Breaking news: Bureau of Meteorology to revamp temperature records, Graham Lloyd reports in The Australian.
We’ve seen this all three times before. As soon as skeptics expose enough scandals in The Australian the BOM has to run and hide behind a “major revision”, a panel, or a review. It’s their pass-out-of-class to not answer questions. It’s too late, I have no expectation that this will achieve anything other than being the excuse de jour for the BOM to keep operating as a PR machine rather than a scientific agency.
In the first round back in February 2011, we worked with Cory Bernardi to request a formal audit of the BOM. They had lauded their “High Quality” or HQ dataset, but suddenly it was not good enough and needed revising. In March 2012 the BOM released an entirely new version called ACORN. The formal audit request was thus “neutralized”, but the new set was as bad as the old set. By July 2012, for free, skeptics analyzed and advised the bureau of a string of pathetic flaws, including that the bureau had “created” nearly a thousand days where minimum temperatures were higher than the maxes, the “hottest day ever recorded in Australia” in their hallowed ACORN dataset now occurred in cold Albany after a seven degree shift. The trend in average summer maximums was been tripled by adjustments that the BOM imply are neutral. The adjustments follow an inexplicable monthly whip-saw square wave pattern that defies any reasoning. The independent audit team found gaps and errors, like days where 36.8C was changed to 26.8C (and so many more). The same pattern of mysterious adjustments took data recorded in modern Stevenson screens eighty years ago and “discovered” they needed to be cooled, changing trends by as much as two degrees, thus turning some raw cooling trends to warming trends and non-randomly increasing the total “averaged” warming rate.
The whole national warming trend from 1910 is supposedly about one degree. But up to two-thirds of Australia’s warming may be due to “adjustments”, not “CO2”. The most cost effective way to stop Australia warming is to dump the BOM and set up a scientific agency instead. It’s a lot cheaper than crippling our electricity grid and punishing our manufacturing base.
In a second round of scandals printed in The Australian in mid 2014, the BOM promised another internal review. It took til March of 2015 for a few hand picked statisticians to consider none of the important questions in a one day tea-n-cakes jamboree and issued a nothing-to-see-here report three months later. How convenient.
In the third mini-round, The Australian again wrote about the odd clipping of cold temperatures, and skeptics exposed that the bureau was destroying data routinely and uses one-second noise instead of properly averaged longer sampling as other international agencies do. The BOM did a short review, and told us that, by sheer coincidence the skeptics had randomly found the only two sites of 695 that weren’t perfect. Problem fixed.
Five years after the Wonderbar ACORN dataset was released, none of these errors have been fixed. The BOM never said “thanks for helping”, showed no interest in doing a better job, won’t release either methods or comparison data. Now, lo, in a fourth round, a few articles in The Australian (and total silence from Fairfax and the ABC) and wouldn’t-you-know but the bureau has suddenly discovered that majorly-revised “best quality” isn’t good enough and they need to aim for doubly-revised ultra-super-HQ. Sure.
We’re beyond excuses now. Read what I said in 2012. The HQ errors could be called unwitting then, but the ACORN revision could not:
For me, this version is so much worse than the previous one. In the HQ data set the errors could have been inadvertent, but now we’ve pointed out the flaws, there can be no excuses for getting it wrong. Instead of fixing the flaws (and thanking the volunteers), it’s almost as if they’ve gone out of their way to not solve them. Instead it’s been complexified, rushed, has many typo’s and gaps, and the point (see below) about the “adjustments having no impact” — when they obviously do — begs to be audited by the Auditor General, the ACCC, Four Corners (ha ha) and 60 Minutes.
The Australian people pay a million dollars a day for this inept and biased operation. A fourth round of “internal” revisions is a waste of money. There is no sign the BOM is any more competent or even willing to act in a scientific manner. Give skeptics just 2% of the BOM budget and the nation would get a real revision and a totally transparent database.
I predict Minister Josh Frydenberg will be fooled and will accept the BOM excuses, thus utterly failing to stand up for the Australian people and the Australian environment. Shame.
Behind the scenes here we’re seriously discussing ways to set up better quality temperature recording stations. If you’d like to offer help, money, advice or space on your farm, please get in touch, leave a comment or send an email. Thank you.
_____________________________________
THE BOM LIST grows — Scandal after scandal
- BOM Scandal: One second records in Australia — how “noise” creates history and a warming trend
- Another BOM scandal: Australian climate data is being destroyed as routine practice
- BOM scandal: “smart cards” filter out coldest temperatures. Full audit needed ASAP!
- BOM scandal heats up: Kininmonth, Watts, Nova quoted in The Australian “We audit banks, why not BOM?”
- Scandal: Australian Bureau of Meteorology caught erasing cold temperatures
- On Sunday, Goulburn got colder than the BOM thought was possible (and a raw data record was “adjusted”).
- Two-thirds of Australias warming due to “adjustments” — according to 84 historic stations
- The mysterious BOM disinterest in hot historic Australian Stevenson screen temperatures
- The lost climate knowledge of Deacon 1952: hot dry summers from 1880-1910
- 1953 Headline: Melbourne’s weather is changing! Summers getting colder and wetter
- The mysterious lost hot Sunday in Bourke, did it really happen?
- Wow, look at those BOM adjustments – trends up by two degrees C!
- Australian BOM “neutral” adjustments increase minima trends up 50%
- Was the Hottest Day Ever in Australia not in a desert, but in far south Albany?!
- Hottest summer record in Australia? Not so, says UAH satellite data
- Mystery black-box method used to make *all new* Australian “hottest” ever records
- BOMs new data set, ACORN, so bad it should be withdrawn (954 min temps larger than the max!)
- Threat of ANAO Audit means Australia’s BOM throws out temperature set, starts again, gets same results
- Australian Temperatures in cities adjusted up by 70%!?
