Witchcraft on Catalyst — Scary weather is coming, it’s all our fault, be afraid!

There they go again. Last night the ABC again used taxpayer dollars to post up a slick advertisement for their favourite religion. Because Catalyst won’t read skeptical blogs, interview skeptics, or ask difficult questions, they give a false impression to any poor viewers who haven’t figured out that the presenters (in this case, Anja Taylor) are more activist than investigator.

“The gorilla in the kitchen remained invisible. Where was cause and effect?”

The Earth has had extremes of every kind of weather for 4.5 billion years. What makes the current ones any different? Any cause of warming could melt ice, raise sea-levels, shift jet streams, change cloud cover and shift evaporation rates. How do we know this warming is due to coal fired power stations? We only “know” because some climate modelers say so — but they rely on models that assume relative humidity stays constant when it doesn’t, and which are proven “unskilled” at precipitation, cloud cover and upper tropospheric temperature profiles.  The models ignore lunar effects, solar magnetic effects and millions of observations so they can blame your SUV and air-conditioner for causing droughts, storms, blizzards, and floods.

This is the modus operandi of the ancient witchdoctor. “I can stop the storms — send us your tithe”. Any time Catalyst want to get a list of real questions to ask climate modelers, they only have to email.

There are hundreds of ways to define a record or trend, so there is plenty of potential for cherry picking and Catalyst take every opportunity. The records and trends that fit the approved meme get promoted. Any inconvenient data is kept carefully out of view. Warming saves more lives than it costs. Cold winters kill more people than hot summers. There is no trend in global cyclone energy, no trends in Australia or NZ. There have always been heatwaves and storms. The Angry summer wasn’t that hot according to the satellites. I could go on…

It’s not so much what Catalyst say, as what they won’t mention. So the water cycle is intensifying — double the climate models? But Catalyst won’t tell you that the temperature trend is half what the models predicted (and below their lowest estimate). They won’t tell you that the water vapor trends in the upper troposphere are crucial to the models but completely wrong. They mention the ARGO buoys and then ignore their most important result — that any warming so far is well below what the models estimate (inasmuch as we can tell). They mention the Arctic, but not the Antarctic. (Wasn’t this supposed to be global warming?)

Without a cause-and-effect link this isn’t science, it isn’t journalism, and we don’t need more state-funded propaganda.

Catalyst for regulation of energy use and bigger government perhaps?

— Jo

Anja Taylor prepares to warn of floods, droughts, blizzards, and hell-fire.

Thus on the seventh day…

global warming strikes again…

…with fire and brimstone

Sinners will get old and sick too.

… killing old ladies

The new Gods are totally biblical.

It’s coming to get you

 

 

Ken Stewart wrote to me this morning:

More Bogus Science From Catalyst

If you want a “perfect” example of lack of balance in the ABC climate reporting, this is it.  Literally.

Last night’s Catalyst (transcript here was all about extreme weather, complete with scary images and scarier narration.  For now I will leave the claims about more frequent high intensity rain events (I think they might find Toowoomba got a bit more than 100mm in an hour, and they mixed up footage of Toowoomba with the Lockyer Valley), January being our hottest month, the Pacific getting fresher and the Atlantic saltier.  I’ll just look at the claim that blizzards and heatwaves can both result from global warming.

Professor Jennifer Francis , from the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University, explained that the rapidly warming Arctic has created a ‘gentler’ atmospheric temperature gradient between the Tropics and the Poles.  This leads to weaker, more variable, jet stream winds, which then ‘meander’ north and south more.   This allows frigid polar air to penetrate further towards the tropics, and hot tropical air to penetrate further towards the poles.  Also, because the wavy jet stream is moving more slowly, this causes weather systems to persist for longer.

OK, that is a plausible explanation for the extremes being experienced in Europe.  But did your intrepid investigative science reporter Anja Taylor or researcher Wendy Zukerman then ask the good professor, “So is that happening in the Southern Hemisphere too? You know, with the Angry Summer?”

Who knows if they did.  But the answer is “no”. For while it is true that “The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere on Earth”, the Antarctic isn’t.

Here is a graph of tropospheric temperature data from UAH for the region 60 to 85 degrees South.

[Jo adds that West Antarctica has warmed, but Law Dome in Antarctica has been cooling for 500 years. The Australian Antarctic stations at Mawson, Casey, and Davis show no significant trend — only Macquarie Island has warmed. The oceans are warming (supposedly) but strangely Antarctic sea ice has increased. There is a million more square kilometers of Antarctic sea-ice today than the same time of year in 1980.]

For the past 34 years, as long as satellites have been able to measure, Antarctic temperatures have been the same.

Therefore, the gradient between the Tropics (which have warmed) and the South Polar region should be steeper if anything, not gentler, and therefore the southern jet stream should not be becoming weaker, slower, and more variable (as in the Northern Hemisphere).  If anything, it should be strengthening.

The logical conclusion is that the Angry Summer (which didn’t occur according to satellites), and the current cold weather in southern parts, cannot be blamed on the same mechanism.

The Catalyst team failed to report that Professor Francis’ explanation does not hold in the Southern Hemisphere, and that the South does not balance the North- but hey!- how were they to know?

Catalyst– the science show you’re having when you’re not having science.

 (Apologies to Claytons).

  See my tweets @JoanneNova and share ideas with Facebook

8.7 out of 10 based on 75 ratings

283 comments to Witchcraft on Catalyst — Scary weather is coming, it’s all our fault, be afraid!

  • #
    Dennis

    Very recently the federal government handed ALPBC substantial new funding, objective I believe to spread the socialist propaganda further. New funding: read more taxpayer monies.

    273

  • #
    Evan Thomas

    Also go to WUWT with a critique of BOM

    183

  • #
    Other_Andy

    ABC,…….say no more.
    Commiserations to the long suffering Australian tax payers.

    184

  • #
    Fox from Melbourne

    Yes here they go again. Without the need to disclose whether or not they interviewing Climate activist or scientist or members of a political party they can dress up propaganda as fact without discloser and the poor public aren’t informed that their both paying for and watching a ad for a Climate Changes alarmist group or political party. Investment and real political ad’s have to disclose why not the ABC. Investment ad’s have to in from us that past result aren’t a grantee of future returns or outcomes. Why isn’t the ABC or Catalyst also recurred to inform their viewers that just because something in the past happen this way doesn’t mean that it will do the same again in the future. Or have to disclose the mistakes that the scientist’s have already made on the very topic that there talking about during there show. If they have gotten it wrong before I think that the viewer and the Tax Paying public should be informed of this. Don’t you?

    272

  • #
    WheresWallace

    THE MODELS ARE WRONG!!!

    They underestimate the change in the water cycle.

    91

    • #
      Leo G

      So, you think positive water vapour feedback is stronger than is assumed by the IPCC, stronger even than assumed by Australia’s Climate Commission, and that consequently we are on track to an accelerated global warming catastrophe?

      10

    • #
      Michael

      There not wrong, they are models. They project what might happen under certain scenarios within the constraints of computing power and climate knowledge thus far. They do not take into account everything and are not what the science is based on. Thw science is based on accepted physics, experimentation, data and observations.

      04

      • #
        Backslider

        Thw science is based on accepted physics, experimentation, data and observations.

        What accepted physics, experimentation, data and observations.

        We are particularly interested in the experimentation – show us.

        20

        • #
          Michael

          You have not provided any proof or peer reviewed science to date that confirms any of your myriad claims. You are not interested in science, so I would be wasting my time. You have already said several times that you find peer reviewed science to hard to read.

          02

          • #
            Angry

            “Michael”,
            If you knew ANYTHING about the Scientific Method you would be aware that the Onus Of Proof lies with those that propose an hypothesis, in this case human induced global warming.

            Thus we all here await you providing this.

            As I said previously, you obviously failed both Logic And Science.

            QED

            10

            • #
              Michael

              Sure Angry. Scroll up and down and look at the many, many peer reviewed science that I have presented that prove every claim that I have made. Actual science not mere words and empty claims and references to opinion bloggers, which is all anyone else here seems to have. I hope you are happy to read and understand science unlike Backslider who said it was to much to read (even though he is happy to have opinions without the knowledge)

              02

          • #
            Backslider

            You have not provided any proof or peer reviewed science to date that confirms any of your myriad claims

            You have not asked for anything in particular – so go ahead. From what I can see, I have only talked simple logic and about things that are common knowledge, but feel free to ask about something you are unsure of…..

            20

            • #
              Michael

              simple logic and about things that are common knowledge,

              Yes I have noticed that anti science people don’t think any science is necessary for there claims, that just talking is science. I have asked you myriad specific requests for actual peer reveiwed science. How about we start with your claim that the “lower atmosphere CO2 is saturated, and has been so long before industrialisation – there is only so much of the infra red in the bandwidths that CO2 is able to absorb to go around.”. Peer reveiwed science and actual experiments thanks.

              02

  • #
    cohenite

    This is beyond a joke; the abc through it’s manifest bias has cost Australia 10’s of $billions; it’s slavish support of AGW and a host of other favourite left/green cause issues has meant that policies have been implemented without proper critical appraisal.

    The abc should be closed; a mature democratic society does not need such an institution when anyone can go out and start their own blog or news [sic] outlet.

    To rub salt into the wound the arrogance and patronising scorn of prominent abc ‘faces’ indicates that they think they are beyond reproach when ridiculing anyone who does not support their pet issue.

    If we had a worthwhile opposition which had the guts to dismantle the abc the forthcoming election may be worth something more than just [sic] getting rid of a criminally incompetent alp government.

    Unfortunately the coalition does not have the guts to attack the abc despite the complete disdain the abc has for them.

    So, if in doubt consider giving your senate vote or preference for the NCTCS.

    254

    • #
      Speedy

      Cohenite

      It probably goes beyond the ABC – it’s also the universities and the “schools” of journalism, which are the breeding ground for such logical clap-trap. The ABC is only the more manifest example of their ignorance and irrespect for truth.

      Cheers,

      Speedy.

      222

      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        Speedy,

        Don’t you mean, “illogical clap-trap”?

        We don’t want to give logical clap-trap a bad name … at least if it is logical, it has some humorous value.

        60

    • #
      Hasbeen

      Surely the ABC is only preaching to the converted/rusted on. I have given up entirely on them, & think many have become ex ABC listeners, after just too much bull. Catalyst was the last to become not worth watching, but they managed.

      So it really doesn’t matter too much what garbage the produce, they have lost the audience they were trying to influence, so it is mostly just a waste of money for little result.

      Speedy’s point is more worrying today. All the commercials are getting an increasing number of silly little girls with no understanding of much after hairstyles & cloths, who reproduce the garbage they are given in press releases.

      A couple of times recently I thought I must have been on the ABC by the rubbish being pushed, only to find, on checking, it was a commercial channel. They are more likely to have the type of viewer the green/left are after.

      80

      • #
        cohenite

        Hasbeen; I agree it is true the abc is preaching to the converted but they still have the imprimatur of being a ‘serious’ news [sic] outlet. Given this status the little darlings in the msm elsewhere readily quote verbatim the rubbish emitted from the abc.

        The abc’s influence is profound because of that authority and in that way it can influence an audience way beyond the botherers and chatterers which make up it’s immediate audience.

        Speedy; I agree entirely about academia; in fact I think the relationship between academia and the abc is symbiotic; remove one and the other would wither.

        80

        • #
          manalive

          Anja Taylor (Coleby) is a “model, television actress, reporter and producer” she also “graduated in science at Macquarie University”.
          The undergraduate options at Macquarie Faculty of Science include Bachelor of Biodiversity and Conservation, Bachelor of Chiropractic Science and Bachelor of Information Technology — Games Design and Development.
          That’s the academy.
          The Enlightenment? …err … what’s that? 

          70

          • #
            Olaf Koenders

            Ah. So Catalyst employed her for her “assets”. That makes sense. Being a “model” (a model what?) is sufficient to allow camera time, regardless the unscientific content.

            40

            • #
              Andrew McRae

              What’s that, Flipper? You’ve found Trenberth’s missing heat in the ocean? I’d better get my snorkelling gear on!

              10

            • #
              Anja Taylor

              If you are interested in my background qualifications (but I suspect you aren’t really), I have spent over 7 years employed as a specialist science researcher for several channels and programs, including National Geographic and Discovery Channel. I joined Catalyst in 2006 as a senior researcher before being made a producer in 2010 and eventually a reporter in 2012. Being a model back in the late 80s while paying my way through university had not much to do with it. If Catalyst was going for looks they certainly could have found much better and younger models than myself, now pushing 42.

              Furthermore, JoNova and Ken Stewart’s criticisms show they completely missed the point of the jet stream segment. Why would I refer to Antarctica and the Southern Hemisphere jet stream when specifically explaining unusual weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere? That would be ludicrous.

              If I wanted to talk about climate change in Antarctica, I could have filled a whole program – in fact I already have. The Catalyst story I researched and produced called ‘Antarctic Glaciers’ explains changes observed in the east, the west and the Antarctic Peninsula and is based on peer-reviewed research by the British Antarctic Survey, NASA and the Australian Antarctic Division. “Ice Core Drought”, also a story I produced and researched, explains exactly how changing winds around Antarctica are affecting our climate. So, far from avoiding the topic, I feel I have already covered it in detail.

              The role of Catalyst is to report on peer-reviewed science and that’s what we do.
              It’s a telling and concerning fact that only climate change stories generate the kind of vitriol seen here.

              31

              • #
                Rereke Whakaaro

                It’s a telling and concerning fact that only climate change stories generate the kind of vitriol seen here.

                That could be because climate change is possibly the only branch of modern science to rely on the authority of consensus, and which goes out of its way to vilify those who dare to naysay it.

                It is also a rare exception in the world science, because it is paid for by public funding, and yet its methods, calculations, and data are not released for independent review by those who are not part of “The Team”. Science thrives on competition and critique. Climate Science stands out, in that there is no discernible discord within the ranks. That is neither natural nor healthy.

                Consensus is just one of the logical fallacies that is used to shore up bad science. Another historic example of a field where consensus was used is Phrenology. I would not be surprised if you have not heard of that. You might care to Google it.

                Thinking about it, Climate Science seems to rely on a number of logical fallacies to underpin its position. When I did my first degree, Philosophy was a prerequisite for almost every other science paper, which was useful because you can avoid a lot of the logical pitfalls. Thinking more about it, Philosophy was also a prerequisite for Journalism, so there you go.

                30

              • #
                Angry

                “Anja Taylor”,
                You are a disgrace, a liar and a DENIER of real science.
                Nobody is fooled by your BS !
                SHAME, SHAME, SHAME…….

                10

          • #
            Rereke Whakaaro

            Perhaps she is the climate model?

            That might explain a lot …

            20

          • #
            Alan

            I noted the linked Catalyst site only states “Anja enrolled in science at Macquarie University, gave up acting and landed a job as a researcher for the National Geographic series Next Wave”. Doesn’t actual say she graduated

            40

          • #
            Angry

            In other words “Anja Taylor” graduated in NON SCIENCE….

            10

    • #
      Martin

      “consider giving your senate vote or preference for the NCTCS”

      With respect, a fragmented electorate is what got us into this mess.

      Rather than wasting votes on an ideology that is attractive but will not win, it would be more effective to organize its written support and then use it to pressure the LNP to razor the expensive posturing and represent its public responsibly.

      70

      • #
        cohenite

        What got us into this mess is green ideology; it has completely possessed the alp and some sections of the coalition are also showing signs of possession.

        I just wonder where the will to resist this pernicious green blight is going to come from.

        Vote Leon Ashby!

        71

      • #
        Angry

        Australians need more choices wrt voting.

        The major parties (alp,liberal,national,greens) do not represent the majority of decent thinking Australians.

        People have had a gutful of voting for dumb or even dumber !!

        They treat Australians like imbeciles !

        We want a party that puts what is best for Australia and Australians FIRST !!

        12

    • #
      Michael

      The ABC is merely presenting what the best science is telling us. Being a governmental science program it needs to present the truth as it is currently known. The vast majority of the worlds climate scientists, peer reviewed science and scientific organisations accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that we have increased by 40% through our emissions and that it will have mostly negative consequences for us. Within that there are many variables and differing outcomes but the basic premise is sound and all of the predictions of what might happen are occuring, and mostly faster than predicted.

      So lets start focussing on solutions.

      115

      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        The vast majority of the worlds climate scientists, peer reviewed science and scientific organisations accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

        True, but what does that tell us? Nothing! The vast majority of women in western culture like chocolate. Which is probably more useful information to have, than what climate scientists are currently concerned about (which may well be a loss of income if they are shown to be wrong).

        We have increased CO2 by 40% through our emissions and that will have mostly negative consequences for us.

        Well, that may be true, but I have yet to see any demonstrable cause and effect. In fact the world is actually greening because of that extra CO2, and plants are at the base of the food chain, so it is probably a good thing there is more CO2 available.

        … the basic premise is sound and all of the predictions of what might happen are occuring, and mostly faster than predicted.

        The basic premise is not sound, because there is no demonstrable cause and effect. And hundreds of dire predictions have been made, about events occurring at some unspecified time in the future, but without any actual sequence of lead-up indicators being given. It is easy to point to an event, after the fact, and say, “See, that was caused by …”, but that is just opportunism. It is much harder to say that an event will occur, and before it does, this is what will indicate that it is about to happen. Climate Scientists never do that, because they do not know their subject well enough to do it. And if they don’t know their subject that well, they should not be making pronouncements that only make them look like fools in retrospect.

        And for those who are unfamiliar with the terminology, “lead-up” indicators are the things that we would expect to see before the main event occurs. You have to close off an area, and put up scaffolding for seating, lights, and speakers, before you can have an outdoors rock concert. That construction activities are the lead-up indicators that the concert is going to take place.

        90

      • #
        Michael

        Rereke says“…because there is no demonstrable cause and effect.”
        Of course there is, and before the fact. Hanson and Jones said in the 80’s that the extreme weather would start to kick in in the early 2000’s, and that is exactly what we are seeing. As well as the Arctic warming the fastest, temps rising, and increase in flooding and precipitation events, rising sea levels etc. We have had some surprises because of some things like the worrying trend in West Antarctica with the ice sheets being eroded from below and ocean acidification but most things were predicted long ago.

        As to cause? Well that has been plain to. CO2!. How? Well CO2 is a greenhouse gas, we have increased it by 40% that will delay the loss of the suns energy to space while more of the suns energy keeps coming in, hence rising energy levels. The warming causes things like the oceans to warm, which expands and causes sea level rises (as well as contributions from glaciers and ice sheets etc). Higher evaporation causes more moisture in the air, which since it has a lifetime of about a week comes down as precipitation (rain, hail and snow), and increases in those we have also seen. Weather? Well weather is a consequence of the different temps between the atmosphere, land and ocean and ocean currents, which are all changing due to a warming climate. Hence weather is changing, more precipitation, more energy for storms etc. Acidification? Well with a higher amount of CO2 in the atmosphere we find that nearly half of what we emit gets soaked up by natural processes, most of it into the ocean hence ocean becoming less alkaline (more acidic). and much more.

        Did I miss anything? There is a definte and easily explained cause and effect between increasing CO2 and the changes we are seeing on this planet. Most of which was predicted before it occured. So lets stop arguing about the science and concentrate on solutions, mitigation and adaptability.

        410

        • #

          Mikey, Mikey, Mikey…. Thanks for the short lesson in how anthopogenic global warming and dangerous climate change works. We must have missed that somewhere.
          You’re obviously new to the discussions here, and to the sceptical side of the debate generally. Extreme weather in the 2000s? Did we not have extremes before this? Google the Accumulated Cyclone Energy index to start with. Arctic warming the fastest…. and Antarctic not warming at all. Temperatures historically rising- but very likely stalled for the past 10-12-15-17 years (depending on which dataset you look at.) Increase in flooding and precipitation events- who says? 5 years ago the prediction for Australia was less rainfall and more drought- remember? The data shows rain fall intensity has decreased since 1900, while annual rainfall has increased. Very similar to global trends. Rising sea levels? Yep, steadily since the 19th century.
          CO2? Has to be? Michael, we don’t “deny” temperatures have risen, we just don’t jump to conclusions and blindly assume correlation between temperature and CO2 (until a decade or so ago) means causation. We say temperature rise from any cause will probably cause weather changes. We say climate changes due to normal and natural variation. We say study the past, analyse observed data, and learn from it. We say certainly spend money on adaptability and mitigation of what is going to keep happening naturally anyway, but stop wasting time, energy, brainpower, and $trillions on a manufactured problem.
          Ken

          92

          • #
            Michael

            Now in regards to the increase in precipitation. Please note, this is by observation and not models.

            “The outcomes are that statistically significant increasing trends can be detected at the global scale, with close to two-thirds of stations showing increases. Furthermore, there is a statistically significant association with globally averaged near-surface temperature, with the median intensity of extreme precipitation changing in proportion with changes in global mean temperature at a rate of between 5.9% and 7.7% per degree, depending on the method of analysis.”

            http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00502.1

            36

            • #
              Rereke Whakaaro

              OK,

              So how do you demonstrate that these trends, that you put so much faith in, are anything other than the product of normal cyclic phenomena?

