK:

Winters will become wetter and summers may become drier throughout the UK.


Never mind what the models said then. Drier, wetter - who cares? Climate change evangelists will grab any freak weather event like this as proof of the global warming catastrophe they so desperately want.

Michael Hanlon, though, just gives the boring facts in the Daily Mail:

We have simply forgotten that relatively heavy rainfall in midsummer is the norm - not the exception - in our windy Atlantic archipelago.

The records of rainfall in Britain contain numerous instances of more rain falling in a single day than would be expected in an entire month. On May 29, 1912, nearly five inches of rain fell in three hours near the town of Louth in Lincolnshire. The flood-water practically razed the town and killed 22 people.

Even more spectacular was the deluge that occurred three months later in Norfolk: Brundall, near Norwich, experienced more than eight inches of rain on one hellish August day - roughly double the total measured anywhere in the recent floods.

Much of Norfolk was still under water six months later.

And on August 15 that year, a depression moving up the Bristol Channel deposited nine inches of rain over Exmoor, spawning the lethal flood that was nearly to wash away the village of Lynmouth.

More than 30 people were killed.

The record for rainfall in one 24-hour period occurred on July 18, 1955, when nearly 12 inches of rain fell on parts of Dorset.

So there is certainly nothing unprecedented about these floods, and similar deluges occurred long before we worried about global warming.

And Tim Blair puts the icing on the cake:

Beset by unexpected summer rain, George Monbiot questions the science:

It wasn’t meant to happen like this. The climate scientists told us that our winters would become wetter and our summers drier. So I can’t claim that these floods were caused by climate change, or are even consistent with the models. But, like the ghost of Christmas yet to come, they offer us a glimpse of the possible winter world that we will inhabit if we don’t sort ourselves out.

So, although Britain's present weather seems to have nothing to do with climate change, it still indicates a future climate change deathscape - that won't be warmer, but colder. Robert Fisk, who misses his snow, will be delighted.

And thats how you measure temperature?

Watts up with that goes to town on America's method of measuring temperature:

Warren Meyer, one of the first surfacestations.org volunteers, delivered Tucson for us Saturday. It was discovered during an analysis of climate stations around the USA on the Climate Audit blog that Tucson had the greatest positive temperature trend for any USHCN station after the TOBS adjustment was applied. The TOBS adjustment corrects for differences in local times of observation of temperature by the observer. The picture says it all:

Yes folks, this is an official climate station of record, the temperatures it measures go into our National Climatic Database and are used in research such as the graph produced by NASA Goddard Institute for Spaceflight Studies here:

There's a British word that has been bandied about to describe the reaction to pictures like this one: "gobsmacked". The word applies even more so since this station is operated by science faculty members at the University of Arizona.

They are so proud of this station they even had a sign made for it to hang on the chain link fence enclosure:

The complete photo essay is available at the Tucson album at www.surfacestations.org The satellite and aerial photo images there are telling of the environment being measured.

Besides the obvious questions like "why is it in the middle of a parking lot?" and "why would scientists who should know better allow such a bizarre siting for a USHCN climate station of record?" Then there is this burning question: "Why did they go to the trouble of installing a precision aspirated temperature sensor and then not even bother to place it at the standard observing height?".

It appears that the Stevenson Screen serves no other purpose except as an equipment holder, as Warren Meyer reports the Stevenson Screen to be empty. Originally the inside standard mounting board for the mercury max/min thermometers were mounted about 1.5 foot higher than the air inlet of the precision aspirated temperature sensor. So the lower mounting height for the precision sensor adds a positive bias.

Is there no diligence left in basic measurement? Is this what they teach in college science departments these days?

Cold Nights and increasing sun induced global warming in Western Victoria

Similar to Northern Victoria, our analysis will show that temperatures in western Victoria have been decreasing at night but increasing during the day.

To start off with, maximum temperatures show no significant increase despite several largish temperature anomalies in the last few years. However minimum temperatures have seen a significant decrease over time since 1910 (p = 0.03), but closer analysis of the graph could indicate possible cyclic activity.

Midnight records of this area are non existent and 3am temperature records are quite haphazard, although 6am,9am and Noon show decreasing trends in temperature (although not significant). However when the sun is at it's fullest we see an significant increasing trend in temperature at 3pm. There were no significant trends in temperature at 6pm nor 9pm.

