In a followup to the post If the BOM was incompetent, the ABC would be the last to find out, Ken Stewart has a reply from the BOM.
The news story run by the ABC said the current Queensland drought was the worst in 80 years. When Ken pointed out that the BOM’s own graphs showed that the drought in 2003 was even worse, and the conditions were not that unusual, the ABC effectively said they were parroting BOM statements which, ahem, is all any public broadcaster could be expected to do, right? It’s not like we pay the 1.1 billion-dollar-ABC to ask our bureaucrats hard questions, is it?
Ken wrote to the BOM, who have now replied, and he’s posted it: “How not to admit a mistake”. The BOM blandly point him at their official drought statement which contradicts what their spokesman said:
The current drought in Queensland is comparable to the 2002–2003 drought, which was perhaps more severe in terms of rainfall deficiencies that occurred at times over a very large area. Historical data shows that the current drought is perhaps a one in ten or twenty year event over a significant part of inland eastern Australia (see for example the 24-month deciles map for 2013–2014), but very severe in some places. For example, some location in central Queensland the present deficiencies are the most severe on record, and in addition have been accompanied by record high temperatures. See: 24-month maximum temperature deciles map for 2013–2014.
So both the ABC and the BOM are palming off responsibility for misinformation being broadcast to the public. Neither are quoting the news story, but cite other documents which were not part of the broadcast, as if the invisible caveats makes this OK.
Ken has some questions for the BOM:
I will email them again asking for a specific reply, preferably Yes or No, to the questions:
Was Mr Jeff Sabburg correct in saying “In terms of rainfall deficiencies the comparison is we haven’t seen this across Queensland at least since the 1927- 1929 depression drought”?
Was Mr Sabburg correct in saying “37.3% of the state was covered by the lowest rainfall on record”?
If the answer to either of these is “No”, will the Bureau immediately issue a correction in a media release?
I would like to know if the BOM is concerned that the ABC has misinformed the public about a climate factor. Is it part of the BOM charter that it provides accurate information to the Australian public? For all the farmers who are making major life and investment decisions based on BOM information and news of fictitious “drought trends”, will the BOM be compensating those who suffer financially?
Will the ABC?
Thanks Jo. I expect a reply by the end of the week and will let you and everyone know about the answers to those three simple questions.
KS
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Thanks Ken,
I can hardly wait for the response.
However, what makes you think that the BOM will respond promptly, or even reply at all?
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They’re supposed to reply within 5 working days.
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On the disinterest on the facts, do Australians know that Queensland has been piloting the UNESCO, post-knowledge, transdisciplinary model for K-12 education? It’s emphasis is on changing how students perceive the world and interpret their daily experiences. Truth and facts are not the point. An emotional belief in the need for transformations is.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/opting-out-as-the-remedy-may-mean-accidentally-accelerating-nonconsensual-transformations/
If that’s the purpose of education and it is going global as the model, why would anyone care what the actual facts are. Those facts must be ignored if they are inconsistent with the desired mental models.
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This is an excellent approach to getting balance, aunty needs to be satirised for the good of the country. Great work Ken.
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As I said, the green worriers can lie/obfuscate as much as they wish, as no one in the MSM will take them to task and, unfortunately, sites such as this and others that do, never see the light of day as far as the masses are concerned.
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Thank you Jo, but integrity would be required.
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But WILL they ? The ABC ?
Only if forced to do so …..
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Don’t expect the owners’ (ie the Australian taxpayers) representatives (ie the gummit of cowardly and craven Coalition members) to do anything which may upset Team Australia.
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There are more questions about this deliberate misinformation. Lima, Peru. Did Mr Saarburg attend? In fact who from the BOM attended? Did anyone from the ABC attend?
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.
Along with the ABC is Fairfax
Here quoting Bureau of Meteorology’s head of climate analysis, David Jones.
That was in 2008, the head of BOM Climate Science who got it as wrong as Tim Flannery and his famous quote:
It’s all about alarmism, and the money
The ABC & Fairfax are full of the same ostriches with heads in the mud.
Just tell them Birdsville races have been canceled due to drought rain
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October 1st 2014.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/summer-201415-weather-forecast-bushfires-heatwaves-and-severe-heat/story-e6frflp0-1227076059759
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Doesn’t the ABC have a “fact checker”?
ABC Fact Check determines the accuracy of claims by politicians, public figures, advocacy groups and institutions engaged in the public debate.
Should they be asked to check the non-facts reported by the BOM through the ABC?
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The fact checker is there to serve one purpose and that is to hand pick “facts” that can be then skewed in a report against the Government. You will never hear the fact checking unit report on anything to do with Labour, The Greens, minority groups or ABC journalists. Its sole purpose is to nit pick at Government statements.