              You can’t point the bone on this site, without excluding all of the other possibilities.

              60

            • #
              Michael

              Seriously you are desperately trying to make excuses. You ask for trends I give you trends. THen the trends themselves are not good enough you need some sort of unattainable proof. It is a planet, it has many variables that can affect the climate. Most of the other variables are investigated, the sun, ENSO, PDO, volcanos etc. They do not explain the warming, most are in cooling phases. They put forward a theory, AGW, they work out what are the likely fingerprints and consequences of a world warming by CO2 emissions. Virtually all of these fingerprints and observations are occuring, most of them worse than predicted. We have a very well funded and motivated industry trying to find alternatives and poke holes in the science. They cannot but resort mainly to spreading misinformation by using blog sites, think tanks and facebook pages. The science stays firm, the vast majority of the science increases the evidence for AGW. Trends match what we would find. Long story short we need to do something. It is never going to be 100% complete but we have to work with what the current science is telling us before it is to late. It is a planet, we need to be realistic, you cannot put it in a test tube and perform experiments varying one factor at a time.

              Think logically, realistically, morally and ethically.

              03

              • #
                Dave

                Michael

                You’ve already won.

                But I’ll add this anyway.

                39.most of them worse than predicted.

                20

              • #
                Backslider

                the trends themselves are not good enough you need some sort of unattainable proof

                So, you are now admitting that there is no science to support what you are preaching… in your own words you describe your position as lacking “unattainable proof”.

                This is the difference between science and religion. You accuse others here of religion simply because you do not care to understand what they are saying and because we do not copy and paste reams of “peer reviewed science” links all over the place, yet you now admit there is no scientific proof for the things you say.

                Science requires hypothesis, experiment, observation and theory. You do not have this, thus you do not have real science. Oh yes, I know it gets passed off as science, but its not. It’s religion.

                50

        • #
          Backslider

          Hanson and Jones said in the 80′s

          Hanson said that by the 1990’s Manhattan would be under water…. and?

          that will delay the loss of the suns energy to space while more of the suns energy keeps coming in

          False. Did you not know that CO2 is one of only a few gases in our atmosphere that radiates? Thus, because it is just as likely to radiate into space it will have a cooling effect.

          Higher evaporation causes more moisture in the air

          You claim that CO2 is causing higher evaporation, however you do not have any evidence of this. Regardless, if what you claim was true, then that would means more clouds, which also would have a cooling effect.

          There is a definte [sic] and easily explained cause and effect between increasing CO2 and the changes we are seeing on this planet

          Really? So, please explain it. Show the verifiable scientific experiments we may conduct to prove your premise. What changes are we seeing?

          73

        • #
          Michael

          Ken and Backslider. I will try and provide as much evidence for you as I can. But it may be to much for here as there is an awful lot of it. I will concentrate on the general weather trends first.
          “2012 was warmest and second most extreme year on record for the contiguous U.S.

          2012 was a historic year for extreme weather that included drought, wildfires, hurricanes and storms; however, tornado activity was below average“
          http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/

          “‘ The four classes of extremes — high heat, heavy precipitation and floods, duration and intensity of droughts and extremes related to higher sea levels –have changed in the last 50 years, Field said.” http://edition.cnn.com/2012/07/10/world/unusual-world-weather/index.html

          American Meteoroligical Society
          Explaining Extreme Events of 2011 from a Climate Perspective http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00021.1

          The New Climate Dice: Public Perception of Climate Change
          http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_17/

          “Extremely hot temperatures around the world are 40% more common today than 60 years ago according to new research from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.”
          https://www.climatescience.org.au/content/146-extreme-hot-temperatures-increase-40-world-heats

          “Monthly temperature extremes have become much more frequent, as measurements from around the world indicate. On average, there are now five times as many record-breaking hot months worldwide than could be expected without long-term global warming, shows a study now published in Climatic Change. In parts of Europe, Africa and southern Asia the number of monthly records has increased even by a factor of ten. 80 percent of observed monthly records would not have occurred without human influence on climate, concludes the authors-team of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Complutense University of Madrid. “
          http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/monatliche-hitzerekorde-haben-sich-durch-die-erderwaermung-verfuenffacht

          “If you look at maximum temperatures, we are now finding that the rate at which we get record high temperatures is three times faster than the rate at which we get record low temperature.””
          http://theconversation.edu.au/as-climate-warms-heat-waves-outpace-cold-snaps-three-to-one-11491

          “Lead author Dr Seth Westra said, “The results are that rainfall extremes are increasing on average globally. They show that there is a 7% increase in extreme rainfall intensity for every degree increase in global atmospheric temperature.”
          http://phys.org/news/2013-02-extreme-rainfall-linked-global.html

          Global observed changes in daily climate extremes of temperature and precipitation
          http://www.knmi.nl/publications/showAbstract.php?id=706

          “The last decade has produced record-breaking heat waves in many parts of the world. At the same time, it was globally the warmest since sufficient measurements started in the 19th century. Here we show that, worldwide, the number of local record-breaking monthly temperature extremes is now on average five times larger than expected in a climate with no long-term warming. This implies that on average there is an 80 % chance that a new monthly heat record is due to climatic change. Large regional differences exist in the number of observed records. Summertime records, which are associated with prolonged heat waves, increased by more than a factor of ten in some continental regions including parts of Europe, Africa, southern Asia and Amazonia. Overall, these high record numbers are quantitatively consistent with those expected for the observed climatic warming trend with added stationary white noise. In addition, we find that the observed records cluster both in space and in time. Strong El Niño years see additional records superimposed on the expected long-term rise. Under a medium global warming scenario, by the 2040s we predict the number of monthly heat records globally to be more than 12 times as high as in a climate with no long-term warming.”
          http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-012-0668-1

          15

        • #
          Michael

          How about specifically the Northern Hemisphere Weather
          “While the Arctic region has been warming strongly in recent decades, anomalously large snowfall in recent winters has affected large parts of North America, Europe, and east Asia. Here we demonstrate that the decrease in autumn Arctic sea ice area is linked to changes in the winter Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation that have some resemblance to the negative phase of the winter Arctic oscillation. However, the atmospheric circulation change linked to the reduction of sea ice shows much broader meridional meanders in midlatitudes and clearly different interannual variability than the classical Arctic oscillation. This circulation change results in more frequent episodes of blocking patterns that lead to increased cold surges over large parts of northern continents. Moreover, the increase in atmospheric water vapor content in the Arctic region during late autumn and winter driven locally by the reduction of sea ice provides enhanced moisture sources, supporting increased heavy snowfall in Europe during early winter and the northeastern and midwestern United States during winter. We conclude that the recent decline of Arctic sea ice has played a critical role in recent cold and snowy winters. ”

          http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/02/17/1114910109.abstract

          “Extreme weather is often the result of climate change, according to scientists in Germany, who say they have found how greenhouse gases are helping to trap the jet stream and the weather patterns it brings.”

          http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/2013/02/climate-change-causes-wild-weather/

          “[T]his year’s record sea-ice melt might foreshadow a harsh winter in parts of Europe and North America. Recent research, although preliminary, suggests a connection between late-summer Arctic sea-ice extent and the location of areas of high and low atmospheric pressure over the northern Atlantic. The highs and lows can remain relatively fixed for weeks, shaping storm tracks and seasonal weather patterns such as extended cold surges.”

          http://grist.org/news/expect-a-colder-winter-thanks-to-arctic-ice-melt/

          16

          • #
            Backslider

            How about specifically the Northern Hemisphere Weather

            How about when the Vikings settled Greenland?

            51

            • #
              Michael

              How about relevence and proof. SO what? Science anyone?

              15

              • #
                Backslider

                A point you have proven you don’t understand by your claims of it cooling in the lower atmosphere.

                Yes again you state that I have said something which I never did. You must be really afraid of me for some reason, finding it necessary to try and divert everybody with your fabrications.

                Please explain to all of us how the Vikings managed to settle in Greenland. How warm was it back then?. You have been unwilling to approach this topic…. it positively frightens you!

                30

              • #
                Backslider

                How about relevence [sic] and proof. SO what? Science anyone?

                So, you deny that the Vikings settled Greenland??? You think that when we are talking about global warming that the warm period back then, which was warmer than it is today, is of no significance????

                Indeed, science anyone?

                30

              • #
                Michael

                “Yes again you state that I have said something which I never did.”

                We are talking about the greenhouse effect, if you are talking about the stratosphere then you are being dishonest. I asked for proof and relevence and none was forthcoming. You throw out comments and opinion like they are facts and then do not put forward any actual references or proof for your claims.

                I did not deny the vikings settled greenland, I asked for relevence and science. A comment like that is meaningless and not scientific without any context and how it is related to AGW. I have never denied climate has changed in the past or that climates change naturally. THe question is why is it changing now? Is it bad for us? and can we do anything about it? Really you are fairly clueless. The old ‘climate changed naturally before so we can’t change it now’ argument is faulty and dishoenst logic. It is like saying that since fires started naturally before we cannot light one with a match.

                04

              • #
                Backslider

                Really you are fairly clueless.

                Right through this discussion you have found it necessary to resort to ad hominem and pathetic ignorance.

                If you are unable to comprehend that the Vikings settling Greenland is not relevant to a discussion of global warming then there is no hope for you.

                Pray tell us Michael how you are going to change the climate.

                40

              • #
                Backslider

                Correction: Vikings settling Greenland is not relevant

                20

        • #
          Michael

          Woops put the precipitation one further up. It is tricky which one you reply to 🙂
          In regards to Antarctica. It has never been predicted to be melting this soon. It is a lot colder than the Arctic, surrounded by oceans and is on land. Basically the opposite to the situation in the Arctic. What is a surprise is the depth of melting underneath due to warming oceans and this could end up being a bigger problem with collapsing ice sheets. So that comes under the debunking something not even predicted category, like the increasing cyclones one. They have not been predicted to increase (from memory even a small decrease was predicted).

          “Here we use observations of Antarctic surface temperature and global sea surface temperature, and atmospheric circulation data to show that recent warming in continental West Antarctica is linked to sea surface temperature changes in the tropical Pacific.”
          http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v4/n6/full/ngeo1129.html

          “The record reveals a linear increase in annual temperature between 1958 and 2010 by 2.4±1.2 °C, establishing central West Antarctica as one of the fastest-warming regions globally. We confirm previous reports of West Antarctic warming, in annual average and in austral spring and winter, but find substantially larger temperature increases.”
          http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1671.html

          ” The temperature record from Byrd Station, a scientific outpost in the center of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), demonstrates a marked increase of 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit (2.4 degrees Celsius) in average annual temperature since 1958—that is, three times faster than the average temperature rise around the globe.”
          http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-12/osu-ssr122012.php

          “The data make clear that the changes in Arctic and Antarctic sea ice cover are not remotely comparable. While Antarctic sea ice is high, it is barely outside of what would be considered normal based on the 1978-2000 period. Arctic sea ice, on the other hand, is barely half of what it was three decades ago.”
          http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2012/10/slightly-increased-2012-antarctic-sea-ice-levels-no-match-for-arctic-declines/

          “We already know that West Antarctica is feeling the heat. A study released late last year found that annual temperatures rose by 2.4 ± 1.2°C between 1958 and 2010. It is now ranked as one of the fastest-warming places on earth.”
          http://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-happening-to-antarcticas-ice-13684?

          “Ocean waters melting the undersides of Antarctic ice shelves are responsible for most of the continent’s ice shelf mass loss, a new study by NASA and university researchers has found. “
          http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth20130613.html

          16

          • #
            Backslider

            I am not going to read all of that, its much too early in the morning, however I will ask this: if any of it is true (we all know that climate changes, nobody here will argue against that) where then is the scientific, experimental proof that CO2 is causing it?

            51

            • #
              Michael

              Yes I had a feeling you don’t read much. Most of it is peer reviewed science. You should not be trying to argue and sway opinion on matters so important for our future if you cannot read or understand the science.

              I have posted several studies above on measurements of the radiative properties of CO2. It can be measured in the laboratory, in the air, and from space by satelites. It is simple physics to calculate its effect and to understand the mechanism. A point you have proven you don’t understand by your claims of it cooling in the lower atmosphere. But regardless of your lack of scientific argument or any verifiable peer reviewed sources, I will continue to provide science for more interested actual readers.

              “ We examine the Earth’s energy balance since 1950, identifying results that can be obtained without using global climate models. Important terms that can be constrained using only measurements and radiative transfer models are ocean heat content, radiative forcing by long-lived trace gases, and radiative forcing from volcanic eruptions. We explicitly consider the emission of energy by a warming Earth by using correlations between surface temperature and satellite radiant flux data and show that this term is already quite significant. About 20% of the integrated positive forcing by greenhouse gases and solar radiation since 1950 has been radiated to space. Only about 10% of the positive forcing (about 1/3 of the net forcing) has gone into heating the Earth, almost all into the oceans. About 20% of the positive forcing has been balanced by volcanic aerosols, and the remaining 50% is mainly attributable to tropospheric aerosols.”
              http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009JD012105/abstract

              36

              • #
                cohenite

                An observationally based energy balance for the Earth since 1950

                From which the conclusion flows:

                Only about 10% of the positive forcing (about 1/3 of the net forcing) has gone into heating the Earth, almost all into the oceans.

                Earth: not warming as point 1 from here shows.

                The oceans:

                1 Surface:

                2 All other levels.

                Soloman did some good work on the Stratosphere and how it is not performing as per AGW theory but her default position is the AGW model.

                You’re not Susan are you?

                42

              • #
                Michael

                You have not provided any actual peer reviewed science. Lets see a cherry picked tiny period to show what ever you think you are trying to prove. A post from a political party? I am supposed to take that seriously? and a post from this site, which is basically an opinion blogger.

                Please show some actual science and understanding, the trend in atmospheric temperature and ocean warming has been researched by peer reveiwed science, not opinion.

                36

              • #
                cohenite

                The evidence is actual data; you know “observations” that you assert your modelled papers are based on but which aren’t.

                The temperature and OHC trends are as shown in the link; down or flat for climatically significant periods, in complete contradiction to AGW ‘theory’.

                I’m fed up with so-called scientists who rely on modelling, twist data and politicise science.

                The FACTS contradict your point and your ‘science’.

                60

              • #
                Michael

                Cohenote you are dishonestly cherry picking. Your data are for sea surface temperatures not for heat in the oceans themselves, which is where the research was focussed on. It is obvious you are not focussed on the truth or scientific integrity but focussed on cherry picking data to prove your point. Show some peer reviewed research, do you guys have any?

                03

              • #
                Backslider

                Cohenote you are dishonestly cherry picking

                Nope >>>>> You dishonestly did not bother looking at what he posted.

                30

          • #
            Backslider

            In regards to Antarctica. It has never been predicted to be melting this soon. It is a lot colder than the Arctic, surrounded by oceans and is on land. Basically the opposite to the situation in the Arctic. What is a surprise is the depth of melting underneath

            Melting???…. underneath??? Antarctica is a CONTINENT…. You may rest assured it will not melt…. dumbo…..

            10

            • #
              Michael

              Melting???…. underneath??? Antarctica is a CONTINENT…. You may rest assured it will not melt…. dumbo…..

              You are so rude in your ignorance

              “In spite of warmer air, the climate of rest of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet remains colder than the Peninsula, so the rise in temperatures has not led to much summertime melting. There, the main culprit is warmer ocean currents. New ocean circulation patterns are bringing much warmer water to the ice edges along the coast. This is rapidly thinning the thickest glaciers at their base, and causing them to speed up. Consequently, glaciers in West Antarctica are also losing ice, in much larger amounts than glaciers along the Peninsula.”

              http://nsidc.org/icelights/2012/11/14/arctic-melt-versus-antarctic-freeze-is-antarctica-warming-or-not/

              03

        • #
          cohenite

          Hanson and Jones said in the 80′s that the extreme weather would start to kick in in the early 2000′s,

          Link please.

          and that is exactly what we are seeing.

          No, it is not. The lead author of The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project concludes:

          As it happens, the project’s initial findings, published last month, show no evidence of an intensifying weather trend. “In the climate models, the extremes get more extreme as we move into a doubled CO2 world in 100 years,” atmospheric scientist Gilbert Compo, one of the researchers on the project, tells me from his office at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871.

          See also John Christy’s testimony to congress. About Hansen’s scaremongering Christy says:

          ‘These recent U.S. ‘extremes’ were exceeded in previous decades’ — ‘The expression of ‘worse than we thought’ climate change as documented in [James] Hansen’s OpEd does not stand up to scrutiny’

          Now in regards to the increase in precipitation. Please note, this is by observation and not models.

          That is junk; AGW is predicated on heating of the surface; now you are saying it increases rainfall and therefore by direct causation evaporation; as Professor Franks notes:

          This is incorrect and ignores the known physics of evaporation.

          “During drought, when soil moisture is low, less of the sun’s radiant energy goes into evaporation and more goes into the heating of the atmosphere which causes higher temperatures.

          “Most importantly, the elevated air temperatures do not increase evaporation but are actually due to the lack of evaporation and this is a natural consequence of drought.

          The question you, as an alarmist, have to ask yourself, is where is all the water coming from to fuel the increased rain given that measurements of evaporation are down as McVicar, Roderick et al have found..

          62

          • #
            Michael

            I also object to the term alarmist. I have been very fair at avoiding the term denier or denialist but I have been insulted and the term alarmist thrown at me repeatedly. I thought that as a scientist joanneova blog site would provide more reasoned argument and less personal attack.

            Your quote in reference to a drought meaning that global warming cannot increase evaporation is incorrect. Why? Because the whole globe is not in a drought, the climate is not as simple as that, the warming is not uniform and regionally it can have huge differences as temperature and pressure gradients change, amount of energy available increases and warming over the oceans will make them evaporate more. It is GLOBAL WARMING not ONLY OVER DROUGHT areas warming.

            Cheesh

            17

            • #

              Rereke, Cohenite, Backslider- Michael is a one man global warming army, he never sleeps, he bombards us with mountains of papers of varying quality and thousands of words, he is on a mission to convert us from our wicked unbelieving ways back to the one true faith. He refuses to accept that there is no evidence for recent extremes showing an increasing trend, and refuses to address the logical inconsistencies pointed out to him, or the problem of causation.
              I have better things to do.

              51

            • #
              cohenite

              Your quote in reference to a drought meaning that global warming cannot increase evaporation is incorrect.

              No, that’s not what I said. I said studies on evaporation show LESS evaporation so the issue is, if rainfall is increasing, where is the water coming from if not evaporation? Secondly, the point is a basic physics one; extra heat will warm rather than evaporate as Stuart Franks explained.

              So I present facts and basic physics and what do you give? Nonsense about energy gradients increasing! But again that contradicts AGW which says with warming poles that energy gradients will DECREASE!

              How can anyone response to this mish-mash?! You are obviously a devotee who can’t be objective about your passion. Here’s a suggestion: isolate what you think is a or the key point of AGW, pick a paper or bit of data which you think supports your point and we’ll go from there. Ok?

              40

              • #
                Michael

                Cohenote said ““During drought, when soil moisture is low, less of the sun’s radiant energy goes into evaporation and more goes into the heating of the atmosphere which causes higher temperatures.

                “Most importantly, the elevated air temperatures do not increase evaporation but are actually due to the lack of evaporation and this is a natural consequence of drought

                I said “Your quote in reference to a drought meaning that global warming cannot increase evaporation is incorrect.”

                and then you said “No, that’s not what I said. I said studies on evaporation show LESS evaporation so the issue is, if rainfall is increasing, where is the water coming from if not evaporation? Secondly, the point is a basic physics one; extra heat will warm rather than evaporate as Stuart Franks explained.”

                I will leave readers to decide what you said.

                02

              • #
                Michael

                So peer reviewed science based on data and observations is better than your opinion. I also did not say that energy gradients would increase with warming poles. You are trying to debunk things I have not said.

                “Lead author Dr Seth Westra said, “The results are that rainfall extremes are increasing on average globally. They show that there is a 7% increase in extreme rainfall intensity for every degree increase in global atmospheric temperature.”

                http://phys.org/news/2013-02-extreme-rainfall-linked-global.html

                Global observed changes in daily climate extremes of temperature and precipitation

                http://www.knmi.nl/publications/showAbstract.php?id=706

                “The outcomes are that statistically significant increasing trends can be detected at the global scale, with close to two-thirds of stations showing increases. Furthermore, there is a statistically significant association with globally averaged near-surface temperature, with the median intensity of extreme precipitation changing in proportion with changes in global mean temperature at a rate of between 5.9% and 7.7% per degree, depending on the method of analysis.”

                http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00502.1

                03

              • #
                Backslider

                I will leave readers to decide what you said.

                I will leave readers to decide your motive for continually side stepping around any discussion of the Vikings settling in Greenland, as important as that is to any discussion of global warming, particularly climate alarmism such as you spout.

