Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Countless Exaggerations in Climate Change Report

In the new Climate Change in Australia report the predictable catastohpic scenarios are outlined. The report, done jointly by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology is very surprising, and it would seen that the Bureau of Meteorology haven't bothered to look at their own stats to come to the reports conclusions.

It predicts lower rainfall, but even by their own Bureau of Meteorology website, this hasn't occurred.

It suggests we will have less spring and winter rainfall, with drops of up to 40 per cent in some southern parts of Australia by 2070. But once again by the Bureau's own website spring rainfall and winter rainfall have shown no decrease at all. Even in the much talked about southeastern Australia there has been no significant decrease in annual rainfall as well as spring and winter rainfalls.

Did the Bureau of Meteorology actually check their own statistics before they issued such a report?

What is interesting is the actual website set up by the two teams, Climate Change in Australia.

Have a look at the observed changes. They state that we have seen significant increases in temperature at both day and night, however my own analysis of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's data proves that Australia has not seen any night temperature increase at all.

The website also claims that south western Australia is becoming dryer as is New South Wales and Queensland, however northern Australia has seen an increase.

So global warming increases certain parts of Australia's rainfall and decreases others? What an evil deceptive thing this global warming is. It is true that south western Australia has seen a decrease in rainfall, but southern Australia has seen a slight increase, and northern Australia as publicised has increased as well. Geez, even the much talked about Murray Darling Basin has seen no significant increase or decrease in rainfall. Who would have thought that if you read the papers!

So according to the climate change in Australia website, global warming makes some places wetter and other places less wet. Just what those places are, and more importantly why, no-one knows.

I might be pushing some straws here, but don't you think there is a slight chance, just a slight one, that these changes (some up ,some down) we are seeing is due to natural variation? Not one single honest statistician could say otherwise. This is a prime example of finding pattens in randomness.

The CSIRO and BOM should be shamed for such terrible inexcusable analysis of their own data.

This, unfortunately, is completely outrageous.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jonhathan,
I have generated trends for rainfall in Australia here :
http://pichuile.free.fr/images/AustraliaRain/

As a whole, it is increasing. Some places have more rain, some other have less, some have no trend.

Hey, may seem new to some but climate trends have only 3 choices, up, down or stable.

Cheers, Demesure.

Anonymous said...

BTW, for the Murray Darling Basin, trends are different depending when you start:
1950-2007 : -14 mm/y
1960-2007 : -8
1900-2007 : +6

Choice is between either alarmists win, or you lose.

Cheers, Demesure

Anonymous said...

Agree completely, Jonathan, and would make 2 additional points.

This is advocacy on the public purse. The authors are entitled to their opinions. What they are not entitled to, is our money to propagate them.

The Australian media is its normal dismal self in this matter duely regurgitating whatever press release they have been handed and pretending to have gathered and analysed 'the news'. Thank god for the Internet and blogs. At least now we have a (more) reliable source than the so called news media.

Anonymous said...

I find it amazing that despite spending millions of dollars "analyzing" this, they still make ths schoolboy howler of attributing minimum temperature to night time temperature.

Alan Woods

Anonymous said...

Jonathan,

First of all, thanks for your wonderful work.

The CSIRO/BOM report is disgraceful, as you point out. It is clear that these organisations are no longer interested in objective science but are tools of blatant advocacy. The timing of the report smacks of election-year opportunism.

As usual, the disclaimer makes for a good reading:

Disclaimer: No responsibility will be accepted by CSIRO or the Bureau of Meteorology for the accuracy of the projections in or inferred from this report, or for any person’s reliance on, or interpretations, conclusions or actions in reliance on, this report or any information contained in it.

Jonathan Lowe said...

Demesure, one cann just pick and choose dates to prove one's cause, and I think this is what you are getting at anyway.

If you see anyone do this, (eg rainfall has decreased by 5mm/year since 1950), then this is bad statistical science.

Who cares if it has increased or decreased, the important thing is if the increase and decrease is statistically significant, and in all cases around Australia, it is not.

Anonymous said...

Jonathan,
If you take trends for one century (that's what we are treated with when the IPCC then the media keep hammering "temperature increase has been 0,7°C since 1900"), precipitations in Australia and most regions of Australia have NOT changed !

The bom uses the start date in the 1950 when it was rainy to convey the idea the rain is declining. It's just propaganda, and not very clever one.

Cheers, Demesure.

Jonathan Lowe said...

agreed demesure, agreed

Anonymous said...

Unusual cooling of waters north of Australia

Moreover, Australia's climate may continue, at least in the short term, to be influenced by the unusual state of the oceans to the north, and particularly northwest, of the continent. These have been cooling since June when, historically, they would have been expected to warm as the La Niña evolved in the Pacific. These cooler than normal waters inhibit the formation of northwest cloudbands, which are a major source of winter and spring rain for central and southeastern Australia during La Niña years.

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/

Anonymous said...

do you know of anyone doing work
on the influence of sea-floor
activity and climate?. For example
unusual cooling in waters NW of
Australia could be related to
ocean current flows from the
Indian to Pacific thru the Indonesian islands. And there have
been significant seafloor changes
off Sumatra.

Anonymous said...
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