…
The danger is in the definition
Ken Stewart has been diligent at trying to understand the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) method for finding heatwaves. He’d heard BOM head, Rob Vertessy speak on ABC radio, declaring that heatwaves were the “number one cause of death” from natural disaster in Australia. Ken wrote to Vertessy repeatedly but for some reason, despite the deadly risk to Australians, Vertessy was unable to answer the question of how to define and estimate heatwaves. (Perhaps if the BOM had The Internet, he could have sent Ken Stewart this link, which Stewart has now found himself four months later.)
The Excess Heat Factor: A Metric for Heatwave Intensity and Its Use in Classifying Heatwave Severity, John R. Nairn and Robert J. B. Fawcett (2015) [1]
With these instructions Ken has now replicated the BOM results for the 2014 heatwave in Melbourne. He has also used the same technique on Marble Bar, Western Australia, and Mawson, Antarctica and found that potentially heatwaves are a killer danger to our Antarctic researchers, and if heatwaves kill, they’d be much safer in Marble Bar. For the record, Marble Bar is the place that had 160 days in a row with daily maxes above 100F (37.8°C) in 1923-24. But that’s not much of a heatwave according to the BOM.
Australians may think they understand the term “heatwave” but the BOM don’t define it the way the average man-in-the-street does. The BOM know that humans can adapt to a wide range of temperatures, so the point of a heatwave is not about absolute temperatures but about the variation from the norm. That means the relentless unending heat of Marble Bar is not a heatwave, it’s “normal”. A few warm days in Antarctica, though, can really shock the system.
Extreme heatwaves, Marble Bar, Western Australia, Bureau of Meteorology method.
..
Extreme Heatwaves, Mawson, Antarctica, Bureau of Meteorology method.
Ken describes their method:
There are several steps. Readers should read the paper for full details. Briefly, using a daily mean temperature calculated by averaging the day’s maximum and the following night’s minimum, three-day means are calculated. These are then compared by subtracting the previous 30 days’ daily means (as people acclimatise to changed temperatures in this period). Differences that exceed the 95th percentile of all three-day means from 1971 to 2000 are multiplied by the three-day mean to give the Excess Heat Factor, which indicates heatwave. This is then compared with the 85th percentile of all positive EHFs from 1958 to 2011 to give a severity index, and if it exceeds 3 times the 85th percentile this becomes an extreme heatwave event.
From the paper:
“The intent of these definitions is to create a heatwave intensity index and classification scheme which is relative to the local climate. Such an approach is clearly necessary given the abundant evidence that people and supporting infrastructure are largely adapted to the local climate, in physiology, culture and engineered supporting infrastructure.”
Here are the results for Melbourne- with all its UHI effect of course.
Fig. 1: Decadal (running 3653 day) count of positive Excess Heat Factor (heatwave) days in Melbourne
Between the combinations and permutations of hottest ever records and adjusted trends, this type of heatwave calculation fills the PR gap on many towns or locations which might fail to trigger a suitably scary press release.
In the Nairn paper during one three-week period in the summer of 2009, the “excess heat levels” across Australia looked like this:
Nairn and Fawcett 2014, Excess Heat Across Australia.
During these three weeks Marble Bar scored a measly 0-10 units – possibly because for the three weeks before this the max temperature at Marble Bar was above 40C every single day, and the minima did not fall below 24C.
Ultimately, there are an infinite number of ways to measure heatwaves. When Ken Stewart used a 40C cut-off, he found there were more heatwaves lately in Adelaide, but less heatwaves in Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, or Darwin where 9 million Australians live. The BOM don’t mention this. Geoff Sherrington looked at 4, 5, and 6 day trends in our capital cities and found the top 20 instances of them in each city and looked at whether there were more in the latter half of the record. He found Perth had had more heatwaves, Adelaide less, and Melbourne, Sydney, and Hobart had no trend.
The trend in heatwaves depends entirely on the definition, and there are advantages and disadvantages with every method. But the BOM don’t tell Australians how fickle or “flexible” their heatwave trends are. Is there a point in reporting noise as if it mattered — only if it’s PR you seek, not scientific truths.
The biggest health risks are not from heatwaves in cold places, they’re not even from heatwaves in hot places
The BOM’s human biology expertise may be letting them down. One day, when they get The Internet, they may also discover air conditioning and the life saving value of coal fired cheap electricity. The heatwave that kills the most Australians, and every single year, is the lack-of-heat-kind. Even in a hot country like Australia, cold weather kills far more often than heat. A study on mortality rates in 74 million people showed the cold-toll is 20 times higher than the heat-toll.[2]
In Australia, a survey reported last week suggests nearly half of NSW householders are not turning on heaters despite feeling cold. (Thanks to NSW having the second highest electricity prices in the western world these days). Consumer group One Big Switch have 550,000 members and surveyed 10,000 NSW households in June and July 2015.
“47% of households are not running their heater this winter, “even though I’m cold”, raising the question of whether high electricity prices are causing health and safety issues, particularly for older Australians.”
What’s the bigger threat to health? CO2 output from a coal fired generator, or rampant unnecessary taxes that stop householders from being able to heat their homes?
NSW is not short of coal. Perhaps someone in NSW can explain why electricity costs so much there? The reasons doing the rounds are that it’s a poles and networks cost, and not much due to “renewables”. But given that Queensland and WA are both less densely populated (and WA is not even connected to the national grid it is so remote) it’s hard to see why their poles and networks could possibly be more expensive.
“In NSW, electricity prices have doubled in the past 5-8 years, due mainly to increases in network costs.[4]
NSW retail prices are 2nd only to SA and are the 4th most expensive in the world, according to a 2012 analysis by Carbon Market Economics.[5]
NSW disconnections have doubled over the past 5 years to 33,000 in 2013-14. About 108,000 households have an electricity bill debt, averaging $529.[6]” — Sydney Morning Herald
h/t Ken, and David B
Read it all at Ken Stewarts blog.
Other posts on heatwaves:
- Fewer heatwaves for 9 million Australians in Sydney, Darwin, Hobart, Melbourne –”thank CO2″!
- Heatwaves in Australia: in many ways they are not hotter, longer or more common. Why won’t BOM and ABC say that too?
- Get Headlines! How to find a heatwave in five easy steps
- Eight reasons the Australian heatwave is not “climate change”
REFERENCE
[1^] Nairn, J. and Fawcett, P. (2014) The Excess Heat Factor: A Metric for Heatwave Intensity and Its Use in Classifying Heatwave Severity, Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2015, 12, 227-253; doi:10.3390/ijerph120100227
[2^] Antonio Gasparrini, Yuming Guo, Masahiro Hashizume, Eric Lavigne, Antonella Zanobetti, Joel Schwartz, Aurelio Tobias, Shilu Tong, Joacim Rocklöv, Bertil Forsberg, Michela Leone, Manuela De Sario, Michelle L Bell, Yue-Liang Leon Guo, Chang-fu Wu, Haidong Kan, Seung-Muk Yi, Micheline de Sousa Zanotti Stagliorio Coelho, Paulo Hilario Nascimento Saldiva, Yasushi Honda, Ho Kim, Ben Armstrong. (2015) Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperature: a multicountry observational study. The Lancet, May 2015 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(14)62114-0
I wonder if BOM records still show that or the data has been “homogenised”?
332
looks like 158 or 159 days going by their data now and the 6th and 7th of May 1924 were exactally 37.8 I wonder how long before they drop to 37.7 or 6 and so change the record to 157 days. step by step history is changing before our eyes.