                20

              • #
                Backslider

                And you may be sure Michael that any time that you care to post to this blog I will hound you with it 😈

                20

              • #
                cohenite

                Michael, Franks used the context of drought to illustrate a basic physical fact, which is heat, from any source, will heat a surface before it causes evaporation; the point holds for non-drought conditions. I then provided a peer reviewed paper by Roderick et al which showed that evaporation from land based sources had declined. I have also provided links to ocean temperatures which shows they have declined and to temperatures generally which also show climatically significant declines or flatness.

                Do you dispute any of this data or the Roderick paper? If not, where is the water for increased precipitation coming from?

                I mean, you seem to think that coming here and flashing some papers proves a point and you get indignant when it is pointed out to you that your papers are flawed or at least contradicted by cogent data or other papers.

                Engage the point and cease hiding behind some imagined authority please.

                30

              • #
                cohenite

                Let’s look at the Westra paper which Michael links to again on increased rainfall and a statistically significant correlation between that increase and temperature increase.

                Soden’s 2010 paper found the same thing. Both Soden and Westra find a correlation between temperature and an increase in intense rainfall events.

                Soden found a strong correlation with ENSO; and given the greater number of +ve Phase PDOs [which are warmer agglomerates of El Ninos] and well documented asymmetry of ENSO during the 20thC little room can be found for AGW as a cause of increased rainfall. Soden finds some success by the model predictions; but Tisdale disagrees with this.

                The Westra paper uses different statistical analysis to Soden and tries to isolate a monotonic trend consistent with AGW. The Mann–Kendall nonparametric trend test is more conservative than linear regression but is known for giving false positives; also, because it cannot capture the stochastic properties of for instance ENSO, it will also not measure rainfall patterns consistent with ENSO rather than a monotonic factor like CO2 increase.

                In any event, as I have explained ad infinitum, evaporation trends are down and temperature from all sources, atmosphere, land and ocean have been flat or decreased for long periods.

                You need to explain that before you present highly modelled interpretations of rainfall and alleged links with AGW.

                30

              • #
                Michael

                before you present highly modelled interpretations of rainfall and alleged links with AGW.

                Cohenite the peer reveiwed paper of a 7% increase in extreme precipitation events are NOT MODELLED, they are based on observations.

                You also seem to be very knowledgable on ENSO so how do you explain the lack of cooling with the 2 recent back to back la ninas? John McLean predicted temperatures would drop back to 1956 levels but instead they have been maintained. You can’t have it both ways.

                Also temperature from all sources HAVE NOT been flat or decreased for long periods. Unless you have missed all my graphs and statements from the WMO about the 2001 – 2010 decade being the hottest on record from every continent, first time, by recent research, for several thousand years, with back to back la ninas. You also ignore where 90% of the heating goes, and that is in the oceans, where heat is going into the deeper oceans unabated, research already previously supplied.

                Also with your evap paper. There is recent research which could explain why, I will link it for you below. But you also seem to forget that AGW precictions say that droughts and heat waves will get worse as well as increasing floods and precipitation events, trends all being seen and research provided. This means that regional effects are not uniform, GLOBAL WARMING causes REGIONAL CLIMATE CHANGE. So some places more, other places less, so it does not need to increase overall, they can quite predictably average out.

                Happy now?

                “Analysing state-of-the-art climate model simulations, we find for the first time that there was a detectable weakening of the hydrological cycle between the 1950s and the 1980s, attributable to increased anthropogenic aerosols, after which the hydrological cycle recovered as a result of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. “

                http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1932.html

                03

              • #
                cohenite

                The data is interpreted by models and various statistical techniques which I have partially described; both Soden and Westra admit to varying results depending on the technique used.

                This is the trend in temperature of ALL indices, land and satellite.

                The graph was compiled by statistician Walter Brozek using the data from all the indices. Brozek uses 2 criteria; the first from NOAA to test for flatness or zero warming; the second from Dr Phil Jones to test for no statistical warming; the 2 criteria overlap with the second allowing for some slight warming and the first for even cooling. The first shows zero temperature for 15 years; the second for up to 23 years. The first is climatically significant by NOAA standards, the second by Santer’s standards. This means the temperature is not being caused by AGW. The only line going up is CO2.

                That is incontrovertible.

                how do you explain the lack of cooling with the 2 recent back to back la ninas?

                Look at this graph.

                The change in temperature trend is plain. Post 2000, when the –ve phase of PDO began, temperature has started to decrease. Naturally the post 2000 period will still be hotter than the 1990s because even though the post 2000 trend is down it is coming down from the peak created by the 1990’s temperature which will mean it will still have higher average anomalies.

                I mean this is elementary; you don’t need a peer reviewed paper to understand what the data is saying.

                The fact that we have multifarious pro-AGW papers saying the obvious is, IMO, a clear indication that the modelling and interpretation of data done by AGW is flawed.

                41

              • #
                Michael

                A political party opinion blogger, I should have known. Your graph was blatant cherry picking and graph manipulation. Firstly it is a PLANET with many natural and anthropogenic variables that take a long time to smooth out. Any look at a true long term record shows that you will have many up and downs but the trend is clear. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif This is why you are wrong. You will use natural influences when they suit you and then ignore them when you don’t. This is manipulation and not scientific integrity.

                We have just come out of 2 back to la ninas, la ninas cause global cooling. John McLean predicted that cooling to send us back to temps in the 50’s. Instead the last 2 years have been the hottest la nina affected years on record. You also get the 2001 – 2010 decade to be the hottest on the industrial record, on every continent, and for likely several thousand years. Hardly cooling.

                You also manipulate the graph to hide any trends by making the range to high for the data.

                According to the World Meteorological Organisation they define climate to be at least 30 years to see a climatological trend. You are mucking around with 10 year periods chopping and changing to hide the trend. How about we stop all the graph games and look at the 30 year trend. here. Also focussing on the 30 year data you get this.

                So what the data, and the science, is telling me, is that despite numerous natural cooling trends (ENSO, PDO, Sun) the first decade of the 21st century is the hottest on the industrial record with the only avaliable scientific explanation being AGW caused by mans emissions. This is plain, if you look at all the data and take into account natural factors, rather than cherry picking periods and ignoring things inconvenient to your story due to confirmation bias.

                The fact that we have multifarious pro-AGW papers saying the obvious is, IMO,

                Where? The vast majority support AGW.

                “The decade 2001-2010 was the warmest since records began in 1850, with global land and sea surface temperatures estimated at 0.46°C above the long-term average (1961-1990) of 14.0°C. Nine of these years were among the ten warmest on record. The warmest year on record was 2010, closely followed by 2005, with a mean temperature estimated at 0.53°C above the long-term average. It was the warmest decade ever recorded for global land surface, sea surface and for every continent. ” http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_943_en.html

                14

              • #
                cohenite

                Your graph was blatant cherry picking and graph manipulation.

                This is why you are wrong. You will use natural influences when they suit you and then ignore them when you don’t.

                The temperature graph I presented has climatically cogent periods as defined by AGW via Santer, Jones and NOAA. Those were the relevant climatic threshold periods yet I am accused of cherry-picking by using AGW’s own standards!

                The other temperature graph clearly shows a declining trend despite claims by the WMO of the warmest decade.

                The fact that we have multifarious pro-AGW papers saying the obvious opposite is, IMO, a clear indication that the modelling and interpretation of data done by AGW is flawed.

                Fixed; in any event your default position of the consensus shows you are a true believer who ignores basic scientific principles that any theory such as AGW is capable of being disproved by one set of contrary facts. There are many such contrary facts.

                31

              • #
                Michael

                The temperature graph I presented has climatically cogent periods as defined by AGW

                No they don’t. No scientific organisation considers AGW falsified by such small periods and expected natural fluctuations that have been explained away. You ignore any evidence that does not fit your confirmation bias.

                The other temperature graph clearly shows a declining trend despite claims by the WMO of the warmest decade.

                Been proved time and time again, but you dishonestly avoid the facts, and that the 2001 – 2010 was the hottest decade on the industrial record is a fact.

                “A decade is the minimum possible timeframe for meaningful assessments of climate change,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. “WMO’s report shows that global warming was significant from 1971 to 2010 and that the decadal rate of increase between 1991-2000 and 2001-2010 was unprecedented. Rising concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are changing our climate, with far reaching implications for our environment and our oceans, which are absorbing both carbon dioxide and heat.”
                “Natural climate variability, caused in part by interactions between our atmosphere and oceans – as evidenced by El Niño and La Niña events – means that some years are cooler than others. On an annual basis, the global temperature curve is not a smooth one. On a long-term basis the underlying trend is clearly in an upward direction, more so in recent times” said Mr Jarraud.
                http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/images/clip_image002_006.gif
                http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_976_en.html

                There are many such contrary facts.

                lol you do not understand the concept. You produce vague hypothesis with no peer reviewed science as if they are facts and destroy AGW. They come nowhere near any such thing. It is you who will ignore anything that does not confirm your bias and flail around looking for any excuse to try to prove that it could be anything but us.

                03

              • #
                cohenite

                Been proved time and time again, but you dishonestly avoid the facts,

                You’ve been given long lists of papers and research and data which contradict AGW; I’m beginning to suspect what I’m giving you is water and you’re a horse!

                No scientific organisation considers AGW falsified by such small periods and expected natural fluctuations that have been explained away.

                Are you delirious? I have given you NOAA which says at page 23 here that 15 years is a climatically significant period, and Santer who says 17 years.

                Your argument is with them; how do you explain what they say? I am well aware of the 30 year period which was plucked out of Pachuri’s nether regions! Do you even know how the 30 year period was arrived at and how irrelevant it is?

                What exactly are your qualifications? I want to know because the last time I struck such insufferable condescension it was from another person called Michael.

                30

              • #
                Michael

                You’ve been given long lists of papers and research and data which contradict AGW

                No I have not. I often ask for it but don’t get it.

                I have given you NOAA which says at page 23 here that 15 years is a climatically significant period, and Santer who says 17 years.

                The NOAA one is still downloading but you have again done the cherry picking out of context thing to Santer.

                “Because of the pronounced effect of interannual noise on decadal trends, a multi-model ensemble of anthropogenically-forced simulations displays many 10-year periods with little warming. A single decade of observational TLT data is therefore inadequate for identifying a slowly evolving anthropogenic warming signal. Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature.”

                So at least 17 years means that is the minimum period and if you have more data than that you should obviously include. Your dishonesty is showing through. Again you ignore natural variations by selecting an anomolously strong el nino year (most probably amplified due to AGW) and finish on 2 back to back la ninas (with cooling not occuring due to AGW). So by any scientific examination of all of the available information it should be plain that warming is continuing, amlifying the effects of el ninos and dulling the effects of la ninas, meanwhile as you say other natural factors like PDO, Sun etc are also in cooling directions during the hottest decade in several thousand years. Shameful that you cannot see that and continue to cherry pick and misrepresent while being some kind of leader of a political party.

                Long Term Trend: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
                30 year trend: http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/giss79.jpg

                02

              • #
                cohenite

                at least 17 years

                Agreed; that’s what Santer says; so apply his criteria to the graph; here it is again.

                Even you can see what it says Michael, but just in case:

                For RSS the warming is not significant for over 23 years.
                For RSS: +0.127 +/-0.134 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1990
                For UAH the warming is not significant for over 19 years.
                For UAH: 0.146 +/- 0.170 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
                For Hadcrut3 the warming is not significant for over 19 years.
                For Hadcrut3: 0.095 +/- 0.115 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
                For Hadcrut4 the warming is not significant for over 18 years.
                For Hadcrut4: 0.095 +/- 0.110 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995
                For GISS the warming is not significant for over 17 years.
                For GISS: 0.111 +/- 0.122 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1996

                There you have it, the 2 satellites show no warming for 23 and 19 years respectively.

                23 and 19 years!

                There you go Michael. If you can’t accept that take up knitting.

                This is what it says on page 23 of NOAA:

                The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.

                Try harder Michael; this is not even a challenge; you’re letting the team down!

                30

              • #
                Michael

                Cohenite, are you serious? Why so much fiddling with the dates.
                1997.33
                2001.33
                2000.9
                1997.1 etc etc
                You have taken cherry picking to a new level. You think that science is a graph without context. For about the hundredth time, you don’t cherry pick a period when you have more information for the sole purpose of proving your confirmation bias. You also do not make conclusions on a graph without the science and context with all the available information.
                DO you deny their are natural forcings on climate?
                DO you deny that the 2001 – 2010 decade was the hottest on the industrial record?
                DO you deny that la ninas cause cooling?
                DO you deny that el ninos cause warming?
                DO you deny that the long term trend shows many pauses and even falls due to natural variations but show a definate upward trend?

                If you deny any of those you are being dishonest, if you don’t then you need to take them into account when looking at a graph of temps in context.

                So here is your own graph but with the same single starting year on all variables that represent a more climatologically sensible period, and cannot be accused of cherry picking.
                http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1950/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1950/trend/plot/rss/from:1950/trend/plot/wti/from:1950/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1950/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1950/trend/plot/uah/from:1950/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1950/normalise:0.5/scale:0.5/offset:0.34

                02

              • #
                cohenite

                Not all the indices begin in 1950; the satellites only began in 1979; but anyway sure temperature has trended up over the 20thC; I certainly don’t deny that, it’s trivial.

                That trend can be explained by the sun or the fact there were 2 +ve PDOs and only 1 -ve PDO during the 20thC; that alone explains the trend!

                But you are being naughty by moving the goal-posts! Tut tut; we were talking about temperature during the modern era and more particularly the last decade and I’ve given you trends using, I repeat, AGW’s OWN STANDARDS.

                Sorry to yell but you are ignoring the elephant in the room buddy.

                As for this:

                DO you deny that the 2001 – 2010 decade was the hottest on the industrial record?

                Read section 5 here.

                10

              • #
                Backslider

                DO you deny

                DO you deny Michael that the period when the Vikings settled Greenland was warmer than today?

                If so, then please explain to us all why all the Viking artifacts are buried in PERMAFROST? How did they get there??

                10

              • #
                Michael

                and more particularly the last decade and I’ve given you trends using, I repeat, AGW’s OWN STANDARDS.

                Wrong. By the peer reveiwed paper that YOU supplied, you need a MINIMUM of 17 years. Also I did not move the goalposts, I HAVE ALWAYS talked about the long term trend and not such a ridiculously small period as a decade or a cherry picked period where you select the highest year you can find and finish at the bottom of a cooling cycle, thats your game (I prefer looking at all the science and using logic) and even then you cannot show any real cooling.

                Lets try starting it at 1998. Even then virtaully all trends show warming, especially GISS the most global of the surface temps.

                Sorry buddy but I try to avoid opinion blogs, preferring peer reviewed science and actual scientific organisations for my science.

                The elephant in the room is that when taking all the evidence into account we are still warming by a long shot, we are still at the highest temps in thousands of years despite global natural cooling influences, that you continually deny as they are inconvenient to your story. you continue to think science occurs by graph without taking the science or the context into account.

                “A decade is the minimum possible timeframe for meaningful assessments of climate change,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. “WMO’s report shows that global warming was significant from 1971 to 2010 and that the decadal rate of increase between 1991-2000 and 2001-2010 was unprecedented. Rising concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are changing our climate, with far reaching implications for our environment and our oceans, which are absorbing both carbon dioxide and heat.”

                “Natural climate variability, caused in part by interactions between our atmosphere and oceans – as evidenced by El Niño and La Niña events – means that some years are cooler than others. On an annual basis, the global temperature curve is not a smooth one. On a long-term basis the underlying trend is clearly in an upward direction, more so in recent times” said Mr Jarraud.

                http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/images/clip_image002_006.gif

                http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_976_en.html

                02

              • #
                Michael

                DO you deny Michael that the period when the Vikings settled Greenland was warmer than today?

                Well yes. By all the actual peer reveiwed science that I have supplied many times that period was not warmer than today. You really do not understand the concept of science.

                For about the one hundredth and one time (and please read this time)

                http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/globalwarming/ar4-fig-6-10.gif

                “Past global climate changes had strong regional expression. To elucidate their spatio-temporal pattern, we reconstructed past temperatures for seven continental-scale regions during the past one to two millennia. The most coherent feature in nearly all of the regional temperature reconstructions is a long-term cooling trend, which ended late in the nineteenth century. At multi-decadal to centennial scales, temperature variability shows distinctly different regional patterns, with more similarity within each hemisphere than between them. There were no globally synchronous multi-decadal warm or cold intervals that define a worldwide Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age, but all reconstructions show generally cold conditions between ad 1580 and 1880, punctuated in some regions by warm decades during the eighteenth century. The transition to these colder conditions occurred earlier in the Arctic, Europe and Asia than in North America or the Southern Hemisphere regions. Recent warming reversed the long-term cooling; during the period ad 1971–2000, the area-weighted average reconstructed temperature was higher than any other time in nearly 1,400 years.”

                http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/ngeo1797.html

                02

              • #
                Angry

                I can’t believe that this fool “Michael” has the gall to actually quote references from an obviously rabid pro global warming and non scientific magazine like NATURE.

                “Michael”,
                Have a read of this.
                Peer Review failure: Science and Nature journals reject papers because they “have to be wrong”….
                http://joannenova.com.au/2013/02/peer-review-failure-science-and-nature-journals-reject-papers-because-they-have-to-be-wrong/

                He uses the world meteorological organization also as his references which is intertwined with the thoroughly discredited anti human united nations IPCC.

                The IPCC’s fatal founding flaw……
                http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2013/01/the-ipcc-s-fatal-founding-flaw

                “Michael”, you must think that we are all as gullible and stupid as you quite clearly are!

                20

            • #
              cohenite

              We’re waiting Michael; pick your point and let’s discuss the science and evidence.

              31

              • #
                Backslider

                Don’t bother Cohenite – this freak doesn’t believe that the Vikings settled Greenland, an undeniable FACT.

                41

            • #
              Backslider

              I have been insulted and the term alarmist thrown at me repeatedly

              It is a perfectly appropriate tag. The difference is very simple: Calling somebody a “climate denier” when they don’t deny anything is an insult. To call somebody who is an alarmist an “alarmist” is not.

              30

              • #
                Michael

                Lets see you guys have critisised and denied virtually all the peer reviewed science that I present for every claim I make and think your opinions and blogger sites trump peer reveiwed science. So since you do deny the published science I can call you a denier? All I am asking is that if you want to have an intelligent reason based discussion you should show me the respect I have shown by not using a term I know you guys do not like.

                04

              • #
                Backslider

                Lets see you guys have critisised and denied virtually all the peer reviewed science

                You show me where I have done any such thing. You cannot.

                Get this one straight Michael: NOT all peer reviewed science agrees.

                Get this straight also Michael: The fact that a paper is peer reviewed does not make it scientifically correct.

                Once you have those two things clear in your own mind then you may consider yourself as having graduated from science discussion kindy and maybe you can start using you own mind and discuss things like an intelligent person rather than some child who jumps up and down screaming “Such and such said, so its right!!!”.

                50

        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          Hanson and Jones said in the 80′s that the extreme weather would start to kick in in the early 2000′s

          And before that, in the 1970’s, climate scientists were telling the world that we were moving into a new Ice Age. We are still waiting …

          50

          • #
            Michael

            The vast majority of the science in the 70’s supported warming. The cooling was a massive media beat up over new science about aerosols having a cooling effect and the computers not being good enough to work out how much cooling that would mean. This has now been determined and the current state of computing, technology and the science is way beyond that. This is like saying our current tv’s are useless because in the 70’s they were only black and white. How about coming out with a REAL, SUPPORTED argument. Truth is you don’t have one do you. I will present peer reviewed proof, unlike 99.9% of the stuff I have been presented with so far. I am actually quite disappointed, I thought this site would have a more scientific debate.

            “There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age. Indeed, the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature even then” http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1

            16

      • #
        Angry

        “Michael” SO YOU WANT SOLUTIONS TO A NON EXISTENT PROBLEM EH?

        …………..CRETIN!

        10

  • #
    Yonniestone

    Once again Jo comes up with a well written, logical questioned article on what is truly Soothsayer/Shaman produced misinformation dealt out to the Australian public, but I still fear for our future.
    As many times Jo and any other true skeptics write open minded intelligent articles (including sage commenters) there seems to be steps already in place to ensure the new junk science prevails in the future.
    Here in Victoria as of 01/07/13 the DSE and DPI have merged to form the DEPI (department of environment & primary industries)so what you might say well have a look at the new website paying attention the Biodiversity crap Public safety zones and Private property http://www.depi.vic.gov.au/home
    I post this as an old farmer was sent a pamphlet by the DEPI stating their new powers over his land, by chance I had a conversation with him and informed him of the political threat looming in our country, he was grateful for the information and said he’d pass it on to anyone that’d listen.
    It seems the idea to steal a generations mind is on track and even stolen some of the recent ones already, there has to be a huge political upheaval to deconstruct this ingrained pseudo science/ political system or we are heading into scary waters indeed.