3am and 6am vs minimum showed no trends, however we did find that temperature anomalies at 9am were significantly decreasing as compared to 6am, and that temperature anomalies at Noon were significantly increasing compared to 9am, and that temperatures anomalies at 3pm were increasing significantly as compared to Noon (check out the last 2 years!).

When the sun loses its power we also saw temperature anomalies at 6pm decreasing significantly as compared to 3pm.

So what does this all mean? Well similar to northern Victoria, we are seeing a decreasing temperature trend at night including temperatures at 9am. It seems that the area is taking its time to warm up in the morning. The reason for this as compared to other places, I'm not sure, and perhaps the readers might want to hypothesise on it. It does show more evidence for night time temperatures not increasing, as we have seen Australia wide.

One thing is for sure however, is that the temperature anomalies leading up to 3pm have been increasing over time, and after 3pm have been decreasing, which once again indicates the influence that the sun has over global warming. There is no other possible conclusion to make, and we have made it time after time after time. The sun has been the major cause of global warming in Australia.

Up against the warming zealots

Martin Durkin defends his swindle doco:

WHEN I agreed to make The Great Global Warming Swindle, I was warned a middle-class fatwa would be placed on my head.

So I wasn't shocked that the film was attacked on the same night it was broadcast on ABC television last week, although I was impressed at the vehemence of the attack. I was more surprised, and delighted, by the response of the Australian public.

The ABC studio assault, led by Tony Jones, was so vitriolic it appears to have backfired. We have been inundated with messages of support, and the ABC, I am told, has been flooded with complaints. I have been trying to understand why.

First, the ferocity of the attack, I think, revealed the intolerance and defensiveness of the global warming camp. Why were Jones and co expending such energy and resources attacking one documentary? We are told the global warming theory is robust. They say you'd have to be off your chump to disagree. We have been assured for years, in countless news broadcasts and column inches, that it's definitely true. So why bother to stamp so aggressively on the one foolish documentary-maker - who clearly must be as mad as a snake - who steps out of line?

I think viewers may also have wondered (reasonably) why the theory of global warming has not been subjected to this barrage of critical scrutiny by the media. After all, it's the theory of global warming, not my foolish little film, that is turning public and corporate policy on its head.

The apparent unwillingness of Jones and others at the ABC to give airtime to a counterargument, the tactics used to minimise the ostensible damage done by the film, the evident animosity towards those who questioned global warming: all of this served to give viewers a glimpse of what it was like for scientists who dared to disagree with the hallowed doctrine.

Why are the global warmers so zealous? After a year of arguing with people about this, I am convinced that it's because global warming is first and foremost a political theory. It is an expression of a whole middle-class political world view. This view is summed up in the oft-repeated phrase "we consume too much". I have also come to the conclusion that this is code for "they consume too much". People who believe it tend also to think that exotic foreign places are being ruined because vulgar oiks can afford to go there in significant numbers, they hate plastic toys from factories and prefer wooden ones from craftsmen, and so on.

All this backward-looking bigotry has found perfect expression in the idea of man-made climate disaster. It has cohered a bunch of disparate reactionary prejudices (anti-car, anti-supermarkets, anti-globalisation) into a single unquestionable truth and cause. So when you have a dig at global warming, you commit a grievous breach of social etiquette. Among the chattering classes you're a leper.

But why are the supporters of global warming so defensive? After all, the middle classes are usually confident, bordering on smug.

As I found when I examined the basic data, they have plenty to be defensive about. Billions of dollars of public money have been thrown at global warming, yet the hypothesis is crumbling around their ears.

To the utter dismay of the global warming lobby, the world does not appear to be getting warmer. According to their own figures (from the UN-linked Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the temperature has been static or slightly declining since 1998. The satellite data confirms this. This is clearly awkward. The least one should expect of global warming is that the Earth should be getting warmer.

Then there's the ice-core data, the jewel in the crown of global warming theory. It shows there's a connection between carbon dioxide and temperature: see Al Gore's movie. But what Gore forgets to mention is that the connection is the wrong way around; temperature leads, CO2 follows.

Then there's the precious "hockey stick". This was the famous graph that purported to show global temperature flat-lining for 1000 years, then rising during the 19th and 20th centuries. It magicked away the Medieval warm period and made the recent warming look alarming, instead of just part of the general toing and froing of the Earth's climate.

