Despite all the headlines we see, 2011 in Australia was remarkable for its extraordinary averageness. It is a rare year that is more average than 2011 was.
(This email was spotted on it’s way to various government officials. — Jo)
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Guest post from Steve Woodman
2011 was the 52nd coldest year on record in Australia, colder than 1912, 1914, 1915 & 1919
Alarmist propaganda outlets such as the ABC were clearly disappointed by 2011 and were forced to resort to decadal temperatures rather than individual years to provide it with its headlines 1:
“Last decade equals warmest on record: UN”
The article then goes on to say:
“2011 ranks as the 10th warmest year since 1850, when accurate measurements began”
That may be so in a global sense, but if the ABC took a more local perspective, in Australia, 2011 was below the 1961-1990 average (see the graph below) 2.
In fact, 2011 came in at -0.13oC. Of course that would not provide the breathtaking headlines like the ABC used in 2010 3: “2010 the hottest year on record”
A headline like, “2011 was the 52nd coldest year on record in Australia, or if your glass is half empty, only the 51st warmest” doesn’t quite have the same ring, does it?
In fact, in the complete 102 year record kept by the Bureau, last year4 (and, by the way, 2001 as well) is slap dash in the middle.
It is interesting to note that there are 12 years prior to 1960 which were warmer than 2011. These warm years were;
| 1914 | 0.27oC | 1957 | 0.03oC |
| 1938 | 0.26oC | 1919 | -0.03oC |
| 1959 | 0.25oC | 1936 | -0.05oC |
| 1928 | 0.22oC | 1940 | -0.09oC |
| 1915 | 0.2oC | 1912 | -0.09oC |
| 1958 | 0.14oC | 2001 | -0.130C |
| 1942 | 0.06oC | 2011 | -0.14oC |
It is interesting to note that four of these warmer years occurred between 1912 and 1919. This is surprising since despite this last decade being the warmest ever, two of its years (2011 and 2001) were colder than it was during World War 1!
This is particularly telling when considering that CO2 concentrations were a mere 301 ppm in 1914 5 as opposed to 389 ppm in 2011 6.
A paradox, surely, yet it shows that the natural variability in past and present temperatures still overlap, despite ever increasing levels of CO2.
I remind the Commission of the admission by climate scientist Phil Jones 7 of the CRU (upon whom the IPCC rely for temperature data) that during the 1910-1940 warming period temperatures rose at the same rate as they did between 1975 and 2009 despite there being so much less CO2 in the air.
| Period | Length | Trend (degrees C per decade) |
| 1860 -1880 | 21 | 0.163 |
| 1910 – 1940 | 31 | 0.15 |
| 1975 – 1998 | 24 | 0.166 |
| 1975 – 2009 | 35 | 0.161 |
Surely this must raise some doubts in your mind as to CO2 causing runaway catastrophic global warming when we see no difference in the rate of temperature between today and a century ago.
In concert with the decade long pause in global temperature rise, Australian temperatures have also stayed relatively flat since 1995, hardly a sign of catastrophic global warming.
Globally 2012 has started in cool fashion with January 21 being the coldest day in a decade 8.
With the La Nina expected to continue to the end of 2012 9 we can expect this year to be cool as well. Where it ends up in the league table of temperatures is anyone’s guess, but it won’t be the hottest year ever which will make the runaway global warming mantra and the need for an economy wide carbon dioxide tax even harder to maintain.
2 concentrations in the atmosphere the average temperature in Australia during 2011was below the average and was colder than 1912 suggesting natural variability still largely determines the globe’s temperatures.
As always I remind the commission of its duty statement.
The Commission will be required to:
- Hold a series of public outreach events to explain:
- the science of climate change and issues raised by climate scientists;
- the magnitude of the challenge to address climate change;
- the role of a carbon price in effectively tackling climate change;
- what contribution other policy mechanisms are making;
- how a carbon price works and its interaction with the economy and the community; and
- the opportunities for Australian firms and communities in moving to a low carbon future
- Draw on their expertise and that of the other relevant experts and organisations to prepare targeted information products to help inform the public and build community support for climate change efforts.