    332

    • #
      Hasbeen

      It happened in QLD years ago, under Labor of course. Dept. of Primary Industry, went under the Dept. of Environment.

      I had bought on old turf farm, with an irrigation licence for the kids horses, & found my self on the local irrigation committee just before this.

      Water resources, [part of the old DPI], had an advisor who helped organize all the competing influences on river use. He used to ensure cooperation, so in dry times everyone got some water, & some got down to run into Moreton bay as well.

      He warned us that after the takeover, the power in the department was more interested in water for the invertebrates, buried in the sand in the river, than water for the farmers.

      Shortly after this he was moved somewhere, & 2 little girls, quite nice, but very thick, with freshly minted environmental science B Sc took over the job.

      They came & introduced themselves, then disappeared. Haven’t seen or heard of them in 10 years. I wonder what they do.

      I also wonder what will happen next time the river starts to run dry. Our little girls won’t have much credibility, if they appear, trying to organize things.

      131

  • #
    Trev

    I had to force my self to sit through it – the sanctimonious look on the face of the presenter as she delivered another killer blow (or so she thought) to those who may differ was truly nauseating. So now it is the gradient between the poles is the issue hey. Hang on this is equatorial warming not global warming. And didn’t the faux high science graphics add to the deception. WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAP. Sorry had to get that off my chest.

    221

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      what A Bunch of Crap

      It seems you have hit on the correct meaning for the acronym – well done.

      130

    • #
      mullumhillbilly

      Yeh, they were nice graphics. Wonderful what you can do with models these days, all those flowing arrows looked very sciencey and convincing, what with the fire and brimstone and all that went with it. Absolutely Bloody Clueless, demonstrating why they are worth your 8 cents per day again!

      40

  • #

    Someone needs a medal for actually watching Catalyst. I gave up years ago. Also gave up on The Australian when I figured buying it was costing as much as the annual inspection on my aircraft. I can get all the left wing garbage and talking points for free on the web(but wash your hands after visiting Daily Kos etc). If you think I’m going to pay for digital access, you’re dreaming, Rupert.

    One of the things we learned on the BoM forecaster’s course was that there are some years when the winds tend to flow more west to east(zonal flow) and others where there is more north south flow (meridional flow). No mechanism known. When there is zonal flow the weather has fewer extremes than in meridional flow. That was in 1971. I don’t know that there has been any advance in knowledge to help figure this out ahead of time.

    182

  • #

    15 seconds. That’s how long I could endure the claptrap.

    It’s not science. It’s druidry. The entrails that they read are the extrapolations of graphs charting their belief system. The sacrifices that they demand punish the poor, if that matters to those getting rich on performing rituals(*).

    Did they even mention that their Imperious Priesthood of the Church of Climatology (IPCC) has written that extreme weather events aren’t attributable to climate change?

    Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of because no one was really poor – at least no one worth speaking of.
    (*) Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

    212

  • #

    “At this stage, even Pope Hansen I of the Church of Climatology has grudgingly admitted nothing much is fricking-well happening and given that other ecclesiastical worthies like Archbishop Jones of Norwich and the rarely ecumenical conclave of cardinals at the Met Office have already said pretty much the same, things are looking pretty desperate for the church.”

    http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/07/05/the-pause/

    It is just a weird religion but unfortunately we climate realists are cast as the witches and warlocks …

    Pointman

    281

  • #
    • #
      ursus augustus

      And it gets worse John, it gets WORSE.

      All that growing by those damn plants causes massive additional transpiration of water taking heat from the surface to the upper atmosphere where it is dumped as the water vapour recondenses. It then goes out into space and Gaia is denied access to that energy to punish the evil humans with. It is soooo wrong, John.

      Those damn plants are extracting enough energy in the form of the latent heat of vaporistation from the surface such that for every unit of water evaporated more than 2000 units of air are cooled by say 1˚C.

      The treachery of that CO2! It has stabbed The Cause in the back just like Julia Gillard did that Evan Krudd chappie. It is so sad that such a beautiful theory handed down to St Bob by the Earthians could be so besmirched. What is the world coming too?

      Its late, I have the flu and I am so upset by those plants. Good Night John.

      150

      • #
        AndyG55

        That would be an interesting study.

        The thing is that raised CO2 levels allow the plants to keep their stomata closed longer, or “de-densify” (is that a word)their stomata.

        So in actual fact a single plant will transpire less water. That’s what makes them more efficient and tolerant of dry conditions. But the plants grow better and bigger.

        I suspect the H2O transpiration actually stays about the same.

        30

  • #

    Ah! Catalyst. Always with their finger on the pulse.

    I started out blogging more than 5 years ago now with a series expected to tap out with around maybe half a dozen Posts, one that morphed into more than 50 Posts on electrical power generation with emphasis on replacing CO2 emitting plants because of Kyoto, mainly coal fired plants. It entailed, well, lots of research. I even canvassed ways of actually replacing large scale coal fired plants, huh, not that any of them have been closed or replaced. Once that series finished I just kept at it.

    Later, I saw a special on Catalyst that canvassed a revolutionary new advance in powering our large cities. Individual power plants for those large buildings. It was basically Cogeneration or Trigeneration.

    Cogen uses a (usually NG driven) turbine driving a generator. The hot exhaust from the (basically a jet engine) turbine boils water to steam to drive a smaller steam turbine/generator unit, adding to the power from the larger unit.

    Trigen then uses the waste steam to run a heat exchange unit to drive heating or cooling, an aircon unit basically.

    A typical large Cogen unit, say up to 1MW, is around the size of a large railway container, and can be placed in the basement car park, and buildings can even be retrofitted.

    Catalyst hyped this all to the max, virtually astounded that this wasn’t thought of earlier on.

    Trouble is it’s not only old technology (maybe revamped a little) it’s almost positively ancient, from the dawn of electrical power generation, only in those days it was referred to as CHP. (Combined Heating and Power)

    They started using it in Manhattan back in the 1880’s on a fairly widespread basis, and it’s still in use today. In fact, just in Manhattan, there are 384 sites, all of them independent of the main grid, and providing 6,000MW, around the size of 3 large scale coal fired power plants.

    So for those of you who can’t recall hearing about it or actually even seeing it, the image at this link is a well known reminder of what CHP is.

    That white billowing skirt is billowing from the steam rising from under the Manhattan ground level.

    I actually thought that the Catalyst program was a bit of a leg pull, and surely they would mention it, even in passing, but no, they passed it off as if they were the first to think of it.

    Tony.

    323

    • #

      Interesting factoid about the Kyoto Treaty. According to a comment at NoTrickZone, it was drafted by a German parliamentary committtee that worked out what levels would be the targets by taking into account the industry that would be shhut down anyway in the decrepid East Germany. i.e. No pain for Germany beyond closing down the stuff that they would have to anyway because it wouldn’t comply with environmental regulations in the rest of the country.

      P.S. News today that German solar company Conergy AG has filed for insolvency. It’s just the latest of the solar catastrophe that has struck as a result of collapsing subsidies.

      50

      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        … it was drafted by a German parliamentary committtee that worked out what levels would be the targets by taking into account the industry that would be shhut down anyway in the decrepid East Germany.

        Now, why am I not surprised?

        Was there any mention of disestablishments for the closed factories? I seem to remember that a generous amount of money changed hands when you “chose” to shut down a factory in East Germany.

        10

      • #
        Angry

        At some good news that Conergy AG is closing down !!!!!!

        10

    • #
      Peter C

      Tony,

      Have you had a look at the cost of going off the grid and generating your own electricity? A natural gas fired Capstone turbine perhaps. Petrol powered small generators are getting cheaper and cheaper but the cost of petrol is going up.

      I thought it might be worth looking at when the cost of electricity gets to $1/kWh. I have had enough of paying for other peoples solar cells ans my wife does not want to give up using the air conditioner on hot days.

      30

      • #

        A diesel generator makes a bit more sense. The cycle if fundamentally better at converting money into electricity the spark-ignition petrol (and propane or natural gas) engine. A liquid-cooled system can be coupled to the heating system in cooler climates so that the “waste heat” isn’t completely shed to the surroundings. A synergistic heating system with a heat pump as the primary heater should work well with the cooling system of the diesel engine coupled to e.g. boosting the floor heating.

        In warmer climates, the coolant heat from the engine could be used to e.g. pre-heat hot water supplies, but little else economically. An 8 kVA to 12 kVA generator required to run a typical house (“off-grid”) doesn’t have the heat rejection to justify installing an absorbtion-cycle cooling system for example.

        50

      • #
        Yonniestone

        Peter as Bernd says diesel is a better option, years ago I helped someone set up a diesel generator/heater for a weekender cabin in the bush, we used an old 3 cylinder tractor engine and ran off the 12 volt alternator at first and added a ?kVA generator later on.
        I then got the idea of a heat exchange system based on a VW beetle concept and piped the trapped exhaust manifold heat into the cabin, it was so bloody hot we ended up having it turned right down or shut off or all the cabin windows open.
        So in summer we ratted an few old car aircon units and got one to work on the diesel then piped it into the cabin, with a few adjustments it worked fine.
        Usage? I think it worked out 0.5 litre per hour so not too bad for a backyard setup that cost stuff all, also the engine was in the ground with an insulated cover with exhaust and piping coming out so you could hardly hear it, funniest thing was the local kangaroo’s liked it and you could find them lounging around the generator keeping warm. 🙂

        30

        • #

          I think it worked out 0.5 litre per hour so not too bad for a backyard setup

          Small diesel generators use about 250 g/kWh … that’s about a third of a litre per kWh generated at optimum load and up to about 20% more under very light or heavy load. Petrol ones slurp 50% more and get much worse when the load is low (below e.g. 50% of rated capacity). If you’re carting fuel, that makes a big difference.

          funniest thing was the local kangaroo’s liked it and you could find them lounging around the generator keeping warm.

          I hadn’t thought of the generators also providing dinner. 😉

          One of the things one notices when driving through the outback is the dozens of roos sleeping beside the tarmac. The gene that led some to sleep on the tarmac was probably rinsed from the pool a few decades ago.

          80

  • #
    sophocles

    Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it.

    60

  • #
    sophocles

    Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. This is nothing but a modern witchhunt.
    The USA’s careful separation of the arms of the Civil Service, Government and Religion with all the checks
    and balances were made with the
    original witchhunts clearly in mind.

    30

  • #
    Joe Lalonde

    Jo,

    Scientists have not figured out yet that there is no actual repeating pattern to our planets weather due to many factors that change the parameters from year to year.
    Temperature is a concept of science and is produced by many factors that also change from minute to minute. Weather is far more complex on a round planet that rotates as water and air have different densities and are effected very differently from the plant to the atmosphere.
    Water on the planet surface changes directions at the 38 degree latitude and low level clouds NEVER cross the equator.
    Salt changes have not been looked at as well…

    71

  • #

    Yeah, I’m afraid, but it’s not weather related. It’s to do with the fact that so many people apparently from respectable academic institutions are so stupid. They seem to be the only ones our leaders are listening to.

    70

  • #
    Bevan

    I was appalled by the Catalyst program last night. Prior to that I had been upset by the lack of balance shown by the ABC. In particular their Environment site which only promotes the Greens’ greenhouse gas global warming mantra while being incapable of reporting on any evidence of an opposing view.
    As the ABC has a Charter requiring it to inform the public in an unbiased fashion, isn’t there some legal way of challenging the ABC Board and management? Can we implement a legal class action against the ABC?
    Oh for a massive snow storm to blanket Canberra for a few weeks!

    151

    • #
      ursus augustus

      Bevan, not too much snow because that would be extreme weather donchaknow?

      50

    • #
      Neville

      Oh god yes, please let’s work out how to initiate a class action! I recently queried the ABC re a similarly-biased “story” – result? Was there a reply (even a courtesy acknowledgment of my email? Nada, zip, zilch, nyet, non; not even the pseudo-recognition that I exist with a “eff-off, sunshine!”

      70

  • #
    david purcell

    The Coalition’s Greg Hunt, a true believer of CAGW is proposing a 15,000 strong “green army” to solve all our environmental problems.I received his email today. What chance do we have with both political parties believing all this “carbon” nonsense? I gave up swapping emails with Hunt on this topic 2 years ago when I realised he wouldn’t be swayed by any science I presented. He believed then that the science was settled, there was a consensus and the world was “headed for disaster”.

    80

  • #
    michael hart

    Locusts. I wanna see the plague of locusts.

    And frogs.

    40

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Not quite a plague of locust, but close

      30

    • #
      AndyG55

      Why? Nothing unusual about a plague of locusts.. Been many in central NSW over the years.

      We just seem to do a slightly better job controlling them nowadays.

      30

  • #
    ursus augustus

    As soon as I saw Catalyst and Weather I switched off and did something else. Soooo predictable it was just a joke. This extreme weather thing is the last throw of the dice for the alarmists. The “pause” has them running around like freaked out ants as reality plants its hooves on their nestworld. This latest ExtremeWeatherExtremeWeatherExtremeWeather ranting is just their latest PR angle. It interchanges with HottestDecadeHottestDecadeHottestDecade for some sort of imagined variety.

    What sad little people. It must be like suspecting then fearing then finding out your favourite uncle is a paedophile. Talk about going into denial.

    100

  • #
    Tim

    Sad that PR has trumped science at our ‘trusted and impartial’ public broadcasting service- which strangely mimics its BBC co-conspirator. This is a global plan that also involves carbon taxes and destruction of coal-fired power. Forget sovereignty,you are part of a much bigger picture.

    91

  • #
    TomRude

    Professor Jennifer Francis , from the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University, explained that the rapidly warming Arctic has created a ‘gentler’ atmospheric temperature gradient between the Tropics and the Poles. This leads to weaker, more variable, jet stream winds, which then ‘meander’ north and south more.

    Francis theory is debunked by the constant high pressure anticyclones coming from the Arctic, hardly a gentler gradient. Its physics is so deeply flawed, so disregarding of facts, of actual atmospheric circulation -as if warm air was pushing cold air- that it is a sad reflection of climate science that such garbage would even be considered.

    122

  • #
    Joshua

    Please do not provide unsupported statements such as the Artic is warming but Antarctica is not etc…The Arctic is experiencing it COLDEST summer on record see here

    http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

    Compare current year 2013 with all previous years. I find these kind of statements when not checked, feed right into the warmist trough.

    60

  • #
    PeterB in Indianapolis

    Severe weather is caused when a cold, polar air mass intersects with a warm tropical air mass. The greater the temperature differential between the two air masses, the more severe the weather.

    If there were a gentler temperature gradient between the poles and the equator, the weather would be milder, not more severe.

    Also, here in North America for example, we have 2 jet streams to deal with, the Polar Jet and the Pacific Jet. So the weather here is far more complex than simply “the polar jet meanders north and south more”.

    For example, the Western portion of the US recently had a heat wave, because the Polar Jet stayed north in Canada until abruptly diving south in the central portion of the US, and simultaneously, the Pacific Jet went south into Mexico. This left a powerful high-pressure ridge stranded for nearly a week over the desert southwest, which resulted in very high temperatures.

    This wasn’t caused by CO2 or any other man-made factors, just random events which caused a high-pressure ridge to stall right over the desert southwest for a week or so, resulting in a heat wave for that area.

    Even MOST of the true-believers here are admitting it had nothing to do with AGW, but there are a FEW (Peter Gleik for instance, see Wattsupwiththat) that are trying to claim we had something to do with it.

    Never mind the fact that temperatures in that part of the US were several degrees warmer in 1913 than they were in 2013….

    110

    • #
      Olaf Koenders

      “If there were a gentler temperature gradient between the poles and the equator, the weather would be milder, not more severe.”

      Thank you. I was wondering when someone would pick up on that.

      60

    • #
      Leo G

      ABC Television now has a factchecker [or was that fat-chequer] for their journalism. It clearly needs someone to perform a similar role with respect to pseudo-science advocacy (a la Catalyst). A scatologist would have the right skills.

      61

  • #
    Ian Wilson

    Think for a second:

    A warming Arctic is leading to lower temperature gradient between the Tropics and the North Pole which [they claim] results in a greater meandering of the mid-latitude jet-stream. This [they insist] is why we having more extremes between hot and cold and wet and dry.

    If this “logic” holds then a cooling Antarctica is leading to an increasing temperature gradient between the Tropics and the South Pole which should produce less wandering of the jet-stream in the Southern Hemisphere. If this is is true then we should be less extreme weather here in the Southern Hemisphere.

    Then what about the “Angry Summer” and the Queensland Floods?

    It is shear genius I tell you, shear genius……NOT!!

    91

    • #
      • #
        Ian Wilson

        Sorry Ken, I did not see your section above.

        I get the feeling that the ABC and Catalyst think that their audience
        is so stupid that they’ll just meekly accept any drivel that put to air,
        no matter how idiotic.

        20

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    Extreme, extreme, extreme…and…they never mention how extreme the BS is. Those who see through the fraud are systematically shut out of the discussion. But when the thing finally collapses the questions will be impossible to answer and the consequences will be terrible.

    I hate to say it but the only way out now is to go through it. Once it became part of popular culture there was no longer any way to argue against it. The fraud is in the driver’s seat and will only be killed by the inevitable crash at the end of the road.

    But I repeat myself. Sorry!

    60

    • #

      It would be nice to be more optimistic than you are in your post but I agree. We are going to have to see this thing to the bitter end. If the path the world is on is continued it will be a very bitter end.

      There is an outside chance that it won’t be bitter or the end. That chance requires a significant fraction of the population of the earth starts being rational and acting rationally. This is possible because man can choose to think and act differently. I wouldn’t bet very much on it happening.

      What we are left with is to live as free as we can as best we can as long as we can and have no regrets at the end.

      Also remember this:

      If you don’t own it, they can’t steal it.

      If you don’t earn it, they can’t tax it.

      Live as lightly as possible, disconnect from the network as much as possible, and be someplace else when they come to enslave you.

      Most of all, stop feeding them. They can’t long exist based upon their own ability and efforts. If enough of us do it, the ugliness will be over in six months. All we have to do is survive. Then we can rebuild a rational world and strive to thrive.

      30

      • #
        Roy Hogue

        Lionell,

        I do hold some hope for the future. If I didn’t I wouldn’t have said what I did or included the speech by E. W. Jackson. One should not simply give up.

        On the other hand, even with the best that can happen I think there’s a long dark road ahead before we see daylight again. So as you said, the job is to survive the darkness as well as we can. And it doesn’t look easy. I’m seeing rumors that Obama plans to nationalize 401-K and IRA accounts, replacing their net worth with treasury bonds. Would you buy treasury bonds? Don’t answer, I know you wouldn’t. The man knows no limits to his stealing from the people.

        I note these comments with mixed emotions.

        If you don’t own it, they can’t steal it.

        If you don’t earn it, they can’t tax it.

        If I don’t own it I can’t use it for my benefit either. If I don’t earn it I can’t use it to live on. How do we get out from under this man who hates successful people so much that he’s willing to destroy them? I have no answer. Oppressed people once came here. Where do we go?

        20

        • #

          Roy,

          This is NOT giving up. It is fighting with the most effective weapon we have: the fact they need us far more than we need them. In fact, we don’t need them at all.

          Live as lightly as possible, disconnect from the network as much as possible, and be someplace else when they come to enslave you.

          Most of all, stop feeding them. They can’t long exist based upon their own ability and efforts. If enough of us do it, the ugliness will be over in six months. All we have to do is survive. Then we can rebuild a rational world and strive to thrive.

          20

          • #
            Roy Hogue

            Lionell,

            Sorry, I apparently wasn’t clear about what I meant. I have not given up and do not advocate giving up. I don’t think you are advocating giving up either. But I do not relish the coming fight one little bit. You and I have worked a lifetime to build careers, financial security and helped to keep the wheels of civilization turning. And then comes a bunch of fools who shouldn’t be allowed to tie their own shoes without supervision — including Barack Obama — and they want to tear down the very people who have been supporting them while they screw away their lives. Frankly I am extremely pissed off about it. If I had someplace to run to that would get me out from under this jackass in the White House I would do it.

            It’s easy to talk about, “Live as lightly as possible, disconnect from the network as much as possible, and be someplace else when they come to enslave you.” But it is quite another matter to do it.

            I do not want any part of the roller coaster ride that will soon hit all of us. But I don’t have a choice about it. The pond scum has taken over and the pond is going to die as a result. The fish are going to go through Hell. I think that’s a real good analogy.

            20

            • #

              Roy,

              I agree with everything you say. Even the over the top angry thing. However, we have only two tools. One is to persuade enough almost there pople to turn the tide or simply get out of the way of the cannibals and let them consume themselves.

              20

              • #
                Roy Hogue

                Even the over the top angry thing.

                There comes a time when a spade must be called a spade. There is nothing to be gained by dancing all around the truth. And spade is not a reference to Obama’s skin color as some have used it. It’s simply the age-old metaphor for calling the truth the truth. The one tolerable thing about him is that he’s black. That fact puts to rest forever any claim of racism that can legitimately be made. Were he an honest and capable leader I would embrace him. But he is not an honest and capable leader.