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Maybe we should send ABC fact-checker the following BoM reports in order to help it solve it.
The annual 2014 summary for Queensland – no mention about the worst drought or 37% of state with lowest rainfall on record.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/annual/qld/summary.shtml
or here (no 37% showing up here)
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/drought/
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But it’s only to check non-progressive lies, er, facts.
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This sort of rubbish published in tech sites doesn’t help either: http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/13/ted-cruz-james-inofe-policy/. Surprisingly, every tech site that I visit, or used to visit, appears to be run by full accredited global warming worriers.
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The ABC is rapidly becoming (if not already there) just conduit of nonsense, misinformation, bias and urban myth, masquerading as quality journalism and reporting.
The staff of the ABC like to think of themselves as “superior” intellectually to anyone who does not work at the ABC. They are graduates of social sciences (lol an oxymoron if ever there was one), student unionists and green sympathisers. They regard themselves as beyond question, particularly if those questions come from the “stupid general public” whos function is to pay their wages and shut up about it.
They broadcast to a “fanbase” of aspiring pseudo intellectuals whos minds are so closed due to their already omnipotent knowledge, that the half baked factoids they pick up from the ABC are just re-spewed to each other over weak soy lattes and exchanged as facts without a single notion of verification being required. A conversation among the genuine fans of the ABC would be enough to melt down the BS alarm on QI if it were ever recorded and played back to their fact checkers.
I went for a 30 minute drive this morning and in that time I heard 2 blatent misrepresentation of facts, virtually one after the other.
In the first a reporter spoke to a cherry grower near Hobart and asked him “how much of your crop do you think was damaged in last nights rain”. The grower replied that he had not been out to look yet, but it could be as much as 40-50%. The reporter then ended the interview and closed with “that was a cherry grower near Hobart who lost 50% of his crop in last nights rain”. Half an unverified factoid becomes concrete data with a wave of the hand for this reporter.
A little later we had the statement “the cartoons in Charlie Hebdo would not be published in Australia due to Section 18c of the Race Discrimination Act.” This is another massive over reach on the part of the ABC to try and paint the Government as restraining free speech, when they themselves railed agaibnst the removal of 18c when it was proposed. But there is one slightly larger and glaringly obvious problem with this notion (apart form the fact that it would be for a court to decide anyway) and that is that 18c refers specifically to “race”
RACIAL DISCRIMINATION ACT 1975 – SECT 18C
Offensive behaviour because of race, colour or national or ethnic origin
(1) It is unlawful for a person to do an act, otherwise than in private, if:
(a) the act is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people; and
(b) the act is done because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the other person or of some or all of the people in the group.
Note: Subsection (1) makes certain acts unlawful. Section 46P of the Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986 allows people to make complaints to the Australian Human Rights Commission about unlawful acts. However, an unlawful act is not necessarily a criminal offence. Section 26 says that this Act does not make it an offence to do an act that is unlawful because of this Part, unless Part IV expressly says that the act is an offence.
(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), an act is taken not to be done in private if it:
(a) causes words, sounds, images or writing to be communicated to the public; or
(b) is done in a public place; or
(c) is done in the sight or hearing of people who are in a public place.
(3) In this section:
“public place” includes any place to which the public have access as of right or by invitation, whether express or implied and whether or not a charge is made for admission to the place.
Islam is not a RACE! Nor is it an ethnicity a colour or a nationality.
A court may indeed find a broader interpretation of this provision should it be tested. But on the face of it, it is ridiculous to confuse religion with race, ethnicity or nationality and then make so called informed legal reporting statements on that basis.
The ABC has allowed itself to be hijacked by narrow interest groups. It no longer cares about facts, truth, quality journalism or accurate reporting. It exists purely to promote the interests of some of the most fringe groups in society, like that somehow is the purpose of their funding and mission. If the so called “fact checking” unit ran an investigation on ABC reporting, it would have its work guaranteed for the next 10 years just trying to sort out the utter rubbish that pours daily form the mouths of the geniuses behind the nonsense that is the ABC.
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Sell the ABC! It was conceived in a time long ago, based on the same ideas as the BBC, a strictly politically independent source of accurate reporting in a pre TV and radio world which served local and social areas not serviced by newspapers and local radio. They are needed in a satellite, internet world where even newspapers are dying from competition. The 1970s SBS as well, serving a multicultural nation which was not otherwise served. How many ethnic groups actually have no alternative today? How many need or care about the SBS, funded also at public expense.
Now that the ABC/SBS have morphed into a huge politically active fiercely unaccountable Green/Communist groups, they can earn their living by charging those who care, not everyone and without choice. It is taxation without representation or accountability.