A lot of this information and so much more was discussed in my chapter “Mysterious Revisions to Australia’s Long Hot History” in the new book Climate Change: The Facts 2017. Co-authors include Clive James, Matt Ridley, Willie Soon, Roy Spencer, and Anthony Watts. Order your copy now, the first edition has sold out. Also available as Ebook and paperback on Amazon.
If companies adjusted their stock prices as much as the BOM adjusts the temperatures, all the directors would be behind bars. What the heck is wrong with sticking to the raw readings in the first place? Even if some are wrong the average temperature over time will iron out most of them. Any odd outliers (cold or hot) should be removed.
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Maintenance of the great illusion of climate change, requires much sleight of hand.
Like all good conjurors, they never reveal their secrets….
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OS
Don’t forget the “sleight of tongue” that is part and parcel of the act
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I wish the red thumbers would have the backbone to reveal who they were.
Carping anonymously from the sidelines with no skin in the game, is the cowards position….
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The red-thumb pushers tend to be prepubescents who want to pretend they are all grown up, and have views that matter. Of course, they are not, and they don’t.
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Now let’s see how many red thumbs my previous comment attracts … 😉
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It is reasonably safe to conclude that those who red thumb sensible comments don’t much like reality or truth.
I suggest looking at the large number of thumbs up and simply add the number of thumbs down as endorsements.
You got their attention and upset them enough to draw an infantile response.
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I have the opposite problem
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GI, not that I am familiar with your work, but I did refer to the red thumbing of sensible comments.
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It is wrong to criticise the red thumbs so. At least they have been here and read some of our comments. Like it or not, they are part of the family.
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The problem you can’t even trust raw data produced by the BoM.
Great post Jo; a very useful summary of the defects of the BoM. The one I like the best is the BoM admitting the HQ had a warming bias due to rounding issues to do with the transfer from F to C. The BoM claimed ACORN had rectified this bias but ACORN had the same trend as the HQ!
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Good point. As Jo is suggesting we need a “second opinion” whereby temperature readings are taken using better means. Alternatively, why can’t we trust the satellite readings. Are they distorted as well?
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“the satellite readings”
And they are calibrated against?
Thermometer readings?
Electronic temperature measuring devices?
?
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The UAH reaults are calibrated against radiosonde readings ata number of latitudes. Radiosondes use electronic temperature measurements.
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Thanks Rud.
Have not gone into that much in the past because radiosonde measurements were for meteorologists and not of much interest to me in terms of understanding the mechanism behind global warming.
Sixty years ago as a ten year old I used to watch the weather balloons heading up until they disappeared. They may have been followed by radar from Williamtown RAAF base until the balloon popped.
At that time the height of technology was my grandfather’s crystal radio and I can’t imagine that the balloons could transmit temperatures at different heights.
Interesting, I guess this brings into question the evolution of atmospheric temperature measurement and how many technological transition points there have been over the years.
KK
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Rud Istvan Sept 17, 2017, 12:05 am
“The UAH results are calibrated against radiosonde readings at a number of latitudes. Radiosondes use electronic temperature measurements.”
Radiosonde electronic temperature measurements are only good for the temperature of the sensor itself not necessarily ‘measuring’ the local heats of this atmosphere! Many move to fast to ‘measure’ the temperature of anything except itself, to any known accuracy.
UAH results cannot be calibrated against radiosonde readings. The two measurements need have no relationship to each other!!
The radiosonde only measures the sensible heat of some sensor, not its surround. The sensors on the satellites measure the narrow band accumulated radiance of atmospheric Oxygen molecules in the whole path from the satellite to the surface including surface radiance itself, in that narrow band. There can be no correspondence between long path narrow band radiance and thermometric temperature at any location or altitude.
I know picky picky! These details quickly establish that academic meteorologists, climatologists, have no clue as to what garbage they spout
BTW the satellite measurements of whatever they are measuring (radiance of atmosphere with extremely variable local water content), are at least an order of magnitude more repeatable than any radiosonde measurement ever made!
KinkyKeith Sept17, 2017 8:39 am
“Thanks Rud.
Have not gone into that much in the past because radiosonde measurements were for meteorologists and not of much interest to me in terms of understanding the mechanism behind global warming.”
Global warming\Gorebull warbilimg is nothing but a political SCAM. No science!
“Interesting, I guess this brings into question the evolution of atmospheric temperature measurement and how many technological transition points there have been over the years.”
Calculated average near surface atmospheric temperature, in the continual presence of highly variable specific and latent heat, can never have any possible meaning!!
All the best!-will-
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Does external calibration matter?
Do we need to know the absolute value?
Isn’t the relative change in temperature what is important?
Just asking, because there seems to be a lot of angst about something that is not really relevant to most people.
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True. The only reason external calibration matters is where you want to mix data sets obtained from two very different methods of measurement.
And/or make a story that makes it possible to scam the tax payers.
KK
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“And/or make a story that makes it possible to scam the tax payers.”
The whole Gorebull intent from the very start! No science whatsoever! 🙂
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“Does external calibration matter?
Do we need to know the absolute value?”
Yes when trying to be precise! The absolute value if one Kelvin is demanded! All stuff less than that equals all stuff more than that! Linearity is for Chimpanzees. Wad jew tink stuff may be? 🙂
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And what is the benchmark for calibration of the Fort Denison tide gauge?
And why did NOAA terminate the Fort Denison tide gauge chart at 2010?
Could this become the biggest bust yet?
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.htm?stnid=680-140
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FIRST, having no other base to work from we are stuck with the raw BoM data records and if nothing else we must force the BoM to maintain, preserve and safely store these records.
SECOND, it’s easy enough to start the question process = do a temperature record with the straight RAW DATA, NO TOUCHY TOUCY AT ALL. Because BoM start at exactly the same place, so then we can say PROVE the basis on which you change the raw record.
THIRD, while it’s easy to all sit back and charge BoM with temperature tampering, someone really needs to be supported to take the raw BoM data and develop an alternative temperature record to challenge the BoM = Jennifer Marohasy? with all adjustments detailed quantified and justified. If the raw record and the new record get enough attention it will start the sheeples asking questions.
