Tony of Melbourne congrats on being offered a post and strongly suggest a satirical piece on climate change. Nobody else seems to be doing it and with so much material going unused it would be a shame to waste the opportunity.
pat linked into this article in the earlier Thread, and it’s worth a comment here on its own for just one part of the article. (which is at this link)
I just cannot understand why they still use this crock hackneyed old metric: (my bolds)
But they have long argued that the United States and other nations bear a greater responsibility for the cumulative damage to the environment because historically India’s per-capita carbon emissions are low. Per-capita carbon emissions in India, measured in metric tons, are 1.7, compared with 6.2 for China and 17.6 for the United States…..
Surely they must know that people can see right through it just by referencing it to population.
U.S. – 316 Million.
China – 1.357 Billion. (U.S. X 4.3)
India – 1.252 Billion. (U.S. X 3.96)
The article mentions that probably 300 Million people in India have no access to electrical power at any level. It’s probably well more than that, and probably as many as 500 Million plus have access to only a tiny amount of electrical power , and even that is only on a sporadic basis.
Probably the same applies for China as well.
The thinking is that we need to reduce our per capita carbon (dioxide) emissions to something back around the level of India.
No electrical power at all, or a very limited sporadic access to electrical power is the end result of that.
There is no developed World government that will even consider that, let alone implement it, That would be political suicide on a scale never seen before in history.
It will never happen, repeat the word never ad infinitum.
No, people don’t know. They pay little attention to AGW at best and certainly don’t put in into totals.
There are 3 figures in use.
Emissions per capita (from a cherry picked group of countries) is used when they want to make Australia seem the villain.
Emissions per capita (Australia is nowhere near the top of the table)
Total emissions by a country (only used when they want to highlight that the amounts of CO2 released are still rising).
For the record Australia’s total is below China, The USA, the EU, Germany, The UK, Canada, Russia, Japan and Sth. Africa, and just ahead of France and Brazil. We come 18th on the list.
TonyfromOz: “It will never happen, repeat the word never ad infinitum.”
Only in Oz …
“The Victorian Greens will use their upper house clout to push for the closure of the Hazelwood power station, claiming it is a risk to the community and no longer needed.
Greens MP Ellen Sandell said Hazelwood was one of the dirtiest coal plants in the world and should be closed.”
Yes, I’ve long proposed that greens should set an example, they should have special smart meters installed so that as the renewable power fluctuates (relative to nameplate, since that’s what they reckon the renewables produce) , their current capacity is reduced until at zero renewable production eg on still nights they have none at all.
I have been working on a similar issue for some time now.
Back in 1990, when mitigation policies were first proposed the rich countries (OECD & Ex-Warsaw pact) had roughly a quarter of the World’s population and two-thirds of global emissions.
To constrain global emissions at the then global average of 4.1 tonnes per capita could be easily achieved by these countries. I graphed emissions per capita against population for eight groups of worlds population here. The area of the blocks represent total emissions.
The situation is totally different when I forecast forward to 2020. Without global agreement, those rich countries will have 19% of the World’s population and 36% of emissions. For China the figures are 19% and 33% with 9.2 t/CO2 per capita. Based on the AR5 Synthesis Report and 9 billion of population (which will be achieved around 2060), the target emissions per capita to stop temperature rises beyond 2 degrees is 1.1 t/CO2, and to stop temperature rises beyond 3 degrees is 2.2 t/CO2.
To achieve the 3 degree target India, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico need to stop emissions growth now. To achieve the 2 degree emissions target, Pakistan and the Philippines need to stop emissions growth by 2030 and Australia needs to commit to emissions cuts of >90%.
Will link in when completed.
As far as I am aware, it is the only attempt to put emissions numbers to the global claim that an agreement is needed to limit warming to 2 degrees.
My conclusions
1. Rich countries cannot bear all the emissions cuts – they are too large.
2. The IPCC is recommending that by 2050 global average fossil fuel emissions per capita should be similar to those in Africa today.
Tony: This is part of the guilt being taught to Americans. Americans are bad because we have more stuff than the rest of the world. The solution, of course, is not to raise other’s standards of living but rather to drop American standards. This began in ernest when Obama was elected. He hates America and wants to punish it for succeeded on the backs of the poor. So far, no one seems in the mood to stop it. There’s a lot of hand-wringing, but nothing more. The indoctrination of how evil America is an how unfair permeates the school systems. Sadly, Obama worshippers do believe this and more and more children are beginning to believe because the schools come down hard on anyone proud to be an American or any child that implies it’s fair America succeeded and others did not. If no one stops this soon, America will become at third world country.
As I have noted before, the only possible way to stop this, so far as I can see, is for power plants just to shut down. Power is invisible so no one realizes just what shutting a power plant down means. It needs to be illustrated clearly and soon.
The similarity in how community thinking is directed is appalling when the so called wealth of our nations is attributed to someone else being hard done by.
For 99% of the effort in both countries, the progress has been due to the honest, bone breaking contributions by “the people”, free citizens who vote and pay taxes.
I look back over several generations in my family and applaud the hard work, the thrift, denial of good things in life for the benefit of children’s education and advancement.
Nobody carried us!
Now all around us is guilt and harassment about the so called abuse of electricity.
Ballarat is currently 17°C and dropping, this mornings 6am walk was 10°C and quite brisk, the only thing angry about this Vic summer are the people for not getting one! 🙂
You could damn near lose your ute on the river flats, if you got too far away, but even on the sandy loam ridges, where a horse couldn’t get a pick a month ago, Just add water & warmth, & the seed heads are nowtickling their bellies.
We’ve got a few Richards here. This one is me. I used to be known as Richard.
It’s cold in Melbourne today. Melbourne weather is variable. Hot one day, cold the next. Actually, hot and cold on the same day.
The new BoM weather station has a max of 22.0C at 15:15. The new weather station was installed about a year ago. With all the latest information about ideal weather station siting guiding their decisions, you can probably guess where it is. No? It’s in a car park next to a sports complex that is currently hosting the Australian Tennis Open. Massive crowds. Air conditioning systems pumping their exhaust over the station. Ideal.