40
I have saved a page from BOM, Climate Education section that holds all the relevant information regarding the 160 day marble bar heatwave, Steve Goddard and WUWT both had links to the same article, I just tried to open the page and get the following response – The page you requested was not found on this server.
Wondering if it’s been disappeared or is down for maintenance or modification. Does anybody have a BoM link that still works.
30
If the data doesn’t fit your failed hypothesis, just change the data says the BOM
concurry stripped of record high temp
The 53.1C on January 16, 1889, had brought notoriety to the outback town.
The weather bureau’s acting Queensland regional director, Geoff Crane, said the high was struck off the books because of the way it was recorded.
31
That is outrageous. Did they say why the measurement was supposedly defective?
00
Supposedly because the thermometer was (according to urban myth) housed in a beer case.
From the Adelaide Advertiser 2004:
“While Cloncurry residents are reluctant to accept the decision, the bureau’s meteorologist Blair Trewin said the temperature had been recorded in a beer or wine crate rather than the standardised Stevenson screen. Mr Trewin said the crate had also been located on the sunny side of a building, lifting the temperature by four or five degrees.”
This was in January 1889. Clement Wragge set up a Stevenson screen in Cloncurry in late 1889.
00
In the UK 7,800 people have died every year for the past five due to living in cold homes according to http://www.energybillrevolution.org/fuel-poverty/
Unfortunately, their solution is not about making cheaper energy by getting rid of wind and solar but:
So carbon taxes are to be used to solve a problem they created in the first place….
342
You could not dream up the UK’s current energy policy.
Closing perfectly good, low priced, reliable, coal fired power stations and attempting to replace their generating capacity with ugly, bird chomping, unreliable expensive wind energy.
Paying huge and rapidly growing sums to turn off wind powered energy in order to keep the national grid balanced.
Paying renewable energy producers first and with a guaranteed high price, while everyone else has to bid at much lower prices to provide energy on an hourly basis. As a result, no new power stations are being built, except the incredibly stupid ones like the tidal energy project at Swansea in South Wales, where £1 billion in expenditure is planned for a power station which will produce an average of 27MW.
Importing tens of thousands of tonnes of wood chips per day (and still growing) from the eastern USA to fire what was once the most efficient coal fired power station in the country.
Emergency plans for cold winters, when there will not be enough power, includes closing down industry and sequestrating hospitals’ emergency diesel power plants.
This insane policy was dreamed up by Ed Milliband, the Labour Party’s last unlamented leader, my guess is Australia could soon enjoy the same idiocy, you just have to vote an ecoloon into power, which seems increasingly likely.
And yet the current UK government will be leading the charge at Paris to make the situation even worse, if that is at all possible.
591
My aged parents built a new house about 12 months ago.
One thing I was adamant about is they had 4 kW of solar on the roof – enough to run a reverse cycle heater/cooler and/or medical equipment if need be ( later to be suplemented with storage batteries, on the quiet…) and a large underground fresh water tank of 10,000L.
I knew the covert green genocidal push via this nonsense people are expeiencing in the UK, would happen eventually. Thankfully Australia has better weather than the UK, so death from cold is a lower risk, although death from heat stroke is also a risk.
I think we have to be energy indepnedent ( off grid even in urban areas ) as much as possible. Mind you, the irony will be you will also need a veggie patch too, as the economy starts to collapse eventually due to lack of reliable power, without food, power is pointless.
I also see a day of politicians being dragged intot eh street and beaten, not because I want it to happen, but mobs will rule despite the best riot gear police have, as starving people with dead relatives caused by energy rationing will snap.
I also notice a new series onAustralian tv called “Zoo”. This is nothing but Gaia “human culling p0rn” whereby the animals start attacking humans becasue they think humans are spoiling the earth. Extreme greenies would love to cull all humans, so I’d see this tv series as a form of semi-bared teeth toward the from the Gaia worshippers.
This sort of stuff can only happen when you have extremists running the show.
I think be warned – the extreme greenies are only just being held on the leash. I think gioven half a chance, they would happily dump a bioweapon on the population and sit back with popcorn and watch with glee…..but I guess we always knew they were demented.
Nuff said.
30
My sincerest sympathy that the series “Zoo” has found it’s way to Australia. What an awful program, for sure.
30
Attempting to define precise numbers for fuzzy natural phenomena is a folly. Climate doesn’t change if the average temperature per decade lifts or drops by 0.25 deg C. If a heat wave is defined across three days, then five days of bl***y hot weather can be a heatwave even if the middle day is a fraction under the criteria, breaking the series into two separate pairs of days.
162
“”Let Them Freeze!” – Politicians in Frozen the Musical” https://youtu.be/nzf0DrbQJrQ
Spoof video on UK fuel poverty. It is a VERY serious issue in the UK, Green energy is killing thousands a year (7,800) as I linked in #2 post above.
Something would actually be done if this number of people (or far fewer) were dying from anything else.
231
David,
I thought it was 30,000 a year
The Guardian:
This report gives the actual number of death of men vs women over a fortnight (14 day period)
And this report for 2013 uses estimated excess winter deaths but gives a clue as to why the numbers differ so.
However just like everything else the numbers can be ‘adjusted’
But not to worry, the UK government has a solution!
Government takes 1m out of fuel poverty – by changing the rules
“Campaigners criticised the Government after ministers took 1m people out of fuel poverty – by changing the way the measure is calculated.”
170
I’ve been explaining to people for years that terms like “poverty” and “poor” have no real meaning. The number is arbitrarily set and can be changed whenever the need be. Like unemployment numbers or number of people registered for Obamacare. Fun with statistics. You can get whatever answer you want.
90
It is strange that Australia, the country blessed with large amounts of all types of natural energy sources, oil, gas, coal and even solar should have the world’s fourth highest electricity costs.
Like ‘climate change’ theory and economics, something clearly does not make any sense.
You clearly need new and improved carbon taxes to achieve your goal of having the world’s highest cost electricity; voting Labor should help you achieve this worthy goal. Then you could hold your heads high amongst all the Paris-ites in France later this year.
432
One of Australia’s great economic advantages (as for the USA) used to be access to some of the world’s cheapest energy. Thanks mainly to Labor and Greens this is no longer the case.
361
And the ABC – This 4 Corners episode = “THE END OF COAL”.
Haven’t seen the episode but no doubt it will be heavily “Warmist” biased.
This is how our hard tax earned A$’s are being spent – trying to undermine (a pun) one of Oz’s biggest export earners. Thanks a lot ABC. If anything the coal industry in Oz will survive and the ABC get privatised or get severe cut backs to its budget until it produces documentaries / programs in Oz’s best interests. PS – I don’t work in the coal industry.
60
Another celebration of trying to increase the unemployment rate.
20
David,
The irony is that it is the Labour and Greens that supposedly fight for the poor and jobs but they don’t realise that cheap energy is the key to most large scale industry (ie. jobs !!).
With cheaper energy via fracking technology,in the USA a number of large , energy intensive industries ( eg. fertiliser manufacturing) are becoming more competitive again.
20
When is your next fishing trip to Iceland, Peter?
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@Peter Miller
You need to factor into those costs the maintenance of opportunistic bureaucrats and politicians. The math then works flawlessly and universally.
81
Someone needs to explain the concept of wearing layers to Vertussy. No such thing as a heat wave until you’re in your shorts and T-shirt.
I mentioned before that a cut off temperature is problematic because 45°C is much worse than 35°C. A function of how much the maximum is above the monthly average is the only way to do it properly. The average between the maximum and the next days minimum is a dependent on cloud cover and then you have even more of an exaggerated effect of having a simple cut off.