THIRD, maintain pressure on the BoM by continuing to call them out on every error.
FORTH, everyone must maintain pressure on your local MP.
Starting to look like a battle plan?
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Who can forget the harry_read_me.txt file from Climategate and Harry’s opinion of Australia’s “raw” temperature record? How could the BOM hope to create a high-quality record from such a laughable dataset?
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Those elites “involved”, (they get money from the government), in the great Global Warming heist need to go to prison. Do Not Pass Go.
Otherwise they will only invent a new disaster we must “all address” by paying them rent. In prison its a lower rate.
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As I understand it we’re only really interested in the “anomaly,” the
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http://jennifermarohasy.com/2017/09/two-decades-temperature-data-australia-not-fit-purpose/
ACORN-SAT Homogenisation for raisons d’etat…Expect another weasily
neo-revisionism or post-revisionism at the tax-payers’expense.
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Unfortunately the BOM, like Their ABC, has an internal complaints review system, rather than an external and independent one. The former ensures that there will never be any improper activity identified and acknowledged.
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Just keep squeezing…..
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Nothing squeezes harder than public exposure.
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Nothing disinfects a cesspool like direct sunlight….
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When I am on a public beach, I always subconsciously pull my stomach in.
Is that what you mean by, “Nothing squeezes harder than public exposure”.?
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Clearly, politicians are elected representatives of the people, the constituents in each electorate vote for a candidate to sit in parliament or local government councils. They are there to represent us and to act in our best interests managing taxpayer’s monies. They are, or should be, first and foremost our local member, and then a member of a political party or as an independent.
The standards have fallen badly in Australia, there have always been rogues and malingerers in politics, but on the whole most have been honourable members.
I never thought I would experience such chaos, dysfunction and incompetence, or so many self serving and foreign interest serving rogues.
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Really? Did you vote for Australia to become welded to the EU as a potential resource basket that never stops giving and a bolt-hole for when it all falls apart over there?
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Two or three scandals before this one, I thought the errors and perfidy of the BOM were a shame and I felt very sad. The last time I thought the situation was hopeless and BOM ought to be abolished and replaced. Now, I feel it is more than incompetence [SNIP]. I now feel that BOM leaders down 5 or 6 levels ought to be [SNIP]. And then when appropriate, abolish BOM and replace it by a new agency or a well known and trusty private company and an oversight board of 5 members with the chair and 2 others prominent skeptics and only two alarmists. It cannot be majority alarmist or they would rapidly recreate a crooked BPM situation again.
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[SNIP]
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Thought this one would get chopped .
–Please report comments like that to support AT joannenova.com.au. Thanks. — Jo
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Castrated?
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I’d settle for incarcerated.
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I am innocent, it was a comment based on humour, not malice.
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Not you.
The UNIPCCCC.
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Whatever [SNIP] is, I totally agree with it.
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Amen brotherI mean, Hell Yea!22
OK Guys, cut it out and get back on the point.
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Dennis Sept 16, 2017 at 4:08 pm ·
[SNIP]
Robert Rosicka Sept 16, 2017 at 4:31 pm · Reply
“Thought this one would get chopped”.
(–Please report comments like that to support AT joannenova.com.au. Thanks. — Jo)
matthu Sept 16, 2017 at 6:01 pm
“Castrated?”
KinkyKeith Sept 16, 2017 at 7:09 pm
“I’d settle for incarcerated.”
Dennis Sept 16, 2017 at 7:53 pm
“I am innocent, it was a comment based on humour, not malice.”
KinkyKeith Sept 16, 2017 at 9:00 pm
“Not you, the UNIPCCCC.
toorightmate Sept 16, 2017 at 11:35 pm
“Whatever [SNIP] is, I totally agree with”
Greg Cavanagh Sept 17, 2017 at 8:03 am
“Amen brother I mean, Hell Yea!”
Rereke Whakaaro Sept 17, 2017 at 10:21 am ·
“OK Guys, cut it out and get back on the point.”
I so solly! What was the point?
So very nice that the Pretty lady’s blog can get around AU hate speech BS with no effort!!
All the best!-will-
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Just love the first red thumb, 🙂
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One thing is for certain it’s pointless contacting the minister for all things green or any politician for that matter , more proof our elected officials are inept , incompetent and couldn’t care less about the plebs or their concerns .
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I have to nag on this point.
When you have measured minimum and maximum, that is all you have measured. You have not measured, cause, duration, speed of rise/fall, UHI, site events, equipment fails, spatial extent…and above all the effect of cloud. Some of these other things might be measured, in which you might have a partial idea, through cross-checks of all kinds, what was going on in a given place over a given period. Maybe.
When you have measured total rainfall for any period and place, that is all you have measured. You have not measured cause, intensity, extent…need I go on? You certainly have not accounted for that six inches of rain which fell into Kempsey airport’s gauge but nowhere else on July 13 this year. You might find ways to measure other factors, but then it is vain to do comparisons with historical records which were simple (though at least under the close control of non-buggy postmasters and lighthouse keepers who were conscientious and sober a lot of the time).
Statistics are mostly juvenile bunk with strong appeal to big babies. We can help statistics along a little toward adulthood, so they can help us human adults a little. But that’s it.
Lastly, even if it is possible to take a “global” temperature from sorting and compiling lots of readings, the matter is trivial. It simply does not matter which horse has a nose in front in a slow two-horse race. It’s been like watching paint dry since “hot” dashed to a big lead about eight thousand years ago after “cold” had been killing it just a few thousand years before. If we get Optimum conditions again, we’ll notice. If we have a repeat even of the much milder cool events since the Younger Dryas we won’t need any global temp to know about it. When the glacier eats your village, as in the 17th century, it concentrates the mind wonderfully.
It does not matter if the world overall is warming a bit. It can only go two ways. Global temp is a squiggle. It’s a dropped spaghetti (cooked).
Actually, what matters is squashing the Climatariat like a dropped spag because it’s running a sinister neo-Marxist scam. On its best day.