At an annual cost of $57 p.a. for every person and $570 p.a. for every nett tax positive person, it is time for the 1,000 journalists of ‘our’ ABC to work for their living. Sell the ABC. Let Mark Scott justify his $800,000pa salary, twice that of the heads of the armed forces with 10x the responsibility. Let them charge their acolytes who prefer their own extremist TV, radio and now internet channels at everyone else’s expense.
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Sorry, they are NOT needed.
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Out of curiosity I looked up the rain records for S. Tas. There was only between 30 mm. and 70 mm., 1 to 3 inches and no hail, so I don’t think it was all that bad, sure a little unexpected for summer which is usually dry. Actually the cherry growers moved to the Derwent Valley, which is fairly dry, because they could irrigate from the river rather than relying on rainfall around Kettering and further south down the Channel.
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I’ve noticed over the last few Months how the weather report at the end of the ABC News here in Queensland has very subtly changed.
Temperatures that over the last few, well, Decades in fact, have been considered normal for Summer here in Queensland now have the word extreme attached to them. Previously, they were just reported as the ….. temperature, and now they are somehow suddenly ….. extreme, with barely a change in the numbers, if at all.
Also, it seems that they now have to find a way to work the word Cyclone into every weather report with the words, probably, possibly, could, might, watching, maybe.
Over the last two weeks the weather reporter, usually Jenny Woodward, has mentioned five possibilities for Cyclones, two of the North of WA, one in the Gulf, and two of the North Queensland Coast. None of those Lows have actually spun up into a Cyclone.
It’s almost subliminal in its nature. Mention it often enough and the scare campaign takes hold.
I don’t blame Jenny, because as a weather reporter, she’s a lot better than most of them, but whoever writes the text on her autocue definitely needs talking to.
It seems that now the weather report is entering the realms of Editorial.
Tony.
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I can’t get my head around percentage likelihood of rain. And I miss the Wednesday 30 day SOI figures!
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I’m disappointed that they’re not unprecedented any more.
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Not only that Tony if you flick between ABC and Sky in the mornings as I do you see the alarmist presentation of the weather even more clearly.
ABC always tells you how many degrees above average a temperature is, but never below. They always say “hottest day since…” and they often present two days in a row of over 30c as heatwaves. Someone is writing a script, its just too coordinated to be random.
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They know that attaching a danger to their reporting will heighten public interest and increase viewers — nothing more than what any organization wants — to be more important; to be more knowledgeable; to be the authority on the subject; to be the big man on the block. Whether it’s true or not isn’t important.
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Another word that has crept into describing atmospheric temperatures is – CATASTROPHIC – which seems to have replaced the previous – severe – and is only used when things get hot.
One wonders when the Macquarie dictionary will be instructed to adopt this more PC, alarmist definition.
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Can we quit disparaging Ostriches? The analogy is factually wrong and a literary cliché.
Perhaps some of the good wordsmiths can suggest new, interesting, and better words or phrases. Jo could have a post and those interested could give this their best shot.
Off topic – Lake Erie on the USA’s north coast is about to freeze over.
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John,
Is this a usual thing or exceptional? Surely ice on the Great Lakes isn’t unheard of. I’ve seen the harbor entrance on Lake Superior at Duluth, Minnesota with ice on it. That was in March and thawing was already underway. But winter is certainly setting in across the midwest and northeast.
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What’s exceptional is finding out that the USA has a north coast. 🙂
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My sister has lived 12 miles south of Lake Erie for many years.
She is 3 years older and says she lives on the north shore.
I don’t claim otherwise.
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I could make a smart alec remark about the Great Lakes being a body of water between the states and canada. But I wont. 😉
Actually the lakes and their connecting river run all the way from eastern Minnesota at Duluth, to the atlantic. Some of Canada is south of the river but I can see how it might be thought of as the “north shore”.
Localisms (dictionary legal) are always something that surprise me. Another one I found when I was stationed in Massachusetts was, “overstreet”, meaning going to the next block over from where you are. I’ve never heard that term anywhere but in New England.
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Lake Erie freezes about 7 of 10 years.
So the answer is “not exceptional.”
Last year was exceptional — almost complete coverage for all lakes.
It is very cold there this week.
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Thanks, John. There’s nothing better than the eye witness testimony.
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May I suggest “procto-cranio experts “?
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WUWT has a 13 Jan thread “Cold kills: Summer no sweat for Aussies but winter freeze fatal”, but ABC/Monash aren’t interested in that:
13 Jan: ABC Rural: Danielle Grindlay: Study shows ageing farmers sceptical of climate change, underestimate heat threat
A Monash University study of elderly farmers’ attitudes to extreme heat events, finds primary producers in northern Victoria are underestimating the threat.
History shows that old age and heat don’t mix and, if predictions ring true, both peak temperatures and the average age of farmers will continue to rise.