92
How many low maxima and high minima occur simply because some cloud drifted in or hung about around max time or min time? What’s the use of knowing temp without context? I experienced a warmer night last night because of some cloud cover. Good, saved some wood. But now skies are clear after a nice day so…firewood!
What’s the point of drawing conclusions and doing reconstructions when the number recorded is often meaningless. How do you compare Sydney’s localised and short-burst record heat of 2013 with the previous record of 1939, result of a more widespread and sustained heatwave which remains Australia’s most lethal natural disaster? (By the way, theorists, 1939 was a La Nina flanked by neutral years!)
You know something was a true heatwave by knowing everything that went on weather-wise, and for how long. Sydney’s heatwave of 1960 was its worst in terms of persistence. I remember it well. And if you check the temps on the days around that Southern Hemisphere max record for Oodnadatta in 1960 and take into account there was no cloud about…it’s fair to suspect it was an all-time stinker. But I’d still prefer to ask someone who was there.
Bare numbers without context are rubbish. Just rubbish.
202
The problem isn’t the numbers, nor the context of the hot weather event itself. The problems crop up in the context of reporting a heat wave. The context used to be – “it’s another bl**y heat wave, pass me a beer.” But now a heat wave is supposed to be proof of “we’ll all be doomed and I’m in charge of the mystical numbers that proves it.“
70
Scarily, scientific integrity is being washed away from its traditional founding value in western society,
More and more, public opinion appears happy to back what is “trending” on the basis of some twit’s fleeting brain snap. Of course, the main stream media and politicians project this social media plague as the clever way to go in a 24 hour news cycle.
Climate science (so-called) has swept with relish into this intellectual desert space.
120
People don’t like sticking out like dogs bits, even if the little voice in their heads says they should. They parrot what they hear to conform to the majority of the other parrots. It’s sad and disturbing to hear people open their mouths and say things that you just know are mantras to conformity rather than considered opinions. Makes you wonder how we manage to function as a society at all sometimes. Just barely is probably the best considered opinion I could offer. Imagine what would happen if people actually started questioning every bit of populist dogma they ever heard. Wouldn’t that be fantastic…
140
A fair bit of the time I think it’s more akin to protective colouration, camouflage if you will, to “fit in” at work and social groups
Unhappily, this tends to become a permanent colour as doubts and questions are continually suppressed to avoid awkward situations
110
Ceetee,
Most people are followers (pack animals). Only a few are actually leaders. This is why civilization works. The problems occur when the guy with the brass and the charisma is also a dimwitted blowhard and not a leader with brains and at least some integrity.
If everyone had ‘leader attributes’ we would not have civilization we would be solitary wanderers with a sole female raising the young until she kicked them out.
40
I also think the speed at whcih events move through the 24×7 world we live has the effect of hypnotizing people.
People dont work well with rapidly changing world aroudn them – they have a tendency to hunker down and become insular, so the spin doctors and doom sayers can circle them like sharks, shrieking “the sky is falling” at them so they cower more and huddle in small groups for protection….personally I like th eidea of lobbing a few “half bricks” of reality at the propagandists so they shut up for a bit and even better if we can upset the white noise they produce.
I am of the opinion that we need quiet and no noise from time to time.
The CAGW mob keep people on the back foot and unable to think clearly by keeping a constant barrage of useless information coming at people…. drives me bonkers …
10
Electricity consumers need at ask how providers can afford to offer up to 20% discount for paying bills on time.
Could it be that they buy electricity from efficient and reliable coal fired power stations for well under what they pay for so called renewable energy? And that the electricity supply to grid from coal fired power stations is the bulk of the supply, and renewable is a quite small input? But consumers are billed for the highest price renewable for all electricity? And therefore, for the shorter term, the profit for providers is so high that a 20% discount is not a problem, noting that it is not offered until a customer decides to transfer to a new provider.
What a con.
And, ignorant consumers who cannot do the maths are being exploited.
151
The latest Labor con is the claim that if carbon tax had not been repealed the $28/tonne price would have dropped to $10/tonne when the carbon tax became emissions trading. Well that would have been the Labor plan to put our tax monies into the EU ETS and that price is now under $10/tonne.
But the Shorten Labor plan, announced at the ALP National Conference recently, is a THREE TIER emissions trading TAX they deny is a tax. So levied three times by $10/tonnes becomes $30/tonne.
Cunning aren’t they.
Listen not to what they say, watch what they do.
190
Favourite pollie game, find the pea..
60
Watch what they do, when hung high from the mizzenmast.. Aaarrgghh!!
50
Yeh.. I dunno.. I got nuthin’.
10
Heatwave effects are way more than just air temperatures, humidity and wind are key variables, here is Body Thermodynamics 101, I’d welcome any comments on this:
The body is always surrounded by a thin layer of body-warmed and produced hot humid air. In addition, there is the ambient air and humidity. The body gains heat from both the air and from condensation of water vapour, and tries to regulate its temperature via evaporative cooling and changes in blood flow.
Winds are cooling because they blow away some of the thin layer of hot humid air.
Ambient humidity is warming because it adds to the body-produced water vapour, resulting in more condensation warming.
I’d be more worried by a 35C windless day in the humid tropics than a 40C day in a dry windy desert.
60
Mikky: To some degree, a hot humid day may be seem more problematic. Having lived in 35 to 40C temperatures with 99% humidity, it seemed hot and muggy all the time but we still worked outside and went outside to play as children. Now I live where there’s humidity of 15% and temperatures around 35C. It’s still hot at 35C, with or without wind. Having been in Arizona with temps over the 40C mark, it’s hot and the dry really does not help. Hot is hot. More than anything, it varies person to person. I do not deal with heat even without humidity. I love cold. On the other hand, some of my relatives have been known to drive an unairconditioned car in Arizona all summer.
Another factor with the 40C and wind is the increase in dryness of skin and in sweating. It is far easier to become dehydrated at 35C in a desert than in 35C in a humid place. A temperature of 40C and wind is extremely drying, to people, animals and plants. If that’s taken into account, I think that drier may not be better.
20
OK, I forgot dehydration, which is maybe what kills in deserts more than direct heating, the body no longer being able to lose enough heat by evaporative cooling.
I once drove across Arizona in the summer with the HEATING full on, the temperature gauge showed overheating, so hoped that the heating on would cool the engine a bit.
00
You have my sympathy on driving across Arizona in the summer with the heater on. You’re a brade person! I did the same thing once in Minnesota in the summer, but that’s nothing compared to Arizona in the summer.
10
I did the same here in North Carolina routinely each summer around 2004. Temp over 100F (38C) and the diesel over heating because we were always hauling a loaded trailer, so turn on the heater. Then you can add the blasted high humidity because we are near the seacoast.
Sorry Sheri, I rather have DRY heat so sweat isn’t dripping in my eyes and my clothes aren’t soaking wet.
We always carry a loaded cooler or two, or three plus several gallons of water for the truck just in case.
Dehydration can be a real problem even here on the coast. One problem I ran into is upsetting the sodium/potassium balance. I hate gatoraide so I mostly drink water — a gallon or more, much more on some days. I had heat stroke problems until I added protein shakes to the coolers. Start to get dizzy? A few sips kill the problem ASAP. Nothing else I tried worked.
20
“More than anything, it varies person to person.” I think I was clear that people vary in their reactions to humidity. Friends in Missouri are shocked when our relative humidity is 5%. That sounds terrible to them. It sounds good to us. My hubby totally agrees with your statement tht he can’t stand sweat dripping when in the Midwest. My sister did not like Arizona because she said she sweated more there than in California. It’s all individual.