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Good point about unexplained high rainfall at a specific point. It reminded me of a day about 30 years ago when the road here was totally dry on one side and soaked on the other !
The dry / wet division was almost on the central white line for about 80 yards. The most tightly defined edge of cloud and rainfall I have ever seen. But, it might not be that uncommon as without the rain edge being along the middle of the road I would not have seen it. It wouldn’t have been noticeable anywhere on the farm itself
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Something similar happened years ago at the junction of Springvale Road and Canterbury Road in Melbourne. We saw heavy rain one side of the junction and it was completely dry the other side.
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This was a case of flood conditions occurring only over a few square inches. The rest of the region was dry, including the airport area where the gauge was located.
It was most likely a failure of an automated system, if it wasn’t a prank. And there was no postmaster to screw up his face at a dodgy reading, chase off mischievous kids or yell at a cleaner hosing down the equipment. The system is too perfect to need that sort of help. Now the reading is there in the record for centuries to come. The Phantom Flood of the Macleay will haunt us now forever.
Mind you, around here you wouldn’t have to move a gauge very far to increase or decrease your annual rainfall. And I reckon a thermometer moved along a border between forest and paddock would produce some very interesting variations on a still winter night. A few metres would be enough to enter a cold sink.
But we’re people. What are we doing arguing with HAL the System?
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I too have considered how futile and irrelevant Temperature Max/Min are. Statistical enlightenment I suppose. All in all meaningless.
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Take say ,ten measurements over the Diurnal/ nocturnal period and average it. Not a new concept. People will still say.” Hasn’t the weather been strange lately”
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Brilliantly put, mosomoso.
I tip my hat to you.
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mosomoso September 16, 2017 at 4:17 pm
“I have to nag on this point.”
“When you have measured minimum and maximum, that is all you have measured. You have not measured, cause, duration, speed of rise/fall, UHI, site events, equipment fails, spatial extent…and above all the effect of cloud. Some of these other things might be measured, in which you might have a partial idea, through cross-checks of all kinds, what was going on in a given place over a given period. Maybe.”
Indeed The US-weather folk carefully use past weather statistics into attempt at future weather ‘probability’, with every disclaimer possible!
Perhaps past A was followed by B, followed by C, then D,E,F,G. Then if recent history has A followed by B, followed by C, Upcoming D is highly probable as Earth’s local weather is much more deterministic than chaotic.
Why has this never been explained to US children in the second grade for understanding? Much much more important than getting the 26 alphabetical symbols in some stupid order! Lets discuss intentional corrupt deliberate dumbing down of poor serf children, for profit!
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For people interested in nuclear power stations …
Nuclear research
On 6 June 2006, Switkowski was appointed to chair a Commonwealth Government inquiry into the viability of a domestic nuclear power industry. He was later appointed chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) by federal Minister for Science Julie Bishop on 4 March 2007. Switkowski was originally appointed to the board of ANSTO on 1 January 2006, but stood down when appointed to the inquiry. After the completion of the inquiry, he was then reappointed to the board as chairman on 1 March 2007. His term as chairman concluded at the end of 2010.
The inquiry concluded that Australia is well positioned to increase its production and export of uranium as well as adding nuclear power to its own energy mix. However, an independent panel of Australian scientists and nuclear experts have been critical of these findings, claiming that they relied upon flawed assumptions while dodging important questions such as the disposal of radioactive waste and the potential greenhouse gas implications of increased mining.
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That’s why we need to look at Thorium Molten Salt Reactors. They start with the waste of rare earth mining and can consume the waste from all the existing pressurised reactors without breeding weapons grade materials. Won’t happen because it is too simple and obvious.
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A good plan, and then convert Coal into liquid fuels for transportation needs and become self sufficient.
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Oz has been hit by a couple of triple-headers. Bad data, bad physics, bad mathematics created the “coal is evil story”. Then Flannery, Rudd and Turnbull delighted in “feeling good” while they preached. No wonder we were ripe for the AGW con.
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Looks like Australia has it’s own climate swamp to drain .
Why would any country throw its own citizens under the bus,
wasting $ billions in the process, over a possible fractional change in temperature ?
Absolutely Bonkers ! The truth is it has almost nothing to do with the earths temperature .
Globalization , wealth transfer and fraud from some scientists on the take , renewable grant seekers and
opportunists looking to score .
Yes humans have an impact , yes it’s warming slightly as we exit the current end of a ice age . So what .
What do we do if Mother Nature throws us a curve? We adapt when necessary . Put on a scarf or wear sandals .
People are exposed to more “global warming” every time they walk up a few stairs .
Time to admit we know little about climate science and stop the abuse of public trust .
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I have been measuring stuff for just over 50 years, and I have always believed that taking the Max and Min temperatures each day is wrong.
Temperature is only 1 good Proxy for the amount of energy in a system.
The only way to measure the amount of energy each day is to calculate the integrated area under the temperature curve which is equal to the days energy. Give it any value you like but stay constant from day to day.
You can have 2 days that have the same max and min temps but have a completely different integrated area. Think clouds or an afternoon thunderstorm.
If I remember rightly, Warwick Hughes and Ken Stewart touched on this at least (maybe) 10 years ago.
I think we should, or the BOM should, revise the methods to determine the amount of energy each area over our country is receiving each day. We have the half hourly temps from the weather stations all over the country,, just integrate each station.
Maybe we will get some results that are meaningful.
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Lateline, 15 Sept, 2017, Industry Minister Arthur Sinodinos, re; Paris Agreement:
6.23 sec: “I can guarantee that what ever we do in this area, we will be consistent with our obligations because we are not walking away from Paris, we made those agreements in good faith, we’re not walking away from it … yada yada blah blah.”
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2016/s4735389.htm
. . .
If they aren’t walking away from that economy killing suicide note, they don’t give a flying fig about BoM.
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Most politicians have an extremely narrow focus and Sinodinos is a good example. They need intense coaching from their advisors in order to get over the brief lest they F… Up big time. Who advises the advisors? Well….
