Winning! The 1896 heatwave story is going viral and the ABC is reduced to weak, late excuses
Australians are realizing that our hot history has been hidden from us. We’ve set a new site traffic record with around 100,000 people checking in since Wednesday, plus thousands more reading the story elsewhere like Catallaxy and Facebook. Thank you for sharing! We first posted the 1896 heatwave here first in 2013, then again on Wednesday. The ABC has gone into damage control responding with a direct attempt to rebut the story, but they are too scared to name this site. What are they afraid of?
We, of course, have no such fear. Six years after skeptics let Australia know about the 1896 heatwave, the ABC and “experts” finally catch up but only under duress. So now they mention it, but use vague caveats, distractors, discuss different time spans, ignore 49 other hot sites, appeal to authority, and don’t mention their own recent artificial site changes that skeptics have documented in more detail than the BOM have. The “experts” allude to “thermometers on beer crates” but in Bourke the heat was recorded at the post office on Oxley st. Skeptics are well aware of the places using beer crates, verandahs and stone walls — they were recording temperatures like 130 F in the shade (a blistering 54.4C), and we didn’t even use those readings to create the heatwave map of 1896 (below). See Marra station N.S.W. and Berlino S.A..
If the ABC wants to focus on Bourke, bring it on. Let’s talk about how cooling trends were changed to warming ones, and how they threw out original data, and from a Stevenson screen — a record of 51.7C in 1909 — wiped “because it was a Sunday”. We can detail the site, the moves, the ground, the equipment and the flaws — apparently better than the “experts” can.
The Australian heatwave of 1896
My point remains — how can the BOM say they “know” it was cooler?
Where is the scientific accuracy to a tenth of a degree coming from? They can’t admit they don’t know and that it might have been as hot or hotter in 1896.
ABC: 435 people died in an 1896 heatwave — but scientists say the extreme heat events of today are still hotter
By Sophie Meixner and Daniel Nancarrow
This is what 97% certainty looks like — a bunch of vague caveats
Wait for it: they “know” it was cooler because it can’t be “easily compared” and is “likely suspect”?
The Bureau of Meteorology noted in a 2017 report the 1896 data “cannot be easily compared with modern recordings”.
“Detailed study has shown that extreme temperatures recorded at Bourke during the 1896 heatwave were likely suspect due to non-standard exposure, and likely around two degrees warmer than temperatures recorded with standard instrumentation.”
The Experts don’t even know the Bourke readings in 1896 came from the post office on Oxley St:
University of Melbourne climate researcher Linden Ashcroft said thermometers in Bourke were likely placed in sub-standard conditions in 1896. “Some thermometers were under verandahs, or they were against stone buildings,” she said. “I’ve heard of thermometers being kept in beer crates.
How about 51.7C in Bourke recorded in a Stevenson screen in 1909 then? Still not good enough?
It wouldn’t matter if Bourke had a Stevenson screen in 1896, high temperatures would still not be accepted. How do we know, because Bourke had a modern Stevenson Screen and recorded 51.7C in 1909 and the BOM threw the original data in the bin and declared it invalid, “Because it was a Sunday”. Jennifer Marohasy and Graham Lloyd documented the whole scandalous incident where a long cooling trend was changed to a warming trend, and original documents were binned:
January 3, 1909, an extremely hot 51.7C (125F) was recorded at Bourke. It’s possibly the hottest ever temperature recorded in a Stevenson Screen in Australia, but the BOM has removed it as a clerical error.
The Stevenson Screen went to the dump and, but for fate, the handwritten notes could have gone there too. But without instruction, the records were kept and are now under lock and key, held as physical evidence of what the weather was really doing in the mid-20th century.
Independent research, the results of which have not been disputed by BOM, has shown that, after homogenisation, a 0.53C warming in the minimum temperature trend has been increased to a 1.64C warming trend. A 1.7C cooling trend in the maximum temperature series in the raw data for Bourke has been changed to a slight warming.
Apparently official temperatures were not recorded on Sundays in 1909 in Bourke, therefore it didn’t occur. Sure. No observer would voluntarily come in to work on the hottest day in history to note down the temperature. Probably there were too many other exciting things to do in Bourke, right? How about the observer in Brewarrina, a town near Bourke, who recorded 123F the same day. Both liars? Both wrong. It didn’t happen. You vill repeat after me comrade…
History is being destroyed.
Who’s in denial?
This is not just about Bourke. Lance Pidgeon and Chris Gillham and the BOM audit team including Warwick Hughes list extraordinary hot temperatures in 49 places. This was an Australia wide heatwave. Were they all wrong?
Bourke: Perhaps the BOM should hire a skeptic and find out about their own sites?
Let’s talk some more about Bourke. Skeptics like Dr Bill Johnston have inspected it closely (We published his 8 page documentation here). Did the BOM “detailed study” explain that they artificially warmed their own modern expert site in 2013 by clearing the ground around it? Bourke’s temperature station is one of the eight longest running and best in Australia, yet it’s still terrible. It started in 1871 and is still listed as one of Australias top 104 ACORN sites. The reading in 1896 would have come from the official post office, in Oxley Street several allotments east of the courthouse. The site has moved several times (Johnston lists them all). Bourke temperatures are hotter now than in the past because of site changes, not the climate.
Temperatures recorded there since 1999 have been artificially raised by site moves, a shrinking screen, electronic “super sensitive” thermometer, faulty and missing records and possible calibration problems:
“an automatic weather station (AWS) 700 m away in 1999, which used a small 60-litre screen and which reported whole-degrees before 2002. The many temperature values that were culled shows the AWS was frequently over-range, probably because its [rapid response-rate probe]* operating in the small screen recorded flurries of warm air that would not affect thermometers housed in large screens; or that due to calibration problems it was prone to spiking on warm days.
* Lance Pidgeon clarifies that it’s the rapid response rate which is likely causing the artificial spikes.
The BOM doesn’t fix their sites, they just magically homogenise the data instead, through a secret process. We call it vandalization:
Australia’s ACORN-SAT temperature datasets are riddled with problems. The process is opaque; lacks statistical control; synchronous inter-site changes such as replacing 230-litre screens with 60-litre ones and thermometers by AWS at infrequently serviced sites beside dusty tracks and in paddocks at airports, are propagated across the network by the process. Thus few ACORN-SAT datasets are independent of collective problems. Using comparator data that are not homogeneous to adjust faults in ACORN-SAT has no merit and should be abandoned. — Dr Bill Johnston
But the taxpayer funded “expert” doesn’t seem to know any of that, and the taxpayer funded ABC journalists are so incompetent they don’t ask. They only needed to do a ten second internet search to find the skeptics here that have done all their homework for them. It’s yet another example of how the ABC acts as a apologist propaganda agency to cover up for incompetent work from other government groups. Save the children, sell the ABC!
It’s all religious faith and excuses — not science
The UNSW genius explains that more people died in Bourke because “they wore more clothes”:
People weren’t prepared for heatwaves in 1896
University of New South Wales climate researcher Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick said people in 1896 were largely unprepared for extreme heat, meaning they were more vulnerable to its effects.
“Back then everyone wore a lot more clothing than what they do now, there was no air conditioning, people worked outside, they moved outside a lot,” she said.
“It’s like comparing apples and oranges.”
So if it’s like “apples and oranges” how can the BOM / CSIRO / UNSW say they “know” it was cooler? Only because of their faith, not their science.
Air conditioners, and cheap electricity will save more Australian lives than anything else
The only point the ABC gets right is that more people died in 1896 because there were no airconditioners. They don’t mention that scientific studies show these are the biggest lifesaver around (Achebak, 2018), they also reduce indoor pollution, and that more Australians will die if electricity prices keep rising as we force more unreliable, random, bat killing, volt-busting, generators which force out the cheap baseload suppliers and cost us more in pointless capital, land, staffing, inefficiency, and maintenance. Airconditioners save 20,000 lives in USA each year. (Barreca, 2016).
Scores dying in Bourke in 1896
Lance Pidgeon points out that the ABC are downplaying the deaths, saying “The town of Bourke lost at least 40 people — 1.6 per cent of its population” (as if that isn’t catastrophic!). He finds evidence that it was many more than this:
Of those 40 I have only been able to name 61.
So far. See https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/104104740/10771354
Even now it is not known how many men perished ; and it may not be known for months. There was a time when the “travellers,”
having fairly defined beats, were known and almost expected ; but latterly quite a new class has appeared —unknown city men, who, generally biding themselves under aliases, may be dead for months and never, if indeed ever, be missed. Already a few unfortunates have been found—one near Warri Warri, another on Morden, two on Nundora, and another, it is stated, on Yancannia. On Tickalara, on the Queensland border, a young man named Myers and an old man named George Smith succumbed ; the cause in each case is said to have been sunstroke.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/44137042
How about those names from South east QLD.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/3619787
Who’s dodging the point?
Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick then tries to distract us from the topic the BOM and climate experts are unscientifically exploiting — the short heatwave. Suddenly she is talking about seasonal averages or annual averages, but the BOM is generating headlines and trying to scare people about heatwaves this week. Watch the goal posts shift:
Temperatures today are still hotter overall
Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick said even taking into account flawed thermometer conditions, average temperatures in 1896 were still lower than last year’s average. “Around [1896], temperatures on average over Australia for that season were about one degree hotter than the overall climate mean,” she said. “But then in 2013, that summer was 1.5 degrees hotter than average.
“And last summer was over two degrees hotter than average.
“So although [1896] was a hot season, it wasn’t nearly as hot as some of the seasons we’ve seen since then.”
History denial?
The record “hottest day” in Australia graph on the ABC news last night only started in 1970 (a cool time when scientists were panicking about the coming ice age). Have they even tried to calculate the “hottest day” in 1896? And would we believe them if they did, after they have homogenised away many of the hottest days in Australia with two revisions of 100 year old data in the last six years?
h/t to Warwick Hughes, David B, George. Based on great research from Lance Pidgeon and Chris Gillham and the whole BOM audit team. Thank you!
If you are fed up with the ABC and BOM please help fund the independent research and commentary here.
To find out the real history of the Australian climate start here:
- Extreme heat in 1896: Panic stricken people fled the outback on special trains as hundreds die.
- Bourke: How 1km of land clearing can warm a million square miles
- Forgotten: Historic hot temperatures recorded with detail and care in Adelaide
- Experts admit droughts are not getting worse in Australia
- Long 1000 year rainfall study suggests droughts and floods used to be longer, worse
- Australia has had megadroughts for the last thousand years says ice core study
- Charles Sturt’s time: so hot that thermometers exploded. Was Australia’s hottest day in 1828? 53.9C!
- Australia’s record hottest 12 month period? Not so say the Satellites
- Australia’s Angry Hot Summer was hot angry hype– satellites show it was average
- Another BOM scandal: Australian climate data is being destroyed as routine practice
- Mystery black-box method used to make *all new* Australian “hottest” ever records
- Eight reasons the Australian heatwave is not “climate change”
- Australia – was hot and is hot. So what? This is not an unusual heatwave
- Australia: 2019 was not the hottest summer say satellites — it was just as hot in 1991
- Two-thirds of Australias warming due to “adjustments” — according to 84 historic stations
- Threat of ANAO Audit means Australia’s BOM throws out temperature set, starts again, gets same results
- A mess of adjustments in Australian capital cities — The inexplicable history of temperatures
- Homogenisation: The Magical system which uses thermometers in Victoria to correct the temperature in Tasmania
- #DataGate! First ever audit of global temperature data finds freezing tropical islands, boiling towns, boats on land
- BOM homogenization errors are so big they can be seen from space
- Raw Data Bombshell: no change in Very Hot Days in Australia since World War I
- Hot days in Australia are mostly due to low rainfall. Dry years are hot years see Ken Stewart and Tom Quirk.
REFERENCE
Achebak H, Devolder D, Ballester J (2018) Heat-related mortality trends under recent climate warming in Spain: A 36-year observational study. PLoS Med 15(7): e1002617.
Alan Barreca, Karen Clay, Olivier Deschenes, Michael Greenstone, and Joseph S. Shapiro (2016) Adapting to Climate Change: The Remarkable Decline in the US Temperature-Mortality Relationship over the Twentieth Century, Journal of Political Economy 124:1, 105-159 [Berkley PDF]
Johnston, Bill, The full 8 page report is here: Welcome to the back of Bourke where they make the weather warmer.
Why was it so hot in 1896? What made it the standout year?
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What makes 2019 a stand out year ?
NOT CO2, is it. !
In fact, 2019 is not a stand out year, except for the “lock up and neglect” fire-load in State Forests and National Parks.
And we all know what has caused that, don’t we. 😉
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Bingo, Andy G,
Various and numerous councils and governments over the last 20 years have actively used the ‘Climate Change’ excuse to rationalise and justify negligence in cutting forest management spending.
‘Climate Change’ is the ‘God’s Will’ of the Green Left.
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“lock up and neglect” fire-load in State Forests and National Parks.
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Saving the National Parks for future generations is the sales and marketing slogan.
UN Agenda 30 Sustainability
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If you don’t know what caused higher temperatures then, you cannot rule out that same cause WRT current observations.
Congratulations, you have just recognised a significant sceptical argument!
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Peter, it’s not obvious? Here’s goes:
1. High temperatures in Australia are due to drought and a lack of soil moisture.
2. 1896 was during the Federation Drought.
3. Jan 1896 was the 11th worst El Nino recorded at that time of year.
See: Blockbuster: Are hot days in Australia mostly due to low rainfall, and electronic thermometers — not CO2?
Dry years are hot years was also noted by Ken Stewart and Tom Quirk
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And the drought is caused by anomalously cool water N, NE and S of Australia.
CO2 doesn’t cause anomalous cool oceans, does it ?
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Logically, heat waves in East and S-E Australia will last longer and be hotter if the velocity of the hot winds from Central Australia is less than usual.
Fast winds blowing the heat out to sea quickly.
Slow winds don’t move the air mass far before it cools.
Is there a Cinderella wind speed that gets it all together for an 1896 type of heat wave?
Similar to last year in USA when a slow moving hurricane dropped record rain on a Texas town, Houston from memory?
Question is, how well are effects like this covered by models? Geoff S
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So these questions stem from my first one:
1. Why were there conditions not replicated until now
2. Were these temps corresponding with massive fires across the states?
3. Can we expect even hotter temps in January, to fully correlate with 1896?
4. Why haven’t here been more deaths recorded?
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Look at the weather:
Heat waves are formed by large cloud-free slow moving anti-cyclone(s)
which give cloudless clear skies and little to no wind
– the perfect recipe for Hot Days in 1896 and 2019.
Dry ground helps, with no moisture in the ground to evaporate and cool the atmosphere.