I have heat exhaustion problems which nothing except cooler temps helps (could be due to being diabetic—it’s pretty common problem amoung diabetics I’m told). I totally agree that I prefer dry to humid. However, when in Arizona, I preferd to leave the state because dry 110F is still HOT. When I left, the temp had finally dropped below three digits for the first time in several months. It was snowing when I got home (October snow). Never been so happy in my life.
20
Maybe when air temperature gets around the same or higher than body temperature there is no longer a thin layer of hotter air around the body, and that is why wind no longer cools so much, there is effectively nothing special left to blow away, except the water vapour from own perspiration.
00
Fewer heatwaves, dammit!
60
Scientific methodology at its finest, or should I say activist – “Heads I win, tails you lose”.
Pointman
133
I clicked on the first linked paper given by the BOM, (Coates et al) which gives figures for heat-related deaths, but doesn’t mention or consider cold-related deaths, in any form or fashion.
How can it be that those, professionally trained and supervised, miss this, is simply beyond me.
131
I think it’s time BOM was homogenised, along with the ABC. At the rate they are going though they will very soon become extreme outliers in which case they should be deleted.
161
I think it’s time BOM was privatised, along with the ABC.
Let them swim or sink – I suspect the latter, ie drowning by a lack of funding.
120
There appears to be an unseasonal heatwave in Tasmania.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/outlooks/#/temperature/maximum/median/seasonal/0
50
Ken Stewart has pointed out that BOM is developing fodder for ‘Screaming Headlines’ by redefining the word Heatwave.
It looks like the term ‘Excess winter deaths’ is also getting a rewrite. Front Page Magazine gave us a clue to the new method with the sentence:
About 2,000 extra deaths were registered in just the first two weeks of March compared with the average for the same period over the past five years.
So extra deaths are the increase over the five year average for the same months of the year. Whether this is the ‘official definition’ does not matter what matters is it is the definition used for information fed to the MSM at least in this article.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) which had the 30,000 excess winter deaths uses this definition:
This November 2002 paper, from ten years before gives a different view and uses the words “seasonal mortality”
Excess winter mortality in Europe: a cross country analysis identifying key risk factors
So Cold Kills has been known for 150 years.
Since the UN definition seems to lower the statistic by around a factor of ten, what is the UN definition of “excess winter deaths”? It certainly can not be “seasonal mortality” since that is what the Office for National Statistics is using.
A search turns up a 27 page 2007 document entitled:
HOUSING, ENERGY AND THERMAL COMFORT
A review of 10 countries within the
WHO European Region
World Health Organization 2007
It is a very interesting document (more on that later) and gives the definition of excess winter deaths.
SO what is the new definition???? Darned if I can find it.
121
As I said above the following is a very interesting document
HOUSING, ENERGY AND THERMAL COMFORT
A review of 10 countries within the
WHO European Region
World Health Organization 2007
They see the problem of more people dying due to the change in energy mix however at that point they make a weird turn in logic.
As Andy West says The Catastrophic AGW Memeplex “is a self-sustaining narrative that is living off our mental capacity, either in symbiosis or as an outright cultural parasite; a narrative that is very distanced from physical real-world events.” And that is very evident in the document.
(For Andy’s essay SEE: wattsupwiththatDOTcom/2013/11/02/the-catastrophic-agw-memeplex-a-cultural-creature/ )
Read that sentence again. The conclusion has been drawn: “…better and energy-efficient housing makes a considerable contribution towards protecting health…” and now they need scientists (studies) to back up that predetermined conclusion! — Scientific method? We don’t need no stinkin’ scientific method!
So what about Fuel Poverty? That gets quickly sidelined in the first few pages.
Not only is fuel poverty sidelined but the pet solution ‘improving the energy efficiency’ is also given a high moral/emotional kick by saying ‘has psychosocial benefits’ (Where is the evidence dude?)
Interestingly the next paragraph shows puzzlement that intervention — Warm Front at a cost of up to £4,000 to install ‘central heating systems and insulation’ — didn’t lead to the results expected.
Remember this report is from 2007 and the excess deaths due to ‘Fuel Poverty’ are still happening. It had become such a scandal that by Dec 2011 the Telegraph and the Mirror have headlines like One in four households suffer from fuel poverty. The UK government responded by sticking its collective head in the sand and changing the definition of ‘Fuel Poverty’ — (more than 10% of your income on heat and light)—- which the Telegraph gleefully reported in Jul 2013 as Government takes 1m out of fuel poverty – by changing the rules
But not to worry, our betters have a ‘PLAN’
So we define away the real problem — no longer able to afford heat AND food — and substitute the ‘pet solution’ blame buildings/housing.
Now that we have swept under the rug the uncomfortable fact that the EU’s switch to solar and wind is causing people to die, we can get on with plans.
And so we come to the rationalization for destroying and rebuilding perfectly good PRIVATELY OWNED buildings in Christchurch NZ. Not only rationalize but actually feel good about the destruction because it reduces excess winter deaths, provide better health AND reduces the contribution to climate change.
The BOM reporting more heatwaves in Australia is very much needed because it reinforces this ‘feel good’ and shoves the cognitive dissonance caused by the ‘Pause’ back under rug.
111
gai
But this fits with the requirements of Agenda 21, where the population must be removed from the countryside (via changes to and the removal of, property rights) and corralling everyone into cities, installing the majority of dispaced people into mimimum cost housing.
http://www.infowars.com/for-rent-your-very-own-agenda-21-shoebox-apartment/
If you can not survive in these cities, at least your carcass is easily collected and disposed of.
60
Tom:
The National Multifamily Housing Council pulled this page:
At least some people are catching on:
http://www.varight.com/news/agenda-21-iclei-update-138-iclei-members-quit-iclei-in-18-months-we-got-em-on-the-run/
10
And this page still works:
http://www.nmhc.org/Content.aspx?id=10815
Oh Joy, now they want the apartment manager to manage YOUR energy use if I read this correctly.
40
They are preparing for the renewables only future when citizens of the states of the one world government will be required to limit their use of electricity, your allocation will be issued by permit at your local citizen’s bureau office. They will also issue travel permits for citizens wanting to leave the suburb they live in and another permit will be required to cover the mode of transport citizen’s intend to use to travel. Approved state broadcasting will be available on ASBC.
70
Sustainability is unsustainable
10
Oh no, World reserves of sustainability are running out!
😆
10
To know which heatwaves are true,
When science explained what it knew,
Check old Geography books,
Untouched by the cooks,
Who dish out the climate-change stew.
190
Is there a parallel definition for a chill wave?
At least three consecutive days with minimum temperatures less than ….. so what !!!
Put on an extra cardigan like your mother told you to.
60
Cold snap. That’s what we had last fall when temperatures went from 50F to −15F and stayed there for about a week. That cold snap killed hundreds of trees that had not “winterized” yet.
50
Chill Wave: They say a picture is worth a thousand words.
http://media.cagle.com/205/2014/01/27/143546_600.jpg
50
Can climate data be pasteurised as well as homogenised?
71
Thomas R. Karl – National Climatic Data Center, NOAA has a very fine pasteuriser that he lends out. So does Gavin Schmidt.
30
From http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/this-issue/atmosphere-and-surface/solar-minima-results-in-thin-and-cool-thermosphere.html
This however goes against the latest revision of sun-spot numbers. The new study shows that some are not satisfied with previous sunspot number pasteurizations, and now have statistically homogenize away the modern solar maximum.
I wonder how Dr. David Evans feels about this change.