But then researchers took the computer program that produced the hockey stick graph and fed it random data. Bingo, out popped hockey stick shapes every time. (See the report by Edward Wegman of George Mason University in Virginia and others.)

In a humiliating climb down, the IPCC has had to drop the hockey stick from its reports, though it can still be seen in Gore's movie.

And finally, there are those pesky satellites. If greenhouse gases were the cause of warming, then the rate of warming should have been greater, higher up in the Earth's atmosphere (the bit known as the troposphere). But all the satellite and balloon data says the exact opposite. In other words, the best observational data we have flatly contradicts the whole bally idea of man-made climate change.

They concede that CO2 cannot have caused the warming at the beginning of the 20th century, which was greater and steeper than the recent warming. They can't explain the cooling from 1940 to the mid-'70s. What are they left with? Some mild warming in the '80s and '90s that does not appear to have been caused by greenhouse gases.

The whole damned theory is in tatters. No wonder they're defensive.

The man-made global warming parade, on one level, has been a phenomenal success. There isn't a political party or important public body or large corporation that doesn't feel compelled to pay lip service. There are scientists and journalists (a surprising number) who have built careers championing the cause. There's more money going into global warming research than there is chasing a cure for cancer. Many important people and institutions have staked their reputations on it. There's a lot riding on this theory. And it has bugger-all to do with sea levels. That is why the warmers greeted my film with red glowing eyes.

Last week on the ABC they closed ranks. They were not interested in a genuine debate. They wanted to shut it down. And thousands of wonderful, sane, bolshie Australian viewers saw right through it.

God bless Australia. The DVD will be out soon.

Whilst Kerplunk asks the ultimate question:

If 'the science is settled' then why does the United Nations' IPCC need 17 climate models when just one should do?

Colder at night, warmer during the day in South NSW/North Vic

Putting a couple of close weather stations together we have Rutherglen and Wagga Wagga.

Unfortunately no midnight temperatures to speak of, but all other temperature records go back to 1945 with max and min since near the start of the 20th century. To the analysis:

Maximum temperatures show no significant increase, however the past 6 or so years (like most places in Australia) have seemed to be above normal. Minimum temperatures however were a stones throw from significantly decreasing (p = 0.066). An obvious downtrend is occurring, however it must be noted that, although close, the trend is insignificant.

Temperatures at 3am show no significant increase or decrease (p = 0.85). Interestingly temperatures at 6am and 9am show insignificant increases or decreases, however they to are very close to a significant decrease (6am: p = 0.052, 9am: p = 0.075). The 9am graph is less obvious of a trend than at 6am as it shows colder than normal temperatures during the 80s and early 90s, and warmer than average temperatures this decade.

Despite this temperatures at Noon and 3pm (during the heat of the day), showed significant increases in temperature (Noon: p = 0.04, 3pm: p = 0.03). Of obvious note is the last 5-6 years of higher than normal temperatures at this time, especially in 2006, which reached almost 2 degrees hotter per day at 3pm.

When the sun loses it's impact, we don't see the temperature raise, with 6pm and 9pm providing insignificant trends (6pm: p = 0.1, 9pm: p = 0.8)

When analysing temperatures at 3am and 6am compared to the minimum, we didn't see the normal results of an increasing trend of minimum temperatures as compared to overnight temperatures. Hence in this case, the minimum is a good indication of overnight temperatures (which were found not to significantly increase or decrease).
I am not quite sure of the reason for this, as it has not occurred in other places in Australia. It could well be random variation or a certain attribute for the area.

With analysis into neighboring times, temperature anomalies at 6am were significantly decreasing to temperature anomalies at 3am. The sudden decrease at around 1973 should raise many peoples eyes in regards to the reliability of the data taken from here. Noon temperatures anomalies were significantly increasing at a greater rate than at 9am, and 9pm temperature anomalies were decreasing significantly as compared to 6pm.

Whilst the reasons for the trends is not so clear cut as previous. This graph, which plots the t value (positive t values indicate increasing trend, negative indicate decreasing trend), highlights the situation in the area.



As one can see, overnight this area has had a decreasing temperature trend, but during the day, when the sun plays an influence, the temperature of the years has shown an increasing trend.