People died from heat exhaustion — extreme dehydration: 1880s into the early 1890s were a Northern Hemisphere cold time so men and women both wore felted woollen clothing. They would have brought that clothing with them from Europe and it was probably imported as well. They knew nothing about El Nino and La Nina then so an El Nino with that sort of clothing was a real recipe for overheating in standard Australian weather.
You dressed up for respectability — collars and ties with waistcoats and jackets for men and the equivalent for women, and hats. Shirts were heavy linen to keep the heat in, as were women’s petticoats, which they did very well indeed.
These days, everyone dresses down for comfort rather than looking respectable.
Don’t you know your history?
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Sadly missionaries required Aborigine people at church missions to wear that unsuitable clothing.
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1. Because they used to use better fuel-load reduction programs
2. Sometimes.
3. Its Australia.. its summer
4. Because we have modern coal powered air-conditioning etc.
Droughts are a natural part of the Australian climate,
So are hot temperatures in summer.
https://i.postimg.cc/BnSbv5Pn/Australia-temperature-records.png
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The land of droughts, heatwaves, bushfires and flooding rains.
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‘Why were there conditions not replicated until now.’
It has nothing to do with temperatures, the environment is very dry like 1894, 1895 and 1896.
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‘Can we expect even hotter temps in January, to fully correlate with 1896?’
Not necessarily, El Nino is absent.
‘Why haven’t there been more deaths recorded?’
The telecommunications revolution.
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Perhaps Joanne is not going back far enough. In 1851 in the middle of a drought temperatures in Victoria reached 117°F (47.2°C) and fires burned out over 5 million hectares. It is perhaps relevant that it was in 1896 at the beginning of the Federation drought as it came to be named that the first rural fire fighting service was raised. Most deaths in these droughts were cause by the ambient temperature, not the fires. In those days they did not have air conditioning to cool buildings and blast out hot air to support the heat island effect.
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I’m wondering if the Drought conditions have any relationship to recorded Sun Spot numbers.
Apparently they “might”. Tried to post some tabular data, but it was all wonky on preview.
In any case, this is a right interesting article.
https://www.predictweather.co.nz/ArticleShow.aspx?ID=489
After looking at sunspot numbers and droughts for the last 125 yrs, it seems there is a correlation.
Droughts seem to occur within -4 to +4 yrs of any sunspot minimum. Often -1 to +1 yrs.
The sunspot minimums are 11 yrs ( +/-1 yr) from the last sunspot minimum.
Next major drought ought to be between 2018 and 2020.
https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/papers//hathadh/2013Hathaway.pdf
https://list25.com/25-most-severe-droughts-ever-recorded/
I can forward correlated tabular data if wanted. It just doesn’t seem to “cut and paste” into this site format very well.
Odd and curious. Not saying it IS, not saying it ISN’T. Just saying it seems to be cyclic in nature.
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oops. Missed a reference link
Sunspot record: https://www.haystack.mit.edu/edu/pcr/Solar/files/Activity%20-%20The%20Sunspot%20Cycle%20-%20Excel%20Data%20Sheet.pdf
Sorry for that.
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‘Why was it so hot in 1896?’
It maybe a cyclic phenomenon, I’ll look into it.
In the meantime have a read of Jennifer Marohasy.
https://jennifermarohasy.com/2019/12/new-record-temperatures-need-justification/
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It’s close to two of those 60 year cycles…
Cheers
Dave B
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Good point, but it ain’t much to hang our hats on.
If we look at Darwin in 1896 it was cooler than normal.
https://jennifermarohasy.com/2019/02/changes-to-darwins-climate-history-are-not-logical/
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Peter Fitzroy . .’Why was it so hot in 1896?’
Short answer, because it was. And the records show it.
But most of all the CO2 was 280 ppm and we all know what that means !!
Regards GeoffW
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Yes indeed. According to the carbonistas it should have been a lot cooler back then with only 280ppm of CO2.
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Sorry red thing error . .
GeoffW
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Sorry red thumb error . .
GeoffW
00
Ah Peter ..
Climate change … really.
If you do some research in Australian newspapers, particularly Government Bulletins notices to seamen, you will find the Antarctic ice shelf broke-up; (search for icebergs for instance); there were record snow-storms around that time (try snow balling in Dubbo; snow in Bourke); people died of cold as well as heat; look for trains outrunning bushfires between Mt Victoria and Katoomba in the Blue Mountains; there were tornadoes (try the Nevertire cyclone or tornado; try ice-storms and hail in Melbourne; try Cyclone Sigma; try flood in Bega and the terrible Cawarra storm that raced up the coast of NSW; floods in the Hunter and the Fitzroy; the Maitland gale; the Sygna storm …. then imagine what it would be like today if those same storms struck.
Don’t listen to climate muppets on the ABC or climate comedians from the Climate Council, do it man .. do it; do some research and find out for yourself!
Cheers,
Dr Bill
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“do some research and find out for yourself!”
LOL.. that is really funny, Bill, :D,
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The mighty Hunter River had dried up during a drought reported to early white settlers in the Hunter Valley New South Wales around 1840 by local Aborigine tribes people.
The Aborigines told the settlers how they had agreed to live together in peace in the Great Dividing Range where springs continued to provide drinking water.
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That drought of the late 1830s may well have been our sharpest. It was when the ‘bidgee stopped flowing, and came at the end of an investment and production boom in wool, wheat and whaling. The drought coincided with a local depression and global financial problems so it’s hard to tell what came first, but it takes a lot of drought to stop the ‘bidgee.
The real problem with history is that it competes less and less with modern media’s ability to magnify and thus manipulate the present. I haven’t even needed the aircon this summer yet even I, despite not turning on radio or television, have begun at times to feel a non-existent heatwave. (The drought and fires have been very real here on the midcoast, disastrous for many, but temps have been typical of a dry season, with some surprisingly low minima and some higher than average maxima.)
There’s a tendency to ascribe less importance to an old Trove report from a country paper than to fresh media “vision” of hot koalas flashed around the world. Nobody in Europe cares about context when they see cuddly koalas perishing. Would they be surprised to know that cuddly koalas were slaughtered annually in their millions a century ago to provide the northern hemisphere with pelts for winter? That would have to be a separate heart-tugging story, and the political will to tell that story is absent.
The drought in my locality right now is as bad as it gets. Even if the “smart” gauge has missed some falls, this is still grim. For other places, like Sydney, it’s been worse in the past, not just once but multiple times. If the drought continues after Chrissy the mozzies might do their weird trick of coming out in the day for a feeding frenzy and disappearing at night. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that while the fires stir again.
An old news article may seem less important than today’s evening news, but both are about the same continent and the same problems. The fires of 1939 were much greater in area and severity than those of this season…but those fires were in high summer in crown fire country, and this season could get much worse, for the south especially. The fires of 1851 dwarf all that we know of, but there is no point comparing them to what’s happened in NSW this year. Vic fires in early February are a very different matter.
The latest NSW fires are historically important. Some want to attribute them to the masked marauder Climate Change. I’ll be happy to split blame between the unmasked marauder called drought and the masked marauder called Big Green.
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🙂
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Above the highlighted part in the following link from 1909 it shows the temperature at Bourke NSW in 1877 127 Deg.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/15025008?
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Charles Todd setup a 61 year experiment to see if the Glaisher Stand readings were different to the Stevenson Screen. Yep they were on average one degree warmer.
https://www.climatescience.org.au/content/792-factcheck-was-1896-heatwave-wiped-record
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The Federation Drought of 1896-1903 was a disaster for outback Australia, and as Jo has posted several times, there was significant loss of life.
But the Bureau of Meteorology is desperate to keep the the true temperatures of that period hidden away from the public, because it was hotter that today (based on measured rather than adjusted temperatures) and it doesnt fit the global warming narrative.
BOM neatly avoid using temperatures from the Federation Drought in their temperature series, preferring to start their graphs in ca 1910.
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But DaveR:
all they’ve done is change the type of thermometer (the new type records higher temperatures)
changed the type of screen (the new type records higher temperatures)
and (often) changed the location (the new one often records higher temperatures).
What makes you think the figures aren’t comparable?
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Creative accounting @ BoM
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After the heatwave of 1939, the 1896 official death toll was the highest for any natural disaster in Oz. Considering that record keeping and communications were improved by 1939, it’s fair to guess that 1896 really was our worst natural disaster by number of deaths. (But note that 1939’s toll does not include the many deaths from fire in that year.)
Of course, everything can be precedented or unprecedented according to the twists one gives to words and numbers. (Know anybody who likes to do that?) In modern disasters like that of 2009 measures for assistance and evacuation were much better, so fewer deaths. On the other hand, the size of population exposed to danger was much greater. A 2009 population total in 1896 would have resulted in many more deaths then.
During the 1939 heat, which was freakishly widespread from SA to coastal NSW, in Singleton alone five people died of heat when the mercury topped 49.4 degrees. Those on the coast around Newcastle were able to take to the water, where masses of people stayed even through the night, taking turns behind a shark-proof net. The heat of 1896 affected inland areas more than the coast, the sustained temps recorded in Bourke for those twenty days in January seem barely survivable – though this localisation of the worst did not stop people passing out on the streets of Sydney.
Mind you, the most severe sustained heat experienced by Sydney was in 1960 (as I remember!). So exact comparisons are impossible. Anything is “unprecedented” in the sense that there are no exact reproductions of complex events. But who would engage is such sophistry? (No need to answer that.)
Anyway, Pete, as a person interested in climate you would know all about the great heatwaves and droughts of the past. I guess that in asking what made 1896 a “standout” you are being coy. As if you wouldn’t know lots about the Fed Drought and the 1896 heatwave! You would also know, as a person interested in such matters, that our heat was mirrored by the 1896 Eastern North America heat wave, when 1500 died in New York alone. How could you, as a person vitally interested in weather and climate, not know?
Of course you know.
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Huhhh Fitz ?
Why do you ask ?
Jo this is a major post !
The Bureau of Misinformation &
The Australian Brainwashing Corporation need a thorough debunking !
Thank you !
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To answer the questions, possibly and amazingly the cold at 15:24. The world temperature was at a minimum, not Australia’s. Droughts go hand in hand with cold, not hot.
Perhaps because Australia like North Africa is a very dry continent with no great rivers or lakes and utterly dependent on evaporation in the Indian ocean and pacific moisture bearing winds from hot Pacific tropical areas. Drought is associated with cold, not hot. Hot produces massive evaporation and monsoons and flooding rains throughout Australia, sweeping down from Darwin or hitting the Eastern Seaboard where we have the world’s highest rainfall around Innisfail. There are wet winds in the roaring forties for Victoria and Tasmania but Perth, Adelaide and Sydney largely miss them.
So if the heat over the ocean fails, the rains fail and like North Africa, the country becomes a desert with no water moderation, nothing to evaporate, no shelter, no mountains, no wind. And we fry.
Now it does not mean you cannot have a dry spell in cooler times and this at the height of the De Vries cycle and the PDO, so we expect more rainfall, but as we know, it is random and unpredictable. And Australia heats up.
This is where just studying air temperatures with Stevenson screens does not tell the story. The sun and the ocean currents are the story of what happens on land. We would have a roasting, unliveable continent if there was no water. And so many people like James Hansen specialise in high altitude air. What we need to do is understand the sun and the water. The air is a puff of wind. There would be no storms at all without water.
We see this in NSW where the peak fire season is just passing and the start of the Pacific trade winds bringing a lot of heat and rain. The peak rainy season in New Caledonia is February.
The real danger now passes to Victoria, for a long dry summer. And without water, it heats up instantly.
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I mean Fitzroy’s question was a good one. What was special about 1896 and the terrible Federation drought? I suggest the answer is the cold because the coincidence between 1890 and the last and deepest trough of the little ice age is clear.
This is also suggested by the fate of North Africa, Rome’s food bowl. In times past it was a jungle and the ruins and skeletons attest to this, but the heat failed and then the monsoons failed and the place became sand. This in turn drove all the people into the 35 metre deep Nile valley. And the annual flood drove them out again, creating one of the most unusual civilizations on the planet. You have to go to Egypt to see how this works, this incredible lineary country, but I digress. It exists because of the failure of the monsoons.
India too has savage heat, but their cycle of life depends utterly on the monsoons. If they fail, the number dead would be in the millions. And the monsoons also depend on (solar) heat over the water.
I suspect that the invention of man made CO2 driven Global Warming has killed logic. We should have a better idea of how our climates work by now, but we are prevented by the overwhelming insistence in this Man Made religion and against all logic. All scientists should be skeptics by definition. No Climate scientist is.
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Tdef you raise some interesting and valuable points in particular the relationship of continents with their adjacent oceans. Also the fact that there is an obsession with the levels of CO2. The climate is not a simple thing, indeed it is highly complex system and as such needs a lot more study if we are to improve our understanding.
GeoffW
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Agreed. The three ingredients for life on earth are sunshine, water and CO2. Photosynthesis. Australia has no water. As 450 poor people found in 1896, you die without water, plenty of it. Nothing has changed. Blaming CO2 levels is so incredibly political and has no basis in science. More importantly, it blinds everyone to the realities of our desperate need for water.
We have not built a major dam in over 50 years and we are dependent utterly on those built by our fathers and grandfathers’ generations. We are blowing up coal power stations built by the same people. What is replacing them? Nothing.
The people in Baghdad, the Nebateans in Petra, the people of the Nile learned to harvest and maximize and transport water in the desert and to identify and provide for the known cycles of drought and floods. The Egyptians worked on an 11 year cycle for 1600 years. And we have done nothing. We Australians think water comes from the government.
All because of a patently stupid made up political science called man made Climate Change, which dictates that we wreck the place and pay carbon taxes overseas and build windmills for others at our expense and to please whom? The socialists and communists in the United Nations and European Union and in the US. They tell us what we know to be ridiculous, that a 50% increase in CO2 is devastating instead of wonderful and necessary. +1.2C is not even noticeable by anyone, plant or animal and the seas have not risen noticeably in the last century or three. Still we have already shut down the manufacturing built after the war and our quality of life with it. Venezuela with beaches.
And real science is on hold while irrational political overseas science tells us what we know not to be true. Where are the CSIRO defending us? Where is the BOM calling this rubbish out, not being fifth column political activists?
Until Climate Science can explain the past, especially 1896 and the Federation drought, it is rubbish. How then can anyone put any faith in predictions of the future? And why do the BOM and CSIRO defend the indefensible. They are wrecking Australia. On public service wages. Isn’t there anyone with an ounce of morality in the 5,500 scientists paid to look after Australia? They have mortgages, careers, a great superannuation plan. Why tell the truth? Someone else’s problem. Cowards.
141
… “Blaming CO2 levels is so incredibly political and has no basis in science. More importantly, it blinds everyone to the realities of our desperate need for water.”…….
….Agree…..This should be a “stand out” for our moronic Vegans. !!