                We are in agreement except perhaps about the wording.

                10

      • #
        JohnRMcD

        Magic. Atlas Shrugged lives!

        01

  • #
    Lars P.

    It’s been several years since I stopped watching such tv programs (and watching much less tv in general). The lack of science & no respect for the scientific method, repeats of same sentences again and again presenters full of pathos but lack of logic. Who needs that … should pay for it.
    Trust these will sooner or later collapse, as the budgets increase steadily and the viewers decrease accordingly, but it needs to take some time.

    60

  • #
    Backslider

    We need to get Topher to put something together regarding extreme weather events way back in the past…. extreme weather has been with us since the year dot, nothing unusual there.

    As we all know, its just another display of sheer desperation.

    82

  • #
    manalive

    This will never happen in future when the new ABC science watchdog is appointed ….. (that was a joke).

    70

  • #
    Martin

    Stop talking. Defund the ABC. Force them into the private sector, where they will have to compete with independent media. The ABC will then promptly go the way of the Dodo.

    Are you listening Tony Abbott?

    92

  • #
    edwina

    Years ago when Catylist began it was interesting. It used to concentrate on the hard sciences such as physics, chemistry,materials and even astrophysics. But as time went by more and more ‘eco’ stories were inserted. Less of the previous type of various science discovery reports were included.
    So,a long time ago.I began to call it the ecology or Green program and never watch it anymore. The fact last Thursday’s show has been brought up is the only reason I know about it. Still the same old same old same old…

    80

  • #
    Macspee

    Co-generation is certainly an old idea. It was used in Melbourne by the SECV that had a boiler in the basement of 15 William Street that provided heat to nearby buildings including the then National Mutual building. Probably gone now – not green nough.

    30

  • #
    Manfred

    True reality TV! Yet another televised dying spasm, the noisy death rattle or Cheyne-Stokes respiration of the C/AGW meme.

    We knew it would get much worse, more flagrant, more message less truth, more ludicrous, more desperate. It has. It will.

    Keep up the inexorable pressure of truth. So long as there’s a price tag attached to the institutionalised green bollox, people will pay greater attention to the dank, grasping hand in their pockets, and as I have said before, spurn it as they do a rabid dog.

    91

  • #
    incoherent rambler

    In the 1930’s Aldous Huxley in a Sci-Fi described a scheme where higher CO2 levels would be administered to developing fetuses to convert them into moronic worker drones.

    Expanding on this, my theory is that higher CO2 levels have converted employees of the ABC, University staff and members of the (gang) Green party into morons. The effects of exposure to increased levels of CO2 are obvious. I have named this observed effect “The Huxley Effect”.

    My soon to be be released, peer reviewed (by the guys at the pub) paper, documents the rise of Greens and illiterate University professors as the levels of CO2 have increased.

    The correlation between CO2 levels and academic idiocy is indisputable. Nevertheless, there are some who would ignore the observable reality and deny the existence of this established causal relationship (these people are referred to as deniers).

    There is little time available for us to take action to prevent the impending disaster as the Huxley Effect spreads across the world. We must act and act now.

    Donations can be sent via the tip jar at this site (mark to the attention of I.R.). Billion dollar government grants and tax deductible corporate sponsorships are also welcomed.

    90

    • #
      incoherent rambler

      I forgot to mention the Huxley Effect is abbreviated as HE.

      HE is to blame for most things that go wrong.

      A variant known as the Super Huxley Effect (aka SHE) covers exaggerated cases of HE.

      SHE is the cause of anything else that goes wrong.

      60

  • #
  • #

    It was an appalling piece of science fiction. Catalyst should be ashamed of themselves. Even 10 minutes was too much.

    60

  • #
    Olaf Koenders

    Thanks for that post Jo. I watched the other night (after several years hiatus since the AGW stuff started appearing) as it was advertised “Weird weather – Climate Change or something else?”. I thought they would actually have a balanced discussion. Sadly it wasn’t to be. Witchcraft all the way.

    60

  • #
    Olaf Koenders

    It’s as we all prognosticated. Near the end their voices become shriller – still none of which contain any fact.

    The recent BBC (yeh.. I know) documentary: “ORBIT – Earth’s Extraordinary Journey”, all 3 episodes were full of fact, regarding atmospheric and ocean current changes during different seasons, including – tadaa.. – Milankovitch Cycles. They left out Solar cycles, PDO, AMO and ENSO altogether. It was a very informative series stuffed with facts and a definite must-see. For the BBC to produce such a thing is surprising.

    Here’s the unsurprising thing. One of the presenters somewhere near the southern tip of Greenland, relying on the words of a single, possibly 50 year old Inuit that knows absolutely nothing about the planet he inhabits, says that the ice extent has reduced over the last 20 years. The presenter then makes this bold assertion:

    “The existence of the sea ice here in Greenland, is testament to the complex response our planet has to the Sun in whose orbit we travel. But, it’s a very delicate balance. And no-one is more acutely aware of that, than the people who live here.

    [Inuit] tells me that even before the storm [2012], that this year there’s less ice than in previous years. It’s part of a trend all over the Arctic. The area covered by sea ice has shrunk significantly in the last 20 years. A series of warm winters have meant the seas haven’t cooled down as much as normal, so not as much ice has been able to form. There’s little doubt, that the cause of the warmer winters, is us.

    Global Warming can feel like a myth, when back in the UK, we’ve endured a string of very cold winters, but here on the front line, it’s a reality. Those predictions suggest that the Arctic will continue to warm rapidly over the course of this century. It could be that we may prove capable of generating the kind of climate change that in the past, has been created by the changes in the Earth’s orbit.”

    And that’s it – No scientific explanation for that statement whatsoever! Well, it was very carefully worded and the UK has had some recent cold winters. But – they show how this happened earlier through changes in the course of the jet stream brought on by seasonal change!

    I wanted to edit that section from the series, but decided to leave it in and added some real facts and a warning at the beginning of my re-edited DVD.

    It’s no wonder when they bombard you with proven scientific facts and then resort to a pathetic “message” not backed by anything other than the BBC head office wanting to stuff that in there, that they’re no longer believed. Thankfully, none of the series from Prof. Brian Cox included any of that gumpf.

    70

    • #
      Yonniestone

      Olaf it’s like a compulsion for them isn’t it, could you imagine a Benny Hill show without Benny patting the bald guy on the head or grabbing a girl on the backside?, no way!, it’s going to happen just a matter of when exactly like these eco zealots on BBC/ABC shows.

      40

    • #
      Leo G

      “Those [global warming] predictions suggest that the Arctic will continue to warm rapidly over the course of this century.”

      A rash generalisation- the Arctic is not just the Arctic sea ice.
      How do we know that the Arctic Ocean hasn’t experienced a net cooling over that time and what we’re observing isn’t a consequence of increased mixing of the Arctic Ocean? After all, if the Arctic waters were well-mixed then the sea ice would completely disappear every year.

      41

  • #
    Leo G

    What’s the basis for the Catalyst narrator’s claim that the intensity of water cycle is driven by air temperature- specifically that an air temperature increase of 1ºC produces a 7% increase in the rate of the water cycle?
    My view has been that the evaporation rate at sea level is described by the change in enthalpy for the phase change in water at sea level, and by that measure, an air temperature increase of 1ºC should produce a 0.1% increase in the rate of the water cycle (not 7%).

    40

    • #
      Leo G

      BTW, I once thought wind currents were driven by pressure gradients [not air temperature gradients]. Does that mean I need de-education?

      30

    • #
      Leo G

      What … creates the pressure difference in the first place?

      Not a temperature gradient. Possibly, the earth’s rotation.
      Why do you think hurricanes and tropical storms don’t form close to the equator, and why do westerly winds move from the subtropical to the polar?
      There may be a correlation with a notional latitude surface temperature gradient, but that temperature gradient is not the cause.

      51

      • #
        edwina

        Colder air is more dense* hence it has more weight or ‘pressure’. So cold air from the Antarctic is more dense and flows north toward the warmer, less dense, tropical regions. The earth’s rotation makes the movement of the air turn to the east (the right.) What the Catylist show was illustrating was the Hadley Cell which is a natural movement of risen tropical air heading back to the polar regions. It’s been known about for many decades. So the push factor comes from the cold air.

        *(aircraft prefer cold air to take off because the air is dense and gives more ‘lift’. On very hot days as in Arizona ligt planes are grounded because the air is not dense enough to give lift.)

        30

  • #
    Gerry Van Hees

    When I saw the initial lead in comments….. enough already did not even bother to watch it,just too painful. And to think that I’m funding this rubbish!!

    50

  • #
    ursus augustus

    This whole “extreme” weather drivel can be readily explained from the simple fact that our records only go back one or two hundred years generally and even then contain only limited data, typically high and low temperatures etc. As time goes on, the sample size increases and the likelihood of data points at the extremes increases. The media in their pig ignorance typically report current weather with the rider of being above/below average as distinct from some more meaningful quantifier referring to variance or say a confidence interval. Taken together there is a bias towards sensationalism. Nothing to see there folks, just the media and its symbiotes doing their little thing to make a buck.

    30

  • #
    Richard111

    As PeterB in Indianapolis points out in post #25 above;

    “If there were a gentler temperature gradient between the poles and the equator, the weather would be milder, not more severe.”

    Mention has been made of the cold in Antarctica this winter and it looks like the Arctic has been a couple of degrees below normal for over two months so far this summer.

    DMI Arctic Temperatures

    In a cooling world the temperature gradient between poles and the equator increases resulting in more extreme weather events yet the powers that be claim all extreme weather is entirely due to increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Phooey!

    To me this looks like a convenient scare tactic with a very ulterior motive. When the cold does come, and it won’t be long, all those PV panels and wind turbines and electric cars will be useless under a foot or so of snow. You won’t have to wait for the ice. Without energy how do you harvest food (if any grew) and transport it to all the cut-off city centres?

    Another point. Heat waves in deserts. Big deal. By the following morning the heat is gone. Radiated away to space. Non of that scary hot heat is stored or saved anywhere. Anyone who has lived and worked in desert regions is aware of this. Look up why deserts occur where they do. It is a natural and permanent condition on this planet.

    70

    • #
      Michael

      You are not dealing in science but in wishful thinking. Decisions need to be made on the actual science, data and observations. The science tells us that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. We have increased it by 40%. It causes warming. Warming has occured, as well as all the associated fingerprints of a world warming by CO2. A couple of months is not science and an ‘anyone who has lived’ comment is not science. All the heat is not ‘radiated to heat’ by morning. If it was we would be looking at -200 deg c temps by morning like the dark side of the moon. The greenhouse gases slow the loss of energy to space, the land heats up and stores some of that energy, the oceans heat up and store some of that energy etc. The trend in Arctic Sea Ice is down for decades, not months.

      “A decade is the minimum possible timeframe for meaningful assessments of climate change,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. “WMO’s report shows that global warming was significant from 1971 to 2010 and that the decadal rate of increase between 1991-2000 and 2001-2010 was unprecedented. Rising concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are changing our climate, with far reaching implications for our environment and our oceans, which are absorbing both carbon dioxide and heat.”

      “Natural climate variability, caused in part by interactions between our atmosphere and oceans – as evidenced by El Niño and La Niña events – means that some years are cooler than others. On an annual basis, the global temperature curve is not a smooth one. On a long-term basis the underlying trend is clearly in an upward direction, more so in recent times” said Mr Jarraud.

      http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/images/clip_image002_006.gif

      http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_976_en.html

      “The decade 2001-2010 was the warmest since records began in 1850, with global land and sea surface temperatures estimated at 0.46°C above the long-term average (1961-1990) of 14.0°C. Nine of these years were among the ten warmest on record. The warmest year on record was 2010, closely followed by 2005, with a mean temperature estimated at 0.53°C above the long-term average. It was the warmest decade ever recorded for global land surface, sea surface and for every continent. ” http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_943_en.html

      “The 2012 global land and ocean surface temperature during January–December 2012 is estimated to be 0.45°C (±0.11°C) above the 1961–1990 average of 14.0°C. This is the ninth warmest year since records began in 1850 and the 27th consecutive year that the global land and ocean temperatures were above the 1961–1990 average, according to the statement. The years 2001–2012 were all among the top 13 warmest years on record.”

      http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_972_en.html

      “Despite the cooling influence of a La Niña episode early in the year, 2012 joined the ten previous years as one of the warmest – at ninth place – on record. Although the rate of warming varies from year to year due to natural variability caused by the El Niño/La Niña cycle, volcanic eruptions and other phenomena, the sustained warming of the lower atmosphere is a worrisome sign. The continued upward trend in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and the consequent increase in radiative forcing of the Earth’s atmosphere confirm that the warming will continue.”

      http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/documents/WMO_1108_EN_web_000.pdf

      08

  • #
    Michael

    So we have increased CO2 by 40% since industrialisation. So then what would be the effects of that? Well some of the predictions include:

    * Atmospheric warming, yep

    * first decade of the 21st century hottest on the instrumental record on EVERY continent, so much for claims of cooling.

    * anti science lobby persist in ignoring natural factors as that heat is despite back to back la ninas. Take the la ninas out and you have even more warming.

    * Ocean warming, yep

    * Sea levels rising, yep

    * Arctic melting faster than everywhere else (and still melting, record reached last year), yep

    * Globally ice volume falling, yep

    * Acidification in oceans increasing, yep

    * Extreme weather increasing, yep

    * day heat records beat cold records 3 to 1 and increasing

    * night heat records beat cold records 5 to 1

    * Observations show increased extreme participation by 7% for every degree increase in temps

    * Increase in storm surges, and some research is showing an increase in hurricane intensity

    …and that is just of the top of my head. Why do people ignore all that and continuously refuse to countenance that there is a very good chance that the warming and all the associated issues the planet is having could be due to CO2, and if it is then we have a responsibility to try to mitigate further damage for the sake of our kids and future generations. You cannot predict the climate to the nth degree, and there are many ups and downs in the record due to natural and anthropogenic causes, a lot of which we cannot control or predict, but the trends are fairly clear, we are at the hottest period in the instrumental record, most natural factors have been in cooling or static directions. Put your extreme bias (or pay packet) to the side for a minute, take a look at your kids and think about this objectively.

    218

    • #
      Ian Wilson

      Here is some news for the top of your head:

      * The atmospheric is warming, yep

      – No one is disputing that the world warmed during the last century – the question is why did it warm!

      * first decade of the 21st century hottest on the instrumental record on EVERY continent, so much for claims of cooling.

      – This is like claiming that you must still be growing when you are in your thirties, since your twenties were the tallest
      decade in your life.

      * anti science lobby persist in ignoring natural factors as that heat is despite back to back la ninas. Take the la ninas out and you have even more warming.

      – Your first two points were based on world temperature changes on time scales of a decade or more. Now you are arguing at the sub-decadal level. If you accept
      your premise natural changes can cause cooling, why can’t you accept the argument that natural changes can also cause warming – possibly even most of the warming of
      the late 20th century.

      * Ocean warming, yep

      – Again on what time scale. Since 2002, the data actually shows that the top 700 m of the world’s oceans have NOT been warming. And anyway, if you taking about
      changes ocean temperature on a time scale of a decade or more, you would expect warming if the atmosphere is warming – the question is still, why is the atmosphere
      warming?

      * Sea levels rising, yep

      – Ditto

      * Arctic melting faster than everywhere else (and still melting, record reached last year), yep

      – An Antarctic freezing faster than anywhere else!

      * Globally ice volume falling, yep

      – Barely, but again we live in a warming world – this does not address the question – why is the world warming?

      * Acidification in oceans increasing, yep

      – And if the oceans cool in the next few decades the acidification levels will go down – so what?

      * Extreme weather increasing, yep

      The scientific literature overwhelming shows that this is not the case.

      * day heat records beat cold records 3 to 1 and increasing

      – a warming world! – Why is warming?

      * night heat records beat cold records 5 to 1

      – a warming world! – Why is warming?

      * Observations show increased extreme participation by 7% for every degree increase in temps

      – An increase in the hydro-logical cycle pumps de-humdified air into the upper tropics via the
      thunderstorms in the equatorial zone of convergence. This decreases the specific humidity of the
      the upper tropical troposphere which provides a negative feedback that virtually eliminates
      any warming caused by Co2.

      * Increase in storm surges, and some research is showing an increase in hurricane intensity

      – The Hurricane intensity has reached record lows

      Virtually every point you make does not support your case. Not one of these pieces of evidence
      proves that CO2 is responsible for the observed increase in world air temperature in the later
      part of the 20th Century.

      60

    • #
      Angry

      yawn……….
      You had better go and hide under your bed then “Michael”.

      00

  • #
    Dan Clancy

    Where’s the all knowing Brookes to give us his lofty opinion?

    60

  • #

    […] There they go again. Last night the ABC again used taxpayer dollars to post up a slick advertisement for their favourite religion. Because Catalyst won’t read skeptical blogs, interview skeptics, or ask difficult questions, they give a false impression to any poor viewers who haven’t figured out that the presenters (in this case, Anja Taylor) are more activist than investigator.  […]

    00

  • #
    Mark F

    Michael 6.4 – Gawd, I *do* hope you are being sarcastic and not delusional.

    50

    • #
      Michael

      Sorry Mark, but I meant every word. Where am I wrong in what I have said? Every major international scientific organisation in the world agrees with the science behind AGW. Every peer reviewed survey of climate scientists opinion always overwhelmingly shows support for the science and every peer reviewed check of the peer reveiwed literature shows overwhelmingly support for the reality of AGW. Most of the predictions have occured and occurred faster than predicted. You can make all the excuses you like, but they are the facts and a science show is accepting and explaining those facts. They have done nothing wrong.

      Feel free to peer reveiw some verifiable surveys of your own. Opinion bloggers and petitions carry no weight.

      “The list contains scientific organizations around the world that acknowledge the global impact of rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations from human activities. While many more organizations could likely be added, the list is limited to those that have either issued a singular statement of their own or signed in agreement to a collective statement regarding the anthropogenic impact of rising emissions on global climate and the global biosphere.
      All statements have been issued since 2001.
      At present, there are 171 organizations on the list that span all continents outside of Antarctica.”
      http://scentofpine.org/consensus/

      17

      • #
        Backslider

        Well Michael, why don’t we start with this one:

        Every major international scientific organisation in the world agrees with the science behind AGW.

        Did you know that Joanne Nova also agrees with the science of AGW? Yep, she does. Now, I am not going to argue the validy of these so called “consensus” surveys, since we all know that consensus is not science. Instead I will point out to you that even if somebody “agrees with the science of AGW”, this does not mean that they support the notion of CAGW, which you clearly do and which in fact you are arguing. Your use of “AGW” in your arguments rather than “CAGW” clearly shows your own dishonesty.

        Nope, most climate scientists DO NOT believe in CAGW and you have lost all arguments on that front.

        CAGW != AGW

        Would you like me to continue?

        51

        • #
          Michael

          Reread the quote backslider. It clearly states that the 171 organisations on every continent across the whole world from countries as disparate as Russia, USA, China, Canada, Iraq etc, agree with ANTHROPOGENIC climate change. I agree with Antropogenic Climate Change. The facts are clear, I am pleased that you and Joanne Nova agree with me. Then regarding your catastrophic climate change comments. How about defining what you term catastrophic? I consider rising sea levels, acidifying oceans, increasing extreme weather etc as concerning and requiring action. They will make life more difficult and less habitable for future generations. The evidence for those effects are already occuring (as predicted), and mostly faster than predicted. So we should stop pretending we can know for 100% certainty how bad or how destructive those effects will get. They may be minor, they may be catastrophic, (and probably a mix of both) but it is plain that things are occuring. So if we care about our kids and future generations we need to mitigate and adapt. This is what the vast majority of scientists agree with. AGW IS REAL (as you agree), the effects ARE occuring, we need to mitigate and adapt as we cannot forecast for certainty how bad the effects may be. So I am not being dishonest, and I cannot think of how to put it clearer. So I am quite happy to continue.

          Consensus occurs due to the strength of 100 years of science of the greenhouse effect, testing, data and observations. Similar to plate tectonics, there was initially much skeptisism, most people didn’t agree, support was low. Then over time as the science got stronger and new data and observations came in and experiments performed etc the support grew. AGW is now at the stage (just like Plate Tectonics) where it is a well accepted theory with a small minority in disagreement. Unfortunately, due to the amount of money in fossil fuels, this minority is well supported and well funded so that their voice is louder than their importance. So rather than personal attacks and accusing me of dishonesty, lets stick to the science, you made an assumption of what i believed, not supported by what I wrote.

          “The list contains scientific organizations around the world that acknowledge the global impact of rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations from human activities. While many more organizations could likely be added, the list is limited to those that have either issued a singular statement of their own or signed in agreement to a collective statement regarding the anthropogenic impact of rising emissions on global climate and the global biosphere.
          All statements have been issued since 2001.
          At present, there are 171 organizations on the list that span all continents outside of Antarctica.”
          http://scentofpine.org/consensus/

          110

          • #
            Backslider

            As I said, you are talking about CAGW. Your arguments do not support CAGW. Your 171 organisations do not support CAGW. Your “consensus” scientists do not support CAGW.