In 2009 Victoria saw 374 heat-associated deaths, most which were attributed to the record breaking heatwave that culminated in the Black Saturday bushfires…
But when Monash University’s Dr Matthew Carroll spoke with elderly farmers of one rural Victorian community, most didn’t believe they were at risk.
“They saw heat as a positive rather than a negative and didn’t really think of it as a health risk,” he said.
“Heatwaves have killed more than any of the other natural hazards that Australia faces … but it’s just not that noticeable.
“It needs to be on the agenda.”
As part of a heat research study, Dr Carroll and his colleague Dr Margaret Loughnan spent time with 26 farmers over the age of 55 in Gannawarra Shire, northern Victoria…
Climate scientists’ predictions that Australia is facing a temperature rise of up to five degrees in the next century should therefore be of concern.
But Dr Carroll said the group was ‘largely sceptical’ of climate change.
“Everybody judges things from their own experience,” he said.
“There is a lot [who believe] that it’s just big government pushing the agenda and so on.”…
Dr Carroll refers to research that suggests Australia could see up to 6,300 heat-related deaths by 2050, up from 1,115 in 2003.
He said a national response is required but real change will come from grass-root initiatives and localised education campaigns…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-12/ageing-farmers-underestimate-risk-of-heatwaves/6013392
btw there’s a touch of ageism in the above, as ABC well knows:
2013: ABC: Damian Murphy: Nuffield analysis: Young Farmer Finance Schemes
In 2010-11, the median age of (Australian) farmers was 53, compared to 39 for all employed persons, according to the ABS.
It is predicted that average age has peaked and will decline slowly over the next 20 years. This decline is not due to more young farmers entering agriculture, but the large number of farmers over 65 that will be exiting the industry…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-29/damian-murphy/4717546
ABS haven’t updated the median age figure since 2011, but the Monash/ABC story should really be about the average farmer being sceptical of CAGW, rather than suggesting it is only ageing or elderly farmers.
ABC WANTS TO MAKE SURE EVERYONE SEES THIS STORY! some other results online:
Monash University’s Dr Matthew Carroll says ageing farmers are vulnerable to heat-related death as the climate warms …
ABC – 2 days ago
South Australia Country Hour – ABC Rural (Australian …
http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/programs/sa-country-hour/
ABC Rural : 4:50 · Monash University’s Dr Matthew Carroll says ageing farmers are vulnerable to heat-related death as the climate warms and extreme events …
health-policy – Topic – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting …
http://www.abc.net.au/news/topic/health-policy
Monash University’s Dr Matthew Carroll says ageing farmers are vulnerable to heat-related death as the climate warms and extreme events increase in …
Climate Change – ABC Environment (Australian Broadcasting
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/?topic=climate-change
Monash University’s Dr Matthew Carroll says ageing farmers are vulnerable to heat-related death as the climate warms and extreme events increase in fr.
Features – ABC Environment (Australian Broadcasting …
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/?type=features
Monash University’s Dr Matthew Carroll says ageing farmers are vulnerable to heat-related death as the climate warms and extreme events increase in fr.
Features – ABC Religion & ***Ethics (Australian Broadcasting …
http://www.abc.net.au/religion/?type=features
Monash University’s Dr Matthew Carroll says ageing farmers are vulnerable to heat-related death as the climate warms and extreme events increase in fr.
***Ethics is not a concern in ABC’s reporting on CAGW.
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Natural hazards, or not: http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/3303.0main+features100012012?
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That part is the truth in that even our usual Southern California high summer temperatures pose a risk to the elderly. It doesn’t take anything out of the ordinary. Dehydration can sneak up on you if you aren’t careful and it can be deadly if you don’t do something about it promptly. If you’re in good health it’s not much of a problem. But many elderly are not in good health and are much more vulnerable.
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When asking questions like this or on similar matters of bureaucracies, organisations, politicians and etc, one good way to ensure you get an answer is to list three or four other similar and probably interested bodies or persons at the bottom of the missive who were also sent a “for information” copy of the same question or comment with the information as to who or which organisation you originally directed this question too.
Just asking the single bureaucracy for an answer allows them to ignore or dissemble at length thereby avoiding providing any semblence of an honest answer to the question without any fear of a peer or political blowback.
Works well with bureaucracies as the one being questioned can never be sure that they won’t get either another demand from an even more important source for an answer or an answer will be provided by another body that conflicts with their own or get some much more pointed questions from higher authorities which then needs a good deal of bureaucratic effort to either neutralize or they have to accept that they goofed badly when exposed.
And that for a bureaucracy is definitely egg plastered all over face.
I would be sending a copy “for your information” of that question to other media outlets and to the “BOM responsible” politicians of both major parties.
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As we are on weather reporting ; From Pierre Gosselin’s NoTricksZone blog
This sort of fundamentally corrupted temperature data as exposed below by the NTZ is fed straight into the Global Historical Climate Network. [ GHCN ]
Then worked over and given a good boost towards further warming by the American based centre for global temperature and climate data , the NCDC.