They can destroy animal farming in Australia…..but just HOW do they think we can achieve their “grain diet” if we continue down this road of….no more dams built… to capture and store water..??
There will be more 7yr droughts, just like the present and illustrated furthur in our agricultural/environmental history…
51
The whole thing brilliant, but the last paragraph!!!
FKK
00
Hi Geoff,
I still remember our meeting in Singleton.
On your comment, climate is indeed complex but CO2 doesn’t feature in that complexity.
CO2 functions entirely as a law abiding component of the atmosphere up to about 11,000 metres altitude.
It doesn’t “heat the atmosphere”.
KK
[ED]
01
Comes?= complex
00
The CAGW nonsense is politics masquerading as science.
Normal science will propose a hypotgesis, run experiments to collect data then propose model to explain it.
CAGW has a belief system thats looking to twist or distort existing data to fit a preconcieved ( and flat out wrong) model. Big difference.
61
Great.
“The CAGW nonsense is politics masquerading as science.”
I don’t know whether masquerading is from the French or Spanish but it’s very apt.
KK
11
Peter
That was during the Federation drought. Droughts lead to hot conditions!
Some think that hot weather causes droughts but it is the other way around. Lack of rain causes droughts. When it rains the temperature is usually cooler because of the cooling effect of the rain plus the overcast conditions reflecting the suns energy back to space rather than allowing it reach the ground. Regular rains results in increased soil moisture and a lot of the suns energy arriving at the surface is utilized evaporating soil moisture. This is energy intensive.
It takes 600 calories to evaporate 1 gram of water (not boiling) and one calorie will raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degree C. So you see that lots of the suns energy is required to evaporate the soil moisture and that energy is not available to warm the atmosphere. At least I think that is how it goes.
John
50
Orwell had yet to pen his prescient words.
1896 never existed and the UN IPCC/UNEP were a mote in God’s eye.
40
Satellites say no warming in Australia this century.
170
November 2019 was the 11th warmest November in the UAH Australia data.
How many “Unfit-for-purpose” BOM surface stations has Kenneth found so far ?
You know, sites that don’t match their own criteria for reliable temperature measurements!
170
Was going to ask the same question Andy. Jo or somebody mentioned a number out of the total number recently, but I can’t find the text on this site. Would love to know.
70
Bill provides the answer at #9
Lots !
10
Great story Jo. Hopefully people will get ‘woke’ enough by this story to see through the lies and misinformation that the ABC feeds to the Australian public on a regular basis !!
GeoffW
160
After they’ve finished with 1896, what are they going to do about 1851?
The weather reached record extremes. By eleven it was about 47 °C (117 °F) in the shade. The air cooled to 43 °C (109 °F) by one o’clock and rose to 45 °C (113 °F) around four o’clock.
Survivors claimed the air was so full of smoke and heat that their lungs seemed to collapse. The air was so dark it made the roads seem bright. Pastures and plains became shrivelled wastelands: water-holes disappeared, creeks dried up, and trees turned into combustible timber.
Clouds of smoke filled the air; forests and ranges became one large “sheet of flames”. The hot north wind was so strong that thick black smoke reached northern Tasmania, creating a murky mist, resembling a combination of smoke and fog.
Homes, crops and gardens were consumed by the rushing fire leaving a quarter of Victoria in a heap of desolate ruins. The community fled to water to escape the suffocating air around them, returning after everything was over to the sight of “blackened homesteads” and the charred bodies of animals that could not escape.
The weather at sea was even “more fearful than on shore”. The intense heat could be felt 32 km (20 mi) out to sea where a ship came under burning ember attack and was covered in cinders and dust.
200
The ABC dared to cite
Without any mention or inquiry that would reveal the BOM does not adhere to that standard.
More Media fudge amidst propaganda.
170
a H.L.D.
Is that the one where the temperatures for the ENTIRE southern hemisphere were based on ONE thermometer in (what is now) Indonesia? (for 14+ years)
The one where a station in east Africa provided its first record for 46 years? (coincidentally helping the new “hottest year ever” announcement?)
The one where 2 stations in the mountains of Columbia reported average temperatures over 80℃ for two whole months? (without the inhabitants noticing their deaths from heat stroke?)
110
The WMO global standard recommends that 1 minute mean temperatures be adopted – the BOM uses 1 second fluctuations to determine maximum temperatures and climate norms.
The global standard is not applicable when the BOM says ‘hottest evah’
80
Jo, yesterday there was a very big discussion in The Australian regarding Dr Marohasy’s article, well over 1200 comments. This site was mentioned a number of times by commenters. The left put a lot of effort in trying to denigrate Dr Marohasy, but they never attempted to challenge what she said. Disgraceful.
240
Id be interested to see if we studied each council/govt agency area for its record of hazard reduction burning, and the size of the recent fires in those areas. I wonder if we will see a correlation?
20
We pay over $1billion dollars to the ABC each year. You’d expect with that amount of money, enough to purchase around 3030 new Cat 1 fire fighting tankers (each year), it might be able to meet the requirements of its charter and present a news service free of bias and error but unfortunately for many, many years now it has been failing miserably and continues to let the Australian public down. If any other government agency was this bad they would long ago have been restructured or given the boot, with red-faced politicians vowing that such waste would never see the light of day – ever again.
The example above demonstrates that when it comes to climate, ABC has (long) been infected by activists intent of rewriting history to meet a failing propaganda message.
For another example consider this piece about the maximum temperature in the nation’s capital that appears on ABC’s website yesterday.
Canberra records highest December temperature as mercury soars to 39.3C
ABC claims “Canberra has surpassed its highest recorded December temperature, amid a heatwave that continues to sweep the country. At 3:16pm, the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) reported the mercury had reached 39.3C at Canberra Airport, breaking the 1994 record of 39.2C.”
Now compare those statements with the weather recorded at the official Canberra Capital Weather station in Acton that was run for 27 years between 1912 and 1939.
Station:Canberra (Acton)Number: 70099 Opened: 1912 Closed 31 Dec 1939
Here are the top 5 maximum temperatures for December recorded at ACTON until 1939 Canberra’s official weather station:
Year Month Day Max.T
1938 12 27 39.7
1937 12 24 38.5
1937 12 23 38
1938 12 19 36.8
1931 12 31 36.7
The temperature on December 27 1938: 39.7 degrees C. This news article from the Telegraph captures what remains Canberra’s highest December maximum. In 1938 Acton and the rest of Canberra was more rural village than city with much less urban heating affect. The ACTON reading was done in a Stevenson screen with a mercury thermometer that does not react to microsecond heat bursts like the current electronic thermometer housed on the runway at Canberra’s Airport (BOM station 70351 opened in 2008, it replaced another at the airport 70014 that recorded data between 1939 and 2008). It seems both ABC and indeed BOM are completely unaware of the data stored in BOM’s vast repository. Our first Parliament house opened in May 1927. Somehow the incompetent reporters at ABC believe there was no weather station there till 1939!
For interest the highest recorded Max. Temp at ACTON was 42.8C set on Jan 11, 1939. ABC would have you believe Canberra’s record high is 42.2C recorded on Feb 1 1968.
ABC: “Earlier forecasts for Saturday put the hottest ACT temperature ever, 42.2C, under threat of being overtaken, but the BOM later downgraded its prediction to 41C.”
I can’t believe we still are forced to pay for the lies, errors and misrepresentations.
261
UPDATE: According BOM today Canberra Airport recorded at least 40.1C. Amazing what hot tarmac and overly sensitive instruments will do to our weather history!
Latest Weather Observations for Canberra
21/03:00pm 40.1
241
Canberra is I think one Ken Stewart checked out.
from memory L FAIL !
100
The actual recorded max temp was 41.1C. BOMs system of instantaneous temp measurements is certainly corrupting our weather history.
10
,! 🙂
00
Marc
“Good enough for government work”
50
Thanks Marc for a great piece.
KK.
00
Ken Stewart at his Blog
https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/
Has been examining all the BOM’s
Network of 720 temperature stations
300 of them do NOT meet the BOM’s own guidelines
That is they do not provide accurate observations !
They are ‘FARKED’ 🙂
And among the 300 are a lot of BOM’s precious ACORN stations.
So the BOM’s ACORN stations are also FARKED !
140
Farked: is that another way of saying “FAKED”? 😀
50
many of the ABC mob are on holiday – how many have flown out of the country?
how many ABC staffers have volunteered as firefighters?
how many remain to play politics with the bushfires?
21 Dec: ABC: Nationals leader Michael McCormack says he accepts more action needed on climate change
By political reporter Nour Haydar
Updated about an hour ago
Acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack has conceded that the bushfire crisis has increased community concerns about global warming and says he “absolutely” accepts more action is needed to address climate change.
The Nationals leader — who has been filling in for Scott Morrison while the Prime Minister has been away on a family holiday in Hawaii — has previously criticised people for linking bushfires to climate change.
As several blazes raged at emergency level in New South Wales, Mr McCormack was asked if he accepted that community sentiment and fear of climate change had increased as a result of the unprecedent(sic) bushfires and if further action should be taken.
“Yeah I do, absolutely — yeah I do agree entirely,” Mr McCormack said.
When asked what more could be done, he said “we’ll have those discussions” while adding there has been “a lot of hysteria around climate change”…
“Climate change isn’t the only factor that has caused these fires.
“There have been dry lightning strikes, there has been self-combusting piles of manure, there has been a lot of arsonists out there causing fires.”…
Despite agreeing more needed to be done, Mr McCormack took aim at those calling for the shutdown of coal mining, saying the industry “provides almost two-thirds of our energy needs” and contributes $62 billion worth of exports.
“For all those people running around saying we should abandon coal right now, I mean what are they going to do with our electricity and power needs this summer if we stop all our coal fired power stations,” he said.
“If we shut them all down today, what on earth are we going to do as far as our energy needs.”…
Related Story:Live: Bushfires raging across NSW as catastrophic conditions take hold
Related Story:’Inner-city raving lunatics’: Deputy PM’s bushfire comments prompt rebuke from mayors
Related Story:Liberal insiders have sent a clear message as the climate change debate rages
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-21/michael-mccormack-acting-prime-minister-climate-change-bushfires/11821258
30
21 Dec: ABC: As the nation breaks new heat records, the Government is facing its own perfect storm
By political reporter Jane Norman
Updated about 5 hours ago
Some Liberal MPs are becoming frustrated with the Federal Government’s inability to sell its climate change policies and believe the chief salesman, Angus Taylor, is part of the problem.
In the midst of a seemingly relentless drought, record-breaking heatwave and bushfire crisis that’s choking cities with smoke, debate about Australia’s role in tackling the global challenge has become even more supercharged than usual.
People are getting anxious and “this is not normal” — the phrase employed by New South Wales Liberal Minister Matt Kean to describe the apocalyptic skies above Sydney — could well become the catch cry of this summer.
Liberal insiders know it is a hot issue and they know voters are increasingly looking to the Government to do something “more”…
The Morrison Government is under pressure to develop a more coherent policy, possibly through a market mechanism, and adopt a more ambitious emissions reduction target (beyond the promised 26 per cent cut by 2030)…
As treasurer, he famously (or infamously) brought a lump of coal into Parliament, proudly holding it up in Question Time to demonstrate his support for the industry…
The pressure is on over climate…
“I think the biggest problem we face is not so much our suite of policy measures, it’s our credibility and sincerity and spokespeople,” said one Liberal.
“Angus doesn’t have the ability to sell a positive climate change message.”
Another MP said Mr Taylor was “not the best person” to be selling the Government’s policies, because he was seen (rightly or wrongly) as a “pro-coal climate change denier” who played a key role in the downfall of the Turnbull government’s energy policy (which was designed to curb emissions)…
Related Story:A fudge, a fib and a family holiday ruined: Morrison’s recall damages his brand
Related Story:Yes, Prime Minister, it is a national disaster and we need a frank discussion
Related Story:Is this the spark Scott Morrison needs to act on climate change?
Related Story:Scott Morrison acknowledges smoke haze concerns as he stands by climate policies
LINK: How spending $200 a year could help prevent climate change
On average, Australians are willing to chip in an extra $200 a year to prevent climate change. It turns out that money could go a long way.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-21/angus-taylor-facing-the-ire-of-liberals-wanting-climate-action/11815000
40
pat:
How much are average Australians already spending on “fighting climate change”?
The average electricity bill has shot up in return for a reduction(?) in CO2 emissions of 0.08% of the world total.
We’ve just had a “small” fire here in the Adelaide Hills. Only one dead (I hope), several badly injured, houses, sheds and businesses destroyed. About 70,000 hectares burnt. How much CO2 was released?**
Does the neglect of commonsense by the local (green influenced) Council ever get considered? Will their announcement of a Climate Emergency stop another fire?
** I have “no skin” in this; I was at the Dentist and wasn’t allowed back into Woodside on my return. Spent most of today at home (having sneaked in through the back roads) without electricity. House OK (except for a small patch of burnt shrub in the front garden, and some pots fallen as the Fire Brigade used the backyard to fight a fire in the backyards of the houses behind mine). Magnificent effort by the firies, especially from what I saw on the backroads where thousands of hectares were still smouldering (and being handled by the locals, including using a bulldozer to flatten a burning tree across a road as the only way to stop it burning). I would say that the ‘non-stop’ report by “your local emergency ABC radio” was a disgrace. The same report of ‘official warnings’ repeated for 4 hours with very little other info. for 4 hours when I stopped listening. Indeed talking with my neighbours across the road (who fought the fire from their back yard) they got more information via social media from friends (in Bali) of their offspring (on the road from Melbourne). That seems to me to indicate some place where the Federal Govt. could well economise.
191
Hi Graeme
Glad you are back here on Jo’s blog and well. Yes Social media has been well ahead of the radio & TB ever since this fire in the Adelaide Hills started. I know that because I’ve been posting about it here for the past 36 hours : https://www.facebook.com/groups/526214578118443/
There have been plenty of posts which the media, the ABC among them, has reported hours later..
50
Glad you are ok Graeme No.3.
We’ve been watching the East Gippsland fires, with family members living down that way. They’ve had an ongoing drought so the inevitable happens at some stage. Not nice, but this is Australia, with its propensity for fires ‘enhanced’ by greenie councils not doing what is needed around human settlements.
50
Annie:
I wish your family well, but tell them not to rely on the ABC “your bushfire alert radio”. Hopeless. So much for having a battery radio handy.
Nor does the official warning service via the phone (land line was out of action for hours) and this morning 15 hours after the electricity came back on I got another text warning about the fires near my house (about 20 hours late).
Once the power came back on, I was able to re-charge my i-phone and go through the text messages, most blank but the same warning otherwise. Also check the 12 “101” messages of which only 2 were real.