- Engage in other community forums and public debate as required.
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/minister/greg-combet/2011/media-releases/February/mr20110210.aspx
References & Notes
1 Last decade equals warmest on record: UN ABC news
2 Bureau Of meteorology climate temperature graph can be found at: BOM
3 2010 the hottest year on record Updated January 21, 2011 10:53:00 ABC
4 Bureau Of Meteorology Temperature data – sorted can be found at: BOM Timeseries
5 CO2 in 1914 – 301 ppm NOAA (PDF)
6 CO2 in 2011 – 391.8 ppm NOAA
CO2 in 2011 – Cape Grimm (CSIRO) 388.98 CSIRO
7 Phil Jones’ interview with the BBC can be found at: BBC
8 Lower troposphere temperature can be found at: UAH
9 Note that 5 out of 7 recent forecasts (in blue) expect the La Nina to extend beyond October 2012. NINO 3.4 WUWT
‘Back radiation’ was a mistake by Arrhenius; the assumption of 100% thermalisation of IR absorbed by GHGs was a mistake by Tyndall. These are why the models predict between 3 and 5 times post-industrial warming even if you assume it’s all due to CO2-AGW. The predicted temperature rise is calibrated against the assumption of 33 K present GHG warming, a mistake by Hansen which no professional physicist should have made.
To explain why we aren’t seeing the predicted temperature rise, the IPCC assumes pollution causes significant increase of cloud albedo. Hence the models use double real cloud optical depth also net AIE 3-6 times higher than experiment.
The problem is that 40+% of low level clouds are anomalously bright to satellites, a large-droplet optical process Sagan didn’t know about but which is implicit in the curve fit that is the basis of the algorithms. Because the effect of pollution goes the opposite way for these clouds than claimed, even the satellite data are wrong.
The jury is still out about when the subject descended into fraud. The publication by NASA in 2004 of fake physics was when it became overt as they desperately kept unproven -0.7 W/m^2 median net AIE in AR4, 44% of AGW. The reality is that it is slightly positive.
Correct the 33 K and real CO2-AGW can’t be more than 15% of the median IPCC claim. Correct the IR physics and it could well be slightly net negative.
I suspect the fraud started in 1997 when the link between CO2 increase and the amplification of tsi change at the end of ice ages was broken, Hence Mann’s fraudulent hockey-stick and he leant on CRU to conform; ‘hide the decline’.
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Our ABC Our Propaganda.Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.WE ARE LAUGHING AT YOU AUNTIE YOUR DEMENTIA IS SHOWING.
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Come on Australia, you’re not behaving yourself.
You need some of our number-changing monkeys from UEA CRU to get to work and ‘adjust’ your temperature data. Down a bit for historical data, up a bit for recent data – and before you know it you’ll have nice MSM headlines declaring that 2011 was ‘The Hottest Year on Record’.
Simples!
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No, no, no couldn’t possibly be getting cooler could it? What with Occupy protesters building igloos in Davos and Adrianna Huffington forced to drive there because the heliport is snowed in? How on earth can anyone say CAGW isn’t going to melt the tops off our milk containers?
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This is disgraceful!!! Have those government scientists forgotten that they are all liars and deceivers. How dare they try and trick us by providing evidence that it was only the 51st hottest year in Australia.
Of course lets ignore the fact that we had a massive La Nina at the beginning of the year that continued through the year.
Lets ignore the fact that for the 18th successive year the annual temperature was one of the 10 hottest years since 1880.
The BOM figures show just how little effect local variations have on the global average, which takes into account all the areas that had hot years as a result of La Nina.
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Readers are also encouraged to compare 2011 with 1917 the last big La Nina year. As you can see from the graph 1917 was a full degree colder than 2011. Yet another indicator of the rapid rise in temperatures over the last century.