From my point of view, this has not been a hot summer so far. Far from it. We’ve had a few days in the low 30s and one or two a bit higher, but nothing in the high 30s or low 40s that we normally get. Of course, we still have February to go, so anything could happen. Low 20s forecast for the next week. Australia Day tomorrow and we might have to wear sweaters at the barbie.
The existing Melbourne observation site, located at the Royal Society of Victoria in Latrobe Street, has been operating since 1908. Wind recordings for this station progressively deteriorated over the years due to the obstructions caused by buildings constructed around the city, and were finally switched off in 2009. The new Olympic Park station allows for wind recordings to be taken from the same location as the rest of the weather measurements.
The two stations will operate in tandem for about 18 months, so that the Bureau can compare data from the two locations and identify differences in the readings for forecast and research purposes. In late 2014, the Olympic Park site will become the official point to which the ‘forecast for Melbourne’ refers.
What’s the betting the new site will be “adjusted” upwards by 2-2.5 degrees to bring it into sync. with the UHI effect of the LaTrobe St site.
Working at our factory oxy/acet welding over a gas furnace at 12.30pm today in Reservoir Vic when I started to get sweaty shivers. Wondered why in the middle of summer. Then noticed a strong cold draft hitting me in the face. Found out someone had opened our south facing roller door.
“Hey sonny would you pull that bloody door down”. Shivers soon passed.
November 26, 2014, canberratimes.com:
Abbott government plans to scrap the National Water Commission as drought looms
“The Abbott government has been accused of “complacency gone mad” over plans to abolish the National Water Commission amid the threat of El Nino-like drought conditions and unresolved issues between the states.
The Bureau of Meteorology said low stream flows were recorded at 53 of 74 locations in October and the near-El Nino conditions in the Pacific may lead to more months of relatively dry conditions.”
12 Jan 2015, ABC:
Widespread soaking rain welcomed by outback graziers
The Bureau of Meteorology says there’s more rain on the way for western Victoria, before national weather conditions return to normal after a wet weekend.
Central Australia saw the highest totals, with a number of stations around Alice Springs recording more than 200 millimetres.
Graziers from outback South Australia and far western NSW also reported widespread falls above 100 millimetres.
Some said that’s enough to secure water and stockfeed for at least six months.
On the subject of El Nino/La Nina I see that CSIRO warmists now claim to have a model that links the frequency and severity of those events with greenhouse gases. I expect they claim greenhouse gases are the causal factor and not the converse.
Just discovered that a cherry eaten straight after a Listerine mouth wash has a different and lovely taste.
Melbourne is rather cool. Coolest Jan I can recall feeling. Just after hottest year evah!
‘
A. G. Kowalskis was dishearted at seeing that no one took any notice of his observations, so went back to his parent’s confectioners shop where he worked hard producing some of the worlds finest chocolates.
‘
But the notion of melting stubornly stayed in his thoughts, until he invented…
The usual culprit, natural variability, is being blamed for this off trend (1990 -2011) result. When observation contradicts the theory it is natural variability. When observation fits the theory it is evidence of catastrophic man made global warming.
I have not thought about the land ice sheets before but I expect they would have a huge thermal lag compared with even the oceans.
Another regularly updated observation that I have an interest in following is the Arctic sea ice extent: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
September 2015 was the date given in 2012 for the Arctic to be ice free – again based on extrapolation science. I have a feeling it will prove to be subject to natural variability.
Nice picture. Even though my only experiences with Australia have been through photographs and films the variety of scenery and landscapes there always impresses me. Perhaps someday I’ll be able to visit.
I will never understand why people who claim to be so concerned with the environment are perfectly willing to junk up the landscape with their pipe dream power projects which are absolutely the most inefficient means of producing electricity not only from an engineering perspective but from the amount of land they consume in order to occasionally produce power. Even in the home if I wanted “reliable” solar power I would have to add an additional room just for the banks of batteries and inverters it would require. Even then it would still fall short.
Whatever it is they really do care about, besides themselves, they continually demonstrate that it isn’t the environment. One look at one of their rallies is enough to show you that. The trash they leave behind, because in the end they see it as being up to someone else to clean it up not them, is ridiculous. As with everything there are some conscientious exceptions, but most of them are just paying lip service to their “values.”
You know how we always hear that the last decade is hotter than the previous decade, etc, etc….what they don’t tell you is the last decade hasn’t warmed as much, or as quick as previous decades. Using GISS data, the decade Jan 2000 to Dec 2009 warmed half as much as the decade Jan 1990 to Dec 1999. What’s more, the decade Jan 2005 to Dec 2014, is the lowest in the previous 5 decades……by a considerable margin!
GISS decadal trend
Jan 1960 to Dec 1969: -0.013°C/Decade
Jan 1970 to Dec 1979: 0.079°C/Decade
Jan 1980 to Dec 1989: 0.059°C/Decade
Jan 1990 to Dec 1999: 0.201°C/Decade Jan 2000 to Dec 2009: 0.104°C/Decade
Jan 1965 to Dec 1974: 0.105°C/Decade
Jan 1975 to Dec 1984: 0.251°C/Decade
Jan 1985 to Dec 1994: 0.108°C/Decade
Jan 1995 to Dec 2004: 0.182°C/Decade Jan 2005 to Dec 2014: 0.023°C/Decade
ONE of the world’s biggest glaciers, holding enough water to raise global sea levels by about six metres, is under threat from warming ocean temperatures, researchers say.
SATELLITE observations show that the Totten Glacier, located in Antarctica’s Australian territory and bordering the Southern Ocean, has decreased in thickness over the past 15 years.
Covering an area more than one and a half times that of the ACT, scientist Steve Rintoul said the glacier was once considered to be in the stable portion of east Antarctica, untouched by warmer currents.
“Our research has shown that warm ocean waters reach the area and the glacier is more vulnerable that first thought,” Dr Rintoul told AAP in Hobart on Monday.