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People like me!
Be afraid, … be very afraid. 😐
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This is beyond a joke. There seems sufficient evidence of tampering with data that [snip] charges need to be brought. The reason people get away with this deceit is that they can and they know no government will touch them. If one of these [snip “is held accountable” ] we might get less people prepared to continually lie. If a biotech company misrepresents data and people die they pay financially and directors do jail time. If the BOM does the same thing which causes governments to implement policies which causes poor people to be unable to meet their power bill and they end up dying the BOM is not accountable. It’s about time that were held responsible.
[The BOM can only be accountable for weather and climate reports, not electricity policy. How the government uses those reports is our elected MP’s responsibility – -Jo]
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Jo, correct But if policy is made that is based on false information then those who provide the information must take responsibility for the effects and consequences of the policies that their ‘information’ brought about.
Sadly in today’s world responsibility for accuracy and honesty has to be enforced by meaningful and painful penalties.
As it is BOM can, as Pontius Pilate did, wash their hands of responsibility for the policy effects of their actions.
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False information AND incorrect assumptions.
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And looking back at the call by Prime Minister Tony Abbott for due diligence to be conducted at the BoM by independent auditors appointed by the government, which was rejected by a majority in Cabinet, our political leaders do not care about false information and incorrect assumptions, they want to toe the line and do the bidding of foreigners.
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And that is why the providers of the information always provide a range of options. You never find a one-handed advisor.
It is the advisor’s job to present a range of alternatives, based upon impartial research, and a sampling of “expert opinion” (even if the “experts” are self-professed).
The recipient then goes through the collated material, and makes their decision. That decision is often based on political factors, so the “decision” is often foreordained.
Advisor’s are the direct metaphorical descendants of the medieval court jester. With much the same life-expectancy.
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Rereke Whakaaro:
So our politicians would make better decisions if hit with an inflated pigs bladder on a stick?
Given that all too many give the impression of a bag of wind inflated with a sense of their own importance where do we save money by attaching them to a large stick? And with what sort of knot?
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I always thought that a lot of your parliamentarians gave a fair impersonation of pigs bladders as they were.
If you want to tie them to something, you will need to use an Al Gore-dian Knot.
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“And with what sort of knot?”
If the knot is BY politicians, then surely there is still a choice of two:
1) the frayed knot. Almost every politician has or will say “I’m a frayed knot”, so clearly they know what one looks like;
2) the one politicians are infinitely familiar with creating – a Gordian knot, of course!
If the knot is FOR politicians, then the most popular choice, historically at least, is the hangmans noose.
😉
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‘Advisor’s are the direct metaphorical descendants of the medieval court jester. With much the same life-expectancy.’
Plus lots.) Nearly as dangerous as being one of Henry V111’s wives.
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Jo, you say:
As I said the other day, looking at the Meteorology Act 1955, there is no mention of “climate” whatsoever. Is there some other Act of Parliament which has given them responsibility through 6.1(j) of this Act? It seems to me the BOM has a pretty sensible and well defined objective. They are all about weather and, as both sides of the climate debate say, weather is not climate. The BOM should stick to their mission and never mention climate.
A key question: which BOM function under the Act is served by revising historical records?
Anybody using BOM data as input to climate models ought to be treating it as another one of the many dodgy proxies. It wasn’t ever intended for use in climate science. Making it suitable (if it can be done at all) should be left to the users, not BOM.
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I echo Cohenite’s words; “Great post Jo”.
One major issue with BOM”s data is that clearly it integrates sets of readings taken with two seriously dissimilar methods.
First we had liquid (mercury or alcohol) in glass thermometer readings taken with or without Stephenson screens and then, more recently, and over a much shorter time span we had the electronic instruments with vastly different sensitivity.
It is WRONG to carry out statistical analysis on those two data sets and integrate them as BOM has done.
An analogy comes to mind in the timing of athletics events at the Olympic games. The timing of races by timekeepers gave a true and accurate result, for that method.
When electronic timekeeping was introduced there was a mad scramble to equate similar performances using the two systems.
From memory I recall that both sets of readings were recorded until the newer results disposed of the time gap resulting from the reaction times of the human timekeeping.
BOM simply ignores the difference in measurement systems and uses the confusion to adjust old and new data to suit the meme of CAGW.
There’s a fox in the hen house and it needs [SNIP “dealing with”].
Can I say that?
KK
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I agree. I worked in instrumentation for a large number of years. You can compare results if everything remains the same during the test but if anything does change then all bets are off.
It seems to me that the climate science community thrive on changing the instrumentation. We had Mann appending thermometers to treemometers. Epic fail. We have revisions to the temperature monitoring stations in use. They discarded a few thousand. This is obviously an issue. There are the changes to the instruments themselves from mercury in glass to electronic, changes in the Stevenson screens, re-painting of the screens. The list just goes on and on.
As we are only concerning ourselves with changes of a fraction of a degree, the accuracy of the data is vital. I can start with a few thousand rows of “random” data in Excel and by discarding a few selected rows I can create either an upward trend or a downward trend in the resultant average depending on which rows I remove (or “adjust”).
People who like to think of themselves as climate scientists appear to completely ignore the accuracy of the raw data. They are much more interested in playing with computer models. The other thing they ignore is history. Hubert Lamb understood that we needed to know what happened in the past. The current generation of climate scientists are happy to ignore it. That way it is easier to make the present appear more scary that it actually is.
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I also keep saying this:
What the BOM have been doing are ongoing breaches of the Meteorology Act 1955 and includes numerous breaches of the Public Service Act 1999 by individuals.
Its time to use FOI to get the documents behind this, as the BOM have been “ducking for decades”. For instance, which BOM divisional head authorised the destruction of raw data?
This issue is too important to leave in the hands of Turnbull and the continually conned Frydenberg.
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Is he conned or compliant?