            Try again.

            101

          • #
            Michael

            You are being dishonest. I support the same things those organisations do and you are participating in a personal attack rather than arguing the facts. If you don’t have anything productive to say or that enhances or furthers the debate then you should not waste our time.

            19

            • #
              Backslider

              No, it is you who is being dishonest. You purport that 171 organization and that the majority of climate scientists support your CAGW views.

              They do not.

              81

            • #
              Michael

              I never said I had CAGW views (and you have still not defined what you mean by CAGW). That is your accusation and a personal attack to try and discredit my argument, because you are to afraid to argue with me on science and logic. If I need to spell it out further I will. I do not believe we will destroy the planet. It has been here quite happily for 4 billion years and will likely be here for another 3 billion or so. Eventually it will be destroyed by the sun, which as a main sequence star (at middle age) is getting hotter and bigger as it gets older, but that is on the scale of geological time and not our initial concern on the time scales of several hundred years.

              So planet will be fine. As for its suitability and habitability for 7 billion (and growing) humans (which is my concern) well thats a different matter. Sea levels are rising, the ocean is acidifying, extreme weather is increasing (floods, heat waves and droughts in particular), and much more. All of these things are accepted by the majority of climate scientists and organisations I pointed to.

              So are you going to keep accusing me of things I did not say and playing games with words or are you going to argue honestly on the science? I thought that a site like this might have a more intelligent and honest debate of these issues than a facebook page…but maybe I was wrong.

              “A decade is the minimum possible timeframe for meaningful assessments of climate change,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. “WMO’s report shows that global warming was significant from 1971 to 2010 and that the decadal rate of increase between 1991-2000 and 2001-2010 was unprecedented. Rising concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are changing our climate, with far reaching implications for our environment and our oceans, which are absorbing both carbon dioxide and heat.”

              “Natural climate variability, caused in part by interactions between our atmosphere and oceans – as evidenced by El Niño and La Niña events – means that some years are cooler than others. On an annual basis, the global temperature curve is not a smooth one. On a long-term basis the underlying trend is clearly in an upward direction, more so in recent times” said Mr Jarraud.

              http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_976_en.html

              17

          • #
            Backslider

            I consider rising sea levels, acidifying oceans, increasing extreme weather etc as concerning and requiring action.

            Please show us all your proof that any of these are occurring.

            I like the “acidifying oceans” one, so let’s start first with you telling us exactly where there is an ocean that is acidic.

            70

            • #
              Michael

              Oh here we go, you are going to be one of those games playing word twisting type of arguers. You think you are being clever but in reality is normally just tedious. If something becomes less alkaline then it is heading towards more acidic. Happy now, your arguments is pathetic, because you have a need to be pedantic, I am wrong? Well if you have grown up a little now I will point you towards some resources for increasing ocean acidity (up by 30%)

              http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2005/9634.pdf
              http://oceanacidification.net/fast-facts/
              http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/AYool_GLODAP_del_pH.png – just a picture of the ocean changes 🙂

              07

              • #
                Backslider

                No. The use of the term “acidifying” is alarmist crap and dishonest. Please take the time to look up the meaning of the word, it most certainly does not mean “less alkaline”.

                You have lost point #1.

                Next: Please show us all your proof that sea level rises are above normal.

                50

            • #
              Michael

              Some more sources and information on acidification for you. Argue on the evidence and the science, if you have any.

              “One affected species, foraminifera, a sand grain-sized plankton, is responsible for the sequestration of 25 to 50 percent of the carbon the oceans absorb and thus plays a major role in keeping atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations at much lower levels than they would be otherwise. Now scientists have learned that foraminifera (forams) shells are much thinner in oceans made more acidic by the enormous volumes of CO2 released in the burning of fossil fuels.”

              http://www.ipsnews.net/2009/03/climate-change-acid-oceans-altering-marine-life/

              “This pH is probably lower than has been experienced for hundreds of millennia and, critically, at a rate of change probably 100 times greater than at any time over this period.”

              http://royalsociety.org/policy/publications/2005/ocean-acidification/

              http://pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean+Acidification

              http://pmel.noaa.gov/co2/file/Hawaii+Carbon+Dioxide+Time-Series

              “The oceans may be acidifying faster today than they did in the last 300 million years, according to scientists”

              http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=123324&org=NSF

              “Until recently, we really didn’t think that having fewer carbonate ions would affect sea creatures for a century or more. Unfortunately, we were wrong.

              Late in 2012, it was reported that one particular sea creature was actually having its shell dissolved by the increasing acidity of the ocean. It’s the pteropod — a free-swimming sea snail that moves about thanks to wings like a butterfly. It lives for two years or longer and grows to have a shell about 1 centimetre in diameter.

              Down in the Antarctic, it is the main sea creature that makes calcium carbonate. In fact, over the whole planet, these sea butterflies account for some 12 per cent of the entire flux of carbonate on our whole planet.”

              http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/12/11/3650065.htm

              “Since the industrial revolution, ocean acidity has increased by 30%. Is increased CO2 to blame for this increased acidity?”
              http://serc.carleton.edu/eslabs/carbon/7a.html

              06

              • #
                Rereke Whakaaro

                Well let’s look at this analytically:

                … shells are much thinner in oceans made more acidic …

                Presumably the ocean will still be alkaline, but perhaps slightly less so?

                … by the enormous volumes of CO2 released in the burning of fossil fuels.

                How big is, “enormous”? If this is supposed to be a serious scientific discussion, surely some empirical (and testable, and repeatable) measurements should be quoted.

                And what is the justification for stating that any change in pH is caused by burning fossil fuels? Have they empirically demonstrated the cause and effect relationship, in a way that is, repeatable, and verifiable, and if so, where is this published, for I haven’t seen it, if it is.

                This pH is “probably” lower …

                What is the probability, or is it just a guess, or perhaps even a wish? As soon as I see any equivocal words, then I know that this stuff is made up. But let us persevere.

                … than has been experienced for hundreds of millennia and, critically, at a rate of change probably (there is that word again) 100 times greater than at any time over this period.

                The term, “Hundreds of millennia”, implies, at the very least, 200,000 years.

                Can you give me a reference to the recorded pH levels for this period that show that the current pH is abnormal at all, let alone 100 times higher? No, I thought not. This stuff is definitely made up, and I don’t care if it comes from the Royal Society, or NOAA, or the Pope. It is rubbish.

                Late in 2012, … one particular sea creature was actually having its shell dissolved…

                I will give the benefit of the doubt here, and assume this means one species, rather than one individual creature. But that begs the question, were no other marine snails affected, and if not, why not? But if all marine snails were affected, they why single out this one?

                But even leaving that point aside, there can be no justification for the ludicrous statements that follow: These snails … make 12% of carbonate of the planet? Come on? Where did that ratio come from? How much carbonate is there in the world anyway, for these snails to make 12% of?

                Since the industrial revolution, ocean acidity as increased by 30%.

                Is increased CO2 to blame for this increased acidity?

                Possibly, but not probably. There are just too many suspects regarding the changes in nature, to be able to definitively point to one cause. To do so, would mean having to demonstrate that no other factors could have influenced any change in pH, other than CO2. That is the way that science works (or didn’t they teach that in your Propaganda 101 course?) Anyway, given all the other fallacies you have been spouting on this thread, the 30% is practically guaranteed to be a trojan number.

                And if you don’t know what a trojan number is, then I suggest you read, “Sorry Wrong Number”, by John Brignell.

                60

              • #
                Angry

                “Michael”,
                Something for your edification.

                Here comes the “ocean acidification” scam, watch out!……

                http://www.iloveco2.com/2009/04/here-comes-ocean-acidification-scam.html

                20

      • #
        Leo G

        Every major international scientific organisation in the world agrees with the science behind AGW.

        Your statement uses fallacious reasoning.
        You imply that there is a ‘science behind AGW’ that is distinct from the rest of science.
        What else are you suggesting? That scientific arguments are based on science and therefor must be true?
        Moreover, Scientific Organisations exist to deal with issues related to the conduct of science- they are not repositories of scientific knowledge (and yes, that is a tautology) nor are they the determining authorities ruling on matters of scientific truth.

        60

        • #
          Michael

          Sorry but I found your whole argument confusing, you appear to me to just be going in circles. Is anyone here interested in honest arguments? or just word games.

          Scientific organisations present the current state of the science and represent the views of the tens of thousands of scientists that are their members (though individuals may have varying opinions) but definately the majority would have had to agree to any statements they put forward. Therefore when you have so many organisation covering the whole globe you would consider this to be a fairly consensus opinion of the state of the science. As I have said about consensus generally builds through the strength of the science, the data, experiments and observations over a large period of time. So if this is what the current state of the science is telling us then we should act to mitigate and adapt for the sake of future generations.

          07

          • #
            Leo G

            Scientific organisations present the current state of the science and represent the views of the tens of thousands of scientists that are their members … definately the majority would have had to agree to any statements they put forward.

            Your perspective appears to be the source of your confusion- you must be spinning quite rapidly to match yor own circular arguments, of which the above is an example.

            30

          • #
            ianl8888

            Scientific organisations present the current state of the science and represent the views of the tens of thousands of scientists that are their members (though individuals may have varying opinions) but definately the majority would have had to agree to any statements they put forward

            Absolutely WRONG !!

            None of the professional organisations held a plebiscite of their members. Various executive committees simply opined without reference to membership. When questioned, the finger-in-the-air answer was some variation of: “It is within the jurisdiction of the Executive Committee to make these pronouncements”

            This resulted in many cases in a mass exodus to those professional organisations that did not make such assumptions. I know exactly whereof I talk here. We did this because we knew greenies would misrepresent the situation … and voila

            BTW, homo sapiens has increased the atmospheric levels of CO2 by 40% ?? From when ? The Cretaceous, perhaps, when CO2 levels ranged between 4000-10000ppm (we notice that the planet didn’t crisp then). Avoid the shallow pedantry label and answer my question

            There has been a measured increase of 0.8C in the last century (I’ll accept the imperfect measurements, we can do no better). There has been no measurable increase in catastrophic weather frequency or intensity – some major storms and floods have coincided in location with now more highly populated/developed areas and this makes them sensationalist-newsworthy, but does not offer proof of significant climate change caused by increased atmospheric CO2 levels anymore than Los Angeles taking a major,catastrophic hit from the San Andreas Fault would prove that earthquake intensity and frequency are increasing

            Climate is the result of chaotic, non-linear, coupled factors. Inherently unpredictable. The IPCC has also said this.(AR2). Global temperatures have not risen significantly for close to two decades now, although CO2 levels are still rising

            50

            • #
              Michael

              CO2 levels have increased by 40% since pre industrial, before which it had cycled between 180-280ppm for about a million years. It is now touching 400ppm, which our best science (yes it is from proxies), estimates it has not been as high for several million years. It is pointless going back to the periods you talk about for 2 reasons. Firstly, the further back you go the more it is guesswork, secondly you are talking about geological time periods of which there are many other factors at play. Differnt atmospheric concentrations, different climate, the sun has been warming over time, the moon has been moving further away over time, geologically the continents and hence ocean currents would have been different, orbital planetary shifts and much much more. I have never claimed the planet has not changed, it has been evolving from a swirling ball of dust for 4 billion years to evolve into the current configuration that has supported the development of 7 billion human beings.

              0.8 in one hundred years, 1.5 in about 250 and the difference between an ice age and an interglacial in global temperatures is around 6 degrees. Globally temp changes can have huge unpredictable regional effects.

              Please provide a list of internationally recognised scientific organisations that have issued statements dismissing AGW. Why are you relying on IPCC AR2, they are up to AR4 and the science has improved heaps, I have a listing of the trends in extreme weather up near the top, I won’t bore everybody by copying and pasting here.

              I never said the planet would crisp, but it was probably fairly crispy when it was a swriling ball of dust 4 billion years ago, but no I do not expect that to happen. What I expect is that the current trends in climate (as outlined above) will continue making life more difficult and less habitable than it should have been. This will cause pain and suffering that was unnecessary. Unless we make changes starting now, globally.

              As to your pause in warming. Well it is a planet, there are many natural factors in play, some cause cooling, some warming, the last decade has predominated in cooling natural factors but even then the last 2 years were the hottest la nina affected years on record and the ocean heat has continued increasing (of which were 90% of the excess energy is going). On decadal scales the 2001 – 2010 decade was the hottest on the industrial record on every continent, and WMO define climate to mean at least 30 years of weather.

              “A decade is the minimum possible timeframe for meaningful assessments of climate change,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. “WMO’s report shows that global warming was significant from 1971 to 2010 and that the decadal rate of increase between 1991-2000 and 2001-2010 was unprecedented. Rising concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are changing our climate, with far reaching implications for our environment and our oceans, which are absorbing both carbon dioxide and heat.”

              “Natural climate variability, caused in part by interactions between our atmosphere and oceans – as evidenced by El Niño and La Niña events – means that some years are cooler than others. On an annual basis, the global temperature curve is not a smooth one. On a long-term basis the underlying trend is clearly in an upward direction, more so in recent times” said Mr Jarraud.

              http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/images/clip_image002_006.gif

              http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_976_en.html

              “The decade 2001-2010 was the warmest since records began in 1850, with global land and sea surface temperatures estimated at 0.46°C above the long-term average (1961-1990) of 14.0°C. Nine of these years were among the ten warmest on record. The warmest year on record was 2010, closely followed by 2005, with a mean temperature estimated at 0.53°C above the long-term average. It was the warmest decade ever recorded for global land surface, sea surface and for every continent. ” http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_943_en.html

              “The 2012 global land and ocean surface temperature during January–December 2012 is estimated to be 0.45°C (±0.11°C) above the 1961–1990 average of 14.0°C. This is the ninth warmest year since records began in 1850 and the 27th consecutive year that the global land and ocean temperatures were above the 1961–1990 average, according to the statement. The years 2001–2012 were all among the top 13 warmest years on record.”

              http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_972_en.html

              “Despite the cooling influence of a La Niña episode early in the year, 2012 joined the ten previous years as one of the warmest – at ninth place – on record. Although the rate of warming varies from year to year due to natural variability caused by the El Niño/La Niña cycle, volcanic eruptions and other phenomena, the sustained warming of the lower atmosphere is a worrisome sign. The continued upward trend in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and the consequent increase in radiative forcing of the Earth’s atmosphere confirm that the warming will continue.”
              http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/documents/WMO_1108_EN_web_000.pdf

              07

              • #
                Backslider

                It is pointless going back to the periods you talk about

                Please answer my question above re. When the Vikings settled Greenland.

                60

              • #
                Backslider

                Please provide a list of internationally recognised scientific organisations that have issued statements dismissing AGW

                How about YOU provide a list of internationally recognised scientific organisations who endorse CAGW.

                AGW != CAGW

                Michael’s crap === CAGW

                60

              • #
                Backslider

                warmest year since records began

                You are of course aware that we are coming out of the LIA?…. or are you an LIA denier also?

                The fact that we are means that global temperatures have been rising, thus it only stands to reason that max temperature records will be constantly broken (Never mind Death Valley, which still stands after how many years??).

                How about you go back and look through all the records and count the number of times a record was broken, taking careful not of the date? There is nothing remarkable happening today, sorry to burst your bubble.

                60

              • #
                Backslider

                On a long-term basis the underlying trend is clearly in an upward direction, more so in recent times

                This is patently false. Clearly the trend is upward and its been a very smooth ride. Sorry, but the hockey stick has long since been debunked.

                70

              • #
                Backslider

                the ocean heat has continued increasing (of which were 90% of the excess energy is going)

                Where did you hear that? I know that you are unable to prove it.

                Where exactly is the tropospheric hot spot?

                Why have atmospheric temperature failed to rise in the past 17 years while CO2 emissions have skyrocketed?.

                Why are climate scientists beside themselves trying to think of ways to explain THE LACK OF WARMING?

                80

              • #
                Michael

                I notice that your arguments are simplistic, non scientific and come without any sources, specifically peer reviewed sources (but any actual science would be interesting by now). Very sad. Provide evidence if you want to continue intelligent discussion. You make previously debunked and non scientific statements without any proof, so not much to respond to. I will though respond to the LIA and MWP. Most research show that both periods were mostly regional in nature and not uniform with known natural factors. Warming now is greater than the MWP and the LIA show us that we were in a global cooling trend until we started emitting CO2. So we should would have been cooling if not for industrialisation. In some way some initial warming was probably a good thing but now it is getting to the point where the negatives have outweighed the positives.

                Myriad of temperature reconstructions: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/globalwarming/ar4-fig-6-10.gif

                “Past global climate changes had strong regional expression. To elucidate their spatio-temporal pattern, we reconstructed past temperatures for seven continental-scale regions during the past one to two millennia. The most coherent feature in nearly all of the regional temperature reconstructions is a long-term cooling trend, which ended late in the nineteenth century. At multi-decadal to centennial scales, temperature variability shows distinctly different regional patterns, with more similarity within each hemisphere than between them. There were no globally synchronous multi-decadal warm or cold intervals that define a worldwide Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age, but all reconstructions show generally cold conditions between ad 1580 and 1880, punctuated in some regions by warm decades during the eighteenth century. The transition to these colder conditions occurred earlier in the Arctic, Europe and Asia than in North America or the Southern Hemisphere regions. Recent warming reversed the long-term cooling; during the period ad 1971–2000, the area-weighted average reconstructed temperature was higher than any other time in nearly 1,400 years.”
                http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/ngeo1797.html

                It is research of 78 researchers from 9 regional working groups from 60 seperate scientific institutions
                http://www.pages.unibe.ch/science/foci/focus-2/themes/2k-network

                07

              • #
                Michael

                Oh and there is no lack of warming.
                “A decade is the minimum possible timeframe for meaningful assessments of climate change,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. “WMO’s report shows that global warming was significant from 1971 to 2010 and that the decadal rate of increase between 1991-2000 and 2001-2010 was unprecedented. Rising concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are changing our climate, with far reaching implications for our environment and our oceans, which are absorbing both carbon dioxide and heat.”
                “Natural climate variability, caused in part by interactions between our atmosphere and oceans – as evidenced by El Niño and La Niña events – means that some years are cooler than others. On an annual basis, the global temperature curve is not a smooth one. On a long-term basis the underlying trend is clearly in an upward direction, more so in recent times” said Mr Jarraud.
                http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/images/clip_image002_006.gif
                http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_976_en.html

                “The decade 2001-2010 was the warmest since records began in 1850, with global land and sea surface temperatures estimated at 0.46°C above the long-term average (1961-1990) of 14.0°C. Nine of these years were among the ten warmest on record. The warmest year on record was 2010, closely followed by 2005, with a mean temperature estimated at 0.53°C above the long-term average. It was the warmest decade ever recorded for global land surface, sea surface and for every continent. ” http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_943_en.html

                “Ocean warming (90% of the total of the Earth’s energy increase) continues through to the end of the record, in agreement with continued greenhouse gas forcing.”
                http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL048794.shtml

                “We add our observational estimate of upper-ocean thermal expansion to other contributions to sea-level rise and find that the sum of contributions from 1961 to 2003 is about 1.5 ± 0.4 mm yr-1, in good agreement with our updated estimate of near-global mean sea-level rise (using techniques established in earlier studies6, 7) of 1.6 ± 0.2 mm yr-1.”
                http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7198/full/nature07080.html

                “We conclude that the simultaneous global warming of the atmosphere and mixed layer alone is uninformative for attribution, but the magnitude of ocean heat uptake, the homogeneity of the spatial pattern as well as the distribution of warming below the mixed layer strongly argue for the 20th-century warming being largely externally forced.”
                http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012GL053262/abstract

                “We provide estimates of the warming of the world ocean for 1955–2008 based on historical data not previously available, additional modern data, correcting for instrumental biases of bathythermograph data, and correcting or excluding some Argo float data. The strong interdecadal variability of global ocean heat content reported previously by us is reduced in magnitude but the linear trend in ocean heat content remain similar to our earlier estimate.”
                http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL037155/abstract

                05

              • #
                Backslider

                You make previously debunked and non scientific statements without any proof

                Such as?

                I take it that my “simplistic” and “non scientific” question re. the Vikings has you stumped.

                40

              • #
                Ian Wilson

                Backslider,

                I fear that it is probably a waste of time debating poor old Michael. He believes that he has the answer and he is just spouting “consensus evidence” that support his foregone conclusion. No true scientist would invoke consensus to underpin their case, so we know that Michael has little or no scientific background.