“The next question is ‘what does that mean for the future?’.”
Australia’s icebreaker Aurora Australis has just returned from a research trip to the Totten Glacier collecting water samples that Dr Rintoul hopes will provide clues to the changing environment around the glacier.
“The glacier is not going to melt tomorrow and we are not going to get six metres of sea level rise any time soon, it is not a doomsday scenario,” he said.
“But it is important to know what climate change might be kicking off now that might not be able to be corrected in the future.”
The worlds oceans are 361,000,000 square kilometers in area
1 metre of depth is 361,000 cubic kilometers
6 metres equals 2,1666,000 cubic kilometers
The Totten Glacier is 65 x 30 kilometres or 1,950 square kilometers
Giving a depth (or height) of 1,110.769 kilometres.
Either there is something wrong with my mathematics, the reporter got it wrong, Steve Rintoul is on something illegal or the glacier is the only part of the Antarctic that can be seen from Hobart.
The estimated glacial ice mass is 146,949Gt, which is 405mm Sea Level Equivalent (SLE).
In the last glacial period the sea level was around 100m lower than now so most of the land ice has already been melted. Only a tiny fraction left.
The predicted rise in sea level with rising temperature is mostly thermal expansion and is given as about 170 – 200mm by 2100. It is likely to be less as the land ice starts to increase again and the oceans begin cooling. The oceans have very long thermal lag that varies with depth and the coefficient of expansion for water is not linear so it is a complex situation. Likewise glaciers are likely to have very long thermal lags – maybe more than oceans.
When considering articles on global warming and consequences it pays to check the date the data was collected. There are current articles t with headlines that Arctic is retreating. In fact it has been increasing cyclicly since 2012.
Scientists were however unable to explain exactly how drastically increased ocean temperatures have led to record sea ice levels. Some believe that it is due to CO2 acting like the gas in a refrigerator, cooling the ocean surface to icy temperatures while expelling heat in the deep dark depths……
All heat transfer (whether by radiation, conduction or convection) takes place in the direction which causes entropy to increase. And, in an isolated system, all heat transfers cease when entropy is at a maximum within the constraints of the system. We know this from the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
So, until you genuinely understand when and how entropy increases and how you can know when it has reached the maximum, then you do not understand the processes that lead to the observed temperature gradients in tropospheres, crusts, mantles and cores.
Yes, in a horizontal plane the transfer of thermal energy will be from warmer to cooler regions. But this is not always the case in a vertical plane in a gravitational field, or in a force field such as in a Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube that separates the gas into hotter and colder streams. That is because gravitational potential energy affects entropy.
Until you understand why there is a propensity for the sum of potential energy and kinetic energy (PE+KE) to be constant as the system approaches thermodynamic equilibrium (which has a density gradient and a temperature gradient) you will get nowhere with any alternative reasoning.
You may read about this and the supporting evidence here where 57,500 others have visited.
I have mentioned several times previously that I become suspicious of those who hide behind pompous sounding terms like “Entropy” and
“the Second Law of Thermodynamics”.
While I’m sure many of us intuitively understand the concept of entropy the constant use of the term does little service in explaining
the thinking behind the comment.
Better to use plain English.
But maybe then we wouldn’t be tempted to go to “The Site’ which is waiting for us just a brief click away.
A brief question, why do I need to be threatened as follows:
“Until you understand why there is a propensity for the sum of potential energy and kinetic energy (PE+KE) to be constant as the system approaches thermodynamic equilibrium (which has a density gradient and a temperature gradient) you will get nowhere with any alternative reasoning.”
I can assure you that anyone who does not understand that “there is a propensity for the sum of potential energy and kinetic energy (PE+KE) to be constant” is in big trouble as a scientist since it is basic high school science.
Let me know if you actually understand Planetary. I have tried, but I just cannot figure out where he’s going with this. To his credit, he seems to have cut back on posts trying to sell his theory. However, I still don’t how his theory works (maybe one of the 57,000 could explain it?).
I think that Planetary and Doug and the PSI site have some useful ideas but feel that it is often just simple concepts dressed up to look a bit smarter.
Everyone understands that air heated near the surface will rise and expand as it rises.
Everyone understands that we have an atmosphere on Earth because we have gravity.
What everyone doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge is that examining gas flow in pipes and chambers is a difficult task but trying to accurately assess gas movement in the atmosphere is almost impossible.
Maybe Doug has worked it all out but just cant explain it. I don’t know.
It is going to be wetter and drier, because 40 models (not 20, nor 30, BUT 40 models) say it will be so. It’s always future tense isn’t it! How do these people sleep at night?
Browsing through the media from around the world over the weekend I see that the Left are hammering the scare very hard in the lead-up to Paris. Many just want to ensure the scare is alive enough to guarantee that their taxpayer-funded trip to Paris is approved. But many others – specifically, the mentally ill Left – want to whip up enough fear to give weight to their plans for authoritarian controls over people. Still others are just not-too-bright leftists who are vulnerable to simple messages like ‘oil bad, solar good’.
In a typically great article, Dellingpole quoted The Crowd: A Study Of The Popular Mind (Gustave Le Bon, 1895) to explain the Left’s strategy in hammering the scare. Here is a quote from Dellingpole’s article:
Here is Le Bon on the most important weapon in the demagogue’s armoury:
It was Napoleon, I believe, who said that there is only one figure in rhetoric of serious importance, repetition. The thing affirmed comes by repetition to fix itself in the mind in such a way that it is accepted as a demonstrated truth.
The influence of repetition on crowds is comprehensible when the power is seen which it exercises on most enlightened minds. This power is due to the fact that the repeated statement is embedded in the long run in those profound regions of our unconscious selves in which the motives of our actions are forged. At the end of a certain time we have forgotten who is the author of the repeated assertion, and we finish by believing it.
To this circumstance is due the astonishing power of advertisements. When we have read a hundred, a thousand, times that X’s chocolate is the best, we imagine we have heard it said in many quarters, and we end by acquiring the certitude that such is the fact.