30
Dr. Nir Shavi’s response is priceless.
http://www.sciencebits.com/sunspots_2.0
[spelling corrected] ED
30
I didn’t know about Nir’s blog post until he sent me an email about it.
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/08/weekend-unthreaded-87/#comment-1735353
20
I always have a waterbag just above the bumper bar of my Land Rover when I go driving in the Antarctic. It is good practice to do this in hot climates.
70
And an ESKY to keep things warm.
60
“Heat waves in Antarctica” show you how disconnected from reality our climate “scientists” are. They would all fail high school science, forget about university level science. And I am not joking about this. They don’t even use the scientific method – that is an immediate fail.
111
I wish we could edit posts – I know the BOM did not actually say there were “heatwaves” in Antarctica, but their methodology, when applied, says there were. The methodology is therefore a FAIL.
110
D.M., it’s actually you and eleven other green-thumbers who have failed.
IF people adapt to their local climate (they do)
AND a heatwave metric is supposed to indicate the impact on people (it should)
THEN the definition of a heatwave must be adapted to the local climate (it is).
It’s not just the BoM’s unique definition of heatwave which does this. The more internationally accepted (eg Europe) definition of heatwave severity is the Heat Wave Duration Index, which requires 6 consecutive days to have a daily max 5 degrees above the 30-year average for that location. A similar but more statistically robust indicator is the “Warm spell duration indicator” which is the “Annual count of days with at least 6 consecutive days when T_max>90th percentile”, so it is also relative to the local climate and not an absolute temperature threshold.
A completely logical outcome of heatwave metrics being relative to local climate is that every location is capable of having heatwaves regardless of absolute temperature.
Indeed, if the heatwave metric had a Maddison-centric definition or a Melbourne-centric definition that would be a fail as it would help less than 0.07% of the world’s population.
Regarding comment editing, most of us do fairly well by thinking before posting.
00
It must be wonderful to be infallible, Andrew McRae. I guess that is why you are a warmist “believer”, you have a fundamental inability to recognise error. Most of us on the reality side believe in the trial and error of the scientific method.
00
David Maddison.
Antarctica was not mentioned in the study. I think the use of “Antarctica” was to puff up a headline.
04
There is a clear desperation in the BOM to find something getting hotter, so the Green geniuses have developed an index which shows the South Pole suffering extreme heat waves? It is almost beyond parody. Are we paying for this nonsense? Another index might be the Hype index, which is the extent to which warming advocates are prepared to inflate any measurement to desperate proportions.
To get public sympathy, perhaps the ABC/BOM/CSIRO can organize a telephone hookup with some desperately hot penguins? That would not be necessary except the Polar Bears have been wiped out by the heat and Prof Turney and his Ship of Fools had to go home early. What did that little exercise cost Australia? Nothing in their view, as everyone was on the public purse. Sell the lot, ABC/BOM/CSIRO and the Universities who waste millions in public money with their extreme left Green politics.
171
I wish someone with lots of money would investigate the idea of taking BOM to court [snip – long story, best not go quite that far in speculation. – J]
91
Lets talk about a solution. Ah okay, not allowed in the green book or political manipulators book.
Last year in response to squealing in the UK media I put the effort into sorting out this kind of problem. I knew from personal long knowledge there was no reason to do more than remark on the weather.
The work has now been extended to more datasets. The results have been on public view for a year, dissent, doesn’t seem to be any.
What is wanted is a metric of how extreme. The most popular way to do this is z-score.
Producing a z-score involves if possible linearising the data to standard. This is related to GAV where most interest is in hydrology where getting abnormal into context is extremely critical. Australians particularly have this problem with rain.
I’ve used a novel method where the clue came from RA Fisher, hyperbolics, and eventually a recent seminal paper. The whole thing is coded up automating the whole process from data download to bundling output plots.
So far the results are in line with what older people know, nothing to see here, it is called weather.
Extending this from monthly area means to short term weather might be feasible in some cases but I am aware of what will be a highly contentious problem. Some local weather parameters will tend to follow 1/f (flicker noise) and that has different properties, averaging 1/f produces Gaussian. See the problem? Hydrology knows all about flicker, see fractals, Hurst, etc. but only applies directly in some cases.
For what it is worth, without detail explanation
As boring as it gets https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2015/08/06/july-2015-was-about-as-ordinary-as-it-gets/
And because that omits any of the PDF I’ve uploaded the one for Tmean here
https://daedalearth.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/tmean-areal-uk-2015-08-05.pdf
The intent is cutting the ground from under certain feet. Don’t be a passenger, don’t follow the path, do. Otherwise same over and over.
80
Lies, Damned Lies and ‘Climate Science’.
80
BOM method or BOM madness?
50
Do not confuse the definition of a “heatwave” with the definition of the new BOM Heatwave Severity Index.
I found the details on the BOM website a number of months ago; there is only a general definition of what a heatwave is.
The BOM says:
“What is a heatwave?
Three days or more of high maximum and minimum temperatures that is unusual for that location.
Until the introduction of this new Pilot Heatwave Forecast there was no national definition that described heatwave or measures of heatwave severity.”
Other references:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/305/5686/994.full
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001JApMe..40..762R
211
I am not clear on how “Three days or more of high maximum and minimum temperatures that is unusual for that location.” works as a national definition any more than no definition did. What is usual? What is unusual? Three degree warmer? Five? There really is no quantification in this. It’s still subjective.
To qualify as science, there would have to be actual values included. For example, three days of temperatures three degrees over the “normal” (as used in weather forecasts) for that same period in the past. So if average is 88 degrees and it’s 100 for three days, that would qualify. It would also make many, many heat waves and probably remove all meaning from the term as far as the public is concerned.
152
Sheri,
that is why the BOM is working on a Pilot Heatwave Forecast. The proposed definition is in the paper.
07
My answer is the same as Ken’s—if you actually use the formulas, you could have multiple heat waves in Antarctica. Unless I missed a min/max value in there, this definition “Heat wave severity as the mean annual 3-day worst (warmest) nighttime minima event (4) from NCEP/NCAR reanalyses, 1961 to 1990, for North America (°C) (A) and Europe (B), and from the model for North America (C) and Europe (D).” could result in a heat wave for Antarctica if the daytime temps were higher and the nighttime too. Thus, a heat wave at −40F is actually part of the definition. I also see no definition that applies to South America and Africa. So they have no heat waves? (Typical of climate science—ignoring the southern hemisphere because it’s not as populated as the north so fewer people to scare with prognistications.)
10
Hi Sheri
The explanation is spelled out clearly in the post, and in more detail in mine at https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2015/08/08/heatwaves-from-one-extreme-to-another/ , and Jo has linked to the Nairn and Fawcett paper. The “usual” is the previous 30 days average mean, and also the 3 day mean compared with the 95th percentile of 3 day means at that location from 1971-2000. The trouble is the calculation leads to ridiculous results in both hot and cold locations.
00
I guess I didn’t stop to think that quantification for the sake of quantification and not a useful formula is becoming the norm. Plus, the absence of a start point leads to ridiculous heat waves occurring, such as Antarctica. I will read through your blog post later—I have to get outside before it exceeds 30C and I can’t work outside. (My personal definition of a heat wave is over 30C for any length of time, but I’m quite intolerant of heat.) Expected high is 34.4C. Not a heat wave, however, since the temperature fluctuates up and down day to day plus nighttime temps are getting lower and lower.
00
This one as well. I could have sworn I had a couple of others, can’t find them
http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/sa/20100115_First_Heatwave_SA_Jan.shtml
112
Harry Twinotter,
What rubbish you friends at the B.O.M. come up with.