                For Michael, the complete failure of the models to replicate the real world climate, just makes him all the more determined to convert the climate “heathens”. It hasn’t dawned on him yet, that the proxy record shows multiple Holocene warming and cooling events in both the Antarctic and Greenland Ice caps that rival and sometimes exceed the current warming event. All he needs is for CO2 levels to go up at roughly the same time as the current warming event to completely convince himself that correlation must mean causation. It hard arguing with someone who’s faith in the answer far exceeds his faith in observational evidence, so I wouldn’t waste your valuable time.

                33

              • #
                Michael

                Apparently Ian you have not noticed above that I have argued with science and provided scientific peer reveiwed references for virtually all the claims I ahve made. You also have not noticed that none of your compatriots have put forward any peer reviewed references for their claims, just like you have not. Just broad sweeping statements not based in science or not relevent to the discussion. You guys apparently think that climate happens by magic and that we cannot determine the likely strength of any natural forcings. You throw out vague viking references without context like it means something relevent and talk about events over geological time periods like the data are 100% accurate and have relevence to the current warming over short time frames.

                You use models as proof that the science is wrong when models are projections for certain scenarios and the science is not based on it, they are basically diagnostic tools because the climate cannot be put in a test tube and have experiments put on it. Also I have made several other posts with peer reveiwed references in them but they seem to be awaiting moderation, so I assume there is some word or link limit before it goes into moderation.

                So basically my arguments are based on the peer reviewed science and basic physics, and as far as I can tell most of yours is just opinion based on ideological beliefs. I don’t have much more than that to base any judgements on because not much more than that has been supplied.

                “When the data are adjusted to remove the estimated impact of known factors on short-term temperature variations (El Niño/southern oscillation, volcanic aerosols and solar variability), the global warming signal becomes even more evident as noise is reduced. Lower-troposphere temperature responds more strongly to El Niño/southern oscillation and to volcanic forcing than surface temperature data. The adjusted data show warming at very similar rates to the unadjusted data, with smaller probable errors, and the warming rate is steady over the whole time interval. In all adjusted series, the two hottest years are 2009 and 2010.”

                http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/fulltext/

                06

              • #
                Ian Wilson

                Michael said:

                “So basically my arguments are based on the peer reviewed science and basic physics, and as far as I can tell most of yours is just opinion based on ideological beliefs. I don’t have much more than that to base any judgments on because not much more than that has been supplied.”

                You quoting papers as though they are the gospel truth – it hasn’t occurred to you that most of the papers that you quote have been scientifically refuted by the skeptic community. You appear to blithely ignorant of the counter-arguments to your beloved world view.

                Lets just take one particular paper – i.e. the Pages2k paper that you so proudly quote:

                This paper is a farce – it is a compendium of a number of studies, that includes some studies that, on their own, have not passed scientific peer-review.
                The classic example of this is the Gergeis et al. study for Oceania which was withdrawn from publication because of fundamental errors in its methodology.

                You also fail to recognize that many of the proxy-temperature records in this study are based upon tree-ring width analysis that is renowned for suppressing past temperature fluctuations such as the MWP and LIA.

                And then there is the little matter of tacking the high-resolution instrumental record for the 20th century onto the low-resolution temperature record from the earlier proxy temperature data. This is out-an-out statistical fraud – and anyone with even the slightest knowledge of scientific reasoning and statistics knows this.

                60

              • #
                Ian Wilson

                Michael said:

                “When the data are adjusted to remove the estimated impact of known factors on short-term temperature variations (El Niño/southern oscillation, volcanic aerosols and solar variability), the global warming signal becomes even more evident as noise is reduced. Lower-troposphere temperature responds more strongly to El Niño/southern oscillation and to volcanic forcing than surface temperature data. The adjusted data show warming at very similar rates to the unadjusted data, with smaller probable errors, and the warming rate is steady over the whole time interval. In all adjusted series, the two hottest years are 2009 and 2010.”

                http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/fulltext/

                Are you completely ignorant of the outstanding work of Bob Tisdale who completely demolishes the arguments that you have put forward. He conclusively shows that the impact of the El Nino/La Nina climate pattern upon world mean temperatures is non-linear and that its effects cannot be corrected for by simplistic arguments that correct for linear effects.

                One of his most telling arguments is the fact that, over the last 40 years, there has been no statically significant increase in the sea-surface temperatures in the 30 % of the World’s oceans that are located in the Eastern Equatorial and Tropical Pacific Ocean. Basic physics tells you that this could not happen if these oceans were being warmed by a combination of back-reflection of infra-red radiation from the atmosphere and atmospheric warming.

                I could go on and on… but what’s the point.

                51

              • #
                Backslider

                You throw out vague viking references

                Like I said, this one has you completely stumped (if you don’t know what “stumped” means then read a little about the game of cricket, you will soon catch on). That you choose to trivialize it rather than address it only shows how unscientific you yourself are.

                Let me show you the insignificance of your ignorance:

                Its a historical fact that the Vikings settled Greenland. Now, if you happen to be an archaeologist studying the Viking presence in Greenland, you will find it necessary to hack through permafrost to find any of their artifacts.

                What does this tell you? It’s not vague at all, in fact its obvious: the temperatures back then were way higher than they are today. Thus, if you want to begin preaching climatic catastrophism the way you do, then you will need to find evidence of catastrophe from back then. Mere speculation of what might happen is not enough, particularly considering that the World has been through higher temperatures than today quite often, including during recorded history and we can easily deduce from that history exactly what we can expect to happen. I can tell you one to get you started: The catastrophe when the Little Ice Age set in.

                When you have done all of that, please come back and tell us why the climate got warmer back then, since we all know it was not CO2 that caused it.

                You talk about storms as though because it is warmer there will be more energy in storms, however the scientific fact is that warming would in fact create milder weather. Please take the time to learn a little about how storms work, then you will see the truth of that.

                You harp on about science and in the same breath consensus, not realising that consensus is the antithesis of science. One of the cornerstones of true science is skepticism.

                You also harp on about peer review, as though if something has been peer reviewed then it must be true. There are plenty of peer reviewed papers that debunk your CAGW views. You go find them as I do not feel the need to debunk you by quoting papers when simple logic is enough.

                40

              • #
                Michael

                So again you guys provide very little science and think opinions carry any weight.

                Ian if Bob Tisdale has proved anything in regards to ENSO then can you please provide the link to his peer reviewed publication. I am sure you can appreciate that anybody can write anything they like on the internet, I could even put up a website and say that the sky is made of marshmallow, so until science has been peer reviewed by similar experts in the field and published in a relevent scientific publication where they have subjected their science to all the experts in the field then I am not interested. If they cannot critique or produce peer reveiwed science then to me their motives, methods and science is questionable.

                Again backslider I have never preached climate catastrophism, I have said that the science and current observations tell us that we will be making life more difficult than is necessary for future generations. Your motives are dishonest in trying to label me that way, so I will give you the term denier, I think it is only fair. You deny the science and produce anecdotal information as science and then make inferences not borne out by even your anecdotal observations. For instance your viking argument has no validity to the question of whether our current climate is affected by AGW. I have never denied that climate changes, it changes naturally for 4 billion years and I even believe it changes naturally now, with many cooling natural factors, but which are being overwridden by AGW and that is why the last 2 years where the hottest la nina affected years on record. The second reason why your claim of relevence is questionable is because it is regional in origin. Whether vikings settled part of Greenland or not the information says nothing about global conditions, also Greenland is huge and it comes quite far down south, so the climate is hugely variable from one part of greenland to another. So again, not science, and doubtful on usefulness.

                05

              • #
                Michael

                Backslider, please point to the science that says that a world warming would create milder storms. Again you are making statements of opinion as fact, I require (as I give) some sources for your claims. Please take into account I am talking about a world that is warming globally, in the lower atmosphere, including the oceans.

                yes I have noticed that you do not need to debunk me by quoting papers, that is because there aren’t any. Again an opinion without any proof or references. Every survey of the science I have seen overwhelmingly show nearly 0 peer reviewed science that debunks AGW.

                Consensus is not the science, consensus occurs over time when a theory has stood the test of time, experimentation and observation. Just like Einsteins theory of relativity, Evolution and plate tectonic. All started with huge skeptisism but over decades have developed consensus due to the strength of the science.
                Thanks

                “2004 article by geologist and historian of science Naomi Oreskes summarized a study of the scientific literature on climate change. [7] The essay concluded that there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. The author analyzed 928 abstracts of papers from refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, listed with the keywords “global climate change”. Oreskes divided the abstracts into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. 75% of the abstracts were placed in the first three categories, thus either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, thus taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change; none of the abstracts disagreed with the consensus position, which the author found to be “remarkable”. According to the report, “authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point.””
                http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveys_of_scientists%27_views_on_climate_change

                An investigation of 13,950 peer reviewed science articles found only 24 or 0.17% or 1 in 581 that reject global warming or endorse a cause other than CO2 emissions for observed warming.
                http://desmogblog.com/2012/11/15/why-climate-deniers-have-no-credibility-science-one-pie-chart

                “The number of papers rejecting AGW is a miniscule proportion of the published research, with the percentage slightly decreasing over time. Among papers expressing a position on AGW, an overwhelming percentage (97.2% based on self-ratings, 97.1% based on abstract ratings) endorses the scientific consensus on AGW.”
                http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article
                http://www.theconsensusproject.com/

                04

              • #
                Backslider

                anybody can write anything they like on the internet

                Just as anybody can write anything and have it peer reviewed….. so????

                30

              • #
                Backslider

                consensus occurs over time when a theory has stood the test of time, experimentation and observation.

                So, please point us all to the experimental science which proves that CO2 causes catastrophic global warming…..

                I am still waiting for your evidence of the catastrophic events which took place during the time that the Vikings settled Greenland, a time which was clearly warmer than today.

                30

              • #
                Backslider

                I have noticed that you do not need to debunk me by quoting papers, that is because there aren’t any.

                Sure there are…. thousands in fact. Try this one for a start: ENSO Influence on Atlantic hurricanes via tropospheric warming – B. H. Tang, J. D. Neelin

                If you do not understand the very basic science that storm intensity is relative to temperature difference between air masses, then you are simply an ignoramus.

                You argue that the polar regions are warming faster than topical, thus the temperature gradient would be lower, which would naturally lead to less intensity.

                Simple logic.

                40

              • #
                Michael

                Just as anybody can write anything and have it peer reviewed….. so????

                Actually no they cannot.
                Scientific Peer Review

                1. The researcher conducts his research and writes a paper.

                2. He submits that paper to a scientific journal that specialises in the field that is the topic of the paper.

                3. The editor selects researchers that specialise in the field of the paper to review its work. They will…

                a) Comment on the validity of the science identifying errors in science, data and methodology.

                b) Judge the significance or importance of the paper.

                c) Determine originality and identify missing or inaccurate references.

                d) Recommend that the paper be accepted or rejected.

                4. The researcher can fix the identified problems and resubmit.

                Typically over 90% of papers fail peer review.

                Once published to the scientific community then they have a chance to evaluate it and sometimes they will write a paper of rebuttal that wil also go through peer review. This is how real science advances.

                Denialist blog peer review

                1. Denialist blogger thinks of some hair brained scheme to throw doubt on the established science.

                2. Writes blog.

                3. Hits the post button.

                4. Instant celebrity and quoted worldwide by followers as having put the final nail in the global warming conspiracy.

                13

              • #
                Michael

                Try this one for a start: ENSO Influence on Atlantic hurricanes via tropospheric warming – B. H. Tang, J. D. Neelin

                Link please

                There are also many temperature gradients that cause storms. Ocean temperature, atmosphere temperature, land temperature etc. AGW causes all of these to warm at different rates, thereby changing their current gradients, some greater. ie the atmosphere warms faster than the ocean. The meandering arctic jetstream is just one, of which causes other problems. I have provided research (authored by Judith Curry) on how the Arctic jetstream is affecting NH climates.

                “While the Arctic region has been warming strongly in recent decades, anomalously large snowfall in recent winters has affected large parts of North America, Europe, and east Asia. Here we demonstrate that the decrease in autumn Arctic sea ice area is linked to changes in the winter Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation that have some resemblance to the negative phase of the winter Arctic oscillation. However, the atmospheric circulation change linked to the reduction of sea ice shows much broader meridional meanders in midlatitudes and clearly different interannual variability than the classical Arctic oscillation. This circulation change results in more frequent episodes of blocking patterns that lead to increased cold surges over large parts of northern continents. Moreover, the increase in atmospheric water vapor content in the Arctic region during late autumn and winter driven locally by the reduction of sea ice provides enhanced moisture sources, supporting increased heavy snowfall in Europe during early winter and the northeastern and midwestern United States during winter. We conclude that the recent decline of Arctic sea ice has played a critical role in recent cold and snowy winters. ”

                http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/02/17/1114910109.abstract

                13

              • #
                Michael

                So, please point us all to the experimental science which proves that CO2 causes catastrophic global warming…..

                I am still waiting for your evidence of the catastrophic events which took place during the time that the Vikings settled Greenland, a time which was clearly warmer than today.

                I have provided many sources of science for the radiative properties of CO2 above to cause global warming. In fact greenhouse gases cause the planet to be 30 deg c warmer than it would be without them.

                You have not proved that catastrophic events occured during the time the vikings settled greenland. In fact you have not provided any evidence on that topic at all, just general opinion statements. Nothing to prove.

                12

              • #
                Backslider

                You have not proved that catastrophic events occured during the time the vikings settled greenland.

                I have not suggested such a thing. It is YOU who needs to provide evidence of the catastrophes that took place during the last warming….. a warming that was greater than today. It is YOU who is harping on about coming catastrophe due to warming, thus you should be able to demonstrate this from the previous warming. You cannot.

                20

              • #
                Angry

                Nice cut and paste effort “Michael”.

                Clearly you failed both logic and science…..

                00

              • #
                Angry

                “Michael”,
                Your use of the offensive term DENIER loses you all credibility here.

                YOU are the real DENIER of actual science and a mere supporter of metaphysical mumbo jumbo.

                You would be right at home with cavemen worshiping trees, rocks etc……

                Are you sure that somebody doesn’t have to keep reminding you how and when to breathe ???

                00

          • #
            Rereke Whakaaro

            Michael,

            Is anyone here interested in honest arguments? or just word games.

            We are very interested in honest – and polite – discussion (call it arguments, if you like). But to discuss technical topics requires a clear use of language.

            A sphere is a ball. But a ball does not have to be spherical. So the usage of those two words is not interchangeable.

            Further up this thread, you were using AGW as a term, but were quoting the potentially dire impact of CAGW.

            That is a sloppy use of English, so please don’t accuse people of word games when the fault is your own.

            51

            • #
              Michael

              AGW does have a potentially dire impact, people suffering extreme weather currently would argue the impact is already dire, that does not mean I accept the term CAGW, especially since my request for an explanation of what you mean by CAGW has not been forthcoming.

              What I find is that most arguments here come as riddles with no relevence forthcoming (the viking reference) and with no scientific support or reference, just as statements like I am supposed to accept you are all celebrated climate scientists. I provide peer reveiwed reference for the vast majority of any claim I make. So basically your arguments and proof have been weak and unremarkable so far and with vague attempts to lable me negatively even though I have not used any purposefully derogatory terms myself.

              07

              • #
                Ian Wilson

                The people here have been very understanding and considerate of your posts given your complete ignorance of the skeptical case.

                It is though a five year old has stumbled into a discussion on quantum physics and started lecturing everyone on the topic based upon his knowledge of Bill-and-Ben the Flow Pot Men.

                Can I suggest that you visit internet sites like Climate Audit,Whatsupwiththat, Bishop Hill etc. and learn a little about the skeptical case.

                51

              • #
                Leo G

                AGW does have a potentially dire impact, people suffering extreme weather currently would argue the impact is already dire, that does not mean I accept the term CAGW, especially since my request for an explanation of what you mean by CAGW has not been forthcoming.

                Are you genuinely that poorly informed?
                Are you unaware of the historical Catastrophism vs Uniformitarianism debates in the earth sciences?
                If you had checked the etymology of the word catastrophe you would have found that it involves the concept of a fatal turning point.
                A Control Theory conceptualisation would involve an abrupt shift from one quasi-stable state to another.
                Climatologists have hypothesised an anthropogenic increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and a consequential logarithmic increase in global atmospheric temperatures (AGW). Some have hypothesised an enhanced global warming associated with a positive water vapour feedback effect which will effect an abrupt worldwide climate shift- one inimical to human civilisation (CAGW).
                The next time you comment here, don’t suggest other commenters are dishonest when the truth is just that you are too lazy to consult a dictionary.

                33

              • #
                Backslider

                people suffering extreme weather currently would argue the impact is already dire

                There has been extreme weather all through human history and beyond. You have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that AGW has caused any severe weather events.

                most arguments here come as riddles with no relevence forthcoming (the viking reference)

                Oh my, the Vikings really got you, didn’t it? If you think that a warmer period in recent history than today has no relevance then we are all wasting our time talking with you.

                Its no riddle sonny, please see my reply to you above.

                41

              • #
                Michael

                Sorry Ian but I generally stick to actual peer reviewed science for my knowledge. Taking information from opinion bloggers like they are gospel seems more like a religion to me, and especially considering that some that you mention have been woefully wrong in many areas.

                So I will stick to science and you can have your religion.

                13

              • #
                Michael

                Leo any even casual look at the planets climate past would show that large climate shifts are indeed possible, and if anything, over its 4 billion years happen quite often. The Milankovitch cycles were a slight orbital shift can set of a sequence of events, including greenhouse feedbacks, that drop the globes temps by a mere 6 deg c and that sends us into an ice age with kms of ice over southern canada for example is a clear sign that shifts are common. Then you can look at the PETM and many others.

                So anybody that things they know that small factors can cause large climate shifts is just ignoring their history. Do I think that is likely in this sense? Well as I have said multiple times above I don’t think so, but I cannot gaurantee it. I think extreme weather will increase (and I have posted all over this site observational research on increasing trends in that area), sea levels will increase and ocean acidification will increase and at a minimum this will make life a lot more difficult and cause unneccessary pain and suffering for our children and future generations. How can we take that kind of risk when the majority of the science and observations are pointing in that direction. It is simple insurance to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to stop concentrations increasing, which are already higher than they were in millions of years, because we cannot gaurantee what such an uncontrolled geoengineering experiment will ultimately produce.

                04

              • #
                Backslider

                Sorry Ian but I generally stick to actual peer reviewed science for my knowledge

                So for you its argumentum ad auctoritatem and nothing else? You are a really funny person… in a very strange way.

                I’ll say it again: Not all peer reviewed science agrees. Because something is peer reviewed does not make it correct.

                I’ll also say: It does not take peer review to tear something patently stupid to shreds.

                30

              • #
                Backslider

                just ignoring their history

                Which is why you refuse to discuss the Vikings settling Greenland. Which is why you make light of it and pretend its irrelevant to a discussion of global warming……

                Who is ignoring history Michael?

                30

              • #
                Michael

                Because something is peer reviewed does not make it correct.

                True, but it does mean it has gone through a thorough process of reveiw by other experts , published in an expert journal and then been subjected to the judgement of all other experts in the field. Quite a bit different to a blogger having an opinion and hitting the post button. Aslo if something in peer review is questionable the scientific way to rebut it is within the peer review process where the critisism is similarly checked, not by a blogger whinging about it and hitting the post button.

                Which is why you refuse to discuss the Vikings settling Greenland. Which is why you make light of it and pretend its irrelevant to a discussion of global warming……

                Who is ignoring history Michael?

                Actually you are. As pointed out, for the majority of the Earths past there has been constant severe climate changes resulting from small changes in forcings. As to your viking stuff, I have responded to it as much as is possible for the little actual information you have supplied. Yes, there were vikings, yes, the climate changes naturally, is changing naturally now in fact. I do not deny any of it. As to being warmer? I have produced research and a graph with a vast array of different proxies that would question that statement. You haven’t really provided anything of substance for me to add to.

                http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/globalwarming/ar4-fig-6-10.gif

                13

            • #
              Backslider

              You haven’t really provided anything of substance for me to add to.

              Yes I have, however you choose to ignore it. I pointed out the fact that if you are an archaeologist studying the Vikings in Greenland then you need to hack through permafrost to find any of their artifacts. This clearly shows that Greenland was warmer than it is today. I have asked you to show the catastrophic weather events related to that warming. You cannot.

              Its a known fact that “climate scientists” have done everything possible to deny both the MWP and LIA…. so???

              You harp on about peer review, while at the same time denigrating anybody who has an opinion and who post to blogs. So what the fuck are YOU doing posting your own opinions to blogs????

              10

              • #
                Michael

                Not my opinions, actual peer reveiwed science from recent research from 78 scientists and a whole host of different proxies confirming that now is hotter globally, all been presented to you. It is your opinion only that you have presented. How about some actual evidence?

                01

  • #
    Eddy Aruda

    From the videos i thought I was watching a rerun of In Search Of where the late warmist Steven schneider was predicting an imminent ice age. The videos are eerily similar!