Oh, and Delingpole’s article featured an image of carbon billionaire Al Gore, Pharrell Williams (anyone else heard of him before?) and somebody or other.
Stephen Wilde is a troll promulgating his invalid physics all over various climate blogs.
His “rising and falling parcels of air” are not contributing any new energy at all. We all know if you throw a stone into the air it does not return with more kinetic energy than you imparted to it. All Stephen’s conjectures tell us is that the atmosphere slows non-radiative surface cooling by non-radiative processes, as it also slows radiative cooling by radiation to the surface. We all know that happens, because we know Earth’s surface does not cool anywhere near as fast or as much as the Moon’s surface.
So what, Stephen Wilde? Cooling from what temperature?
You have not explained how the required thermal energy gets into the surface in the first place. The mean solar radiation of 168W/m^2 does not supply anywhere near sufficient. On Venus there is less than 20W/m^2 getting through its atmosphere. How do these planetary surfaces get hot in the first place? The temperature will not build up above what radiation could achieve except by the addition of extra thermal energy by non-radiative processes. If the extra energy is supplied by radiation only, it will just be radiated away. There has to be more energy supplied than radiation can emit, because there are other energy losses too, like conduction, convection and evaporative cooling.
The Sun’s direct radiation into the surface does not have a hope of raising the surface temperature of planets with atmospheres to the observed levels, and such surfaces are not black bodies (by definition) and so need even more radiation than a black body would, because they simultaneously lose energy by non-radiative processes as well as by radiation.
Even James Hansen and Co. realized there was missing energy, and so they worked out that they needed as much again as the Sun supplied at TOA. Hence the whopping 100% back radiation figure that (by coincidence? /sarc) gives a net energy input of just over 390W/m^2 which nicely agrees with a black body temperature of 288K (15°C) all well fiddled into place. The only trouble is that the back radiation component does not penetrate the ocean surfaces that make up about 70% of the globe.
So, Stephen Wilde, your little thought experiment that shows nothing more than that the atmosphere slows non-radiative surface cooling, is nothing new and in no way a complete explanation as to what happens regarding energy flows on all planets and satellite moons with atmospheres.
“Even James Hansen and Co. realized there was missing energy, and so they worked out that they needed as much again as the Sun supplied at TOA. Hence the whopping 100% back radiation figure that (by coincidence? /sarc) gives a net energy input of just over 390W/m^2 which nicely agrees with a black body temperature of 288K (15°C) all well fiddled into place. The only trouble is that the back radiation component does not penetrate the ocean surfaces that make up about 70% of the globe.
Most of us with some scientific knowledge had worked it out earlier.
Tony of Melbourne congrats on being offered a post and strongly suggest a satirical piece on climate change. Nobody else seems to be doing it and with so much material going unused it would be a shame to waste the opportunity.
80
pat linked into this article in the earlier Thread, and it’s worth a comment here on its own for just one part of the article. (which is at this link)
I just cannot understand why they still use this
crockhackneyed old metric: (my bolds)Surely they must know that people can see right through it just by referencing it to population.
U.S. – 316 Million.
China – 1.357 Billion. (U.S. X 4.3)
India – 1.252 Billion. (U.S. X 3.96)
The article mentions that probably 300 Million people in India have no access to electrical power at any level. It’s probably well more than that, and probably as many as 500 Million plus have access to only a tiny amount of electrical power , and even that is only on a sporadic basis.
Probably the same applies for China as well.
The thinking is that we need to reduce our per capita carbon (dioxide) emissions to something back around the level of India.
No electrical power at all, or a very limited sporadic access to electrical power is the end result of that.
There is no developed World government that will even consider that, let alone implement it, That would be political suicide on a scale never seen before in history.
It will never happen, repeat the word never ad infinitum.
Tony.
230
“we need to reduce our per capita carbon (dioxide) emissions”
Does that apply to those guys using the private jets to fly to climate conferences….
I’m guessing not ! 🙂
151
“No electrical power at all, or a very limited sporadic access to electrical power is the end result of that.”
UK or South Australia on a bad day !
Soon, soon.
120
No, people don’t know. They pay little attention to AGW at best and certainly don’t put in into totals.
There are 3 figures in use.
Emissions per capita (from a cherry picked group of countries) is used when they want to make Australia seem the villain.
Emissions per capita (Australia is nowhere near the top of the table)
Total emissions by a country (only used when they want to highlight that the amounts of CO2 released are still rising).
For the record Australia’s total is below China, The USA, the EU, Germany, The UK, Canada, Russia, Japan and Sth. Africa, and just ahead of France and Brazil. We come 18th on the list.
150
Now , once you consider our “sink” area..
We end up being quite a large CO2 net sink.
All other countries show be paying us a CO2 tithe ! 🙂
140
“All other countries should be….
50
Nice one Tony. You could add in the population of the African continent which is just over 1 billion.
40
TonyfromOz: “It will never happen, repeat the word never ad infinitum.”
Only in Oz …
“The Victorian Greens will use their upper house clout to push for the closure of the Hazelwood power station, claiming it is a risk to the community and no longer needed.
Greens MP Ellen Sandell said Hazelwood was one of the dirtiest coal plants in the world and should be closed.”
http://www.smh.com.au/victoria/greens-to-use-upper-house-numbers-to-seek-closure-of-hazelwood-power-station-20150123-12wzyx.html
. . .
No longer needed?
Expect improved climate in anticipation …
90
Easy…… Find out which suburb Sandell live in..
Turn off the electricity.
See how her constituents like that !!!
80
Yes, I’ve long proposed that greens should set an example, they should have special smart meters installed so that as the renewable power fluctuates (relative to nameplate, since that’s what they reckon the renewables produce) , their current capacity is reduced until at zero renewable production eg on still nights they have none at all.
70
I have been working on a similar issue for some time now.
Back in 1990, when mitigation policies were first proposed the rich countries (OECD & Ex-Warsaw pact) had roughly a quarter of the World’s population and two-thirds of global emissions.