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Jo
You must be also aware that the temperature drop in the data is the LEAST ever recorded for such a large La Nina event over two years!
ta
(Did you read the blog post?) CTS
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No.
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Probably because they are still eliminating “certain” recording sites and “processing” the remaining data…………
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Hijack Alert, sorry.
Rather than mention this in the main post that is drawing all the comments, and detract from them, I thought I’d place this here, where it might not even be seen at all.
It was mentioned in an earlier Post about the CME on the Sun, and what followed was mention of how this will react when it comes into contact with the Van Allen Belts, seen here on the surface as Aurora, and probably the most observed, the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights.
This link shows some wonderful images recently taken of that Aurora.
The Midnight Phoenix Rises
Tony.
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Hi Tony, thanks for that link mate the images are truly magnificent.
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Thanks Tony – spectacular.
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Oh my oh my. An EXTREMELY average year. Panic. The sky is falling. What if all we have from now on is extremely average years. Imagine how boring it would be. Must be the increasing levels of CO2 that is causing it. It is according to the climastrologists can’t think of anything else. Correct that. They can’t think.
Most likely it is natural variation with the weather and climate behaving as it always has. In any string of random numbers, a number close to the average of all numbers will appear once in a while. Even the rare number that is extremely close to the average. Wait until next year, things will be different. As if you didn’t already know.
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Warming, cooling, wet, dry, extreme weather or normal weather — it doesn’t matter which — it must still be mankind’s fault, and especially those selfish capitalists with their awful notions of ‘freedom’ and ‘choice’.
How much better to bow down to the high priests of CAGW, with their kidnapper philosophy (“Do as we say, and you won’t get hurt.”)
Today’s first lesson is read by E. F. Schummacher, from ‘Small is Beautiful’: “private ownership of the means of production is severely limited in its freedom of choice of objectives, because it is compelled to be profit-seeking, and tends to take a narrow and selfish view of things. Public ownership gives complete freedom in the choice of objectives and can therefore be used for any purpose that may be chosen.”
How free they must all have felt in the old Soviet Union.
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We indeed might be getting hotter according to BoM and NSAA but they still haven’t proved it’s due to GHG’s and if you read the ABC article Jo has linked it says “Scientists believe any rise above the 2.0 threshold could trigger far-reaching and irreversible changes on Earth over land and in the seas.” but this is very misleading because it implies “all scientists” and to use the word believe isn’t scientific it’s religious, in fact the whole paragraph is a pure corruption of science.
In my opinion the whole article can be thrown into the dustbin due to that one paragraph!!
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Yeah. Big La Nina, cool year. So?
Anyway, I’ve been waiting for one of these posts so that I can complain about Perth’s weather.
In the middle of December I mentioned how gloriously mild our summer was. Now well into January it all seems like a distant memory. We hit 37.5 C at 11:30 this morning, and it will keep going up for some time. Our overnight minimum was 26.5. If the seven day forecast pans out we can expect temperatures in the high 30’s and low 40’s for the next week. If so, it will be up there with the heatwave that ended on 5th January 1965, the day I arrived at Perth airport.
I liked the cartoon in yesterday’s paper. The devil is welcoming new arrivals to the flames of hell, and is muttering to himself, “If anyone else says that Perth was hotter…”.
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Bad news jonnyboy, I’m back.
Seeing you’re a bit slow I’ll bring you up to speed what has happened.
The cabal that propitiated their fear onto us decided to get into a street fight, to prove their right. Big mistake, when you are in a street fight, it is not your size that counts, it’s your brains.
Well, although it hasn’t dawned on you yet, AGW has been knocked out, and is currently waiting in the gutter for the ambulance to arrive.
But what you green, lefto, warmists don’t realise is that the good fight you were doing for our environment has been washed aside for the great AGW invalid theory.
It will be the sceptics who will have to bring you back from the brink. I for one don’t mind, because, I am you John Brookes, just a man.
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You’ve had some hot weather? So?
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“You’ve had some hot weather? So?”