And then further butchered by the likes of GISS, CRU and etc before being released to the public as global warming gospel according to the climate scientists.
And then tomorrow they all go back and their algorithms change all that data beginning from a near century ago all over again so as to not compromise the climate model generated temperature trend lines.
Bear in mind when reading this that the global temperatures have risen by about 0.8C over the last 150 or so years or about 0.6C per century
[ IPCC TAR; Average global surface temperature has increased by approximately 0.6°C since the late 19th century, with 95% confidence limits of close to 0.4 and 0.8°C. Most of this increase has occurred in two periods, from about 1910 to 1945 and since 1976, and the largest recent warming is in the winter extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere. ]
_________________
Weather Instrumentation Debacle? Analysis Shows 0.9°C Of Germany’s Warming May Be Due To Transition To Electronic Measurement
[ quoted ]
Klaus Hager also has a website. At this website he posted a meteorological bulletin, which he authored and was published as an annex to the Berliner Wetterkarte (Berlin Weather Chart).
That bulletin was about the results of his eight and a half year study where he compared in a side-by-side test the former glass mercury thermometers with the newer electronic thermometers, which were installed during the 1980s and 1990s by Germany’s DWD German Weather Service.
&
New electronic system
The new electronic system, however, employs a completely different sensor technology, known as the Pt 100, where temperature is measured with two measurement sensors that check each other. Each second a value is generated and measured for an entire minute, i.e. minute mean. The daily mean temperature is calculated from 24 values, each at 10 minutes before the hour (e.g. at 8:50 for 9 a.m.) The extreme is calculated from the minute mean values between 00 h and 24h. Today they are recorded inside a plastic hut with slats (at first made of aluminum).
&
Results of 8.5 year side-by-side test
Hager compared the two different measurement systems side by side at the GeiInfoAdvisory Office of Fliegerhorst Lechfeld from January 1, 1999 to Jul 31, 2007. The following is a plot of the differences between the two measurement methods:
[ Graphs of temp differences ]
Figure 1: Differences in the daily maximum temperatures from the Pt 100 compared to glass thermometers for 3124 days (ca. 8.5 years) conducted at the GeiInfoAdvisory Office of Fliegerhorst Lechfeld (from 4) – mean difference 0.93°C. Figure from Rengelink, 2012)
Clearly the electronic thermometers produced warmer readings than the mercury thermometers.
&
Hager says, the German DWD Weather Service did not adequately investigate the two different measuring systems and compare them, writing that:
Although the DWD set up so-called climate reference stations at (way to few) locations and published the studies from the comparison measurements, the results unfortunately were not satisfactory. Here not the “old data was compared to the new data”, instead only the electronic thermometer was investigated in various locations, but were not compared with the glass thermometers, which are readily at hand.”
&
Hager writes:
Differing daily measured values from the old and new sensors for temperature measurement spurred the author [Hager] to conduct a comparison spanning from January 1, 1999 to July 31, 2006 at Fliegerhorst Lechfeld (WMO 10856) 8-1/2 years long, daily without interruption, among other comparison tests of mercury maximum glass thermometers in a Stevenson screen and a Pt 100 resistance thermometer inside an aluminum enclosure, both unventilated. The 3144 days yielded a mean difference of +0.93°C; the Pt 100 was higher than the mercury thermometer. The maximum daily difference even reached 6.4°C!
_______________
On this close to a trillion dollars of wealth and treasure has been expended. Hundreds of thousands of families in advanced western countries can no longer afford to pay their energy bills.
Corruption has become rampant in some political circles where the so called and falsely called “”renewable energy industry uses it’s tax payer funded wealth to buy their politicians and bureaucrats.
Scientific if not personal corruption has become almost universal in climate science circles.
Entire societies have been brought into needless conflict all over a 0.8C rise in global temperatures that have taken a century and a half to achieve and which may all be down to nothing more than a refusal by climate scientists to exam their changed and now electronic temperature measuring methods.
Some no doubt for fear that they might become exposed as promoting a completely false premise which if proven false means the end of their lavish tax payer funded gravy train. and probably of their careers in science.
As for the science!
What science?
One apparently that allows a major discrepancy like the above to exist and which is allowed to exist as it tilts the entire temperature record towards the alarmist meme direction required by those with an anti-human agenda.
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I noticed this NTZ article too ROM. Does anyone know if the BOM uses PT100s for temperature measurement? From my engineering days I recall that PT100s (platinum resistance thermometers) are quite accurate and relatively stable over time. Could it be that the apparent error/difference when comparing them with mercury thermometer readings is not so much a difference the raw temperature values, but in the methodology adopted to calculate max, min and average values?