    80

  • #
    Ian Wilson

    Backslider,

    You may want to direct Michael to the scientific debate about “touch-stone” paper:

    http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/ngeo1797.html

    that is going on over at Climate Audit. Hopefully, if he reads some of the comments there it might correct some of
    his naive beliefs about the MWP and LIA.

    http://climateaudit.org/2013/05/09/pages2k-online-journal-club/

    30

  • #
    Paul Bunyon

    They have settled on the whole “weird weather” meme precisely because the Earth has stopped warming. You can tell it’s a strategy, because everyone adopted it simultanously. There hasn’t been warming in 15+ years so they have to adopt a new issue to keep the masses scared and willing to give up their money. They’ve settled for “extreme weather” because there will always be some extreme weather event somewhere in the world, usually multiple of them.

    They use to predict dry, drought weather. Now anything will suffice. Dry, wet. Cold, hot. Anything.

    These people are soothsayers, not scientists. They are doing far more damage to their cause than good. They seem content to carry on their fiction so long as other “true believers” accept it to be true. But other “true believers” have a low threshold for subjective opinions. They’ll accept outright contradictions because they believe in the Cult of Climatology, not because the science itself is compelling. But most people are not part of this cult and they are far more aware of the contradictions than the alarmists believe. Every year support for this science fiction declines. I expect that to continue.

    30

    • #

      Paul, you’re right that “wierd weather” is the replacement for the warming that isn’t happening recently, but it doesn’t have to be a coordinated strategy. Those who follow the herd will pick up any useful meme quickly. They are easy to train.

      40

      • #
        Michael

        Joanne how do you answer all the research based on observations that show that trends in extreme precipitation, hot days over cold days, hot night over cold nights and much more are increasing.

        “Extremely hot temperatures around the world are 40% more common today than 60 years ago according to new research from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.”

        https://www.climatescience.org.au/content/146-extreme-hot-temperatures-increase-40-world-heats

        “Monthly temperature extremes have become much more frequent, as measurements from around the world indicate. On average, there are now five times as many record-breaking hot months worldwide than could be expected without long-term global warming, shows a study now published in Climatic Change. In parts of Europe, Africa and southern Asia the number of monthly records has increased even by a factor of ten. 80 percent of observed monthly records would not have occurred without human influence on climate, concludes the authors-team of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Complutense University of Madrid. “

        http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/monatliche-hitzerekorde-haben-sich-durch-die-erderwaermung-verfuenffacht

        “If you look at maximum temperatures, we are now finding that the rate at which we get record high temperatures is three times faster than the rate at which we get record low temperature.””
        http://theconversation.edu.au/as-climate-warms-heat-waves-outpace-cold-snaps-three-to-one-11491

        “Lead author Dr Seth Westra said, “The results are that rainfall extremes are increasing on average globally. They show that there is a 7% increase in extreme rainfall intensity for every degree increase in global atmospheric temperature.”

        http://phys.org/news/2013-02-extreme-rainfall-linked-global.html

        Global observed changes in daily climate extremes of temperature and precipitation

        http://www.knmi.nl/publications/showAbstract.php?id=706

        02

      • #
        Michael

        How can you deny that climates are changing due to AGW with even just the research available, let alone observations of increasing floods and droughts occuring over the last 4 years.

        “The last decade has produced record-breaking heat waves in many parts of the world. At the same time, it was globally the warmest since sufficient measurements started in the 19th century. Here we show that, worldwide, the number of local record-breaking monthly temperature extremes is now on average five times larger than expected in a climate with no long-term warming. This implies that on average there is an 80 % chance that a new monthly heat record is due to climatic change. Large regional differences exist in the number of observed records. Summertime records, which are associated with prolonged heat waves, increased by more than a factor of ten in some continental regions including parts of Europe, Africa, southern Asia and Amazonia. Overall, these high record numbers are quantitatively consistent with those expected for the observed climatic warming trend with added stationary white noise. In addition, we find that the observed records cluster both in space and in time. Strong El Niño years see additional records superimposed on the expected long-term rise. Under a medium global warming scenario, by the 2040s we predict the number of monthly heat records globally to be more than 12 times as high as in a climate with no long-term warming.”

        http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-012-0668-1

        03

        • #
          Backslider

          observations of increasing floods and droughts occuring over the last 4 years

          Oh, the last four years? Really??? Oh my, that is a VERY statistically significant time period!!!

          30

        • #
          Backslider

          …. and YOU accuse people of cherry picking????

          30

    • #
      Michael

      The facts do not support your argument. Climate according to the WMO is at least 30 years. Real science says that you use as much data as is avaliable. So cherry picking a selected period and data set that is not global and ignoring the long term trend and larger timescales is not science. It is cherry picking and hiding the truth. IT IS A PLANET, natural forcings and factors are in play that are not predictable, but you guys ignore natural fluctuations and long term trends like they don’t exist. Even with cooling natural factors the 2001-2010 decade was the hottest on the industrial record on every continent and the last 2 years were the hottest la nina affected years on record. Also being ignored is that our planet is mostly water, and water takes a long time to heat and periods occur where that heat is taken deeper, and that research on ocean warming have shown that that is occuring unabated. So their is science and there is manipulation.

      “A decade is the minimum possible timeframe for meaningful assessments of climate change,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. “WMO’s report shows that global warming was significant from 1971 to 2010 and that the decadal rate of increase between 1991-2000 and 2001-2010 was unprecedented. Rising concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are changing our climate, with far reaching implications for our environment and our oceans, which are absorbing both carbon dioxide and heat.”

      “Natural climate variability, caused in part by interactions between our atmosphere and oceans – as evidenced by El Niño and La Niña events – means that some years are cooler than others. On an annual basis, the global temperature curve is not a smooth one. On a long-term basis the underlying trend is clearly in an upward direction, more so in recent times” said Mr Jarraud.

      http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/images/clip_image002_006.gif

      http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_976_en.html

      “The decade 2001-2010 was the warmest since records began in 1850, with global land and sea surface temperatures estimated at 0.46°C above the long-term average (1961-1990) of 14.0°C. Nine of these years were among the ten warmest on record. The warmest year on record was 2010, closely followed by 2005, with a mean temperature estimated at 0.53°C above the long-term average. It was the warmest decade ever recorded for global land surface, sea surface and for every continent. ” http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_943_en.html

      14

      • #
        Backslider

        Real science says that you use as much data as is avaliable.

        Right….. and this is why you avoid discussing the fact (and even denying!) that the Vikings settled Greenland.

        41

        • #
          Michael

          Liar. I have not refused to discuss or answer the viking issue. I have covered it above.

          14

          • #
            Backslider

            Liar. I have not refused to discuss or answer the viking issue. I have covered it above.

            What? Are my pants on fire?

            No, you have not discussed anything. You have not addressed the very simple and logical question, which requires no peer review, of the Vikings settling Greenland, with their artifacts now buried in permafrost and which logically shows that it was warmer then than it is now. I don’t care how many proxies you care to throw around because THE OBSERVATION clearly shows what is true: IT WAS WARMER THEN THAN IT IS NOW.

            On the basis of the fact that it was warmer back then than now, you should be able to show us all the catastrophic consequences during that warming. >>>>>> You cannot.

            40

            • #
              Michael

              You have actually not PROVED any of your claims. Do you understand the concept of PROVED and SCIENCE.

              As I have said, I am happy to accept that their were vikings and that they made it to greenland, apart from that you have not PROVED anything. You have given me 0 sources and evidence to date to respond to. If I was you I would be embarrassed with your actions. In contrast I have provided peer reviewed science from 78 researchers from over 60 different institutions that have shown that now is hotter globally and that the LIA and MWP were largely regional (big tip for you, greenland is a region). I also provided a large number of proxies from different sources that confirm the same thing. So one side science, your side hmm, I struggle to call it opinion. It is actually getting amusing your desperation to make the vikings an issue, like it proves something.

              Thanks for the smile 🙂

              02

  • #

    […] – JO NOVA BLOG Witchcraft on Catalyst — Scary weather is coming, it’s all our fault, be afraid! http://joannenova.com.au/2013/07/witchcraft-on-catalyst-scary-weather-is-coming-its-all-our-fault-be… Like this:Like […]

    00

  • #
    Backslider

    How can you deny that climates are changing due to AGW

    How can we deny something that has not been proven?

    We are waiting for the scientific proof, that is all.

    We do not deny anything. We simply do not accept something that has not been proven.

    So, if you could kindly point us all to the science that proves such a thing we are all ears.

    31

    • #
      Michael

      I have provided above research on the trends in daily climate extremes and precipitation, trends in day and night heat records, and trends in extreme precipitation events and trends in monthly temp extremes globally. I have also provided peer reveiwed science (one of the authors being Judith Curry) linking Northern Hemisphere climate changes to changes in the jetstream due to a warming Arctic.

      Now you can continue to ignore and deny evidence I put forward, but that only shows that you are dishonestly mainpulating the discussion. You are also a hypocrite always demanding ‘proof’ while you provide none and make meaningless statements of opinion as if they are fact and mean something.

      14

      • #
        Backslider

        I have provided above research on the trends in daily climate extremes and precipitation, trends in day and night heat records, and trends in extreme precipitation events and trends in monthly temp extremes globally.

        We are not interested in statistical analysis and people’s opinions of the same. This is not science.

        We want the physics that shows that CO2 in the atmosphere causes catastrophic warming.

        Here is that link for you again – I eagerly await your rebuttal.

        40

        • #
          Michael

          Peer reviewed statistical analysis is science. I have provided many sources of the radiative properties of CO2. Are you seriously saying that you do not believe that CO2 causes warming in the lower atmosphere? Are you seriously saying that the planet is not 30 deg c warmer due to the effect of greenhouse gases. Please clarify. Do other posters and Joanne Nova agree with you? I really want to know. I thought this was a science blog.

          Your link is not peer reveiwed science. Seriously if the greenhouse effect has been shown to be false then scientists would be falling over themselves to prove it and publish it. To overturn over 100 years of science would surely mean a nobel prize for somebody. So I do not need to respond to an individual, unsupported opinion. Provide actual science, do you actually understand the concept?

          02

  • #
    Dave

    Cut & Paster of the Week:

    Goes to MICHAEL the CAGW representative from the IPCC.

    “Again backslider I have never preached climate catastrophism”

    Here’s a few from this one thread:
    1. It will have mostly negative consequences for us
    2. The worrying trend in West Antarctica with the ice sheets being eroded
    3. “2012 was warmest and second most extreme year on record for the contiguous U.S.
    4. The four classes of extremes — high heat, heavy precipitation and floods, duration and intensity of droughts and extremes related to higher sea levels
    5. Extremely hot temperatures around the world are 40% more common today
    6. “Monthly temperature extremes have become much more frequent
    7. the recent decline of Arctic sea ice has played a critical role in recent cold and snowy winters. ”
    8. [T]his year’s record sea-ice melt might foreshadow a harsh winter in parts of Europe
    9. It is now ranked as one of the fastest-warming places on earth.”
    10.so important for our future if you cannot read or understand the science.
    11.I also object to the term alarmist.
    12.you should show me the respect I have shown LOL
    13.first decade of the 21st century hottest on the instrumental record on EVERY continent
    14.Arctic melting faster than everywhere else

    AT this point he turns emotional:

    15.for the sake of our kids and future generations.
    16.take a look at your kids and think about this objectively.
    17.lets find solutions before it is to late for our children.
    18.Opinion bloggers and petitions carry no weight.
    19.Russia, USA, China, Canada, Iraq etc, agree with ANTHROPOGENIC climate change.
    20.I agree with Antropogenic Climate Change
    21.more difficult and less habitable for future generations.
    22.They may be minor, they may be catastrophic
    23.So if we care about our kids and future generations
    24.So I am not being dishonest
    25.I never said I had CAGW views LOL
    26.7 billion (and growing) humans (which is my concern)
    27.Sea levels are rising, the ocean is acidifying, extreme weather is increasing
    28.Happy now, your arguments is pathetic, because you have a need to be pedantic, I am wrong?
    29.ocean acidity has increased by 30%
    30.to mitigate and adapt for the sake of future generations.
    31.I won’t bore everybody by copying and pasting here. LOL
    32.This will cause pain and suffering that was unnecessary
    33.most of yours is just opinion based on ideological beliefs.
    34.So again you guys provide very little science
    35.more difficult than is necessary for future generations
    36.Consensus is not the science
    37.I have not used any purposefully derogatory terms myself.
    38.cause unneccessary pain and suffering for our children and future generations

    There’s heaps more, but this is The CAGW chook that’s just had his head cut off. I remember when we had chooks, once you cut their head off, “they ran around like mad headless chooks” faster and all over the place compared to the ones that still owned their head.

    This is one of The Last Headless Chook CAGW Trolls, and he’s cranky and all over the place.

    But terrific for a laugh. And he said this:

    I never said I had CAGW views

    LOL

    31

    • #
      Michael

      Yep you can typically go for the person and ignore that the majority of the statements came from the peer reveiwed papers I presented. Proof that was continuously demanded of me (although proof from posters here of opinions was rarely forthcoming). I could similarly go through any of the posters here and make a similar list of copy and post clips out of context and say it means something, but all it tells me is that this is a fairly mean blog that mostly avoids the science and prefers to go for the man due to their lack of evidence.

      15

      • #
        Dave

        Michael,

        I am sorry, but it is your continual use of authority and statements like:
        Peer Review is the only authority,
        Our childrens future is in danger

        I am not a scientist like you are, I am the average person, yet you continue to RAM down our media, all these lies from fools like Tim Flannery, Parncutt, Gore all of them with so many bullshlit predictions you wonder why the trust has dissolved. Including yourself with links to the Conversation???

        Get over the totally “I know the truth” garbage, the average person is over it. You change the warnings weekly. It’s hotter now, it’s colder now, it’s wetter now, it’s dryer now.

        How can science operate like the odds on a horse race. You have to state your findings and your predictions over a long period of time, not crap on with different links and stuff every day.

        What is your reason for fighting this week for justification of CAGW or AGW. Is it to save the human race, the earth or what? How the stuff can you justify windmills chopping and destroying wildlife and altering the plant distribution in their locations. Never mind their total incapability of producing reliable electricity. Your environmental ethics have disappeared into the ether, as now you allow massive offshore manufacture of rare earth mining and refining in OTHER places, except your back yard to produce your new renewable Green unsustainable vandalism occurring all over the world.

        Biofuels
        Windmills
        Solar
        Geothermal
        Wave energy
        Desalination
        Batteries
        EPVV etc etc

        These are all a result of your madness currently taking over, and all I want is an answer on who and why are you spreading this garbage which comes out of a different mouth as a different message each week.

        CAN WE HAVE SOME ONE IN AUSTRALIA STATE THE FOLLOWING:

        “I know the truth, and here is the data for you to look at”

        It’s not proved, it’s only peer reviewed. This you ONLY answer.
        Think about how others think.

        41

        • #
          Michael

          Wow, have we met before? This is my first time on this site.

          Peer reveiw is the best method we have of verifying and progressing science. Science is not progressed by opinion bloggers and think tanks. At least with peer review several experts in the field have reviewed a thoroughly researched paper for data and method and checked that it has not been done before or been superseded elsewhere. Errors are checked and can be corrected and then if it does get approved (most aren’t) it is published in a publication that is hopefully perused by experts in the same field as the paper so that the scientists in the field at large can evaluate and critique it using peer reveiw if they think it is wrong. It is not perfect, publications that are not in the same area can be chosen, mistakes can be made, its human nature, but in the end the scientific community at large will evaluate it and comment on it and the mistakes will generally be found and corrected. It is infinitely more thorough than an opinion blogger hitting the post button and then read by a myriad of followers without the academic background treating it as gospel and deciding an opinion on something they know little about.

          Flannery and Gore are not my heros, as shown above I focus mostly on the peer reviewed science and to my mind that is where I am going to get the best information possible as well as general international science organisations. I do have a science degree but I am not a climate scientist and I try and understand the process and go to the science to check any claims. Generally speaking many of the times that wrong predictions are thrown at Flannery and Gore etc they are comments taken out of context, made by individual scientists and are not the science in general. If you go to the initial IPCC documents and other science publications you generally find that what is happening was predicted and outlandish claims were never made.

          Generally speaking the science of greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect is accepted science and physics for a long time. It is well accepted that we have increased concentrations of CO2 by 40% since industrialisation. That this will cause warming, which has occured. Most of the fingerprints and general consequences predicted form the beginning have been measured and observed. But it is evolving and improving science and there are many natural variables that are unpredictable, but as time has gone on these factors have been taken into account and measured as well. So basically at the current state of the science, it overwhelmingly confirms AGW and that without the extra CO2 emissions you cannot explain the current warming and the observations of our changing climate and climatic trends.

          14

          • #
            Backslider

            I focus mostly on the peer reviewed science and to my mind that is where I am going to get the best information possible

            No. You focus only on the “peer reviewed” garbage that supports your meme. You do not look at anything peer reviewed that is against your beliefs. You have NEVER tried to falsify your own beliefs/religion.

            You are definitely not a scientist.

            30

            • #
              Michael

              How arrogant of you to presume what I have done. For your information I have read physics books, downloaded physics lectures to watch and listen to and done everything I can to learn the actual physics going on. When I first started trying to find out about climate change I investigated every skeptic claim. I read it, went to the science and tried to understand it, and found that the vast majority were baseless. Mostly relying on cherry picking or focussing on non scientific principles. Such as
              * The vikings settled greenland so climate change is fake
              * Climate occurs naturally so climate change is fake
              * Its the sun, so climate change is fake
              * Temps haven’t risen in …(select cherry picked period and data set)so …fake
              * Weather has occured previously so climate change is fake
              * CO2 is odourless and colourless so climate change is fake
              * CO2 is a tiny weeny amount so climate change is fake
              * The government want to take all our money so climate change is fake
              * The scientists need more ferraris and hotels in the hamptons so …fake
              * There is a big global conspiracy (apparently its been going for 100 years, includes nearly every country and scientific organisation on the planet and they can control the weather and Arctic ice and are really really good at keeping a secret, even though most governments don’t like or talk to each other) so climate change is fake
              * and much much more pointless, illogical and unscientific arguments

              I also checked peer reviewed that skeptics do put forward and in most cases find that the science has been misrepresented or taken out of context and in the majority of cases with conclusions that support AGW. So basically I came to the conclusion that it is real and a threat to my children through many years of slogging, reading, arguing and learning. So don’t you dare try to presume who I am. I love my kids and my grankid with one on the way, and there is no way anybody can gaurantee that this great big geoengineering experiment that has changed our CO2 by 40% so that it is higher than for over a million years, over non geological timescales (as happens normally) is not a danger to future generations. So basic cautionary principles apply, lets stop spewing CO2 willy nilly and let the system settle and see where we are headed, our kids deserve it.

              02

  • #
    Safetyguy66

    The Environment/Ecology team at my new workplace (who the powers saw fit to put me in with, God has a sense of humor) came in the morning after that show and the comments were basically

    “oh its so scary I dont even want to think about it”
    “I made my kids go to bed, I dont want them to see what we are doing to the planet”
    “Its basically all over red rover”

    I somehow managed to sit quietly in the background and suck it up. Im only in my 3rd week in this job so expressing my views to that audience right now would be “unwise” at best…

    Its like being a freakin leper I tells ya…

    10

    • #
      Angry

      “Safetyguy66”,
      You need to speak up and not let this BULLSHIT & PROPAGANDA go unchallenged……..

      00

  • #
    Don Gaddes

    The Catalyst program did not mention ENSO. Why – when it has been blamed for everything, and has been the basis of all BoM ‘forecasting,’ since being ‘exported’ from the University of East Anglia in the mid 1970’s?
    ENSO has always been (and remains) a Fantasy. (A very much peer reviewed and vastly taxpayer funded Fantasy!)

    Alex S. Gaddes described the influence of Solar induced ‘Dry’ Cycles in his work ‘Tomorrow’s Weather'(1990)He also produced a method to forecast their exact arrival and duration. (Note, the entire planet is now under the influence of a Two Solar/Earth Year ‘Wet’/Normal Period. The next ‘Dry’ Cycle will begin over China from mid February 2014,(circa 110 degrees Longitude East of Prime.)and reach the Australian East Coast in early January 2015. These ‘Dry’ Cycles travel longitudonaly East to West, (thirty degrees/month with the Solar Orbit of the Earth’s Magnetic Field.)This means both the Arctic and Antarctic are influenced simultaneously.
    Surface temperatures fluctuate as the ‘Dry’ Cycles pass over the various temperature stations, though they remain static overall, as the ‘Dry’ Cycle duration equals ‘Wet’/Normal Periods over time. Alleviation of these ‘Dry’ Cycles may occur via volcanic activity,(albedo,) though the Cycles themselves are immutable.
    The Solar instigator of these ‘Dry’ Cycles has yet to be determined, though interaction with Jet Stream Cloud by Solar Particles is a likely avenue of research. (Svensmark Hypothesis?)Alex S. Gaddes suspected Neutrinos.

    An updated version of this work (including ‘Dry Cycle forecasts to 2055,) is available as a free pdf from dongaddes93@gmail.com

    10