Australia had some cool weather this year, so? How desperate does someone have to be to cherry pick less than 2% of the Earth’s surface area in an attempt to make it seem like 2011 was exceptionally cool? The graph at the beginning of the post clearly shows that Australia is getting warmer, with the last ten years warmer than any decade on record, with the 90’s second warmest, and the 80’s third warmest. One year a little below the 1961-1990 average doesn’t change that strong warming trend.
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I was born in Perth and grew up in Perth and Kalgoorlie.
Be grateful the overnight temperature is dropping below 30 (Perth) and staying above freezing (Kalgoorlie).
No air conditioners back in those days, either.
Not even fans in most homes.
Wimp.
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Hung by their own petard!
However the data this post relies on is the HQ data, which has been adjusted with a large warming bias, and which contains some remarkably poor quality data. So 2011 is even less warm relative to early last century.
Watch for a post at http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com in the next few days!
Ken
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[…] 2011 was 51st warmest year in Australia! […]
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[…] Keep reading → […]
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“Yeah. Big La Nina, cool year. So?”
Well if La Nina is such an obvious explanation why didn’t somebody PREDICT IT!?!?!
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hi keith no 6
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Keith. Celtic/Gaelic. Warrior Descending. Keitha. A female Warrior. Welcome to battle Keith!
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Ah but I’m sure Jo did. She was busy telling how cool it would get because of La Nina when really it only got average and even then only in Australia the rest of the world stayed in the top 10 in the record.
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from the “coolest summer ever” in brisbane, i wonder what we can make of this:
18 Jan: RepublicanAssemblies: RNC Adopts Resolution Exposing Agenda 21
http://www.republicanassemblies.org/rnc-adopts-resolution-exposing-agenda-21/
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Thanks for that material, pat. I didn’t have it.
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#10 – the 2 degree figure is also an invention by Phil Jones. When did it become a “threshold” that could “trigger” armageddon?
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I think that there was a long period when the earth was 2 degrees warmer than today, and that during that period there was no ice at the poles (so naturally sea levels were tens of metres higher).
So us climate alarmists think stuff like, “If it gets 2 degrees warmer, we might jump into a regime where the poles melt, with catastrophic consequences.”
Of course, an ice age would be equally catastrophic, but seems unlikely with our high CO2 levels.
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John, John, John … it’s fundamentally like this ‘elevator explanation’, first temperature goes up and then 600 – 800 years later CO2 rises – it comes from the ocean and other natural environments – atmospheric CO2 concentration is higher at the equator. Nowadays a very small amount comes from homo-sapien advancement. Until you warmies came prove beyond reasonable doubt through observation and measurement that the equation works the other way around, you are all just full of it. Currently measurement and observation shows CO2 increasing and temperature decreasing. Any questions?
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Hey Jo, next time you do the open discussion thing can you throw this topic up as a bit of fun?
‘What would you do if you discovered you were wrong?’
Eg: You dont believe in AGW but you were hit with undeniable evidence and realised that you were wrong, what would you do?
And, flip side, you believe in AGW but came across undeniable evidence and realised that you were wrong, what would you do?
Not meant to be an argument on whos right or wrong, just how would we act if we had to swallow our pride.
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Easy:
1) – Build more baseload power stations to supply energy for air-conditioning, refrigeration etc and all the other things we would need power for to overcome the effects of warming.
2) – Scrap all forms of biofuels and redirect the effort back into food production so we could feed all the climate refugees.
1) – Build more baseload power stations to supply energy for air-conditioning, heating etc and all the other things we would need power for to overcome the effects of cooling.
2) – Scrap all forms of biofuels and redirect the effort back into food production so we could feed all the climate refugees.
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Nice point warcroft. If AGW turned out to be totally wrong, then I’d carry on living just as I do now. And I’d say sorry to anyone I’d been mean to on this blog!
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We’d be scrolling forever.
Tony.
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I’d probably give up hallucinogenic drugs.
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It does not matter if thermometers are saying its colder and rain gauges are saying its wetter. “Its caused by Global Warming!” (or maybe TA)
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Hot Summer Night.