But undoubtedly it presents yet another opportunity for data
fudging(sorry) adjustment, and I suspect we’d all be happy to bet London to a brick which way that would go.90
Bob in Castlemaine @ # 15.1
Bob, if you check the previous NTZ post to the above post, you will see this quote on Klaus Hager who did that comparitive testing as posted above.;
University Of Augsburg 44-Year Veteran Meteorologist Calls Climate Protection “Ridiculous”…”A Deception”!
______________
So I figure that Klaus Hager, a professional meteorologist and a university lecturer in meteorology and instrumentation, knew very precisely what the correct temperature measuring techniques were required to ascertain the comparative performances of the older Mercury thermometers and the newer Pt100 resistance thermometers.
We could have a very similar unexamined problem of a very large step up in measured temperatures due to the change from mercury thermometers to the resistance thermometers here in Australia if this very short comment below from the BOM site is indicative.
I suspect also that the World Meteorological Organisation [ WMO ] is probably pushing for a standardised global method of measuring temperatures and other weather factors and would be promoting the installation of the resistance type thermometers of a very similar type across the world, all of which would be calibrated against a WMO International standard for these resistance thermometers.
If so we might be looking at a completely spurious instrument created jump or shift upwards in global temperatures over the next few years or alternatively, a counter to what everybody will see and feel as colder temperatures all over but which official records will claim don’t exist.
All due to instrument changes that aren’t comparable in temperature measurement performance and that create a spurious warming when compared to historical “liquid in glass” [ LIG ] temperature measurement systems.
From the BOM;
Temperature – Automatic
Resistance temperature detector
The resistance temperature detector (RTD) is always used in an automatic weather station (AWS), and has been progressively replacing the liquid-in-glass thermometers at other stations.
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so sorry….I had to start breathing again…I just couldn’t hold it any longer…!
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Don’t expect the right honourable Malcolm Twistcow, minister for communications and Goldman-Sachs, to be asking for integrity from the ABC and their doomsday quackery reporting.
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It’s not like the ABC gets $20million per year for a fact finding unit to check on this type of thing.
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Slightly off-topic, but there’s one thing has been a bee in my bonnet for a while and it’s something that infuriates me about the way the BoM operates and decides on what is relevant or not. Scientific discovery didn’t start in the late 20th century or the 21st century, or even in the 19th century, it dates back way, way, back beyond that and the manner in which the BoM behaves is like dismissing the most fundamental discoveries in our history, as if there was no scientific rigour or accuracy until recently. The BoM wouldn’t bloody well exist if it wasn’t for the discoveries of people far, far, more astute and dedicated to true science than the current crop of fakes at the BoM (and elsewhere).
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Pretty much sums it up
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The BOM could learn some humility and perspective by reading up on this guy…
Archimedes
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Then there is also…
Eratosthenes
I’ll think I’ll stop there – listing the great scientists who never worked for the BOM will exhaust my life.
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Ken,
I have been proposing this for a while, both the BOM and particularly the ABC are virtually unaccountable as media organisations. Strictly speaking you can’t even complain to ACMA about the ABC because the ABC act is different to the broadcasting act. The ABC unlike all it’s commercial rivals has NO independent oversight. (Well strictly speaking they are answerable to the minister, but a minister can’t be seen to be directly influencing the ABC, so effectively there is no oversight)
Solution to the ABC problem with the truth is to establish an ombudsman within ACMA that has the power of life and death over the ABC, make that ombudsman accountable for truth in broadcasting, complaints handling, and KPI measurement for truth and complaints. Also, the entire ABC being publically funded should be open access, especially the fact checking unit, upon paying a reasonable fee, anyone should be able to commission the fact checking unit to check facts. Finally the ABC needs to become liable for deceptive practices through the courts. If they knowingly give misleading information that is relied upon by a member of the public, who makes a significant monetary loss then they should be able to be sued. At the moment they have the commonwealths protection from being sued.
No media organisation in this country is protected against their own lies like the ABC, and we wonder why they lie? Easy, no consequences!
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If BoM has difficulty defining drought conditions pity help the farmers at the mercy of the banks’definition of drought when enforcing foreclosures.
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As an interesting aside, it doesn’t matter if we strip that evil molecule CO2 of the carbon … O2 is still dangerous:
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/world/a/25995926/danger-in-the-oxygen-we-breathe/
Increased O2 results in higher incidences of lung cancer.
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“Increased O2 results in higher incidences of lung cancer.”
OMG, something needs to be done, for the children.