More evidence of the suns effect on temperature in Australia.

Weather Stations

How not to measure temperature, part 4, at the Royal Observatory

This is a Google Earth satellite photo of the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh. The weather station, at 55°55′22.71″N 3°11′17.69″W is the white box in the middle of the grass circle. Of concern is not just the nearby roads, but also the buildings. It appears the station is almost completely encircled by tall buildings.

This means that the heat from the buildings will significantly bias the temperature, and reduce wind which adds further bias.

You’d think top scientists would know better?

The problem with climate models:

Google results for the following: "climate model" "hold out sample"

Your search - "climate model" "hold out sample" - did not match any documents.

Australia spends $3.4bill to reduce temperature by 0.000025 degrees

John Howard, Australia's prime minister has just announced that they will be spending $627 million to combat climate change. He hopes to reduce Australia's emissions of greenhouse gases:

Mr Howard said today Australian action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions since 1990 will prevent about 87 million tonnes of climate-changing carbon a year entering the atmosphere by 2010.

He said the $627 million would bring total government spending to tackle global warming since 1996 to about $3.4 billion.

So lets do the sums once again. If we assume that 100% of all recent warming is completely and only due to greenhouse gases (unlikely but hey), and Australia's greenhouse emissions is equal to 1.5% of the worlds, and that Australia produce on average 350 million tonnes a year, should Howard's goal come true, Australia will reduce its emissions by a quarter. Good stuff.

Hence their world wide contribution to limiting greenhouse gases would be at 0.375% (about 1/3rd of 1%). Therefore Australia will reduce the world wide temperature by 0.00225 degrees over 100 years or by about 0.000025 degrees per year.

So that means $3.4billion will be spend by the Australian government to reduce the temperature by 0.000025 degrees per year. Considering how cold it is in Melbourne at the moment and the fact that we had our coldest winter in half a century, perhaps we should be looking at increasing the temperature.

Or we could spend $3.4billion on the disadvantaged of the world, like starving Africans for example. For $516 a year one can sponsor a child providing them health care, education, clean water food an income. In other words we could sponsor 6.5million children or 650,000 children each year for 10 years.

Hmm... reduce the temperature by 0.000025 degrees per year or sponsor 650,000 children for their whole childhood.

Tough decision this one, what do you chose?

Cold snap prompts Peru emergency

The Peruvian government has declared a state of emergency in several Andean regions hit by unusually cold weather. More than 200 people, about 50 of them children, have died in recent weeks. The people, mostly farmers living at high altitude in the Andes mountains, mainly died from pneumonia caused by sub-zero temperatures. Scores of people die every year from the cold in Peru but farmers in the Andes say the weather is now more extreme and unpredictable.

The people and their animals living in the upper reaches of the Peruvian Andes are exposed to the harshest extremes of heat and cold. For the millions who live at 3,000m above sea level, or higher, the temperature frequently drops below zero at night. But this autumn, the weather in much of the Andes has been colder than usual. As well as the 200 who have died, thousands of people are suffering from pneumonia and other respiratory infections.

As ever the victims are the most vulnerable - children and the elderly. To make matters worse, the coldest areas are also the poorest and alarming levels of malnutrition have meant hospitals are packed with mothers and their sick children. In the coastal capital, Lima, and elsewhere people are making donations. The Peruvian health ministry is planning to take 16 tons of donated clothing to communities living in the six regions in Peru's eastern and southern Andes, all of which have been put under a state of emergency.

Scientists say the unseasonable droughts, heavy rains and frosts are due to climate change. Meanwhile, weather experts are forecasting that temperatures will plummet even further with the South American winter soon to begin in earnest.

Barrier Reef 'can adapt' to warmer times

THE Great Barrier Reef may be much better suited to surviving climate change and warmer conditions than previously thought.

Researchers in north Queensland have found many corals contain microscopic algae that protect them from temperature fluctuations.

The study by the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville, which clashes with the work of many coral experts who have long claimed the reef is doomed by climate change, used DNA analysis to show many corals stored several types of algae that kicked in to provide nutrients when temperatures increased.

The future of the reef has become a touchstone for environmentalists, some of whom say the reef could be gone within 20 years. Last year, Nicholas Stern, the author of Britain's Stern Review into climate change, said the reef would die because of global warming.