Wiiliam M. Briggs provides some insight on how to draw trend lines for effect. 😉
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Thats great!
And I see JB has already given his 2c there.
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It seems that JB didn’t understand the article. Not even the final statement:
JB’s comment is so bad that it’s not even wrong. The infidels aren’t the ones pointing at trend lines and predicting imminent doom. The infidels aren’t the ones spending thousands of millions of dollars (ostensibly) trying to change those trend lines and avert doom.
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Bernd, Bernd. Time series data can have a linear trend. There is absolutely no reason that they shouldn’t. Over a reasonably short time period, most things are linear.
Surely you should make the best possible fit to time series data. But that doesn’t mean fitting some complicated model with several dozen parameters and then saying, “Gee, look how good the fit is!”.
If you model a time series using just one parameter, you will model it with a constant function. If you want to use two parameters, you could use a line. With 3 parameters, you could use a parabola, or a step function (where the parameters are the value of the first step, the value of the second step, and the time at which you jump from one step to another). With each additional parameter, you should get a better fit. But somewhere, there should be an optimal fit. One which by some measure gives the best fit for the number of parameters used. If this measure is reasonably similar for say a 2 parameter fit and a 3 parameter fit, you’d probably go for the 2 parameter fit (i.e. a line) because it simpler.
Mr Briggs nice post makes obvious one thing – don’t try and draw conclusions from too little data. But we all knew that anyway.
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JB,
You are arguing against a statement made by William M Briggs.
Why did you not try to argue that on his blog instead of grasping at straws tryingto use his argument to justify cricism of “skeptics”??
You’re trying to have it both ways: Trying to use for support in one forum what you denigrate in another. That’s woefully inconsistent.
I will not waste my time pulling the rest of your unfounded, unsutainable “argument” to pieces. Wasting the time of others appears to be your objective.
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But it was the second warmest this decade
I bet someone has already said that but Ive missed it in the comments
Its just too obvious
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Jo,
The endless examples of a natural variability and the endless rejection by the warmists is extremely frustrating. Surely there is some way of taking the plethora of bad predictions and those that make them to task and in a public way expose the scam for what it is.
I recall that several readers here combined to ask the Federal Ombudsman to investigate the manipulation of the Australian temperature record by BoM to better accommodate the AGW hypothesis. Has anything been heard of that submission? Or has our Ombudsman been corrupted as well by the vested interests promoting this great fraud?
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But lawrie, the “skeptics” predictions are far more laughable.
I think Mr Watts runs an annual “predict the arctic sea ice minimum” competition. I just said what Tamino said, and was pretty close. Some of the high predictions by “skeptics” were obviously wishful thinking.
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Not sure if anyone else has noticed, with the recent plimer interview and report about windmills, the ABC seems to be becoming more interested in “fossil fuel interests” (declared or not) that stakeholders may have.
I have no problem with that (except when they are wrong), but it is one sided. When do they ever disclose that “X” has interests in renewable energy or some other fairy tale scheme (which is a waste of tax payers money).
Spokespeople for “Friends of Gaia”, “BluePeace”, the Head of the “X research”, etc..never seem to get the 3rd degree, even though their ideas are totally and utterly not practical.
And australias warmist year has just turn into warmist decade again! All they seem to go off is a few decades of past data, love it if La Nina redevops into a monster (flip a coin, could happen!) lol
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The warmest year, the warmest decade and the poles are still frozen. All the pictures of ice melting on the ABC and the sea level is still not moving. The land must be rising, either that or the water has re-frozen
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Just an observation.
The last five years (2007-2011) were cooler on average in Australia than the previous five years (2002-2006). It seems that this cooling has more to do with the fact that 2002-2006 were virtually all El Nino years and the next five were a mixture of El Ninos and La Ninas. The last time we had a run of below average annual temps was in 2000-2001 – another run of La Ninas.
The following data shows the history of the SOI. The relationship between this and rainfall/temp is uncanny.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
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