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Consider that the Environment ministers had so little faith in meteorology that they also hired/employed 350 additional full time CSIRO scientists for years just to study Australia’s climate, apparently without studying the weather. Hundreds of millions of dollars cost. Perhaps a few thousand man years of intense professional PhD level study. It is still continuing in part.
This is possibly because our Chief Climate Commissioner and his commissioners did not have a meteorologist among them, just a few engineers and a chemist and a few bureaucrats. Clearly politicians buy the argument that climate is very different from weather.
Then the CSIRO/BOM had to set up a special committee to liase between the people who knew only about the weather (BOM) and those who knew only about the climate (CSIRO)?
You could not make this up as comedy.
Then why have a BOM at all if the minister in charge is so dismissive of the real science of meteorology? Climate Science clearly requires different skills, like those of Al Gore or Tim Flannery’s giant extinct Wombat knowledge. Climate, the mystery which will never be solved.
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Thousands of meteorologists were also excluded from the 97% of scientists story! Clearly the consensus was that meteorologists knew nothing about the Climate. Of the 10,000 weather specialists surveyed, only a very exclusive 100 with very recent and frequent publications alleging man made global warming were chosen for the 97% of scientists. Self evidently these were Climate Gods. This was the consensus of the very, very few.
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https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/30798/european-union-and-australia-sign-framework-agreement-deepen-cooperation_en
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The review consisted of a group of Statisticians known as the Technical Advisory Forum (TAF).
The terms of reference , minutes of the meetings and reports and BOM responses are on the BOM website but are hard to find by browsing. They are here.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn-sat/#tabs=Technical-Advisory-Forum
The members were;
Dr Ron Sandland AM FTSE Forum Chair
Emeritus Professor Bob Vincent FAA Forum Vice Chair
Dr Phillip Gould Forum Member
Dr John Henstridge Forum Member
Ms Susan Linacre Forum Member
Professor Michael Martin PFHEA Forum Member
Professor Patty Solomon Forum Member
Professor Terry Speed FAA Forum Member
http://www.environment.gov.au/minister/baldwin/2015/pubs/mr20150119.pdf
The members of the TAF were appointed for a period of 3 years. Their final report has recently been delivered (Sep 2017).
All the repots seemed to express satisfaction with the BOM’s methods of homogenisation of the temperature records and general alarmist projections. They made a few recommendations for minor changes in the BOM’s methods but seem to have overlooked important issues of data sampling such as the change to automatic recording thermometers with 1 second readings which were not averaged over 5 minutes as recommended by the WMO.
Probably they never even knew about such things unless they were readers of this blog or Jennifer Marohasy. From my reading of the probably sanitised minutes, they were informed by presentations from BOM officers including Drs David Jones, Rob Vertesy. Karl Braganza and Blair Trewin. If anyone asked searching question of the BOM they were not recorded in the minutes.
About 20 people made what were described as unsolicited representations to the TAF (including my self). I think Dr Jennifer Marohasy was one, which should have been reason enough for the TAF members to follow her blog.
The assessment on the final report (2017) included the following statements
” The Forum remains satisfied with the Bureau’s ongoing development and operation of the ACORN-SAT dataset, and notes that the Bureau has consistently demonstrated a genuine commitment to best-practice management of the dataset.”
” The Forum continues to support the Bureau’s methodological approaches to homogenisation practices, and reiterates the importance of homogenisation in supporting the maintenance of a meaningful and consistent set of temperature records over time. The Forum noted again that the Bureau is recognised internationally for its expertise in homogenisation, which is demonstrated through their continued engagement and leadership on this topic within the international climatological science community.”
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Like did anyone actually think they were going to make a negative finding against the BOM , must have been a great three year junket .
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CYCLONES
The BOM are [snip “incorrect”] in their cyclone forecasts and actual data. Neither Yasi, Ita or Marcia were more than CAT 3 on the Queensland coast based on damage sustained, central pressures and maximum winds. Yasi never had a greater gust than 185 k.p.h recorded at Lucinda, Marcia 156 k.p.h. at Middle Percy Island and Ita a similar figure near Cape Flattery. An unregistered site pressure of 930 mbs at the Tully Sugar Mill was given as proof of Yasi yet Innisfail 19 miles from the centre had little damage. All the big Cat 5 Hurricanes have always had centres below 900 mbs, tight centres and some having pressures falling 6 mbs per hour as they develop. No one in the BOM has ever been close to a cyclone – they sit in their offices far away and just rely on theory and make up things to create a sense of doom and destruction. I am not a cyclone expert but have flown through the eye of two cyclones, one a Cat 3 which developed to Cat 4 and destroyed Mornington Island in 1976 so I know what the eye looks like inside and what the winds are like on the ground within 80 klms.
The recent cyclone Debbie was interesting. At no time did they report what the central pressure was as this would show that their forecasts were wrong. Many of their anemometers have given false readings over recent years, such as the December Kurnell storm where they recorded a wind gust of 213 k.p.h. for over five minutes straight which was probably overstated by about 100%. In over 52 years in aviation I know that wind gusts never stay the same figure for five minutes or more – that’s not what a gust is or how it is measured. These are a few examples to show what a pack of frauds and incompetents these people really are. On many occasions I have seen them report a forecast in real time which was the exact opposite of what was happening – they don’t even have the brains to look outside.
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You are generally correct. BoM have done some over the top cyclone predictions, and then resorted to mucking around, by eg deleting perfectly reasonable measurements at Middle Percy Island AFTER the event had gone past. In Marcia, Rockhampton suffered from inadequate design decisions rather than a cyclone. Debbie did not count as even a tropical low by the time it got to Proserpine according to the JCU SWIRLNet device deployed there.