Maybe we could neutralize some of the excess O2 by binding it to carbon…
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We recall the early 1950’s as a watershed in more ways than one, but we tend to forget that Northern Oz and Qld had an almighty drought after the big wet of 1950. All that growth followed by searing drought led to major spring fires – you know, the sorts of spring fires that are supposed to be a new climate thingy:
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/18236494
Fire is often the legacy of good wet years. Just think of the 1980 inferno right on Sydney’s southern rim. Million hectares? (But that just made it into November, so maybe it was late spring and doesn’t count as spring fire!)
Worst fire conditions up here on the NSW mid-north coast would have been 1896…late winter! Big summer rains, then Simpson Desert conditions for 4 months. Just add August westerlies! (The fires came, but I don’t think this is a fave subject with BoM.)
What the hell. In the late 1830s the bloody Murrumbidgee dried up. Who can say what’s “worst ever”. Maybe we should count our slender blessings – and catch more of the rain which does happen to fall.
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Who can say what’s “worst ever”.
Certainly no one other than perhaps the 32,000 year old participant in Lewandowski’s survey. The rest of us are doing the climate equivalent of reconstructing a dinosaur skeleton from a partial toenail print.
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reconstructing a dinosaur skeleton from a partial toenail print
Tim Flannery gets a guernsey at last.
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DETOUR (not o/t)
Settled science overturned!
~ ~ ~
Were he alive today, E.H. Sellards, Florida state geologist in the early 1900s, would likely have revelled in the validation of his controversial theory that humans co-existed with large prehistoric animals some 14,000 years ago in Vero Beach, Florida.
While the current findings are significant to Floridians, Adovasio said the Vero site also plays a role in the more far-reaching debate surrounding the founding populations of the Americas.
Historically, the first agreed-upon culture in the Americas was called Clovis, after a site discovered in New Mexico in the 1920s.
Sites identified as Clovis dated around 11,200 – 11,500 radiocarbon years ago.
But, beginning in the 1970s, sites pre-dating Clovis began to be discovered, such as Pennsylvania’s Meadowcroft Rockshelter, where Adovasio was principal excavator; Monte Verde in Chile and Gault in Central Texas.
Those discoveries – and now Vero – go a long way toward proving Clovis believers wrong and turning most archaeologists on Adovasio’s side of the debate.
http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/12/2014/excavation-suggests-human-presence-at-old-vero-man-site-in-florida
. . .
Adding Doomsday Global Warming:
Florida flooded by global warming, Sea World ironically left above water
Oops.Wrong link
(NYT) Miami Finds Itself Ankle-Deep in Climate Change Debate
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One would also ask where other alamist media outlets source their climate data and corosponding information for broadcast.
And if incorrect, one would also expect our BOM being the “experts” to admonish such unadulterated alarmism.
From October 1st 2014
“If you thought last summer was hot, you’re not wrong. Australia has sweltered through record warm temperatures over the past two and a half years with 2013 our warmest year on to date. And the heat’s not going to let up any time soon according to the Sky News Severe Weather Report, released today.”
http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/summer-201415-weather-forecast-bushfires-heatwaves-and-severe-heat/story-e6frflp0-1227076059759
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No lions, tigers and bears?
Oh my.
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It would be constructive if the ABC ran a story on the great climate shift of 1998.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/plot/rss/from:1997/to:2015/trend/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1997/trend
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I am in WA at the moment on holidays from Queensland. Every where I go they talk about the low water table because of climate change. I was amazed to see so many wind turbines. Most locals I spoke to say they think the government is doing something for the environment. Can anyone let me know the truth about the sw area and what is effecting rain fall.
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Where’s Chester?
I’m shocked – I sure expected him to show up and defend both the ABC and the BOM from our “rude” inquiries.
If we listen carefully he may show up.
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….Crickets….
Noting that he has totally ignored this post to go to the more recent Sea Level rise post…
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Hmm an earlier post seems to have disappeared – it was off-topic:
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/medical/oxygen-in-air-linked-to-lung-cancer/ar-AA87my3
Yes ebil CO2 even without the “C” is still ebil. Not like the oxidising effects of oxygen should come as a surprise to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of biology and chemistry. Yes be wary of them “oxygen free radicals.”
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OK that’s weird – there it is at 22…
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The crack team was on duty
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The substances they take in their own time, are their business G. 😉
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Where has the Climate Council gone? (Maybe, not back from Peru yet.) Surely if the exponential ‘Hockey Stick’ has any validity, the ‘record heat’ of October 2014 would have now extended into ‘record’ heat for January 2015? OOPS, I notice somewhere in the desert got to 40 degrees – and then somewhere else got hot via a Northerly Wind blowing off the desert – well slap my sceptical wrist!
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ABC Big Ideas: The global governance deficit
Pascal Lamy (Chair of the Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations and former Director General of the WTO) presents a solution to the global governance deficit: ‘creative coalitions’.