30
Well Graeme the fire on Friday has scared the sh#t out of the local Hills council & the government..!
Now ) in late December) the CFS is being allowed to do fuel reduction buns with ‘fire crews back burning in the Cudlee Creek Forest Reserve along Kangaroo Creek this morning… until mid to late afternoon……”By doing some controlled burning in that area it just means that fire, when it reaches those areas, can be halted because there won’t be any fuel there for those fires to burn through,”
Reported by the ABC :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-22/adelaide-hills-bushfire-uncontrolled-as-crews-begin-backburning/11821702
The problem is that no one has done any fuel reduction burning in those areas in the last 20 years I’ve lived in the hills….
80
That area of back burning started this morning
Has got out of hand and crossed containment lines.
Well it has not been cool burned for at least 20 years
And has a huge fuel load on the ground.
So now the CFS is trying to put it out.
And that just shows why cool burns are so important.
Allowing the fuel load to build up is stupid.
50
Graeme no 3 – Its high time the greenie influenced councils who havent allowed hazard reduction burning be taken to court and sued …..if councils do not willingly fulfil proper duty of care regards fire mitigation, they need to be held legally accountable.
As to paying 200 – no , no and heck no.
80
Debating temperatures plays into the hands of the klimatariat, its really a wet and dry argument in South East Australia.
‘Prolonged dry conditions were identified in various parts of the region during 1837–1843 and 1845–1852, while wet conditions were noted from 1836 to 1838, primarily in southern SEA. Anomalously cold periods were also identified in 1835–1836 and 1848–1849, in general agreement with temperature reconstructions from other regions of the Southern Hemisphere.’
Ashcroft, Karoly and Gergis 2014
60
Of those only Ascroft’s view is trustworthy and only then when hers not associated with Karoly et al.
Karoly’s whistle is well and truly burnt.
Cheers,
Dr Bill
120
They are all on notice, but Ashcroft should be safe.
50
That probably means that if there is a chop it will be Ashcroft
00
21 Dec: ABC: Victorian bushfire at Gippsland generates its own weather as it quadruples in size
Updated 26 minutes ago
Firefighters on Saturday morning said the Gippsland blaze had “almost quadrupled” overnight but did not appear to have destroyed any properties.
“This fire was large enough to be generating some of its own weather … and was driving itself along purely with the energy created by the fire,” the State Control Centre’s Luke Heagerty said…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-21/gippsland-bushfire-leaps-in-size-as-victorian-heat-record-broken/11820850
headline on ABC “Just In” page:
This town should be full of tourists — instead it’s full of smoke
By Claire Wheaton and Adriane Reardon
21 Dec: ABC: NSW Bushfires cut Batemans Bay off from thousands of tourists during Christmas season
By Claire Wheaton and Adriane Reardon
On the weekend before Christmas, Tod Sutherland would usually expect his caravan park to be bustling with hundreds of families.
But this is no ordinary weekend…
Related Story:’A very dangerous situation’: RFS warning as fire-generated thunderstorms form in NSW
Related Story:Scientists explain why this summer is ‘smashing the extremes’
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-21/batemans-bay-currowan-fire-tourism-impact/11821038
40
Now experiencing a cold change coming through yet the news still acting as though we are having the worst heat wave ever and will last for the rest of summer. The lies have gone too far and too long. A Royal Commission into all this would be very appropriate.
140
All in good time, Morrison will follow the UK example.
‘Following the election one of Boris Johnson’s first acts has been to appoint climate change sceptics to his cabinet.
‘This is despite election claims that his government would take the unfolding climate disaster seriously.
‘Monmouth MP David TC Davies has been made a minister in the Wales Office, and assistant government whip.
‘Mr Davies has a long history of denying man-made climate change despite the overwhelming consensus of leading experts around world stating the opposite.’
WalesOnline
100
EG:
He has also allocated £220 million for research in a small toroidal fusion project.
Better than wasting it on solar in the UK.
90
We will have to wait an see if UK reverses their trend to close down all their coal fired power stations. In any case we have a long way to go before Morrison follows the UK example. We will only when we allow nuclear power plants to be built here. We could use AGRs as UK does or look at the new SMRs. Let’s see if Morrison drops the ban on nuclear power stations here.
40
PM Morrison pointed out that only state governments have the constitutional powers to approve new dams and power stations and other projects.
It was the federal government (Labor) that created the just below 30 percent Renewable Energy Target and taxpayer funded subsidies to private sector businesses for profit, but state governments have supported and approved so called renewable (unreliable) energy business projects. And sold or destroyed or leased state owned electricity grid and power station assets.
20
On Sky News recently a Federal Government MP was interview about a Committee reviewing nuclear energy for generating electricity, they are reviewing the Report prepared for the Howard LNP Government before 2007. The MP said small modular unit nuclear generators were the preferred option.
As I understand it there was a ban on nuclear supported by both sides of Federal Parliament around 2007 when the Howard Government was voted out of office in November 2007. Could have been before or after that date.
20
Re SMR’s
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/12/18/w-o-o-d-18-december-2019-the-impeachment-party-wood/#comment-121453
00
Also, if Morrison wants to follow the UK example he will have to dump Michael McCormack who now believes climate change has an impact on the bush fires and we have to do more about it. Good luck on that one given Morrison also believes we should continue to reduce our emissions. Unless both are telling lies, apologise and retract their positions we are far from ever following the UK and for that matter the US example on power generation.
30
‘Unless both are telling lies …’
That is correct, they are trying to avoid getting into a fight with the ABC zealots.
Morrison has reorganised the bureaucracy and will now seek to reshuffle the front bench. There won’t be an apology or retraction for past ignorance, renewable subsidies have come to an end and the game is over.
20
Subsidies might have come to an end for small scale renewables (eg, home solar systems) but not for large scale ones. According to the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 and amended this year, new renewable energy power stations can continue to be accredited until 2031. That means we still have some 11 more years of renewables growth by way of certificates. What happens after 2031 is anyone’s guess at this stage.
20
I wonder how many of the “farms” will be abandoned before that year?
The Energy Council, non-government organisation like Tom Foolery’s Climate Council, is complaining that more government incentives/subsidies/carbon tax against coal and gas fired power stations is needed urgently because investment into “renewables” is declining.
In the “Born Lucky” article about Infigen Energy business from US and Australia once assets are written off for taxation purposes and the assets are approaching replacement time the major shareholders decide to sell their shares to unsuspecting investors. Because the assets replacement cost is prohibitive including removal of the original assets, etc.
40
Somebody here posted a few years ago about a wind farm in Victoria management or directors announced a zero dividends end of financial year result due to lower than estimated revenue.
The reasons given from memory were windy periods were fewer than expected and unforeseen operating expenses were incurred?
20
A lot can and probably will happen between now and 2031. My guess (and that’s all it is; a guess) is reality will bite and we will eventually have SMRs to augment our aging coal fired power stations. A partial overhaul of a typical coal fired power station will cost hundreds of millions for an extra 10 or so years. A complete overhaul can send the costs into the billions and take years making it more attractive to build a new one, coal or nuclear. Meanwhile renewables will make some advancements but not enough in my mind to replace coal and nuclear.
20
Around the world investment in renewable energy is falling sharply and Australia is leading the charge.
‘A sharp slump in new investment in wind and solar farms will continue unless a price is put on carbon or the Renewable Energy Target is extended beyond next year, the Clean Energy Council warns.
‘CEC chief executive Kane Thornton said investment in renewable energy had dropped by 60 per cent in the past year and declines would continue without government intervention. He said this would put pressure on power prices and reliability as coal generators aged.’ Oz
10
Are solar panels self-cleaning? If not, I wonder how many large-scale installations have a coating of soot and other debris from the wide-spread fires? But no doubt, Richard Di and Adam B are pumping up the tires in their bikes, ready to head out with sponges and bottled water to ensure we all have the power to run traffic lights, fridges and air-conditioners! Yeah, right!
100
Don’t believe subsidies for home solar is cutting out in 2030. In WA, the subsidy drops by $300/year, but still continues.
10
2020…
10
The ACCC wants to curtail subsidies and the government supports the proposition.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/accc-new-push-to-end-rooftop-solar-subsidies-appears-to-get-support-from-taylor-67033/
10
Less subsidies,
less solar,
more grid stability
Win-win.
10
And before that reinstate the Treason Act or whatever it was called?
20
13 Jan, 1906: The heat in the country
“A record heat wave has been experienced in the north this year.
For the past-five weeks the temperature has reached over 100 deg. in the shade almost daily, and during the past week it has been ranging from 106 to 112 deg.
Many people are prostrated with the heat, and more sickness is anticipated if a good change does not soon take place.
Old residents state that they cannot remember such a long stretch of hot weather before.
At the time of writing the glass is standing at 111 deg.
Christmas, 1905, will be long remembered as a record for heat.
The shade readings of the thermometer for six days were: —
23rd, 114 deg.;
24th, 115 deg.;
25th, 117 deg.:
26th us deg.:
27th, 118 deg.;
28th, 116 deg.
The dust was to-day consolidated with a few drops of rain, and a cool change seems now to be setting in.
-Strange to say, ‘this is being appreciated by some of the very people who only a few weeks ago were complaining about the cold, and wishing for a breath of summer.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/88112390
90
Somewhat O/T but more of “the great anonymous They” only approving of history their way
““History’s Greatest Sea is Dying”… Because Gratuitous Reference to Climate Change”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/12/20/historys-greatest-sea-is-dying-because-gratuitous-reference-to-climate-change/
21
More records tumble as heatwave rolls on, scientists point finger at climate change
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-20/finger-pointed-at-climate-change-as-heatwave-smashes-records/11817884
“Professor David Karoly, a leading climate scientist at the CSIRO, said the cause was clear.”
Professor David Karoly should tell the truth.
The Dec temperature record in Hopetoun, Vic comes from a weather station that is only 15.6 years old.
The previous record came from a weather station that started in 1970.
120
It was not only hot in Australia during 1896. ‘Climate historian’, Tony Heller describes a very hot year:
80
meanwhile, National Geographic Channels 1 and 2 ran the 2-hour ***”Worst weather ever?” documentary from 2013/2014 this afternoon. didn’t watch more than a few minutes – Sandy, bushfires in Australia, etc etc.
4 Jan 2014: JoanneNova: French Polar Chief slams Spirit of Mawson fiasco
#1.2.1.2.5
Bones January 5, 2014 at 9:49 pm
MV,we aint getting anywhere,the average aussie is still only getting warmer propaganda.This afternoon Natgeo had 2 wonderful hours of tv called ***“Worst weather ever”.A tv doco made by climate scientist,so it had to be true,with the same extreme cold,record breaking heat,melting arctic ice,7C temp increase this century.All this blamed on CO2 and the warning “we aint seen nothing yet”.Why I say we aint getting anywhere is this was made recently after Hurricane Sandy,so the warmer scare effort is alive and well.2 hours of tv program,how much money spent for what they THINK may happen.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/01/french-polar-chief-slams-spiritofmawson-fiasco/
12 Jan 2015: Paul Homewood: Channel 5’s “Worst Weather Ever” Drivel
The other night, Channel 5 broadcast what might have been better titled “The Worst Documentary Ever?”. Indeed, if the blurb is an accurate reflection of the programme as a whole, I am not even sure “documentary” is an accurate term; fantasy might be more appropriate…
Are hurricanes becoming more common or ferocious?
They spend a lot of the programme looking at Storm Sandy, without ever mentioning that, at maximum strength, it was only a Category 3 hurricane, which was downgraded to Category 1 by landfall on the US coast.
For some reason, they did not think it appropriate for viewers to know that it is now nine years, the longest spell on record, since the US has had a major, Cat 3+, hurricane. Or that hurricanes this century have been below average. Or that the worst decade was the 1940’s…
COMMENT QV: I think the programme was made in 2013 for the National Geographic Channel, so I presume it has already been broadcast there…
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/channel-5s-worst-weather-ever-drivel/
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pat:
And Iceland has just had an Ice Cyclone with winds up to 250 kp.h. (but averaging Category 3 ) and a mere 2+ metres plus of snow*, leaving ALL roads impassible. And its on its way to northern Europe.
*Sorry, read 160 m.p.h. winds and 7 foot of snow.
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Graeme No.3 – shhhh…
40
Graeme No. 3
Thanks for the tip
Hríðarveður í nótt og stormur á morgun
20.12.2019 | 16:40 Heavy weather can be expected in East Iceland tonight and then northeast in the morning as well. NA 18-23 m / s and the weather is slowly changing.
40
If the mainstream media (including the rare questioning voices) want to rescue their shattered reputation, they need to stop assuming their dwindling audiences are stupid, and start analysing in the level of detail shown on this blog. Sadly though, I wonder if heavily politicised graduates of journalism schools have the intellectual capacity to understand the basics themselves.
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J Burns:
I have noticed the The Australian has changed style in recent years. A few years ago Graham Lloyd had to be hidden on back pages because of the adverse reaction in the comments. Now he’s is main stream, and the amount of trolling has reduced. Other journalists are being more openly adverse to “the Consensus”. Try Gerald Henderson in today’s paper “This is no time to convert climate sceptics”.
Of course, this may not mean a change of mind by the Editor, just that he has seen the results of the “Go Woke, Go Broke” policies of the SMH, The Age, The Guardian, the ABC etc. and decided that there is an alternative approach.
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I too have noticed a trend in the Oz comments section of the ‘climate change’ articles with skeptic commenters howling down this climate hysteria. There are a few alarmist trolls but the rest are rebutting the alarmism.
It’s very refreshing. Graham Lloyd, Jo Nova et al are indeed making a difference.
As this current blog post by Jo shows, she has got the ABC all hot and bothered.
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Yes, definitely The Australian has changed its tune. Regular articles now by many commenters, and recently very good articles by Marohasy, Plimer and Lomborg. These articles have been backed up by many excellent comments.
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That is great hear re the Australian.
But Jo’s comment above, that this site has had a record of over 100,000 site visits since Wed. is also another great indication the people are seeing through the ABC BS and are actively seeking alternative information.
I think there is a much larger part of the population who are sceptics than the “other side” are prepared to acknowledge or know about.
It is like the “shy voter” issue for pollsters.
90
It is interesting how the angry green ants attack any blogger who dares to be a sceptic.
“How dare you”.
41
I’m sure this ABC story had a graph of deaths from heatwaves which somehow was supposed to back up the claims made by the ABC but when you look at it you realise it almost does the opposite and shows the heatwave in the 1940’s that Bom erased .
70
Gee that was quick. This story was posted only 40 minutes after my comment about the same ABC article.
Obviously our gracious host had already been alerted to the news and was already on their case like a bloodhound.
The thorny question I arrived at bears repeating:
if Bourke temperatures were biased too high in 1896, why were they adjusted upwards in official final figures?