You are wrong about Yasi. JCU Cyclone Testing Station Technical Report No 57. April, 2011:
” …barograph at the Tully Sugar Mill recorded a minimum pressure of 929 hPa as the eye passed over suggesting wind gusts of about 285 km/h were possible.” “Maximum Category: 5 Maximum sustained wind speed: 205 km/hr (estimated) Maximum wind gust: 285 km/hr (estimated) Lowest central pressure: 929 hPa”
http://www-public.jcu.edu.au/news/JCUPRD1_071493
http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/how-strong-was-yasi/
I was 200km south of the eye, 200m from the shore, and the load on my N4 window glass was likely 200km/hr, based on the fact that it was deflecting. eg bowing inwards slightly. I was not game to observe that for very long. No one was undertaking actual anemometer measurements anywhere. My calculation was subsequently proven correct by calculations by JCU CTS of the fail characteristics of traffic signs.
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Sorry Martin,
But you would be wrong on Yasi. The highest wind gust ACTUALLY recorded was 185 k.p.h. at Lucinda Point. A 929 mb centre does not indicate a Cat 5 and they did not have a recognized weather station anywhere in the area at that time. If you look at all the big CAT five hurricanes they are below 900 mbs. Yasi was too large in size to spin that fast for a 285 k.p.h. wind. Many of the Hurricanes and Typhoons reported as Cat 5 were not Cat 5 as the data was never verified. You could not have been experiencing 200 km winds 200 kms south of the eye because I saw the actually sea conditions not long before the eye crossed the coast as the deck officer on a bulk carrier that was between Magnetic Island and the Palm Island Group gave a video interview with a television station and reported the wind at 90 klm.p.h and they would have been about 50 n.m from the eye. I actually saw the sea conditions and the waves were barely breaking over the bow.
Go and have a look at photos of Innisfail straight after the passage of the cyclone and it was less than 20 n.m from the eye wall with minimal damage. There is no doubt it was Cat 3 with the damage done to Cardwell and Mission Beach
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Martin,
I also thought that wind speed data from Middle Percy Island at the eye of Cyclone Debbie passed by had been deleted after the event. I was checking the observations every half hour or so, during the evening but I went to bed before midnight, thinking that I would have a look at how things had developed the next morning. In the morning the wind speed data stopped after about 10pm and it seemed to me that an hour or more of the data that I had seen the night before had been deleted.
I had no proof because I had not been saving the screen shots. It did not occur to me to do so. I asked the BOM about that and was informed by email that the anemometer had been broken by the high winds. No admission about deleting data.
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Interesting. I recently looked at what “Debbie” had cooked up and the restoration since March. On the Northern approaches near Gloucester Island and Edgecumbe Bay there is little observed damage save the crowns of trees damaged.Little uprooting. Further south around Airlie Beach and Conway they had a similar outcome. I recall my first visit to the area round 1969 and noted the entire ridge line overlooking Airlie was denuded and in disarray.
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Dear Jo, and all;
It seems to me that we spend a lot of time discussing the what of climate change, and the scientific why of climate change,
without discussing the why this is a big issue.
Here are a couple of ponderables:
In the US at least, climate change is part of a family of litmus test issues that it has no obvious relation to, from abortion to
various phobias to income inequality.
More than most of these others, ‘climate change’ is being encumbered by the elements of being a religion.
Here’s one take on why.
Most of the causes of the left are failing. They are factually testable. Ordinary people can see for themselves that non-white races are making tremendous progress, that women in the workplace are making progress, that there are certainly places where gays can marry and be fully accepted in civil society, and that ordinary people of a variety of religions are OK in spite of some terrorism. ABortion is falling to medical science as seven and eight month babies routinely survive.
But climate still remains the mystery that caused our millenial ancestors to reputedly throw virgins into volcanos to prevent the onslaught of nature. Two major storms in twelve years “proves” a case that no major storms in eleven and ha half years have made a dent in.
The left have found an issue that gives them leverage, and they are exploiting it to the hilt. Unlike the “isms” where extreme examples of stupidity becomes rarer and harder to attribute to general society, the mysterious forces of nature are all too visible from time to time, with concomitant horrors revealed by “studies” that the ordinary folk have no basis for disbelieving even if they are peer-coordinated fol-de-rol.
But I think we are onto something now. The simple notion that “environmentalism” makes everything cost more while the storms, droughts, and flood don’t stop may eventually force the left to move on to the next big thing, whatever it is.
Its shameful that Australia may have to be the canary in the coal mine (referential pun intended) that proves that “green” policies can destroy a perfectly good economy, joining Venezuela as clownish terror examples of liberalness for the 21st century.
IN the US, I think the mania is beginning to pass — bleating about superstorms notwithstanding. Several regions impoverished by liberal EPA authoritarianism are now reviving economically under a relaxed regime, and ordinary folks can see the difference. They won’t be fooled again.
I’d wager the majority of Australian are there too.
You know, the system will never really get better as long as politicians remain the only major responsible segment of society that never bears any personal accountability for their actions. This may, in fact, be the libertarians best argument for less goernment.
Starting with a private power grid, no?
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One thing I forgot to mention.
If we all drove electric cars, Irma would have swept over a million people
stopped dead on the north south freeway with no place to go, no way to move, and no
radio or air=conditioning.
One thing that kept the traffic moving was pumper running up and down the shoulder bailing out people low on fuel.
I saw one Tesla evacuate.
It was on a diesel flatbed.
Selling electric cars will be tough in Florida for a while.
If Tesla fails, the shareholders will feel much pain.
The legislators who shoveled our money at the company? Not so much.
Enhances the point, I think
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Surely they will aim for double-plus revised, will they not?
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Jo,
Your headlines these days read like an inventory of bad old movies. You know, the kind of stuff that when you walk out of the theater you regret spending the price of admission, the ones that aren’t even redeemed by popcorn and your favorite candy.
Or maybe the ones you went to with your boyfriend and sat in the back row and didn’t care about the movie. 😉
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Would one of those movies be “Idiocracy” ?
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Well, they say old dogs can’t learn new tricks. But I never heard of that one before so it’s being added to my list of movies to avoid at all costs.
Thanks
The trouble is, we resemble that movie’s description a little too close for comfort.
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I can’t believe you’ve never watched it , it fits the CAGW meme right down to irrigating crops with coolaide and not knowing why the crops won’t grow .