To constrain global emissions at the then global average of 4.1 tonnes per capita could be easily achieved by these countries. I graphed emissions per capita against population for eight groups of worlds population here. The area of the blocks represent total emissions.
The situation is totally different when I forecast forward to 2020. Without global agreement, those rich countries will have 19% of the World’s population and 36% of emissions. For China the figures are 19% and 33% with 9.2 t/CO2 per capita. Based on the AR5 Synthesis Report and 9 billion of population (which will be achieved around 2060), the target emissions per capita to stop temperature rises beyond 2 degrees is 1.1 t/CO2, and to stop temperature rises beyond 3 degrees is 2.2 t/CO2.
To achieve the 3 degree target India, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico need to stop emissions growth now. To achieve the 2 degree emissions target, Pakistan and the Philippines need to stop emissions growth by 2030 and Australia needs to commit to emissions cuts of >90%.
Will link in when completed.
50
I have posted on this issue at
Global Emissions Reductions Targets for COP21 Paris 2015
As far as I am aware, it is the only attempt to put emissions numbers to the global claim that an agreement is needed to limit warming to 2 degrees.
My conclusions
1. Rich countries cannot bear all the emissions cuts – they are too large.
2. The IPCC is recommending that by 2050 global average fossil fuel emissions per capita should be similar to those in Africa today.
30
Tony: This is part of the guilt being taught to Americans. Americans are bad because we have more stuff than the rest of the world. The solution, of course, is not to raise other’s standards of living but rather to drop American standards. This began in ernest when Obama was elected. He hates America and wants to punish it for succeeded on the backs of the poor. So far, no one seems in the mood to stop it. There’s a lot of hand-wringing, but nothing more. The indoctrination of how evil America is an how unfair permeates the school systems. Sadly, Obama worshippers do believe this and more and more children are beginning to believe because the schools come down hard on anyone proud to be an American or any child that implies it’s fair America succeeded and others did not. If no one stops this soon, America will become at third world country.
As I have noted before, the only possible way to stop this, so far as I can see, is for power plants just to shut down. Power is invisible so no one realizes just what shutting a power plant down means. It needs to be illustrated clearly and soon.
80
Good analysis Sheri.
We have the same thing in Australia.
The similarity in how community thinking is directed is appalling when the so called wealth of our nations is attributed to someone else being hard done by.
For 99% of the effort in both countries, the progress has been due to the honest, bone breaking contributions by “the people”, free citizens who vote and pay taxes.
I look back over several generations in my family and applaud the hard work, the thrift, denial of good things in life for the benefit of children’s education and advancement.
Nobody carried us!
Now all around us is guilt and harassment about the so called abuse of electricity.
Sad.
KK
70
A blast from the past
Mynde entrainment; no not hypnosis—-POLITICS.
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/11/us-schools-teach-kids-high-tech-ways-to-waste-money/#comment-1334995
40
A 100 thumbs up KK.
10
It’s 1420 and I notice the temperature in Melbourne (Mulgrave) is given as 19C!
60
It is 34C in Brisbane. Has anyone here seen a warmist with a suntan?
We got an inflatable pool on the front deck, had to sacrifice the pool to create the backyard fire pit generator setup.
60
Ballarat is currently 17°C and dropping, this mornings 6am walk was 10°C and quite brisk, the only thing angry about this Vic summer are the people for not getting one! 🙂
100
But then again…it could be 34.6C but I could not feel the difference.
Could anything really feel that difference apart from ice hovering just below zero? All the pants wetting for near nothing!
70
Don’t wet your pants in below zero conditions scaper, you’ll stick to whatever you’re sitting on and freeze your nay nay’s! 🙁
60
Around 30°C +/-4°C where I am..
… depends on the slight breeze and where I stand.
70
36C outside here today, & quite muggy after over 3 inches of rain.
And my air conditioning needs re gassing.
Boy you should see the grass grow. An inch to a metre in 15 days. Snow looks good, but it don’t feed no multitude.
60
Where you at? Sounds like Taranaki!
40
Nah, just south of Brisbane.
You could damn near lose your ute on the river flats, if you got too far away, but even on the sandy loam ridges, where a horse couldn’t get a pick a month ago, Just add water & warmth, & the seed heads are nowtickling their bellies.
60
The ONLY downside of CO2 and warmth, add water and you need to mow the lawn twice as often… nice for the veggies though
60
You’re complaining? according to the BOM it was minus 49.9C at Rowley Shoals 4km off the coast of Broome yesterday.
30
Standby for an adjustment. Probably one of the few justifiable ones.
30
We’ve got a few Richards here. This one is me. I used to be known as Richard.
It’s cold in Melbourne today. Melbourne weather is variable. Hot one day, cold the next. Actually, hot and cold on the same day.
The new BoM weather station has a max of 22.0C at 15:15. The new weather station was installed about a year ago. With all the latest information about ideal weather station siting guiding their decisions, you can probably guess where it is. No? It’s in a car park next to a sports complex that is currently hosting the Australian Tennis Open. Massive crowds. Air conditioning systems pumping their exhaust over the station. Ideal.
http://www.bom.gov.au/weather-services/announcements/vic/melb-olympic-park2013.shtml
From my point of view, this has not been a hot summer so far. Far from it. We’ve had a few days in the low 30s and one or two a bit higher, but nothing in the high 30s or low 40s that we normally get. Of course, we still have February to go, so anything could happen. Low 20s forecast for the next week. Australia Day tomorrow and we might have to wear sweaters at the barbie.
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Richard X
Look up cockney rhyming slang for ‘richards’. 🙂
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Ooo er 🙂
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” We’ve had a few days in the low 30s and one or two a bit higher, but nothing in the high 30s or low 40s that we normally get”
Stand By For BOM Announcement..
Melbourne has hottest January EVER !!!
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The existing Melbourne observation site, located at the Royal Society of Victoria in Latrobe Street, has been operating since 1908. Wind recordings for this station progressively deteriorated over the years due to the obstructions caused by buildings constructed around the city, and were finally switched off in 2009. The new Olympic Park station allows for wind recordings to be taken from the same location as the rest of the weather measurements.