120
given it’s always advisable to follow the money, here goes:
16 Dec: ZeroHedge: 750 Billion Reasons Why Goldman Is Rooting For Greta Thunberg’s Success
by Tyler Durden
On Monday, Goldman Sachs said it will provide $750 billion in financing, advisory services and investments for initiatives that fight climate change, as well as those that foster economic opportunities for under-served people over the next decade. What Goldman did not say is that it will pocket a generous commission, somewhere in the 3-5% ballpark, by peddling “green” products to naive investors (including central banks) who have fallen for the whole ESG virtue signalling charade.
The bank also updated its internal environmental policy framework to rule out providing financing to any new projects that will drill for oil in the Arctic or that create new thermal coal plants or new thermal coal mines. Of course, the destructive consequences of the bank’s involvement in the 1MDB scandal would be quietly excluded from this virtuous charade.
Ironically, Goldman’s policy changes come just as the United Nations concludes a conference that failed to ramp up efforts to combat global warming, according to Reuters.
Goldman CEO David Solomon announced the plans in an editorial in the Financial Times, where he wrote that there is “a powerful business and investing case” for the bank to take steps to address climate change and the growing worldwide opportunity gap. Very powerful: having failed to make almost any money from the bank’s last foray into carbon tax and cap-and-trade, Goldman is now seeking to directly appeal to fellow fake virtue signalers, who in turn will hope to extract capital from naive investors pursuing the oh so noble goal of only investing in green, renewable, and “clean” (whatever that means) projects. Goldman’s bottom line, assuming a blended 3% commission on the $750BN in financial services it sells to gullible clients, works out to about $22.5 billion – a “powerful business case” indeed…
And just in case (Greta) Thunberg falls short of sparking the next major revenue driver on Wall Street, there is always the Fed. On Monday, the San Fran Fed published a paper titled “The Economics of Climate Change: A First Fed Conference” in which the authors concluded that “the economic consequences of climate change are likely to be substantial and will require responses from a wide range of policy institutions”. More importantly, they will make tens of billions in revenue for such idealistic, progressive, “green” organizations as Goldman Sachs…
In parting, we remind readers what Matt Taibbi wrote about “the great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity” almost a decade ago: “From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression — and they’re about to do it again.” Fast forward ten years when, with the help of Greta, Goldman is about to do it all over again.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/750-billion-reasons-why-goldman-rooting-greta-thunbergs-success
50
20 Dec: TheLocalGermany: AFP: Germany signs off on multi-billion climate reform package
By Kit Holden
The German parliament on Friday formally approved a wide-ranging package of climate policy reforms, in a relief to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government as it faces growing pressure to take environmental action.
The so-called climate package, which includes plans to reduce rail prices and increase taxes on air travel, will take effect on January 1st after months of wrangling.
Previously blocked by a dispute over costing, the bill was passed by the upper house after MPs reached a compromise on a higher carbon price earlier this week…
The climate package has already attracted criticism from environmentalists and business lobbies, but the government was keen to show it was taking global warming seriously after months of massive ***”Friday for Future” protests…
The bill’s approval also comes hot on the heels of European Commission chief ***Ursula Von Der Leyen’s ambitious “Green Deal” unveiled earlier this month, aimed at making the bloc carbon neutral by 2050…
Germany’s climate package is estimated to cost the government €54 billion euros by 2023…
Following the compromise struck between the government and lawmakers, Germany will charge a starting price of 25 euros per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions in transport and construction from 2021.
The government had initially proposed a rate of just 10 euros per tonne – to the outrage of environmental campaigners…
But academics from “Scientists for Future” said the CO2 price was “too weak” to convince households and companies to change their behaviour…
One of the most hotly-contested topics is Germany’s planned coal exit by 2038, a controversial decision that has pitted environmentalists against those wanting to protect jobs in the sector.
The dirty fossil fuel still accounts for around a third of Germany’s energy mix, in part because of Merkel’s 2011 decision to phase out nuclear power.
***(FINAL LINE) Holger Lösch, deputy director of the Federation of German Industry (BDI) said Germany faced higher gas and electricity prices as a result of the climate package that would undermine the country’s businesses.
https://www.thelocal.de/20191220/germany-signs-off-on-major-climate-reform-package-after-dispute
18 Dec: NoTricksZone: “Von der Leyen’s Green Madness”: Europe Aims To Divert One Trillion Euros…”Best Way To Torpedo Europe”
By P Gosselin
Michel Gay at the French language Contrepoints here writes that “EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s green madness is the best way to torpedo Europe”…
1000 billion euros
The new EU President of the European Commission said she wanted to present a plan called The Green Deal that would cost 1000 billion euros over the next decade in order reduce the European Union’s (EU) greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030 compared to 1990…
Taxpayers will pick up the tab…READ ALL
https://notrickszone.com/2019/12/18/von-der-leyens-green-madness-europe-aims-to-divert-one-trillion-euros-best-way-to-torpedo-europe/
28 Nov: Guardian: Von der Leyen pledges climate focus as MEPs back new commission
President says parliament’s support is vote of confidence in her ‘agenda for change’
by Daniel Boffey in Brussels
Ursula von der Leyen has said the EU as the world’s “trading superpower” will lead the fight against the “existential threat” from the climate crisis…
Von der Leyen repeatedly emphasised that her top priority upon taking office this Sunday was dealing with the climate emergency and ensuring the end of carbon emissions by the middle of the century. The commission is set to unveil its “green deal” on 11 December.
She said: “This is an existential issue for Europe – and for the world. How can it not be existential when 85% of people in extreme poverty live in the 20 countries most vulnerable to climate change? How can it not be existential when we see Venice under water, Portugal’s forests on fire or Lithuania’s harvests cut by half because of droughts? This has happened before but never with the same frequency or intensity.”…
Von der Leyen said the commission would look to robotics to move people out of occupations that she suggested should no longer be carried out by people…READ ON
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/27/von-der-leyen-pledges-climate-focus-as-meps-back-new-commission
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watching Russia Today an hour ago, and there was the latest development in an ongoing scandal, involving ***Ursula von der Leyen, which I knew nothing about.
apparently all the data on her official phone has been deleted (a la Hillary?). can’t find the RT story online as yet.
20 Dec: Archyde: Cell phone data from Ursula von der Leyen deleted?
By drbyos
According to media reports, data from the mobile communications of former Minister Ursula von der Leyen (CDU), which may be important for the investigation of the defense minister’s advisory affair, have been destroyed. As the ARD capital studio and the newspaper “Die Welt” reported, the Vice Government Commissioner for the Clarification of the Affair, Markus Paulick, admitted on Thursday in a confidential meeting of the committee of inquiry that the data on the mobile phone from the Leyens (CDU) had already been deleted in August.
The cell phone was “security deleted” by the manufacturer, and the data was allegedly irretrievably lost, Paulick was quoted by the ARD capital studio. According to “Welt”, the Bundestag had applied for the cell phone to be classified as evidence before deletion. The accusation of unauthorized destruction of files is now in the room…READ ON
https://www.archyde.com/cell-phone-data-from-ursula-von-der-leyen-deleted/
12 Dec: Deutsche Welle: German opposition to probe defense minister over spending scandal
by amp/sms (dpa, AFP)
Ursula von der Leyen is suspected of poor management and nepotism over her department’s allocation of contracts and its decision to hire a consultant as her deputy. A parliamentary committee is set to investigate.
Opposition parties in the German Bundestag have agreed to launch a parliamentary investigation into Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen’s role in a spending scandal involving her ministry’s allocation of lucrative contracts…
Nepotism and spending suspicions
The investigative committee will examine irregularities in a contract awarded to ***McKinsey and a €390 million ($442 million) IT contract given to another company that failed to pass through the company’s supervisory board as required.
It will also investigate whether von der Leyen committed nepotism by hiring Katrin Suder, a former ***McKinsey consultant, as her deputy to oversee the ministry’s arms procurement section…
Opposition lawmakers on the Defense Committee had complained that Suder, who quit the government early this year, had refused to speak with them over her role in the scandal…
The “consultant affair,” as it has become known in Germany, ***began in August after the National Audit Office raised concerns about wasted expenditures and nepotism within the Defense Ministry from 2015 to 2016.
https://www.dw.com/en/german-opposition-to-probe-defense-minister-over-spending-scandal/a-46704514
***began in August?
19 Oct 2018: UK Times: Merkel ally Ursula von der Leyen is investigated after cosy deal with advisers
by Oliver Moody, Berlin
Angela Merkel’s defence minister is accused of presiding over “absolute chaos” as her department handed out contracts to consultants worth tens of millions of euros without making a proper business case or inviting rival bids.
Ursula von der Leyen, one of the chancellor’s longest-serving allies, is being investigated over allegations that her office engaged business advisers illegally in an apparent attempt to cut labour costs…
***Ursula von der Leyen’s son works for McKinsey, the management consultancy…
—
the worst that Wikipedia has to say about Ursula:
Wikipedia: Ursula von der Leyen
Plagiarism accusations
In 2015, researchers collaborating at the VroniPlag Wiki reviewed von der Leyen’s 1991 doctoral thesis and alleged that 43.5% of the thesis pages contained plagiarism, and in 23 cases citations were used that did not verify claims for which they were given… The Hanover Medical School conducted an investigation and concluded in March 2016 that while the thesis does indeed contain plagiarism, no discernible intention to deceive could be proven…
Critics questioned the independence of the commission that reviewed the thesis as von der Leyen personally knew its director from joint work for an alumni association. Various media outlets also criticized that the decision was nontransparent, not according to established rules and failing to secure high academic standards…
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finally, given how nice Wikipedia is to Ursula, thought I’d post this:
20 Dec: Breitbart: Wikipedia Blacklists Epoch Times, Gateway Pundit for Russiagate Criticism
by T.D. Adler
(T. D. Adler edited Wikipedia as The Devil’s Advocate. He was banned after privately reporting conflict of interest editing by one of the site’s administrators. Due to previous witch-hunts led by mainstream Wikipedians against their critics, Adler writes under an alias)
Over the past year, Wikipedia editors have been on a banning spree targeting conservative news sources. Having previously banned the Daily Mail as a source, the following year marked the beginning of an acceleration of the process. Since then, editors have imposed similar bans on fifteen other sites aside from Epoch Times and Gateway Pundit…
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/12/20/wikipedia-blacklists-epoch-times-gateway-pundit-for-russiagate-criticism/amp/
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Wikipedia’s been FARKED !
Bugger !
60
A good reason to ignore their latest “begging letter”
50
Also known as
the Fork ‘n’ Shysters!
Applicable to man-made runaway Goldman Sachs too,
“a small tribe of greedy-as-hell Wall Street swine… a gangster state” – Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, 2010.
00
meh, 1896 will be adjusted down the memory hole next year by them that control “the record” Why not? just one more step until we have the correct history.
120
The ABC and the BOM have absolutely no credibility, if you asked them the time of day they would homoginise and corrupt the answer. The ABC must be sold off and rely on commercial support and the BOM needs at least the top 3 layers of management to be fired and replaced by realists, the rest of the corrupted staff could be retrained.
170
Precisely!
If you asked the BoM what the time was, they would say that in 1960 it was 4pm, but today it is 4.10pm. This is because the measurements of time must have been incorrect. After all, back in 1960 they used wind-up clocks.
How possibly could they have been accurate? What if you forgot to wind it up?
However, with our modern amazing digital timekeeping software we can tell you the time is actually 4.103145pm
Well it was a millisecond ago, but now a new record has been set, it is now…
ad finitum…
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“ad infinitum…”
30
Taxpayer’s monies used to fund those organisations could be far better utilised.
20
Various ‘authorities’ say that old technology thermometers (i.e. 19th century and earlier) were crude and unreliable by modern standards and therefore temperature measurements were inaccurate. Disregarding the controversy over Glaisher v Stevenson screens (1° or so, which surely can be accounted for?) it is not unreasonable to assume that thermometers worked properly.
Back then water froze at 32°F or 0°C, same as now, and that’s one way they were calibrated. The other way was the temperature at which water boiled which was used to calibrate the upper end of the scale. Nothing was different in those days and water behaves exactly the same now as it did then. What better way to calibrate a thermometer (given that atmospheric pressure can be measured and factored in)? How on earth could those so-called ‘primitive’ devices been so faulty as to dismiss their readings entirely as being useless and wipe them from the record?
If anything they undermeasured because they were slow to react. Surely they (the ‘authorities’) could set up all manner of measuring devices side by side and replicate the 19th century conditions, tabulate the results and correct if necessary any or all discrepancies? Surely modern science is capable of doing it properly?
If not, leave the old figures alone and take them at face value for what they’re worth. It can’t be any worse than digital one-second spikes, otherwise known in the technology world as ‘noise’. Water freezes and boils the same then as it does now.
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Samsbanned
The ability to have lots of automatic screens that produce numbers without someone needing to dedicate their life to being there for each one is strong. So The World Meteorological Organisation have come up with an averaging plan that copes well with the change over and allows for new electronic noise sources.
I encourage you to check out the documentation of what they were supposed to do about the rapid response times compared to what they did.
The WMO standard helps to show how this is all nonstandard. The BoM do not seem to be in compliance with WMO 8 Part II 1.3.2.4a
They seem to instead use the method described in Part II 1.3.2.2b which is intended to measure very rapid extremes of fluctuation not normal daily extremes.
This means the maximum temperature can spike as high as the shortness of the time constant allows and there is nothing much to stop electrical noise from sources such as airport radar from adding perversions via extremes within the error detection window. This time constant also does not seem to comply with Part I 2.1.3.3 (20 seconds) because they appear to use 18 seconds at 5M/S. This also is a reduction from the old 30 seconds from WMO 315. The method of selecting just the min, max and last of 60 one second samples is in contradiction of Part II 1.3.2.2a Not just because they are no longer at “equally spaced time intervals” but that they ” then exceed the time constant of the sensor” (II 1.3.2.2.a.i).
PRELIMINARY 2018 EDITION OF THE CIMO GUIDE (WMO-No.8)
https://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/www/IMOP/CIMO-Guide.html
50
I wonder what happened to shipping records in ships log books filed in the Greenwich UK Museum?
50
Actually the staff reading those thermometers back in 1896 would have done a better job as there were no mobile phone distractions (/s)
20
Here is a short list of what government scientists have said about nature in the past; most of them have a recurring theme: nature is benign and humans are to blame.
– sharks would never attack humans (1910s in response to a spate of great white shark attacks in eastern USA)
-dingos don’t attack humans (in response to the death of Azaria Chamberlain, and which was part of the reason the police then went after Lindy Chamberlain).
-tsunamis don’t form breaking waves, merely surges (before videos of breaking waves were shot in the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, and the japan tsunami of 2011).