We don’t need their highfalutin definitions of a heatwave.
The people in the pup know what a heatwave is!!!
We all do! So give us a break.
Regards
Geoffrey Williams
41
O/T – another model up for verification
“In order for a predictive model to be useful it needs to be validated in some way.
Here are two predictive models that I suggest might be useful in interpreting scientific papers.
◾If the paper is published in a Nature journal it’s probably nonsense. Particularly if it’s in (a) Nature itself or (b) Nature Climate Change
◾If it calls RCP8.5 “business as usual” it is political drivel.
With these predictions in mind, readers may be interested in this new paper from Nature Climate Change:”
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2015/8/10/in-which-nature-climate-validates-my-predictive-models.html
41
Clearly ‘heat index‘ would seem a more appropriate measure and one also implied in the definition of ‘heatwave’ —
except of course, that ‘heat index’ does not contain the measure of time.
The following appears able to show ‘heat index‘ values for Australia.
20
Is this invention of a heat index and heat wave intensity simply part of a push to create both extreme events and heating events? If so why? Why only heat? What about a cold wave, a freezing snap? Surely they have very cold events in Antarctica too. Also in Australia? Why not a cold snap in North Queensland, a period with substantially lowered temperatures and even snow in the tropics? We had one this year. Or is cold something which does not fit a political agenda of extreme heat and wind and rain?
Is that why two cyclones were erroneously in inexplicably upgraded to Category 5 this year? Has the BOM become a slave to the anti carbon league, captured like the ABC by groupthink and an activist political arm of to the Greens, prepared to make serious mistakes and invent heat news just to push a non science agenda on behalf of its employees and their political masters? A mistake here, a fiddle there, a press release on a made up index. What happened to rational Science at the BOM? How many BOM people are off to Paris with the environment people from the ABC and the Guardian and Age to demand the economic crippling of Western democracies?
60
There are cold snaps—at least we have them in the USA. As I noted elsewhere, a cold snap last fall here killed hundreds of trees.
There has always been (for the last 5 decades at least) a wind chill index for cold weather. It’s often as low as −70F. The heat index is new—Wiki says 1978. That was before the global warming push. I always thought it was just created as a mirror so to speak of the wind chill idea. Humidity makes it warmer, wind colder. Right now, our temperature is 87F and the heat indue is 84F due to humidity of 17%. The heat index is not always higher than the temperature.
As for cyclones and wind speed, it’s never actually measured. It’s calculated, just like with tornadoes. There are people in the US trying to get equipment out to measure wind speed in tornadoes, but you have to be there when the tornado comes down and be close enough. I don’t know if there has ever been a direct measurement attained.
As to what happened with rational science at the BOM, you’re on your own with that one.
70
The ‘it feels like‘ factor is often reported on popular weather sites (here for example) and reflects not only heat index but wind chill, as Sheri pointed out 29.1.1.
What is different however, is the hyperbolic manner in which such news reporting takes place, the heat index appearing conflated with temperature as The Daily Telegraph did on August 1st 2015.
Unless the readership of the paper is focused on the detail, I think that a process of skim reading might miss the distinction between ‘index’ and ‘actual’…score a point for alarmism. Using the heat index as a head line is I believe, an example of intentional obfuscation.
50
The Angry Winter
What observations/metrics would constitute an “Angry Winter?”
In 2013, Will Steffen defines a “Angry Summer” as; “The past summer has been the hottest in Australian records.
In the 102 years of uniform national weather records, there have been 21 days when the entire continent averaged more than 39 degrees – and eight of those took place this year.
~ ~ ~
Remembering the Australian continent is one of the flattest, driest, low lying slabs of land on the planet, for snow to reach sea levels during such high levels of carbon(sic) is … inconvenient.
With snow from Western Australia, to Hobart, Victoria, NSW, and all the way to Queensland, I declare an Angry Winter.
UPDATE: Snow predicted for South Australia today.
80
Via BoM:
Temperature data methodologies at the Bureau of Meteorology
Describing the recent heatwave
A complete description of the January 2013 heatwave, including the main elements that were notable, can be found in an article prepared for the academic news site, The Conversation What’s causing Australia’s heat wave?
20
Greg Hunt takes on the numbskulls at their ABC.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/pretending_to_stop_global_warming_will_cost_another_660_million_a_year/
And the govt will have an aim of 26% by 2030. But Labor wants to sink the economy just to justify their religious mania.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/pretending_to_stop_global_warming_will_cost_another_660_million_a_year/
40
Its no Labour any more Neville. Its some confection of Green imposters.
The party of the Australian worker would never go out of its way to increase the cost of living and shrink the economy, that is 180° from Labour values. Therefore this cannot be the Labour party, they are merely deluded placeholders.
60
I wrote that only 8 Labor members were in parliament on absolute majorities. People howled. One wrote that I was absolutely wrong! Now I have seen it quoted repeatedly, even by Labor people but the figure is now 7.
That means the rest of the Labor parliamentary members are absolutely dependent on Green votes for their seats, which means the Green tail is furiously wagging the dog. The Green would never preference the coalition, but still Labor have forgotten their Hawke/Keating values and now do whatever they are told. Boat invasions, carbon taxes, windmills, destroying R&D, mining companies, farmers.
Where is the old Labor party? Would Hawke’s unions have chased Toyota out of the country by a lawsuit in the Federal Court? Would Keating have shut down mining in South Australia? Whole states are being destroyed by Labor/Green activism. Tasmania and South Australia are economically crippled and young people are fleeing, which suits the Greens fine. Where is the old Labor which stood for something? “There will be no Carbon tax in a government I lead” is still the lie, Bill calling such an idea ‘rubbish’ when in fact it is party policy. So the argument is whether a ‘trading system’ is a tax.
What sort of ‘trading system’ forces you to pay for worthless pieces of paper from overseas banks, but perhaps it is not a tax as the people of Australia do not even see the money in this new model. We will hand our sovereign rights to the UN and our money will leaves the country to pay for dams in China. Turkey is building 80 new coal fired power plants. We are buying windmills from China.
40
Following on from Neville.
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2015/08/10/climate-change-survey-spin-will-backfire-on-the-alp/
40
This event will cheer you up…..NOT! https://www.facebook.com/events/1019653951401740/
10
I just came across this on the ABC “Just In” website:
“More non-urgent surgeries cancelled in Adelaide public hospitals due to winter demand for beds”.
Was posted about 8:20 EST.
Cheers,
Dave B
60
You just have to love stats don’t you? The explanation as to how the figures are derived are worthy of obfuscating academics spouting pseudo science. What a load of rubbish, the BOM stuff that is for neither Ms Nova’s nor Mr Stewart’s work are. As for the “increased network costs” that’s public service and mealy mouthed politician speak for extracting more “dividends”, ie money from the consumers, through the electricity companies. It also had much to do with previous Labor gummint’s paying of the power worker’s unions bosses.
30
An interesting article at Judith Curry’s blog from Dave Rutledge. The bottom line is that wind and solar deliver a negative return on investment. These people must be suffering from some type of religious mania or mental illness? Fair dinkum. Eschenbach found the same recently at WUWT.
BTW Dave Rutledge info here———-
Biosketch: Dave Rutledge is the Tomayasu Professor of Electrical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology.
http://judithcurry.com/2015/08/10/will-the-presidents-clear-power-plan-save-consumers-money/#more-19553
30
There needs to be a Royal Commission into “Climate Change”. For non-[A]US readers an RC is an independent judicial inquiry with wide powers to investigate and to compel people to testify. It has greater powers than a judge would have. I think it is much like a Presidential Commission on the US.