Measureing Temperature

Watts up with that has posed some great pictures of weather stations, and we'll be lifting a few and posting here just incase you haven't as yet read them as shown below:

How not to measure temperature, part 3

The picture below is from Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor. You may have heard of him, the Governor of Oregon tried to get him fired for not jumping on to the global warming bandwagon because he doesn't see enough supporting evidence.

The picture is of Forest Grove, Oregon, and the temperature plot below shows how it is warming. But George says:

"Yes, it’s a window air conditioning unit to the east and the edge of a large asphalt parking lot to the north, northwest, and west. The pic is shot looking northeast. For those of you that may not immediately realize this, air conditions exhaust hot air to the outside.

Not only that, but Forest Grove is located in Washington County, Oregon’s fastest-growing county (in terms of population growth, not percentage) for the last 40 years. No wonder it’s seeing unprecedented high temperatures…"

It looks like the air conditioner may have been installed around 1985, notice the sustained 1 degree jump that started about then and sustained a plateau.

And this is a station of record, a US Historic Climatology Network station that is used in global climate models by NASA, in fact the plot is from that database.

Greenlands ice

As reported by the Boston Globe Friday

An international team of scientists, drilling deep into the ice layers of Greenland, has found DNA from ancient spiders and trees, evidence that suggests the frozen shield covering the immense island survived the earth's last period of global warming.

The findings, published today in the journal Science, indicate Greenland's ice may be less susceptible to the massive meltdown predicted by computer models of climate change, the article's main author said in an interview.

"If our data is correct, and I believe it is, then this means the southern Greenland ice cap is more stable than previously thought," said Eske Willerslev, research leader and professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Copenhagen. "This may have implications for how the ice sheets respond to global warming. They may withstand rising temperatures."

A painstaking analysis of surviving genetic fragments locked in the ice of southern Greenland shows that somewhere between 450,000 and 800,000 years ago, the world's largest island had a climate much like that of Northern New England, the researchers said. Butterflies fluttered over lush meadows interspersed with stands of pine, spruce, and alder.

Greenland really was green, before Ice Age glaciers enshrouded vast swaths of the Northern Hemisphere.

More controversially -- and as an example of how research in one realm of science can unexpectedly affect assumptions in another -- the discovery of microscopic bits of organic matter retrieved from ice 1.2 miles beneath the surface indicates that the ice fields of southern Greenland may be more resilient to rising global temperatures than has been forecast. The DNA could have been preserved only if the ice layers remained largely intact.

A scenario often raised by global warming specialists is that Greenland's ice trove will turn liquid in the rising temperatures of coming decades, with hundreds of trillions of gallons of water spilling into the Atlantic. This could cause ocean levels worldwide to rise anywhere from 3 to 20 feet, according to computer projections -- bad news for seaport cities like Boston.

But the discovery of organic matter in ice dating from half-a-million years ago offers evidence that the Greenland ice shield remained frozen even during the earth's last "interglacial period" -- some 120,000 years ago -- when average temperatures were 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they are now. That's slightly higher than the average temperatures foreseen by most scientists for the end of this century, although some environmentalists warn it might get even hotter.

Researchers from the Danish-led team said the unanticipated findings appear to fly in the face of prevailing scientific views about the likely fate of Greenland's thickly-layered ice, although Willerslev stressed that the findings do not contradict the basic premise that the earth's temperature is rising to worrisome levels, with gases emitted by industry, cars, and other human activity playing a big role.

"But it suggests a problem with the [computer] models" that predict melting ice from Greenland could drown cities and destroy civilizations, according to Willerslev.

Well it's not the worlds biggest island, but hey.

South East NSW

South East NSW through the weather stations of MORUYA HEADS PILOT STATION and POINT PERPENDICULAR LIGHTHOUSE COMPARISON doesn't have a lot of data at Midnight, 3am, 6am, Noon, 6pm and 9pm - each ranging back around 20 years, but 9am and 3pm records are good.

But firstly maximum temperatures recorded a significant increase in temperature (p < 0.01), with especially the last 10 years being well above the average. Minimum temperatures seem to be cyclic if anything, decreasing until about 1970 and increasing from then until now.