-There has never been a death from wolf attacks in North America (late 1990s, until hikers and joggers were confirmed killed from wolves just a few years later).
-shark attacks on humans are a case of mistaken identity (meaning hungry 6m sharks don’t see human swimmers as food, I guess all those deaths were just over territory)
-the waters in rivers before European settlement following into the sea was never brown. (Wtf?).
-humans didn’t actually hunt mammoths, and they died out from climate change (before they found, and are still finding, numerous examples of mammoth hunt sites and bones with spears in them. )
And I haven’t even got to climate change yet, but here’s one: transferring hundreds of thousands of hectares from logging to conservation hasn’t had any effect on fuel build up and fire-proneness in Eastern Australia, especially close to towns.
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What is this clown McCormack up to now in the name of stopping heatwaves, droughts and bushfires? Where did the Nats find this idiot?
30kph speed limits.
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2019/12/deputy-pm-mccormack-off-to-sweden-to-help-un-bring-in-30-klmhr-urban-speed-limit-for-climate-action-.html
It resolves to strengthen “law enforcement to ensure zero speeding and mandate a maximum road travel speed limit of 30km/h … in residential areas and urban neighbourhoods within cities as efforts to reduce speed will have an impact on both road traffic injuries, air quality and climate change”.
The Stockholm Declaration calls on public and private organisations to purchase “safe and sustainable vehicle fleets”. It flags addressing “the connections between road safety, mental and physical health, development, education, equity, gender equality, environment and climate change”.
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McCormack certainly achieved name recognition in what might be his last day as Acting PM (for the moment). Sky Australia has been pathetic.
according to Sky, McCormack now believes and we are all angry about climate change now, because of the bushfires, and people are protesting at Kirribilli House, wanting climate action, and the PM must answer the question when he gets back. so there.
21 Dec: news.com.au: The 13-year-old activist from Kirribilli House has a message for Scott Morrison
Izzy Raj-Seppings, the young girl pictured sobbing outside Scott Morrison’s house this week, has slammed the Prime Minister’s actions.
by Rebekah Scanlan
The 13-year-old who became the image of Australia’s bushfire crisis after being filmed tearfully being moved at a climate change protest this week has spoken out — and she’s got some stern words for Prime Minister Scott Morrison…
Now she’s penned a piece for The Guardian Australia, explaining what made her travel for more than an hour on a bus to Sydney and camp outside the Prime Minister’s house on the hottest day of summer to date…
“My answer? Our politicians’ denial, and the inaction of our government and our prime minister.”…
https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/the-13yearold-activist-from-kirribilli-house-has-a-message-for-scott-morrison/news-story/904702e0f35544ed69245639c87c77aa
20 Dec: BBC: Why Australia’s PM is facing climate anger amid bushfires
The country is also facing a historic heatwave – the national average temperature broke the previous records on two consecutive days this week.
As the crisis rolls on, many Australians have accused the prime minister of failing to provide reassurances or support to fire-hit communities…
Much criticism has focused on the government’s support for coal-fired power plants. But the Labor opposition has also attracted anger over its pro-coal policies…
Their views are not shared by all, however. Others have placed the blame for the fires on a severe drought, the sheer amount of dry land there is to burn, and what they view as natural weather cycles…
Australia, with its coal-dependent economy, has one of the highest per capita greenhouse gas emission rates globally…
While bushfires are a natural part of the Australian cycle, the Bureau of Meteorology has said the rising heat has exacerbated drought which in turn has made dangerous fires more frequent and more intense.
The group Emergency Leaders for Climate Action, made up of former former fire chiefs and emergency leaders, has accused the government of being “missing in action” on climate action and ignoring calls for a crisis summit…
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-50737887
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If Morrison had half a brain he would appoint Craig Kelly as climate change and environment minister then each liberal pollie would get their talking points on climate change from Kelly .
The MSM have stopped asking Kelly anything about the subject after he embarrassed them on the issue of the Pacific islands .
120
Of course you are right, but Craig Kelly is a straight shooter with much knowledge that is not appreciated by other politicians, socialist globalists and their profiteering mates.
80
Morrison is obviously just as culpable as McCormack in this nonsense. I don’t begrudge him a week off in Hawaii, but I do bridle at the garbage he and his ilk are committing us to at the UN.
If I recall, a 30 kph global warming speed limit was not part of their election platform.
And where is Angus Taylor in all this? This government is getting worse by the minute.
40
Breaking News: Deputy PM McCormack has announced that the government, that he will not support the lowering of speed limit proposal or others.
Minister Taylor drew fire from delegates at the IPCC COP recently when he questioned what an emissions trading scheme could do to combat (natural) climate change, and our federal government has also angered the IPCC by no longer participating in their begging bowl funding requests, the US has also declined and other member nations too.
Is this why the IPCC is highly critical of Australia and wrongly accusing Australia of not dong enough to combat the climate change (hoax based on “cr*p” modelling and date), attempting to shame us into funding them?
50
Yippee. Bout time. Now dump Paris too.
70
The UN 2030 Agenda requires developed nations to handover 0.7% of GDP. For Australia that amounts to AUD1000M. The libs are not going to do that without a fight given their obsession with a government surplus. I believe they are arguing that Australia provides substantial direct aid to developing nations that inevitable offers some benefit to Australians.
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/21252030%20Agenda%20for%20Sustainable%20Development%20web.pdf
Once money is handed over to the UN you can guarantee it will go to a worthy dictator to buy arms and it is their choice where they source them.
50
Highest “per capita” and (should not be) responsible for emissions from coal and gas exported to be burnt in export market countries, where the burning is also counted as new emissions.
The man made global warming caused by carbon dioxide deception, and recorded using creative accounting methods to maintain a rising heat trend, and reported appealing marketing hyperbole and puffery.
Meanwhile there are politicians who maintain that they must rely on the science.
What happened to representing the people who elected them in the best interests of we the people?
50
Dennis:
Which list are you using? I ask because Australia has appeared at Nos.1, 18 and 23 on various lists.
The first list I have never seen but must exist because all Greenies refer to it.
The last 2 lists include different countries which seem to have been missed in the first. Perhaps the Greenies are using the list of “All those we think are mean and nasty”.
30
It must be true Graeme, various bloggers have claimed it is so.
10
When a bureaucrat botches a process, exacerbating the problem he or she was supposed to address, the universal claim
will be insufficient funding, staff, and authority. With more money, more staff and more authority usually granted,
the problems usually worsen, but the Public Relations effort succeeds in fooling all of the people some of the times and
51% or more on election days (until elections can be eliminated, of course).
Over a half century, the US has spent more than 25 Trillion Dollars to “eliminate poverty”. The poverty measure in the population
remains stubbornly the same, and the stories of horror and hardship repeat ad infinitum. To be fair, poverty among the
anti-poverty bureaucracy has been virtually eliminated.
A quick search of the first decade of reporting on Lyndon Johnson’s ‘War on Poverty’ finds no mention of climate, other than the needs for
winter shelter in urban ghettos. Today, ‘climate change’ is intimately involved in causation of poverty; with funding for climate efforts now
considered amelioration.
As before there is little poverty among the climate bureaucrats, but energy-cost-induced poverty is becoming a real issue in many jurisdictions.
Talk of reforming a government agency is useless. In that business, one cannot grow unless one’s task is increased, requiring more staff and money.
Bad incentives are a feature, not a bug, and your BOM & ABC are fitting the model perfectly.
Good luck. I’ll wager a small donation to the site that as we pass to a climate cooling phase ( as seems possible) The agencies will morph, the ‘climate
emergency’ will remain, the appeals for power & money will be undifferentiable from today.
(actually, I’ll donate as I do each Christmas, and encourage y’all to do so as well)
Merry Christmas
90
Were beer crates the precursors to Stevenson screens?
40
An old time beer crate was larger than the modern “12 tallies 24 stubbies” type box.
IIRC it was a wooden box that held something like 8 cartons of a dozen bottles each.
So of reasonable volume
50
A wooden beer crate held five dozen beer bottles. That’s how we received our “monthly ration” on the Nullarbor.
40
John:
Dialogue in the Outback (which means far from large towns).
“We need a Stevenson screen to measure how hot it is”
“It will take months to ship one here”
“What about that beer crate?”
“Good enough, but we had better drink the beer before it gets hot”.
“Well, what was the temperature?”
“Dunno, we’d better empty another crate of beer”.
50
Thought so!
10
WW2, Horn Island, pilot and off-sider loading beer on to a Vultee Vengance bound for Merauke.
The “freighting fee” was a bottle from each carton, shared by the pair.
10
I think that, in that era, “cold” was a term relative to the capabilities of a wet chaff bag.
1965 drought visit to the Birdsville Pub after a drive of about 250 miles, temperatures of 110+ F and dust aplenty. To an introduction to Southwalk beer – of which about two stubbies was enough.
The explanation came years later. Refrigeration was in limited supply in that area and era, so
“Cold, Southwark was the worst beer in Australia. Hot it was the best”.
10
My regional average Tmax reconstruction for the Walgett area (including Bourke) has Jan 1896 at a very high monthly average, similar to peaks in recent Jans:
https://diymetanalysis.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/nsw2_fig181.jpg?w=840
February 1896 was cooler than average, suggesting that it was a rainy/cloudy month.
20
Berkeley-Earth for a location very near Bourke also has Jan 1896 at a very high level:
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Local/TMAX/Text/29.74S-145.85E-TMAX-Trend.txt
Strangely, it is only the BoM, the only body that has the original paper records and metadata, that is unable to go back before 1910.
80
“Turning a cooling trend into warming” seems to be common in Australia, and is justified by the data, here is Bourke (and other) Tmax relative to the regional average, it is very common for the raw data to be abnormally high in the early data:
https://diymetanalysis.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/nsw2_fig50.jpg?w=840
41
Bourke’s Jan 1896 max mean of 43.4C is still the highest Jan average on record beating 2019’s 42.6C.
100
I’d be willing to bet January 2020 will be the hottest January eeevvveeerrr. Or it will be after the BoM have “homogenised” the data to suit the required political narrative.
90
For readers who are new to this website, the politics of climate change hoax and BoM external volunteer auditing complaint handling.
In 2014 the Minister responsible for the BoM referred a letter from complainants providing evidence of BoM media releases not matching historic record data. Prime Minister Tony Abbott recommended to Cabinet Ministers that an independent audit, that due diligence be conducted at the BoM based on the evidence received. Apparently the proposal did not receive a majority support. In September 2015 Prime Minister Abbott was voted out and Prime Minister Turnbull replaced him.
Earlier PM Abbott had commented that IPCC climate data is “cr*p”, that natural climate change is normal and that he would not stand for socialism masquerading as environmentalism.
The hoax has cost us tens of billions of dollars and will cost us much more if not exposed and stopped.
101
Lord Monckton warned of the danger to Tony Abbott BEFORE he was removed.
https://youtu.be/NG0WcjGHkEw
60
Thank you David, he also warned about PM Harper in Canada I recall, a like minded leader.
70
The big three, US, Russia and China are failing to meet the Paris Agreement by a long shot while Australia is meeting it comfortably. So why is the ALP+Greens acting like clowns? Politics of course. It has absolutely nothing to do with the facts and reality. Morrison is claiming victory in reducing our admissions so it’s time Morrison turbocharged his standing on “acting sensibly” on climate change by reducing our emissions even more by allowing nuclear power stations to be built. Subsidies are not needed. Nowhere in the world is nuclear power subsidised and in some countries it is taxed because production costs are so low. It would be a game changer and a double barrel shot gun aimed directly at the ALP+Greens. It will expose the hypocrisy of the left if they refuse to accept the move to nuclear.
80
Crony capitalists profiteering, like union industry superannuation funds and merchant bank/renewables business investors influencing politicians.
40
The Circle of Life.
20
Hmm. Perhaps we should turn ourselves over to China. Of course that would have to be done in a way we can keep our freedoms of speech and religion (to the limited extent they currently are). We might then have the best of both worlds. However, I would not like to take the risk so let’s stick to crony capitalism.
30
No Peter, better to revert to free market capitalism.
And ban politicians from picking winners and losers, let the markets decide.
30
We cannot turn ourselves over to China, or adopt any other form of totalitarian rule, and retain our freedoms. Is a contradiction.
The Romans tried it, way back when.
They elected a Dictator, because he could break a political deadlock and solve some intractable problems. The first couple of Dictators (Julius Caesar and Ceasar Augustus) were not overly tyrannical. But the DID entrench their positions.
By the time the real shockers arrived, there was no way of getting rid of them…… and that’s how one of the original Republics became an absolute tyranny.
Authoritarians will ALWAYS resort to more authority, coercion and violence to solve what they regard as problems. It’s their biggest hammer, and everything looks like a nail. Is the nature of the Socialist beast.
30
Australian Republican Movement.
Control and manage.
By order
Your leader
Harbourside Mansion
Sydney Harbour
20
China is well and truly on track to exceed their climate change target, whoch was to double their emissions level by 2030.
00
One better news story I read recently is that our Federal Government (also the United States and other nations) has stopped participating in funding UN IPCC.
No wonder they single Australia out for so much criticism alleging we are not doing enough to combat climate change, the gravy train must be running low on finances.
I thought that their choice of a railway engineer from India as CEO of the IPCC was amusing.
90
In Out of Our Minds: What We Think and How We Came to Think It (London: Oneworld, 2019), Felipe Fernandez-Armesto identified
What he did not do, neither here nor in an earlier work on Truth: A History (1997), was ask: “why does truth matter”? Or put another way, why does the integrity of our work, particularly intellectual work, matter? In this day and age the answers are remarkably difficult to discern. What benefit, if any, accrues from truthfulness? Does it matter? Why?
40
I am concerned for the safety of the original paper temperature (and rainfall) records held by BoM.
We know it’s a problem because we have their instruction manual, Orwell’s “1984”.
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt
80
Also the manual for Agenda 30 implementation and web of red and green tape protecting the agenda participant operational centres.
40
Some people think Agenda 2030 is a crackpot conspiracy theory but it is a very real UN scheme to dramatically reduce the standard of living of the Civilised world. The useless Australian foreign minister of the time, Julie Bishop signed us up to it.
https://www.foreignminister.gov.au/minister/julie-bishop/media-release/australia-welcomes-new-global-development-agenda
70
You can find this right off the UN website:
It isn’t a conspiracy.
20
This is a link to the UN “Transforming The World”:
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/21252030%20Agenda%20for%20Sustainable%20Development%20web.pdf
This is the basis of One World Government. What countries have made these commitments? The section on Finance includes:
In Australia’s case that would require handing over AUD1000M ever year to the dingbats at the UN to give to whatever dictator who lavishes the UN administrators with the most valuable gifts.