40
I meant non-AUS readers, the “A” did not register on my keyboard.
20
‘Climate change sceptic and West Australian Liberal MP Dennis Jensen immediately condemned the base target as “too high” and said no target was needed.
“I think it would be damaging … you’re going to be forcing electricity prices up, obviously,” he told reporters outside Parliament House on Tuesday.
‘He also lashed out at the news leaking from cabinet before being put to the party room.’
“I’m disappointed that these numbers are being floated around there, from outside cabinet quite frankly, when it was promised that there would be significant partyroom discussion on this,” he said.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/emissions-reductions-target-ranging-from-26-to-28-per-cent-to-be-put-to-coalition-partyroom-20150810-giw4tz.html#ixzz3iSXROcnd
Follow us: @smh on Twitter | sydneymorningherald on Facebook
10
Further to that, inside the party room.
‘Climate change sceptic Dennis Jensen complained about the fact that MPs read about the government’s position in the media first.
‘Others observed that most of the presentation on the policy betrayed a focus on attacking Labor rather than promoting the Coalition’s own policy.
‘The government’s focus in the policy is on cutting the cost of electricity, rather than reducing emissions.
‘However, ministers were not able to tell MPs what the full cost of the new scheme could be.
‘They were told there would be a “modest allocation” of extra funds to the government’s emissions reduction fund and no allocation has been to pay for the so-called safeguard mechanism.
‘Think tanks meantime have estimated that the cost of this policy could run into billions of dollars by 2030 if the government’s target was met.’
Read more: http://www.afr.com/news/politics/tony-abbotts-leadership-authority-crisis-deepens-20150811-giwfrh#ixzz3iTgLABXQ
Follow us: @FinancialReview on Twitter | financialreview on Facebook
10
Minor point, but goes to appearances.
It’s actually Rob Vertessy, not Vertussy.
[Thanks, It has been corrected]ED
30
Complete political propaganda devised from an arbitrary calculation. The BOM is on the hook of the green blob currently running Labour and its cohorts. I am rapidly coming to the conclusion there is a deep green think tank of sorts in the Australian Public Service. It sits at the very top and spreads its festering roots throughout all areas. It is most obvious in the ABC but easy to see in many other areas. Its probably not organized, but it is pervasive enough to seem so.
20
Neville –
don’t get too excited about a single, much-interrupted interview of Greg Hunt by ABC’s Brissenden on AM yesterday.
today – the most vacuous conversation, not interrupted at all, of CAGW matters ever – with Christine Milne.
go to ABC Breakfast/AM for any of the following links:
ABC AM: Michael Brissenden: Kyoto ‘con job’ and ‘climate recalcitrance’: Fmr Greens leader Christine Milne on Abbott Govt climate targets
Former Greens leader Christine Milne says the low figure is ‘no surprise’ and that it’s more ‘climate recalcitrance’ from the Abbott Government…
on Fran’s Breakfast:
Breakfast: Government reportedly pushing for lower post-2020 emissions target than most advanced economies
Australia is under significant international pressure to toughen up its action on climate change, after US President Barack Obama raised the bar by announcing a Clean Power Plan last week that would see America’s carbon emissions reduced by 32 percent on 2005 levels by 2030.
Guest: Greg Poling, Expert on Pacific and South Eastern Asian affairs, Centre for Strategic and International Studies
(Poling tells Fran our REPUTATION is at stake over CAGW as it’s the #1 issue among our neighbours.)
Breakfast: Mark Butler on Australia’s post-2020 emissions target
The goal is to limit global warming to 2 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels…
The new target is expected to be announced today, but according to a report in The Australian newspaper this morning, the Prime Minister has secured a scaled back target of 26 per cent by 2030 — far lower than the 40 to 60 per cent cut sought by the independent Climate Change Authority…
(Fran doesn’t ask about the cost of any Labor policies, nor does she get Butler to disclose Labor’s target.)
in another segment, Fran talks to Paul Bongiorno on the Govt’s new emissions reduction target, and Bongiorno speaks of the Govt’s myopic vision for Australia’s renewables’ future.
in another segment Breakfast had O’Neill & Watts, whose “brighter future” – according to SMH in August – would mean “clean-energy jobs are the fastest-growing area of a low-carbon economy”. from ANU bios, where they will appear on 13 Aug – O’Neill “has been a management consultant with McKinsey & Company, & studied public policy as a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard’s Kennedy School”, while Watts “has been a lawyer at Mallesons Stephen Jaques and studied at the London School of Economics”. ANU Chancellor, Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC QC. will be speaking to O’Neill & Watts at the event.
Breakfast: Two Futures: Australia at a critical moment
Now, two freshly-minted Labor MPs from Melbourne are explicitly asking: what will Australia look like in 2040?
Clare O’Neil, member for Hotham, and Tim Watts, member for Gellibrand, have joined forces to publish a new book titled Two Futures: Australia at a critical moment
Clare O’Neil and Tim Watts join James Carleton on RN Breakfast.
also on Breakfast today:
Global population growth to add significant pressure to world food security
Guest: Gerda Verburg, Chair of the UN Committee on World Food Security and the World Economic Forum Council on Food Security and Nutrition
also on AM today:
AM: Hopeland residents say they’re in the dark regarding investigations into coal plant contamination.
ADD TO ALL THE ABOVE THE “CARBON” STORIES IN THE NEWS HEADLINES & UPDATES.
at one point u had Poling on Breakfast, while simultaneously Milne was on ABC Brisbane and, if u switched over to ABC News Radio, they had Marius Benson with Fairfax’s Mark Kenny on how Tony Abbott was back to the near-death moment he was at six months ago, and the CHATTER had begun!
50
oh, and this was how ABC Four Corners opened their program (following the prelim intro) last nite:
10 Aug: ABC Four Corners: The Great Cricket Coup
…The reporter is Quentin McDermott.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT, REPORTER: There’s a ***HEATWAVE in London and the crowds are basking in the sun, watching the first Ashes Test in Wales being beamed onto a big screen near Tower Bridge.
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2015/08/06/4288339.htm
what a way to bring up a heatwave, Quentin!
just imagine how unbiased the following fact-checking will be?
10 Aug: The Conversation: The Conversation to fact check panellists on Q&A
by Andrew Jaspan, Editor at The Conversation & Debbie Dickinson, External Relations Manager at The Conversation
The challenged statement is first checked by an academic specialist with deep subject expertise and the finding sent for “blind review” by a second topic specialist. The second reviewer doesn’t know the identity of the first, allowing for unbiased scrutiny.
The process is overseen by The Conversation’s FactCheck Editor, Sunanda Creagh…
Viewers can request statements to be FactChecked via Twitter using hashtags #FactCheck and #QandA, on Facebook or by email…
We cannot FactCheck all Q&A statements, but hope to check at least one claim a week…
http://theconversation.com/the-conversation-to-fact-check-panellists-on-qanda-45714
10
Bureau of Meteorology reveals first national heatwave definition
ABC, 14 January, 2015:
For the first time, the Bureau of Meteorology has provided a national definition of a heatwave.
The definition was enabled by the bureau’s new heatwave forecast service, which allows it to map areas that are expected to have unusually hot conditions over a period of four days.
. . .
Strangely, in this age of BoM Doomsday Global Warming, when heatwaves are predicted with 97% certainty to get more prevalent, longer, hotter, drier, more extreme, more deadly, the BoM Heatwave Tracker doesn’t work in Winter. Summer months only.
As Summer approaches, prepare to switch the 97% Doomsday Alarmist Clock from weather to 97% Global Warming, and a switching on of the BoM Heatwave Tracker.