Temperatures at 9am showed no significant difference in temperature (albeit a slight though insignificant decrease), whilst temperatures at 3pm show a significant increase, which is understandable as the temperature range is only from the 1960s.

So what does this mean? It's getting hotter during the day, and outside this time is argueable. In fact taking the dfference between temperatures at 3am and 6am and the minimum temperature sees an increasing trend - especially of late.

This means that the minimum temperature is increasing at a rate much quicker than the temperatures at 3am and 6am. Thus indicating that the minimum temperature is not a good representation of overnight temperatures. Also the minimum temperature is increasing at a significant rate since 1957 as compared to 9am temperatures.

So it would be great if we were to stop analysing max and min temperatures as the ultimate measure of world wide temperature.

I still can't believe that scientists (obviously they aren't statisticians) believe that the formula

global temperature = (max + min) / 2

is a good formula for measuring average temperature. It's just plain ridiculous.

Live Aid Ratings Footprint

Jim Treacher does the numbers on live aids ratings footprint:

Reuters says: "The overall numbers amounted to a small fraction of the 2 billion people that Live Earth organizers had hoped to reach through TV, radio and Internet coverage of the event, spearheaded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore to raise awareness of global warming." 2.7 million viewers on NBC, 3.1 million on the BBC, 1 million on Germany's ProSieben network, and 9 million on the MSN stream. Let's call it 16 million, give or take. Meanwhile MoveOn.org and various news organizations are still touting 2 billion viewers, or almost 1 out of every 3 people on the entire planet. But hey, why bring numbers into it? This is science we're talking about! So they were something like 1,984,000,000 viewers off. Big deal, wingnuts.

And his take on raising awareness:

Apparently the average American produces 11 tons of carbon dioxide per year. So in just one day, Live Earth did as much "damage" to the environment as 6,773 of us non-celebrities could do in a whole year. I'd call that making a difference!

Raising awareness is indeed fantastic. For example, until now I wasn't aware that Sean Combs isn't the only rapper who can ruin a Police song:

And Quite rightly he suggests that

FIGHTING GLOBAL WARMING WITH A ROCK CONCERT IS LIKE FIGHTING OBESITY WITH A HOT DOG-EATING CONTEST

Live Earth Kills Earth

The live earth concert has come and gone, with some estimates suggesting that the concert produced as much as 74,500 tonnes of deadly greenhouse gases.

Live Earth's official sponsor by the way is the Chevrolet, hmm... interetsing.



Of course the fact that people like Madonna and Bon Jovi can be playing at the concert, who loves to jet set around on her private jet should raise a few eyebrows. As Martin Durkin suggests

I think [the concert is] a combination of hypocrisy and ignorance because the idea of Al Gore and Madonna telling us the world is consuming too much makes the mind boggle. But ignorance because so few people are prepared to actually look at the evidence and there is so much evidence now that flatly contradicts the notion of man-made global warming. I think this is political prejudice rather than science.

Bon Jovi's private Jet:


And TimesOnline suggest that the religion has found its second coming:

As the Live Earth concerts rolled out around the globe, each blessed with Gore’s presence, either live or on giant screens, it became clear that the failed presidential candidate has metamorphosed into a prophet.

But nothing can me more hilarious than the poor turn out at Johannesburg and the reasons blamed for it. You guessed it global warming. But not because it was too hot, but because it was too cold.

Officials at Live Earth Johannesburg have blamed the effects of climate change for poor audience attendance at Saturday's South African event. Organiser John Langford believes extremely cold weather in the region - it snowed last week for the first time in a quarter of a century - kept people away from the concert

Madonna using an ELECTRIC guitar. She should go green, go acoustic.

Global Warming to kill billions of people

I know this is about a year old, but stuff like this must be re-telled from time to time.

GLOBAL warming is irreversible and billions of people will die over the next century, one of the world's leading climate change scientists claimed


"Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert; before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs that survive will be in the Arctic, where the climate remains tolerable."

This type of stuff is the reason why people like myself take all talk about global warming critically, and why a lot of the public do not think that it is a major issue.

If Billions of people is say, 3 billion. Then this means that every year up till the year 2100, approx 32 million to die every year or 88,000 a day or about 60 deaths per minute.

And you know what that means, 1 person is dying every second because of global warming. I mean....seriously....