Guests:
Geoff Gallop, Former WA Premier Geoff Gallop, now working at the Graduate School of Government at the University of Sydney
Monica Barone, CEO of the City of Sydney
Professor Roy, Dean of the UTS Business School Greenhttp://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/the-global-governance-deficit/5565872
2013: PDF 86 pages: Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations – Now for the long term
Members of the Commission includes:
Lionel Barber, Financial Times
Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post
Julia Marton-Lefevre, International Union for Conservation of
Nature
Chris Patten
Nicholas Stern
http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/commission/Oxford_Martin_Now_for_the_Long_Term.pdf
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don’t know how the abc big ideas comment went thru before i explained why i was posting it. i hadn’t even typed Chris Patten’s position at the time, Chairman BBC Trust.
it’s interesting to note what abc chooses to repeat, while their staff are on their endless summer holiday.
the “global governance” big ideas prog is being aired & repeated this week, having already been aired & repeated in july this year.
what i heard was the final 15-20 minutes, with Monica Barone, who is part of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership
Group, saying the leaders of all the cities in the world should be given seats at the table at all the major CAGW events, because it is they who are on the front line in tackling this issue. just imagine how that would swell the numbers at COP, etc!
a few choice excerpts from the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford report:
“Many of these challenges, not least those related to climate change, are the by-products of industrialisation and economic growth.”
” The use of carbon has yielded extraordinary benefits and
none of the now advanced economies would have developed without it, but the negative costs arising from the consequent climate change now pose a rising threat. Warming of the climate system is
unequivocal.”
“Our ecological footprint now exceeds our biological capacity by a record margin.”
“The science underpinning climate change is complex. Whilst recent evidence suggests there may be a current hiatus in global warming, over 97 percent of scientists support the tenets of human-induced climate change as outlined by the IPCC.”
“Debates about climate change need to be recalibrated so that their focus is opportunity, and to ensure progress does not rely disproportionately on a unanimously agreed outcome at the UNFCCC.”
“The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) needs reform. A few countries are holding up vital progress for all. Mechanisms need to be found to allow multi-track solutions and coalitions of like-minded countries to begin to make progress on common agreements.”
“Sir John Houghton, former co-Chair of the IPCC, has spoken out against the role played by those with something to gain from denying anthropogenic climate change, stating ‘a lot of resistance comes from vested interests, coal and oil interests in the United States which are very strong and which employ thousands of lobbyists in Washington to try and persuade members of Congress that climate change is not happening”.'”
and so on and so forth…for 86 pages.
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the compassionate progressive left!
14 Jan: Counterpunch: Peter Belmont: The Daily Upwards Adjustment of the Earth’s Thermostat
Changing the Global Warming Metaphor
I will mention the human over-population at the end of this essay. Let it suffice here to say that human over population will continue to contribute to GHG production and other causes of GW/CC (such as cutting of tropical forests) and will result also in horrible starvation and other problems if and when GW/CC causes disruptions and reductions in food production and distribution…
Warming Every Day, Rain or Shine
Global warming is a name for the fact that every day, more heat is being retained then ejected. Every day, the earth is warming.
Every day…
Every day. Rain or shine…
Fourth Step. Yes, I said “three”, but there is one more thing to be done. To make the problems as small as possible, we should reduce the size of mankind–reduce the global human population–by as much as we can, say to 50% of today’s population…
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/14/changing-the-global-warming-metaphor/
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I disagree. I think the BOM is very anxious that the Australian public should be misinformed.
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Argus Media (formerly Petroleum Argus Ltd) pushing Prince Charles’s group’s demand that the EU further FIX the ETS:
13 Jan: Argus Media: Start EU ETS fix early – corporate leaders
European Parliament members (MEPs) should vote for an early start for a market stability reserve (MSR) for the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS) and a full transfer of back-loaded allowances into the reserve, according to the Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group (CLG).
In a letter to MEPs the group, which includes the heads of Edf, Shell, Doosan and Unilever, argued such a move would help to rebalance the emissions market and encourage countries to get on with decarbonising their economies.
“The EU ETS is the cornerstone of EU climate policy, so we have to get it right — it must be reformed to drive forward green growth sooner rather than later,” said the group’s chair and former Alstom president Philippe Joubert.
The early introduction of an MSR would also mitigate any downward pressure on the carbon price from structural economic changes or from other successful energy policies, the letter added…
http://www.argusmedia.com/News/Article?id=976145
13 Jan: The Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group (CLG)
Business leaders write to MEPs to urge timely reform of EU-ETS
LINKS:
Read the press release.
Read the letter.
http://www.cisl.cam.ac.uk/clg
from the letter:
“The Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group looks forward to a healthy discussion with Members of the European Parliament over the coming debate period. In the meantime, may we take this occasion to also send our best wishes for a productive, happy and low-carbon 2015.”
doesn’t this constitute royal interference in politics?
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