The two stations will operate in tandem for about 18 months, so that the Bureau can compare data from the two locations and identify differences in the readings for forecast and research purposes. In late 2014, the Olympic Park site will become the official point to which the ‘forecast for Melbourne’ refers.
What’s the betting the new site will be “adjusted” upwards by 2-2.5 degrees to bring it into sync. with the UHI effect of the LaTrobe St site.
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Working at our factory oxy/acet welding over a gas furnace at 12.30pm today in Reservoir Vic when I started to get sweaty shivers. Wondered why in the middle of summer. Then noticed a strong cold draft hitting me in the face. Found out someone had opened our south facing roller door.
“Hey sonny would you pull that bloody door down”. Shivers soon passed.
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The cool change is coming from a place in the southern ocean not far from Antarctica.
http://www.bom.gov.au/fwo/IDY65100.pdf
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To which I’ll add, Antarctic sea ice is still tracking above average.
https://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/tag/antarctic-sea-ice/
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November 26, 2014, canberratimes.com:
Abbott government plans to scrap the National Water Commission as drought looms
“The Abbott government has been accused of “complacency gone mad” over plans to abolish the National Water Commission amid the threat of El Nino-like drought conditions and unresolved issues between the states.
The Bureau of Meteorology said low stream flows were recorded at 53 of 74 locations in October and the near-El Nino conditions in the Pacific may lead to more months of relatively dry conditions.”
12 Jan 2015, ABC:
Widespread soaking rain welcomed by outback graziers
The Bureau of Meteorology says there’s more rain on the way for western Victoria, before national weather conditions return to normal after a wet weekend.
Central Australia saw the highest totals, with a number of stations around Alice Springs recording more than 200 millimetres.
Graziers from outback South Australia and far western NSW also reported widespread falls above 100 millimetres.
Some said that’s enough to secure water and stockfeed for at least six months.
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Wish there was coal or iron ore out close to the Darling River.
They could then mine the coal and leave nice deep off-stream dams to hold flood waters for when there is a drought !
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How about a scheme to mine there anyway – all paid for by a subsidy from big wind farm and solar industries.
That’ll work, wont it?
🙂
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On the subject of El Nino/La Nina I see that CSIRO warmists now claim to have a model that links the frequency and severity of those events with greenhouse gases. I expect they claim greenhouse gases are the causal factor and not the converse.
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How could you ever doubt the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project? I find it quite scary.
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Just discovered that a cherry eaten straight after a Listerine mouth wash has a different and lovely taste.
Melbourne is rather cool. Coolest Jan I can recall feeling. Just after hottest year evah!
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Soda tastes like a tin can if you drink straight after a Listerine mouth wash. Takes a while to wear off.
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Let us inject some reconciliatory humour into recent events.
http://i.imgur.com/c8cupvj.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/iNOwGBq.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/QPpVoED.jpg
They’re not all bad.
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Blame it on CO2
http://i.imgur.com/97yF4FL.gifv
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There is always somewhere beautiful nearby in Oz.
That picture looks very similar to a cave on Broughton Island, 15 miles off Port Stephens NSW, a whole continent away.
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Ah Port Stephens. 🙂
I head up there occasionally when I can get time off.. out of school holiday time. !
Its useful having friends in Newy. Parking point for the Hunter and Port Stephens.
And Newy itself isn’t too bad… nice beaches, less crowded that down here. 🙂
…when there aren’t sharks hanging about, of course..
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More spotted today between Merewether and Blackies.
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School kids go back on Wednesday.. perhaps the sharks will loose interest !
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Was up at Shoal Bay, False Bay a few days ago.
Never cease to be amazed by the headlands to the waterway.
Amazing coast.
My first memory of Shoal bay must have been of a bushfire which went past our tent while we sheltered on the sand: age about2.
KK
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Sorry KK,
There were no bushfires before “Climate Change™” happened.
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Which reminds me I haven’t been to Caves Beach for about 50 years.
KK
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We were told decades ago that the poles would show the effects of global warming first.
Yep, the global sea ice chart shows this so graphically…
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
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Quite correct. The very first pole to make this important observation was Alexander Graham Kowalski.
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‘
A. G. Kowalskis was dishearted at seeing that no one took any notice of his observations, so went back to his parent’s confectioners shop where he worked hard producing some of the worlds finest chocolates.
‘
But the notion of melting stubornly stayed in his thoughts, until he invented…
🙂
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NASA and MET get the temperature wrong, satellites need to be used but they are too stubbing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhJR3ywIijo)
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This is one of those weather observations that has not got wide circulation in popular press but it is another observation not fitting the theory:
http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-stories/article/greenlands-ice-sheet-winter-growth-above-average.html
The usual culprit, natural variability, is being blamed for this off trend (1990 -2011) result. When observation contradicts the theory it is natural variability. When observation fits the theory it is evidence of catastrophic man made global warming.
This is the link to Greenland land ice data:
http://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/
To put the accumulated anomaly in perspective I calculate it is 0.03% of the total ice on Greenland – not much.
I have not thought about the land ice sheets before but I expect they would have a huge thermal lag compared with even the oceans.
Another regularly updated observation that I have an interest in following is the Arctic sea ice extent:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
September 2015 was the date given in 2012 for the Arctic to be ice free – again based on extrapolation science. I have a feeling it will prove to be subject to natural variability.
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Nice picture. Even though my only experiences with Australia have been through photographs and films the variety of scenery and landscapes there always impresses me. Perhaps someday I’ll be able to visit.
I will never understand why people who claim to be so concerned with the environment are perfectly willing to junk up the landscape with their pipe dream power projects which are absolutely the most inefficient means of producing electricity not only from an engineering perspective but from the amount of land they consume in order to occasionally produce power. Even in the home if I wanted “reliable” solar power I would have to add an additional room just for the banks of batteries and inverters it would require. Even then it would still fall short.