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I try to avoid movies that will insult my intelligence, my moral standards or my understanding of how science depends on evidence.
But honestly, I had never heard of it until I read you comment.
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This last week has seen 33C days in NSW and many bushfires, far earlier in the season. In neighbouring and very cold Victoria, we have had a new snow dump and skiing is good. Tesslar’s spring Tulip festival has opened with hardly a flower to be seen and the temperature has yet to crack 20C mid spring. So even the plants are telling us it is a very cold year but homogenization over a mere 300km will fix that to a balmy 25C average.
Clearly Climate Change can operate from one street to the next but only heat counts for sensationalism. That same applies to oceans too, where climate change selectively heats water around the Great Barrier Reef and causes hurricanes. Cold water and very cold air are simply natural variation. If the many BOM errors and omission and edits are simply carelessness, they are always in the same direction. There is great career incentive to discover warming and none in cooling. Only one storyline brings the politicians with chequebooks. This is one of the forces of nature.
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It certainly looks as if the BOM has been so compromised by its efforts to provide propaganda on the ‘hottest year ever’ for the push to close down Australia electricity supply system that replacing it with a network of dedicated amateur observers all over the country would be a big step forward and save a lot of money.
THe CAGW inspired computer models of climate are so crude by comparison with reality that sticking your head out of the window and observing ant activity are still valuable adjuncts to weather forecasting.
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The UK Met came up with an idea and sold it to BoM, its called WOW.
http://www.bom.gov.au/wow-support/
We maybe able to use this to our advantage.
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Well done Jo, keep up the good work. A review into this would only cost a fraction of the 360 million we pay each year. The whole management team should be stood down.
How much more taxpayers money for reviews Will be spent before we get a politician with some ticker to take them on.
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Typhoons and the Chinese Met on AGW, the intellectual rigour BoM lacks.
‘Zhang Ling, chief forecaster at the meteorological administration, said on Friday that 19 typhoons had formed around the world this year, 2.8 more than the average in the same period in past years, and 13 had appeared since July – six in late July, four in late August, and three this month.
‘Asked about the reason for the frequent windstorms near China since July, meteorological experts said there’s no reliable data indicating they were related to global warming.
‘Xu Ming, a researcher at the meteorological administration’s Shanghai Typhoon Institute, said that although it makes sense from the physics point of view that global warming can lead to more windstorms by increasing the water vapor in the atmosphere, which would reinforce tropical depressions, more precise data is needed to support the theory.
“Scientists should make conclusions based on statistics. Up to now, researchers in different countries don’t have exact data demonstrating that global warming brings more typhoons. And they cannot reach consensus on it,” Xu said.
China Daily
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Will the new adjustments just be made on top of the already previously adjusted (several times) data sets or will this be a whole new round of adjustments and homogenisations based on raw data?
In fact, how much raw data, if any, still exists?
The economic damage caused by the BoM adjudting data to falsely demonstrate anthropogenic global warming is extreme and somebody needs to be held to account. Corporate executives go to jail for much lesser misrepresentations.
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This weather instrument is far more accurate than anything the BoM has to offer.
https://youtu.be/z3GYXUKwjhM
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This is clearly not incompetence which woukd require sacking. This is deliberate falsification and obstruction of the operation of a vital public assett. Every management level public servant is culpable and must be gaolled at least or better still deported. Syrian Army is looking for gun fodder to expend on fronyal assaults. This would be a positive contribution they could be forced to make.
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fantastic post, jo.
fantastic because most of the population – not only in Australia, but worldwide – know noting of the BoM shenanigans that have been uncovered by ordinary citizens of Australia. just as the world knows nothing of what’s been going on in SA with unreliables/blackouts. these are matters which should be of great interest to people everywhere, who have been bombarded with CAGW propaganda for decades.
this saga should have inspired at least two ABC “Four Corners” by now.
if One Nation wants ABC to be “fair and balanced”, why haven’t they brought up even the latest BoM revelations to back up their concerns?
why haven’t The Nationals/Barnaby Joyce – who allegedly represent the farming community which relies on accurate weather data – brought up the latest revelations?
why hasn’t anyone from any party demanded the ABC bosses come in and explain why they haven’t covered the latest BoM shenanigans? over a billion dollars of taxpayer money each year and yet, if you check ABC “Just In” pages on any given day, it’s unbelievable what they consider newsworthy, and what they simply ignore.
there is nothing accidental about the BoM’s behaviour. the fake inquiries, reviews, etc., are precisely what happened with Climategate, which was purposely reduced to a complex “mike’s nature trick” meme, instead of a BBC/Paul Hudson “WHAT HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING” meme. that was the real story of Climategate.
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I agree Pat. I too wonder where the political skeptics are when these revelations are made. Question time would be the venue I would think for ON members.
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I don’t know whether anyone will read this as I’m a bit late to the party but here goes. How good is the BOM at short term weather forecasting? In the UK the Met office seems to do a pretty good job in this respect.Their medium term predictions are hopeless, but I feel that this is probably because predicting the weather more than a few days ahead is impossible. For years now they have always predicted that the weather will be warmer than it then turns out to be, never ever erring in the opposite direction. This suggests to me that they are factoring in the significant warming effect of CO2 when the actual warming effect of CO2 is negligible.
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I have a hundred acres about 10 km North of Wingham in NSW. The local BoM site is the Taree AP about12 km East of me. I have been following the high jinx of the BoM for a decade and want to help expose it for the duplicitous agency it is. I would be quite happy to have a Stevenson screen here and could provide the space so it was unaffected by human heat sources. If you could indicate how much it would cost to set up I may well be able to fund it. I do travel occasionally so would not always be available to read the thermometer. Anyway the offer is there and you have my email.
Lawrie
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Anyone noticed the new stations popping up (in NSW, anyway)?
No doubt we’ll hit new record highs, now stations such as Smithville on the SA border, Boronna Downs and Delta are included.
All are in the far NW of the state.
I’m all for more coverage, but you just know we’ll be hitting new records in no time.
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