50
Yeah I really trust the ABC that can’t even get a link to one of the authors correct…. It’s 2019, though, so maybe this is Sophie Meixner…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-18/adam-driver-1/11810844
40
O/T but we have a worthy winner of The Climate Prat of the year on The Pointman.
A late surge by St. Greta put her in front, with no CO2 used.
My nomination, Sir David, came third, well back in the field. He left his (half hearted) retraction about those bungy jmping walruses too late to make up ground.
And the GWPF has introduced the EMMA Award, but these come in 3 categories – the SLEB, the Poly and the Biz. refer to https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/12/21/the-emma-awards/
for more information.
20
a story that has mostly flown under the FakeNewsMSM radar:
21 Dec: GatewayPundit: HUGE! AG Bill Barr Calls Out George Soros For Subverting Legal System and Causing “Increase in Violent Crime and More Victims” Through Targeting District Attorney races
by Jim Hoft
Far left billionaire George Soros has been systematically targeting district attorney races throughout the United States. Many of his backed candidates have won their races and are causing havoc across the country…READ ON
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/12/huge-ag-bill-barr-calls-out-george-soros-for-subverting-legal-system-and-causing-more-chaos-and-more-victims-through-support-of-radical-candidates/
a rare, lengthy analysis from 2016:
2016: Politico: George Soros’ quiet overhaul of the U.S. justice system
Progressives have zeroed in on electing prosecutors as an avenue for criminal justice reform, and the billionaire financier is providing the cash to make it happen
by Scott Bland
While America’s political kingmakers inject their millions into high-profile presidential and congressional contests, Democratic mega-donor George Soros has directed his wealth into an under-the-radar 2016 campaign to advance one of the progressive movement’s core goals — reshaping the American justice system…
It is by far the most tangible action in a progressive push to find, prepare and finance criminal justice reform-oriented candidates for jobs that have been held by longtime incumbents and serve as pipelines to the federal courts — and it has inspired fury among opponents angry about the outside influence in local elections…
Soros’ spending started on these races about a year ago…READ ON
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/george-soros-criminal-justice-reform-227519
30
An act of terrorism, so why isn’t the terrorist and cell dealt with?
20
The conceit of the dingbats who now infest the BoM has no limit. They sit in their air-conditioned offices looking at logged data from remote sensors having no idea of what is happening in the field. They show no regard for the pioneers of weather recording in Australia who were IN the field diligently reading their instruments and experiencing the weather conditions they reported.
“Homeginastion” of weather data is a crime against past generations of hard working, diligent weather observers. To claim it as “best practice” shows how far these dingbats are mired in the swamp of anti-science.
111
Rules in a radiation course series were that calculators were allowable in everything except dosimetry.
On the principle that one day one might find one’s self in a situation where instant comprehension of the reading of the counter was required.
70
Excellent comment RickWill.
60
Hi Jo – And don’t forget, they didn’t have automatic datalogging in 1896. Which means that the peak temperatures they reported were the ones that they physically observed. Whereas today, the datalogger will detect and report the absolute peak on any given day, in years gone past the peak temperature would have gone past, literally, unrecorded.
Cheers,
Mike
50
They may not have known the second when the maximum or minimum occurred, but they could know the measurement extremes.
From Wonkypedia:
We had one like that in our “weather station” at Medina Primary School (W.A.) in the late 1960’s. One of the duties of the school’s weather watchers was to note the min/max and to reset the thermometer (with a magnet) for the next day. IIRC, there was also a standard thermometer and a wet bulb one within the shelter.
60
20 Dec: Vox: If our governments won’t stop climate change, should we revolt? Extinction Rebellion says yes.
Mass civil disobedience is our only option, argues the climate movement co-founder Roger Hallam.
By Sigal Samuel
Extinction Rebellion, or XR for short, is the movement behind some of the boldest climate protests of the year…Greta Thunberg rallied behind it, and soon, thousands of activists around the globe did too. XR has spread to dozens of countries, including the US.
XR’s cofounder, the longtime British climate activist Roger Hallam, has a new book out explaining the rationale behind this global rebellion. In Common Sense for the 21st Century, Hallam argues that nonviolent civil disobedience is our only shot at countering the climate emergency. That means breaking the law by blocking roads and disrupting transit, and getting arrested en masse, until the government agrees to up its game on fighting climate change. And if it doesn’t agree? Then topple the government, Hallam says.
The idea of rebelling against the government might seem silly or extreme…
But it’s worth noting that Hallam’s theory of social change is based on academic research, particularly the work of Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth. At King’s College London, Hallam is currently working toward a PhD on how people use civil disobedience to achieve social change.
I spoke to Hallam about his new book, the exact nature of the rebellion he’s envisioning, and what happens ***once the revolution is over. A transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows…
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/12/20/21028407/extinction-rebellion-climate-change-nonviolent-civil-disobedience
21 Nov: BBC: Extinction Rebellion: Co-founder apologises for Holocaust remarks
He added that he was sorry for the “crass words” he had used but did not feel the need to apologise for drawing attention to the “genocide that is happening now” – an apparent reference to climate change.
What has the response been?
“We distance ourselves from Roger Hallam’s trivialising and relativising comments about the Holocaust,” said XR Germany’s Annemarie Botzki in a tweet…
XR spokesman: “Internal conversations have begun with the XR Conflict team about how to manage the conflict process that will address this issue. We stand by restorative outcomes as preferable, although in some cases exclusion is necessary.”…
Green politician Volker Beck accused Mr Hallam on Twitter of “bringing the climate movement into disrepute.”
The XR co-founder’s German publisher, Ullstein, announced it had stopped the publication of his book on climate change, saying it was disassociating itself from his comments
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50501941
10
the Vox writer, Sigal Samuel:
TWEET: Sigal Samuel, Staff Writer at Vox. Former Religion Editor at The Atlantic
Nonviolent civil disobedience — what Extinction Rebellion is proposing — is more effective than you might think. Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth has amassed lots of data showing this. I highly recommend watching her TED talk: LINK
20 Dec 2019
https://twitter.com/SigalSamuel/status/1208127851612033025
18 Dec: Vox: Want to fight climate change effectively? Here’s where to donate your money.
These are six of the most high-impact, cost-effective, evidence-based organizations. You may not have heard of them.
By Sigal Samuel
Climate change is the biggest emergency facing humanity…
6) Climate Emergency Fund
What it does: The Climate Emergency Fund (LINK) is different from the groups listed above. It was founded very recently — this July — with the goal of quickly getting money to groups engaged in climate protest. It has already raised over $1 million and disbursed about $800,000 of it in 26 grants to groups it has vetted. The grantees range from the well-established 350.org to the fledgling Extinction Rebellion, an activist movement that uses nonviolent civil disobedience — like filling the streets and blocking intersections — to demand governments do more to stave off mass extinction…
Why you should consider donating: Because it’s so new, the Climate Emergency Fund definitely has less of an evidence base than the organizations listed above, so we’ll have to monitor its impact and cost-effectiveness. But it offers something important: immediacy. As David Roberts wrote for Vox:
“The money is going to everything from hiring organizers to buying signs and bullhorns to organizing school trips. A second round of more than 30 grants is in the works, representing over $2 million more.”…
If you’re skeptical that street protest can make a difference, consider Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth’s research. She’s found that if you want to achieve systemic social change, you need to mobilize 3.5 percent of the population, a finding that helped inspire Extinction Rebellion…
Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, recently told me that building the climate movement is crucial because although we’ve already got some good mitigation solutions, we’re not deploying them fast enough. “That’s the ongoing power of the fossil fuel industry at work. The only way to break that power and change the politics of climate is to build a countervailing power,” he said. “Our job — and it’s the key job — is to change the zeitgeist, people’s sense of what’s normal and natural and obvious. If we do that, all else will follow.”
You can, of course, also volunteer with an activist group — whether it’s Extinction Rebellion, the Sunrise Movement, or Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future — and put your body in the street to nonviolently disrupt business as usual and demand change…READ ON
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/12/2/20976180/climate-change-best-charities-effective-philanthropy
Climate Emergency Fund: About Us
Board of Directors
Trevor Neilson (co-founder & chairman)
Trevor Neilson is the co-founder and CEO of i(x) investments. Neilson served as President of G2 Investment Group where he helped lead the firm’s initiatives in energy, real estate and security. Before his work with G2, Trevor was co-founder of Global Philanthropy Group where he was involved in the creation and implementation of many of the world’s most respected philanthropic initiatives and worked with over fifty major philanthropists…
Trevor’s leadership in business and social change included time as the Executive Director of the Global Business Coalition, a coalition of over 200 multinational companies focused on global health issues and created with investments from Bill Gates, George Soros and Ted Turner. Prior to his leadership of the GBC, Trevor worked closely with Bill & Melinda Gates, both in their family office and as Director of Special Projects and as a founding member of the team that created and launched the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where he served as the Director of Public Affairs. Named by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader, Trevor served in the White House during the Clinton administration…
Advisory Board includes:
Aileen Getty, Founding Donor of the Climate Emergency Fund; Bill McKibben, 350.org; David Wallace-Wells, deputy editor, New York magazine and the author of the international best-seller “The Uninhabitable Earth”;
https://climateemergencyfund.org/about-us/
10
Need to bring this to the attention of Morrison et al
“Trump weighs executive order on scientific research”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/12/21/trump-weighs-executive-order-on-scientific-research/
20
According to the responses to my question at #1 there is nothing remotely like what we are experiencing now. No El Niño, 3 years into a drought, massive fires at the same time.
Ergo AGW is in the frame
017
Drought? Where?
Australia’s a big place. It’s been “wetter than normal” here in SW W.A. judging by the state of the lakelands.
80
There were not many weather stations in central Australia in the 1890s but those that existed had higher temperature than have been recorded this century:
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=047007&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=048013&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13
You are one of the gullible people conned by the dingbats infesting the BoM. How DARE these slime HOMEGENISE the past records. They do not stand on the shoulders of the pioneers of weather recording in Australia. They deserve no respect for devaluing the diligence of the pioneers’ work.
AGW does not exist. It is utter nonsense. The reason it is hotter in Australia now is the lack water on the land and in the atmosphere above it. Water vapour cools the planet. “Geenhouse gasses” is just a fairy tale for grown ups.
100
You are aware that 1939, the year of our highest death toll from natural disaster (heat) and the year of of the 2 million hectare Black Friday fires, was NOT an El Nino?
In fact, as someone in the know about climate, you are doubtless aware that 1938/1939 was a La Nina year flanked by neutral years? That’s right. Despite the technocrat’s belief in simple controls and mechanisms. 1939 was a LA NINA. And it was flanked by ENSO neutral years. Plentiful rains came, but too late for the south east of Vic, which in the LA NINA period of April 1938 to January 1939 had lowest-on-record rainfall. Really. Confusing, isn’t it?
The WW2 Drought which followed was related to a double El Nino from 1940 to 1942 and monsoon failure in India. Note I said “related” because I can’t share the technocrat’s belief in simple controls and mechanisms. I’m also too aware that “weak” El Nino like 2002/3 can be far more damaging on this continent than “strong” or even “super” like 1998.
But how does one stop the New Man at Year Zero thinking in GameBoy terms? New Man would rather twiddle knobs than think hard and live with complexity and contradiction.
But as someone vitally interested in climate you would know about 1938/9 and the very up-‘n-down double El Nino of WW2. I’m just saying all this for someone who maybe hasn’t heard it all before. But you would have to know all this, Pete.
100
Where you around in Bourke back the Poiter ?
40
Drought & Fire always go together you idiot !
And why does drought happen ?
Well just now it’s the Indian Ocean Dipole phenomena
It’s giving us drought
While giving East Africa huge floods.
20
“there is nothing remotely like what we are experiencing now”
Australia has experienced worse droughts,
Australia has experience hotter days
Australia HASN’T experienced such a large neglected fuel load as now.
Is that what you mean ?
Or do you mean the yabbering drone of idiotic, anti-science AGW propaganda mantra.
91
No drought in North Queensland, was had an epic monsoonal flood during Feb 2019.
51
“AGW is in the frame”
Utter and complete scientifically-unsubstantiated rubbish… as always.
You have never produced any empirical evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2.
You know you are incapable of doing so.
All you have is your rancid, brain-washed, anti-science “belief”.
80
“Ergo AGW is
in theframed”10
It is hotter and drier inland…
We get just as many fires…the difference is that we put them out quickly.
We can do that because we have less fuel and better access, not nicer weather.
We can’t change the weather. We can change the fuel and the access.
40
In Qld
Urban outlook (including FireCom which has the last say)
“Ooh! A fire! Put it out before it burns something!”
Rural
“We want to burn something before we put it out”
00
21 Dec: MyPanhandle: AP: Record rain, darkness: Seattle braces for floods, mudslides
SEATTLE — Record rainfall and darkness has hit Seattle as a major storm begins to lift across western Washington on the first day of winter, though the region is still at risk for flooding, mudslides and avalanches.
Friday became the wettest day in Seattle in the past 10 years, and the most rain recorded for Dec. 20 since record-keeping at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport began in 1945.
The National Weather Service said the airport recorded 3.25 inches (8.25 centimeters) of rain Friday, making it also the fifth rainiest day in city history.
Seattle also broke a daily rainfall record on Thursday with 2.91 inches (7.39 centimeters) of precipitation, making it the 11th wettest day recorded at the airport.
Parts of the soaked Seattle region and western Washington are under a flood watch through Sunday evening. Rivers in King and Snohomish counties are expected to crest and slowly recede Saturday. The weather service warned drivers not to go through flooded areas as that “is the cause of most flood related deaths in Washington.”
The low-lying areas of the northern Oregon coast are also at risk for flooding. Astoria saw 3.42 inches (8.69 centimeters) of rain on Friday, breaking a record previously set 113 years ago…
Snow is also falling in areas above 3,000 feet (914 meters) in elevation…
Friday also broke a record for measured sunlight in Seattle. The University of Washington recorded just 0.37 million Joules of solar radiation, the lowest level of sun energy measured since the university started counting over the past 20 years.
https://www.mypanhandle.com/news/national-news/record-rain-darkness-seattle-braces-for-floods-mudslides/
60
18 Dec: CoinRivet: Justin Sun pledges $1 million to Greta Thunberg
by Jordan Heal
Tron’s controversial CEO and chief marketeer Justin Sun has pledged $1 million to climate activist Greta Thunberg.
In a tweet to Thunberg posted yesterday, Sun said:
“As a young entrepreneur, I share Greta Thunberg’s passion to change the world. Crypto will contribute immensely on reducing carbon footprint by implementing decentralised settlement. I would like to personally commit USD$1 mil to Greta Thunberg’s initiative.”
Meanwhile, Sun has been an extremely polarising figure throughout 2019. The Tron CEO won a bid to dine with legendary investor Warren Buffett earlier in the year with the intention of convincing the crypto cynic about the benefits cryptocurrency can offer.