Whatever it is they really do care about, besides themselves, they continually demonstrate that it isn’t the environment. One look at one of their rallies is enough to show you that. The trash they leave behind, because in the end they see it as being up to someone else to clean it up not them, is ridiculous. As with everything there are some conscientious exceptions, but most of them are just paying lip service to their “values.”
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I’ve just been playing around with Nick Stokes’ Temperature Trend Viewer;
http://moyhu.blogspot.com.au/p/temperature-trend-viewer.html
You know how we always hear that the last decade is hotter than the previous decade, etc, etc….what they don’t tell you is the last decade hasn’t warmed as much, or as quick as previous decades. Using GISS data, the decade Jan 2000 to Dec 2009 warmed half as much as the decade Jan 1990 to Dec 1999. What’s more, the decade Jan 2005 to Dec 2014, is the lowest in the previous 5 decades……by a considerable margin!
GISS decadal trend
Jan 1960 to Dec 1969: -0.013°C/Decade
Jan 1970 to Dec 1979: 0.079°C/Decade
Jan 1980 to Dec 1989: 0.059°C/Decade
Jan 1990 to Dec 1999: 0.201°C/Decade
Jan 2000 to Dec 2009: 0.104°C/Decade
Jan 1965 to Dec 1974: 0.105°C/Decade
Jan 1975 to Dec 1984: 0.251°C/Decade
Jan 1985 to Dec 1994: 0.108°C/Decade
Jan 1995 to Dec 2004: 0.182°C/Decade
Jan 2005 to Dec 2014: 0.023°C/Decade
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Wow did you see what climate-change did to those rocks,it’s wearing them away,how terrible, someone should do something about it.
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Totten Glacier ‘melting’ with warmer ocean
ANDREW DRUMMOND
• AAP
• JANUARY 26, 2015 11:48AM
ONE of the world’s biggest glaciers, holding enough water to raise global sea levels by about six metres, is under threat from warming ocean temperatures, researchers say.
SATELLITE observations show that the Totten Glacier, located in Antarctica’s Australian territory and bordering the Southern Ocean, has decreased in thickness over the past 15 years.
Covering an area more than one and a half times that of the ACT, scientist Steve Rintoul said the glacier was once considered to be in the stable portion of east Antarctica, untouched by warmer currents.
“Our research has shown that warm ocean waters reach the area and the glacier is more vulnerable that first thought,” Dr Rintoul told AAP in Hobart on Monday.
“The next question is ‘what does that mean for the future?’.”
Australia’s icebreaker Aurora Australis has just returned from a research trip to the Totten Glacier collecting water samples that Dr Rintoul hopes will provide clues to the changing environment around the glacier.
“The glacier is not going to melt tomorrow and we are not going to get six metres of sea level rise any time soon, it is not a doomsday scenario,” he said.
“But it is important to know what climate change might be kicking off now that might not be able to be corrected in the future.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/totten-glacier-melting-with-warmer-ocean/story-fn3dxiwe-1227196815950
The worlds oceans are 361,000,000 square kilometers in area
1 metre of depth is 361,000 cubic kilometers
6 metres equals 2,1666,000 cubic kilometers
The Totten Glacier is 65 x 30 kilometres or 1,950 square kilometers
Giving a depth (or height) of 1,110.769 kilometres.
Either there is something wrong with my mathematics, the reporter got it wrong, Steve Rintoul is on something illegal or the glacier is the only part of the Antarctic that can be seen from Hobart.
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The Totten Glacier has a tongue that reaches out into the sea,wouldn’t that tongue no longer be part of the glacier but part of the ice sheet?
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This paper gives an estimate of the glacial ice volume in 2013 over the globe:
http://www.cryosphericsciences.org/publications/pfeffer_2014_a-JGlac-RGI.pdf
Table 4 gives the relevant information although it does not go into detail on specific Antarctic glaciers.
The estimated glacial ice mass is 146,949Gt, which is 405mm Sea Level Equivalent (SLE).
In the last glacial period the sea level was around 100m lower than now so most of the land ice has already been melted. Only a tiny fraction left.
The predicted rise in sea level with rising temperature is mostly thermal expansion and is given as about 170 – 200mm by 2100. It is likely to be less as the land ice starts to increase again and the oceans begin cooling. The oceans have very long thermal lag that varies with depth and the coefficient of expansion for water is not linear so it is a complex situation. Likewise glaciers are likely to have very long thermal lags – maybe more than oceans.
When considering articles on global warming and consequences it pays to check the date the data was collected. There are current articles t with headlines that Arctic is retreating. In fact it has been increasing cyclicly since 2012.
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Scientists were however unable to explain exactly how drastically increased ocean temperatures have led to record sea ice levels. Some believe that it is due to CO2 acting like the gas in a refrigerator, cooling the ocean surface to icy temperatures while expelling heat in the deep dark depths……
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All heat transfer (whether by radiation, conduction or convection) takes place in the direction which causes entropy to increase. And, in an isolated system, all heat transfers cease when entropy is at a maximum within the constraints of the system. We know this from the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
So, until you genuinely understand when and how entropy increases and how you can know when it has reached the maximum, then you do not understand the processes that lead to the observed temperature gradients in tropospheres, crusts, mantles and cores.
Yes, in a horizontal plane the transfer of thermal energy will be from warmer to cooler regions. But this is not always the case in a vertical plane in a gravitational field, or in a force field such as in a Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube that separates the gas into hotter and colder streams. That is because gravitational potential energy affects entropy.
Until you understand why there is a propensity for the sum of potential energy and kinetic energy (PE+KE) to be constant as the system approaches thermodynamic equilibrium (which has a density gradient and a temperature gradient) you will get nowhere with any alternative reasoning.
You may read about this and the supporting evidence here where 57,500 others have visited.
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Dear Planetary,
I have mentioned several times previously that I become suspicious of those who hide behind pompous sounding terms like “Entropy” and
“the Second Law of Thermodynamics”.
While I’m sure many of us intuitively understand the concept of entropy the constant use of the term does little service in explaining
the thinking behind the comment.
Better to use plain English.