Climate stability: an inconvenient proof

This paper demonstrates that the widely prophesied doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from natural, pre-industrial values will enhance the so-called ‘greenhouse effect’ but will amount to less than 1°C of global warming. It also points out that such a scenario is unlikely to arise given our limited reserves of fossil fuels—certainly not before the end of this century. Furthermore, the paper argues that general circulation models are as yet insufficiently accurate for civil engineers to rely on their predictions in any forward-planning decisions—the omission of solar wind effects being a potentially significant shortcoming. It concludes that the only certainty is that the world's fossil fuel resources are finite and should be used prudently and with proper respect to the environment.

Massacres and paramilitary land seizures behind the biofuel revolution

Armed groups in Colombia are driving peasants off their land to make way for plantations of palm oil, a biofuel that is being promoted as an environmentally friendly source of energy.

Surging demand for "green" fuel has prompted rightwing paramilitaries to seize swaths of territory, according to activists and farmers. Thousands of families are believed to have fled a campaign of killing and intimidation, swelling Colombia's population of 3 million displaced people and adding to one of the world's worst refugee crises after Darfur and Congo.

Report

5000 year hurricane record suggests no connection to CO2

As the world climate report reports



Hurricane (or tropical cyclone) season is here again, and the internet is full of sites predicting an active year in 2007. The hurricane season of 2005 was a global warmers’ dream come true, but the Atlantic hurricane season of 2006 was a monumental dud. Therefore, according to many sites, 2007 will be a return to exactly what we’ve been warned will happen if we do not start reducing emissions of heat trapping greenhouse gases.

The Summary for Policymakers in the 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states “There is observational evidence for an increase in intense tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic since about 1970, correlated with increases of tropical sea surface temperatures. There are also suggestions of increased intense tropical cyclone activity in some other regions where concerns over data quality are greater. Multi-decadal variability and the quality of the tropical cyclone records prior to routine satellite observations in about 1970 complicate the detection of long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity. There is no clear trend in the annual numbers of tropical cyclones.” Fair enough, but as we have written about repeatedly in World Climate Report, the scientific literature is full of articles disputing the claim that tropical cyclones are increasing in intensity in recent decades beyond where natural variations would have taken them.

We agree with the IPCC that the detection of trends in tropical cyclone activity is complicated by the lack of long-term records. Don’t look now, but an article has appeared in the prestigious journal Nature entitled “Intense hurricane activity over the past 5,000 years controlled by El Niño and the West African monsoon.” The title suggests that someone has a 5,000 year record of hurricane activity and that the activity is controlled by El Niño and weather in West Africa – there is no suggestion that hurricane activity is controlled by greenhouse gases, planetary temperature, or sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic.

Jeffrey Donnelly and Jonathan Woodruff of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts begin their article noting that “At present there is significant debate about the cause of observed multi-decadal variability of hurricanes in the North Atlantic. To detect long-term patterns in tropical cyclone activity, reliable proxy reconstructions that extend back before the instrumental record are needed.” Finding proxy records of intense hurricane activity requires some imagination and some help from Mother Earth, and the pair found exactly what is needed on Puerto Rico’s island of Vieques.

Imagine a nice tropical beach backed by a vegetated barrier ridge about 10 feet tall. Behind the ridge is a back-barrier lagoon that over time becomes a playa that is only periodically under water. During large hurricane events, which are common in Puerto Rico, the ridge is breached and a large amount of material is deposited on the playa. Donnelly and Woodruff extracted cores from the playa, and they note that “Cores collected from the site contain several metres of organic-rich silt interbedded with coarse-grained event layers comprised of a mixture of siliciclastic sand and calcium carbonate shells and shell fragments. These layers are the result of marine flooding events overtopping or breaching the barrier and transporting these barrier and nearshore sediments into the lagoon.” Organic material can be dated, and just like magic, a long-term record of intense hurricane activity is produced.

The pair finds that “On the basis of our age model an interval of relatively frequent intense hurricane strikes at Vieques is evident between 5,400 and 3,600 calendar years before present (yr BP, where present is defined as 1950 AD by convention), with the exception of a short-lived quiescent interval between approximately 4,900 and 5,050 yr BP. Following this relatively active period is an interval of relatively few extreme coastal flooding events persisting from 3,600 until roughly 2,500 yr BP. Evidence of another relatively active interval of intense hurricane strikes is evident between 2,500 and approximately 1,000 yr BP. The interval from 1,000 to 250 yr BP was relatively quiescent with evidence of only one prominent event occurring around 500 yr BP. A relatively active regime has resumed since about 250 yr BP (1700 AD).”