However, Sun had to rearrange the lunch after he claimed to have had kidney stones, though rumours surfaced suggesting he had caught the attention of Chinese financial regulators.
Numerous allegations arose suggesting he was involved with gambling and pornography.
However, the Tron and BitTorrent CEO soon took to Weibo to clear the air and apologised for over-marketing.
Sun’s pledge also comes little less than a week since his Weibo account was shut down, creating yet another wave of negative PR for the marketeer.
https://coinrivet.com/justin-sun-pledges-1-million-to-greta-thunberg/
“threatens”?
18 Dec: CNN: TRON (TRX) CEO Justin Sun ***Threatens to Give Greta Thunberg $1 Million
TRON founder Justin Sun vowed to donate $1 million to help Greta Thunberg’s initiative to stop climate change. But is TRX the answer?
by Greg Thomson
Sun claims cryptocurrency itself will contribute to decreasing the world’s carbon output.
But in terms of energy efficiency, cryptocurrency remains vastly less efficient than current digital payment methods such as VISA…
The TRON creator’s vow to combat climate change was met with a cynical response on social media. Some hinted the $1 million pledge was the latest in a long line of fruitless PR stunts by the TRX frontman…
Others took aim at the wider climate change narrative. One commenter voiced the increasingly-held view that Greta Thunberg was merely the latest political puppet to be paraded on the world stage…
In 2017, data from CleanCoin suggested Bitcoin was 180,000 times less efficient than VISA when measuring for carbon output…READ ON FOR MORE DEEP ANALYSIS
https://www.ccn.com/tron-ceo-justin-sun-greta-thunberg-1-million/
DM’s original headline:
‘Australia’s Greta Thunberg’ is 13-year-old schoolgirl Izzy Raj-Seppings
Daily Mail – 21 Dec 2019
changed to:
‘How dare he!’ Schoolgirl, 13, who was threatened with arrest by riot police outside the PM’s residence breaks her silence and accuses ScoMo of ‘racing off to Hawaii’ and lying on a beach with his ‘head in the sand’
***•A proud activist, she is a member of the Extinction Rebellion group in Sydney
By Alisha Rouse
Daily Mail – 21 Dec 2019
31
Now a thirteen year old activist, what’s next, a baby that cries how dare you?
30
Just don’t pull the string.
I accidentally flicked to ABC just now and got an unsolicited earful of Infinity-Crisis™ propaganda. The stuff where they don’t say anything useful, informative or even real, but still manage to produce a shrill noise amid nods of deepest concern and mutual knowing-looks. The remote was hiding under a tea towel and I was almost driven to despair before I located it.
20
To help liven up your Sunday
“Some More Good Ones From A.F. Branco”
And link
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/12/21/some-more-good-ones-from-a-f-branco/
30
Henry Lawson did his famous walk from Hungerford to Bourke in the summer of 1892-3. It was a scorcher then too. Only cold beer saved him.
50
21 Dec: Deutsche Welle: Germany: Finance minister proposes billions for debt-ridden towns
Finance Minister Olaf Scholz proposed helping German towns burdened by debt with a “one-off” payment. The move hints at a possible break with Berlin’s long-standing “black-zero” policy and resistance to spending.
by Rebecca Staudenmaier
In an interview with the Funke media group, (Finance Minister Olaf) Scholz said Berlin “has signaled its willingness” to help remove a €40 billion ($44 billion) debt from local authorities on a “one-off basis.”
Out of Germany’s 11,000 local authorities, Scholz said the plan concerns “around 2,500 cities and municipalities that are squeezed by so much debt that they can barely breathe.”
Removing the debt would likely set local authorities up to spend more on much-needed infrastructure repairs and renovations on schools, kindergartens and swimming pools…
***Most of the overindebted municipalities are located in states like North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, which have been hit hard by deindustrialization…
Scholz has largely maintained his predecessor Wolfgang Schäuble’s so-called “black zero” — a policy of not taking on new debt.
Although Germany is proud of its balanced budget, the government has come under increasing pressure from economists and fellow European Union members to stimulate its economy with higher investment to ward off a possible recession.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-finance-minister-proposes-billions-for-debt-ridden-towns/a-51760862
40
Jo, you often make reference to communism in the context of the climate change scam, and again you threw in the faux USSR jibe ‘You vill repeat after me comrade…’, why is that? Do you have a gripe about the modern Russian people? Can you better explain what is the connection with communism and the climate scam when the climate scan is almost exclusively a Western democracy phenomena? China, one of the few large communist countries on the planet is still happy to get on with the business of burning coal. Even if you consider Russia to still be a communist country (based on some of the comments you have published in the past), they are hardly drinking the climate scam koolaid are they? You seem to convey the message that only a far-right or fascist government can possibly be immune from the climate scam propaganda and I can not see how that is supported by what is happening around the world where it seems the communists are the least likely to drink the koolaid. Can you explain your view a bit better as it seems that your cause is far more political these days rather than purely scientific and goes well beyond the truth-in-science issue?
00
I really think that labels like, Left, Right, Communist, Republican, Democratic etc are often more of a hindrance than a help in describing things.
I agree though that Russia and China are not into Renewables for their electricity.
Having said that, Chyna is making a Motza out of the renewables game and sells as much a junk as they can worldwide to stupid western countries and these sales are made possible by the collective belief in Man Made Global Warming.
Germany is also in on the renewables game.
It’s a mess of gigantic proportions and driven by greed and profit.
Recently the peoples of USA and U.K. demonstrated that democracy still exists, in part maybe, but it’s still working.
They have system and hope.
As to communism in Russia and China, just ask the Ukrainians, Tibetans and Vietnamese for references.
And then we have the non communist EEU.
In the end it’s all about greed regardless of the label.
KK
00
The issue is of influence. Which then gives control and cash.
Communism has a long underground history in Australia that has morphed into the modern Greens where the fake environmental concern in a sense makes them seem pure.
All to affect control of the masses, and it’s going well here in Australia.
KK
00
(I don’t know if the following, in thought or tone, is appropriate for this site, but I guess I’ll see).
I proudly admit that I’m a bit of a lefty (a left-leaning centrist, technically), and quite the ‘greenie’ … but I’m not brain-dead, and I too read the original article referenced here, and sat, simply dumbstruck and gaping, as I read. I am so sick of this endless quantity of abject bulldust about our weather (especially our historical patterns) in the media these days! Surely they don’t really expect anyone either with a modicum of education, or older than about 25, to just believe it all … do they?!
I.e., “They wore more clothes…” so says Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick.
Hey she doesn’t miss a trick!
Indeed they did.
However, she obviously doesn’t realise it, but what she’s effectively saying is that, back in 1896, the average Aussie was a good deal more intelligent than they are today!
Because she’s right ~ indeed they didn’t have air-conditioning, and indeed they often had to go out-and-about in that kind of weather … so guess what? They knew exactly how to cope with it, so they did indeed wear more clothes in it ~ because, like any intelligent semi-desert dweller, they knew to cover-up, head to toe, including wearing a good hat and covering foot-ware, to expose as little of one’s skin to such temperatures as humanly possible, and to not strip-off in the sun as she would seem to be suggesting is the ‘better’, modern idea (I wouldn’t recommend it!). Our iconic ‘outback uniform’ of long-leg, pure cotton moleskins, rather than shorts; a long-sleeved, pure cotton shirt, rather than a singlet; full leather boots, rather than thongs; and an Akubra (rather than a bloody baseball cap!), became iconic for a reason, and fashion had nothing to do with why.
Fact is, their ‘more clothes’ would have saved them if out in such temperatures, not killed them — I would guarantee that that was not the cause of so much as a single death. Quite the opposite — it would have been those who didn’t have adequate clothing (and shade and water, of course) who’d have perished.
And I could go on ~ about how our outback homesteads were built in the 19th C, because in fact they did have ‘climate control systems’ and several of them, and they’re really quite remarkable:- they had high ceilings, under simply huge, vented and gabled roof-spaces (using natural convection to draw the heat up and out of the house, and with which even a hot north wind will cool the house); deep, wide, shady verandahs all round, thus shading both walls and windows from the sun; breeze-ways, usually on a north-south aspect; and small, double-sash windows, which they draped in heavy, natural fabrics — all of which exclude and dissipate far more heat than those without such features could possibly appreciate. Our iconic ‘outback homestead’ and ‘the Queenslander’ became iconic for a reason; and architectural-fashion had nothing to do with why.
Our eye-searing climate, however, had everything to do with the evolution of both.
What I cannot fathom is why our so-called experts, who are obviously no longer truly expert, are pretending otherwise; and why our journalists, who are obviously no longer true journalists, apparently aren’t even attempting to verify their claims. It’s not that I haven’t noticed it until now – of course I have – but I think my ruminating on it has just reached a kind of ‘critical-mass’.
In short, what the hell is going on?!
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A good comment RDF.
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RDF
Welcome to the world of the climate awoken.
Climate science is a piece of junk that is so nonsensical it literally defies reality.
Lewis Carol would have been so proud.
I recommend that you first read my short essay on LinkedIn which addresses the issue of why Climate Science is built on false foundations.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/comparative-planetology-establishing-role-meteorology-mulholland/
In order to fully comprehend why climate science is a junk science, and why the concept of planetary surface heating by back radiation from greenhouse gases is a complete fiction, it is necessary to understand the origins of this obscure and esoteric branch of geoscience. Climate Science has its origins in astronomy. It starts with a model devised by astronomers and used to determine the thermal radiant emission temperature of a solar illuminated planetary body.
Astronomy is the study of electromagnetic radiation and the challenge to devise a method to establish the thermal emission temperature of a distant planetary body was a worthy endeavour. The solution that the astronomers created is the vacuum planet equation. This equation possesses three critically important assumptions: –
1. That the planet has no atmosphere.
2. That the planet rotates rapidly.
3. That the planet is not tidally locked to the parent sun.
Assumption 1 means that all surface intercepted solar energy is carried from the lit to the dark hemisphere by planetary rotation.
Assumption 2 means that the disk silhouette of intercepted solar energy is diluted by a factor of 4. This concept of “Divide solar intercepted beam intensity by 4” lies at the heart of the vacuum planet equation and is a feature of spherical geometry. We have to address this issue in order to appreciate why climate science fails so spectacularly as a piece of logic:
1. All planets are spherical orbs (or at least a very close approximation).
2. All planets cut a silhouette disk shadow from the illuminating solar beam that has a cross-sectional area equal to the size of a planar disk with the same diameter as the planet’s spherical diameter.
3. The curved surface area of the illuminated hemisphere of a globe is twice the cross-sectional area of the planar disk silhouette.
4. Therefore, the total curved surface area of a globe (lit and unlit sides) is four times the cross-sectional area of the planar disk silhouette.
5. All planets that are not tidally locked receive daily and annual illumination over the full surface area of the globe averaged over the course of a year.
6. Therefore, the surface area of a spherical globe that receives illumination is 4 times the cross-sectional area of the intercepting disk silhouette.
7. Therefore, the solar beam intensity is divided by four. This is the logic trap that condemns Climate Science to be a pseudo-science.
Why is this a logic trap?
Because at no time is the planetary globe ever illuminated over both hemispheres simultaneously. There is always a lit day hemisphere and a dark night hemisphere on every planet illuminated by a single central sun. Therefore, the average solar beam intensity impinging on the lit hemisphere is only ever divided by 2 and not by 4. The purpose of the vacuum planet equation is to establish the thermal radiant exhaust temperature of the climate system and not its internal system energising surface temperature.
Assumption 3 means that the equation cannot be applied to a tidally locked vacuum planet as the intercepted solar energy in this special case must be diluted by a factor of only 2. The vacuum planet equation, by its very definition, cannot be applied to a tidally locked planet, yet such worlds with thick atmospheres must clearly exist (e.g. Venus). So how do we provide solar energy to the unlit dark side of the planet that has an atmosphere if daily rotation is not possible? The process that transmits this energy is by adiabatic energy storage within the atmospheric reservoir and was first identified by my co-author Stephen Wilde.
It is a perfectly valid assessment that for a tidally locked vacuum planet the permanently lit hemisphere would have searingly hot temperatures, while the permanent night side would have surface temperatures close to absolute zero. This assessment leads to the conclusion that the longer the day is the greater the thermal contrast is between night and day. While this assessment is correct for a vacuum planet it is completely false when the planet possesses a thick atmosphere, as slowly rotating Venus so clearly shows. Venus is the closest approximation in our solar system to a tidally locked planet with a thick atmosphere, and surface data show a minimal thermal contrast between the lit and unlit sides of Venus.
Because climate science starts with an equation derived from astronomy with its factor of 4 divisor of solar flux it appears that the sun cannot raise the temperature of the surface of our planet to the observed values found at the Earth’s surface. Hence was devised the concept of “back radiation” whereby the presence of greenhouse gases lowers the thermal radiant opacity and so cause the atmosphere to heat the surface. Back radiation is a complete nonsense because at all times only half of our planetary orb is ever illuminated, so the solar intensity flux divisor must at all times be integer 2 and not 4.
So how does the intercepted energy of the day get transported to the night side? A planetary atmosphere is a dynamic reservoir that can store solar flux, and in the case of high-pressure Venus, this is a truly impressive quantity of energy. The real mechanism that transports intercepted solar flux from the lit to the unlit hemisphere is vertical atmospheric mass motion. During the day the sun pumps energy into the atmosphere, heating it and raising the tropopause. At night the stored energy is released from the atmospheric reservoir, the surface cools and the tropopause lowers. Vertical mass motion in a gravity field either stores energy on assent or releases energy on descent.
The Noonworld climate model I built for Stephen Wilde of New Climate Model https://www.newclimatemodel.com/ describes this process in detail and starts with a tidally locked planet as its founding metric and this model can clearly be applied to all planets.
For further exploration of this Meteorological mechanism that fully explains the climate system of all terrestrial worlds with all types of non-condensing atmospheres, see our series of essays here on Research Gate.
https://www.researchgate.net/project/Dynamic-Atmosphere-Energy-Transport-Climate-Model
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Surprised the “scientists” allow the old newspaper stories to remain. They probably view it as denialist propaganda.
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Deniquilin NSW is an interesting place for look at temperatures. The site at at the visitors centre opened in the 1850s and closed in 2003. The AWS site at the airport about 3 kms away opened in 1993 and still operates, so there is some overlap and data from both sites can be compared and it shows consistency.
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It’s a few years ago now, but the relocation of the official Melbourne weather site was interesting. When the old one was originally set up, it might have been sort-of, maybe marginal. It was too close to buildings, walls, trees, etc. Too close to be accurate. That site was on a major road. So they picked a new site. The Melbourne Tennis Centre extension had just been built and the BoM picked an ideal spot, next to the car park. Well done, chaps.
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