But maybe then we wouldn’t be tempted to go to “The Site’ which is waiting for us just a brief click away.
A brief question, why do I need to be threatened as follows:
“Until you understand why there is a propensity for the sum of potential energy and kinetic energy (PE+KE) to be constant as the system approaches thermodynamic equilibrium (which has a density gradient and a temperature gradient) you will get nowhere with any alternative reasoning.”
I can assure you that anyone who does not understand that “there is a propensity for the sum of potential energy and kinetic energy (PE+KE) to be constant” is in big trouble as a scientist since it is basic high school science.
KK
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Let me know if you actually understand Planetary. I have tried, but I just cannot figure out where he’s going with this. To his credit, he seems to have cut back on posts trying to sell his theory. However, I still don’t how his theory works (maybe one of the 57,000 could explain it?).
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Hi Sheri,
I think that Planetary and Doug and the PSI site have some useful ideas but feel that it is often just simple concepts dressed up to look a bit smarter.
Everyone understands that air heated near the surface will rise and expand as it rises.
Everyone understands that we have an atmosphere on Earth because we have gravity.
What everyone doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge is that examining gas flow in pipes and chambers is a difficult task but trying to accurately assess gas movement in the atmosphere is almost impossible.
Maybe Doug has worked it all out but just cant explain it. I don’t know.
KK
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The latest from BOM and CSIRO.
It is going to be wetter and drier, because 40 models (not 20, nor 30, BUT 40 models) say it will be so. It’s always future tense isn’t it! How do these people sleep at night?
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I’m assuming these are the same models that DIDN’T PREDICT the current 18 year plateau in temperatures. 🙂
Robustly wrong !!!
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Browsing through the media from around the world over the weekend I see that the Left are hammering the scare very hard in the lead-up to Paris. Many just want to ensure the scare is alive enough to guarantee that their taxpayer-funded trip to Paris is approved. But many others – specifically, the mentally ill Left – want to whip up enough fear to give weight to their plans for authoritarian controls over people. Still others are just not-too-bright leftists who are vulnerable to simple messages like ‘oil bad, solar good’.
In a typically great article, Dellingpole quoted The Crowd: A Study Of The Popular Mind (Gustave Le Bon, 1895) to explain the Left’s strategy in hammering the scare. Here is a quote from Dellingpole’s article:
And we are in luck.
Le Bon’s book is downloadable from Project Gutenberg’s web site.
.
.
.
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Oh, and Delingpole’s article featured an image of carbon billionaire Al Gore, Pharrell Williams (anyone else heard of him before?) and somebody or other.
Here’s Catallaxy’s take on climate expert Pharrell Williams.
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Labor intends to reintroduce the Carbon Tax and the Mining Tax if elected in ‘wheneveritis’.
Will this be enough to counteract Mr Abbott’s stupidities and lack of traction?
Do the Liberals need to change leaders to Julie Bishop?
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This blog has been a solid Tony Abbott supporter forever. Look what happened with the Sir Prince Duke Philip thing. Straws that break camel’s backs.
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Been keeping an eye on the background…too messy to make a call. Doesn’t look good for Abbott.
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Stephen Wilde is a troll promulgating his invalid physics all over various climate blogs.
His “rising and falling parcels of air” are not contributing any new energy at all. We all know if you throw a stone into the air it does not return with more kinetic energy than you imparted to it. All Stephen’s conjectures tell us is that the atmosphere slows non-radiative surface cooling by non-radiative processes, as it also slows radiative cooling by radiation to the surface. We all know that happens, because we know Earth’s surface does not cool anywhere near as fast or as much as the Moon’s surface.
So what, Stephen Wilde? Cooling from what temperature?
You have not explained how the required thermal energy gets into the surface in the first place. The mean solar radiation of 168W/m^2 does not supply anywhere near sufficient. On Venus there is less than 20W/m^2 getting through its atmosphere. How do these planetary surfaces get hot in the first place? The temperature will not build up above what radiation could achieve except by the addition of extra thermal energy by non-radiative processes. If the extra energy is supplied by radiation only, it will just be radiated away. There has to be more energy supplied than radiation can emit, because there are other energy losses too, like conduction, convection and evaporative cooling.
The Sun’s direct radiation into the surface does not have a hope of raising the surface temperature of planets with atmospheres to the observed levels, and such surfaces are not black bodies (by definition) and so need even more radiation than a black body would, because they simultaneously lose energy by non-radiative processes as well as by radiation.
Even James Hansen and Co. realized there was missing energy, and so they worked out that they needed as much again as the Sun supplied at TOA. Hence the whopping 100% back radiation figure that (by coincidence? /sarc) gives a net energy input of just over 390W/m^2 which nicely agrees with a black body temperature of 288K (15°C) all well fiddled into place. The only trouble is that the back radiation component does not penetrate the ocean surfaces that make up about 70% of the globe.
So, Stephen Wilde, your little thought experiment that shows nothing more than that the atmosphere slows non-radiative surface cooling, is nothing new and in no way a complete explanation as to what happens regarding energy flows on all planets and satellite moons with atmospheres.
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This is like a perpetual motion machine:
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/weekend-unthreaded-64/#comment-1673524
PSI
PSI
KK
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I think its a pretty low act to go at Stephen on a thread he hasn’t even posted on.
But, all along, it has been that arrogant approach from PSI that makes people want to ignore them.
I know which group seems more like a troll, and it isn’t Stephen.
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Well put Griss!
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Dear Planetary Group,
You say:
“Even James Hansen and Co. realized there was missing energy, and so they worked out that they needed as much again as the Sun supplied at TOA. Hence the whopping 100% back radiation figure that (by coincidence? /sarc) gives a net energy input of just over 390W/m^2 which nicely agrees with a black body temperature of 288K (15°C) all well fiddled into place. The only trouble is that the back radiation component does not penetrate the ocean surfaces that make up about 70% of the globe.
Most of us with some scientific knowledge had worked it out earlier.
There cannot be “back -rad”.
The universe doesn’t work like that.
Talk about stating the obvious!
KK
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