With respect to the linkage between higher sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and hurricane activity, the pair notes that “Given the increase of intense hurricane landfalls during the later half of the Little Ice Age, tropical SSTs as warm as at present are apparently not a requisite condition for increased intense hurricane activity. In addition, the Caribbean experienced a relatively active interval of intense hurricanes for more than a millennium when local SSTs were on average cooler than modern.” They found that hurricane activity over the past 5,000 years has been modulated by the El Niño / La Niña cycle and the strength of the West African monsoon, not by the sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic and certainly not by global temperatures.

Should an unusually intense hurricane spin-up in the Atlantic during 2007, global warming advocates will be in front of every camera in sight claiming we are witnessing another manifestation of global warming. That is an interesting “spin,” but as we see in the recent Donnelly and Woodruff article, that Mother Nature may play a larger role in the process than she’ll be given credit for.

Reference:

Donnelly, J.P., and J.D. Woodruff. 2007. Intense hurricane activity over the past 5,000 years controlled by El Niño and the West African monsoon. Nature, 447, 465-468.

Only the tropics are cold?

As pointed out by Philip's comments on the previous post, the BOMmade it clear in their press release that only the tropics of Australia last month were terribly cold.



But as shown by this graph, the whole of Australia were below the average (with the exception of a very small part of western Australia).

But of course, why report that the whole of Australia is cold? Lets report that global warming still exists, but only in the south (where the drought is!)

But just today they have released their new press release: Cold June follows Warm May, making careful announcements about how warm May was and how hot eastern Australia got during Autumn. But hang on a sec, wasn't this a press release about June? Yes, surprisingly it is. But why not bring up how hot the last few months are anyway.

Long Term weather predictions are off

In late May the BOM predicted that Western Australia and Northern Australia will have warmer than normal winters. They also predicted that no place in Australia will have colder than normal winters.

Well it's not a good start for them with "Exceptional cold and rain in the tropics in June"

and also:

A series of cloud bands, which brought widespread rainfall, also kept daytime temperatures well below average with record low maximum temperatures reported across much of the state.

Strike 1 with the first month of winter, but of course they can predict for sure what will happen 100 years from now.

Australian Army to fight climate refugees

The herald sun has reported that Australia's Military will be called on to assist in more disaster and relief missions because of climate change.

A report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute also says defence forces might end up spending more time protecting borders against climate refugees.

Climate Refugees are apparently people who are fleeing their country in panic because of increased temperatures or water (temperate at a rate of 0.07 degrees per year, and water at a rate of 1mm/year - ohh the pain! Flee, Flee!)

At home, soldiers would need to respond to extreme weather such as cyclones, flooding and bushfires.

The effects of flooding in Asia and the Pacific caused by rising sea levels could produce large numbers of climate refugees, the report says.

Global warming increases cyclones? Umm, no Global warming increases floods? Umm, no. Global warming increases bush fires? Umm, no again

But increased sea levels? Ok, sea levels have been rising my 1mm a year, despite the IPCC saying that "No significant acceleration in the rate of sea level rise during the 20th century has been detected." But seriously, they expect people to be fleeing their country for Australia because of a 1mm increase in sea level rise per year?

Are they out of their mind?

"Mass movements of people may require more ADF border protection activities."

I don't think i need to answer the above question.

Central East NSW

Unfortunetly central east NSW is lacking some good data, but we'll have a look at Jerry Plains Post Office and Cowra Airport Comparison anyway.

For these two places there is no temperatures overnight (Midnight, 3am,9pm), however maximum and minimum temperatures go far back.

Maximum temperatures show no significant increase, however closer examination shows that max temps were greater than now before WW2 and have increased from their lull in the last few years. Minimum temperatures took a sudden increase following WW2 but have been consistent since.

Temperatures at 6am, 9a, and Noon failed show significant increases, however temperatures at 3pm and 6pm did.

With lacking overnight temperatures not a lot more can be analysed about this area. A better analysis with better data on the next station area.