50
In the case of recent colder temperatures earlier than normal we need only go back to the 2007 IPCC report which plainly defined what “global warming” was going to cause:
Global climate change is likely to be accompanied by an increase in the frequency and intensity of heat waves, as well as warmer summers and milder winters (see Table 3-10).
In the above mentioned table 3-10 the IPCC explained how sure they were of their forecast for warmer winters.
http://jer-skepticscorner.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/global-warming-play-doh-theory.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+SkepticsCorner+(Skeptic's+Corner)
30
***the merging of religion & CAGW politics is almost complete:
10 Aug: RTCC: Ed King: Pope Francis declares annual Catholic environment day
1 September chosen for day of environmental awareness; Vatican calls for faithful to adopt “appropriate lifestyles”
In a statement on the Vatican website, Pope Francis said all Christians should work towards resolving what he termed the “ecological crisis” facing the world.
The day “will offer individual believers and communities a fitting opportunity to reaffirm their personal vocation to be stewards of creation,” he wrote…
1 September is already celebrated by Orthodox Christians as their environment day. ***This year it also coincides with a set of UN climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany…
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/08/10/pope-francis-declares-annual-catholic-environment-day/
10 Aug: RTCC: Megan Darby: Senegalese imam declares ‘green jihad’ on pollution
Islamic leader in West African country says aggression towards the environment is a sin and must be stopped
The Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences has prepared a draft declaration to be finalised at a summit in Istanbul this month.
Following the example of Pope Francis with his encyclical on the environment, it makes a faith-based case for action.
“As we are woven into the fabric of the natural world, its gifts are for us to savour – but we have abused these gifts to the extent that climate change is upon us,” it says…
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/08/10/senegalese-imam-declares-green-jihad-on-pollution/
10
10 Aug: RTCC: Can grassroots climate action save the planet?
CO2 cuts for a 2015 UN climate deal will fall well short of required levels, placing pressure on bottom up initiatives
By Andrew Jordan and Harro van Asselt
(Andrew Jordan is Professor of Environmental Policy at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia.Harro van Asselt is a Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute in Oxford.)
The good news is that non-state actors are rising to this challenge.In a new paper published today in Nature Climate Change, we examine the innovative approaches to climate governance that are emerging beneath and all around the UNFCCC – and the new challenges they raise in gauging climate ambition…
Take national policies, for example. We know that non-binding strategies are being adopted by states at a much faster rate than legally binding national policies.
And as there is as yet no international body responsible for collecting information, the world relies on a non-state actor – Globe International, supported by the London School of Economics – to confirm that this is true…
Even less is known about the performance of non-state initiatives…
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/08/10/can-grassroots-climate-action-save-the-planet/
above links to the paper below:
Nature: Emergence of polycentric climate governance and its future prospects
Published online 10 August 2015
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2725.html
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re RTCC on Pope’s 1 Sept CAGW Day, posted above, which says: “This year it also coincides with a set of UN climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany”.
when u look at the UNFCCC Calendar for the rest of the year, it would be almost impossible to pick a day that didn’t coincide with CAGW meetings.
note Bonn is the host with the most…by far!
UNFCCC Calendar
http://unfccc.int/meetings/unfccc_calendar/items/2655.php
this is what will be happening on 1 Sept, and before, and after:
Bonn Climate Change Conference – August 2015
The tenth part of the second session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) will be held from 31 August – 4 September 2015…
there’s no business like CAGW business.
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Australia has exceeded its Kyota emissions reduction target, is on track to meet or beat its 2020 target. By 2020 Australia’s emissions will be at least 13% below 2005 levels. On a per capita basis this beats Canada, US, Japan and EU.
But in the lead up to the Paris conference the Union Labor Greens are not satisfied, and the IPCC is not satisfied, they all want more from Australia.
The Abott Liberal National Coalition Government wants to continue to reduce emissions without damaging the economy further, without boosting electricity prices further. And as we all know here the UN IPCC push is all about politics and money, the climate changes all the time, natural Earth Cycles. This race to the bottom, which government can beat others to economic ruin, is a disgraceful situation.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-11/government-plans-to-cut-carbon-emissions-by-26-per-cent-by-2030/6686780
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By definition, a reduction in emissions means that the economy is damaged because it comes at the cost of much higher cost “green” energy.
You cannot reduce emissions without doing damage to the economy unless you use nuclear which produces cheap, non-CO2 electricity however nuclear is against government policy.
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I don’t think nuclear is against Liberal National Parties policy, in fact the Howard Coalition Government commissioned an inquiry into nuclear energy for Australia conducted by, spell check needed, Ziggy Zitzgowsky who is a nuclear physicist and former Telsta CEO which recommended it to the government for future electricity supply. The Union Labor Greens however oppose nuclear power and even Uranium mining and they are the problem in my opinion. And of course with a hostile Senate dominated by them this government has no hope of getting approval.
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1) Switkowski
2) During Ziggy’s Telstra tenure, he made a few enemies, as it were (who wouldn’t in that position ?) One of the more erudite of these people commented publicly that “Ziggy’s name was actually Smithfield, but he changed it to Switkowski so he’d seem smarter”
3) Ziggy was actually born in Germany (and so the non-Anglo name) and is a particularly smart individual. His publicly stated view on AGW is that it’s real and to adapt, nuclear power stations are needed (I don’t necessarily agree with his initial premise – I can’t find the very minor temperature increase over the last 150 years to be anything but a 10th order issue). He’s well smart enough to realise that nuclear power in Aus is politically impossible, which is why he leaves the arm-waving to others
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Switkowski, thank you Ian.
Patrick Moore, on the of the founders of Greenpeace, is a convert to nuclear;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html
Also former ALP PM Bob Hawke supported the plan by the Muckety Station Land Council (Aborigine) to create a nuclear waste dump on their land to charge for international waste to be contained at the dump with spaces leased to foreign nations.
And now as South Australia faces reality, that wind turbines and solar panels cannot meet electricity demand now that the only coal fired power station is being decommissioned following extensive fire damage and the realisation that repair costs could not be recovered because of renewable energy subsidies, the premier is advocating nuclear energy for the state. Amazing how voter pressure can influence policy changes.
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“one of the founders”, sorry.
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Do climate “scientists” ever look out the window?
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When and if the sheeple work out they have been lied to about CAGW the reputation of science and scientists will be irrepairably damaged. This will be a very bad thing for the progress of civilisation.
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remember the massive MSM coverage recently about Coke & other Big Corporates backing Obama’s Climate Plan? according to its website, Coke believes the “consensus on climate science is increasingly unequivocal”:
Coca-Cola Company: Position Statement on Climate Protection
The consensus on climate science is increasingly unequivocal — global climate change is happening and man-made greenhouse gas emissions are a crucial factor. The implications of climate change for our planet are profound and wide-ranging, with expected impacts on biodiversity, water resources, public health and agriculture…
http://www.coca-colacompany.com/position-statement-on-climate-protection
maybe Coke should question the CAGW “science” the way their own dodgy “science” is being questioned this week!
9 Aug: NYT: ANAHAD O’CONNOR: Coca-Cola Funds Scientists Who Shift Blame for Obesity Away From Bad Diets
The beverage giant has teamed up with influential scientists who are advancing this message in medical journals, at conferences and through social media. To help the scientists get the word out, Coke has provided financial and logistical support to a new nonprofit organization called the Global Energy Balance Network, which promotes the argument that weight-conscious Americans are overly fixated on how much they eat and drink while not paying enough attention to exercise…
Records show that the network’s website, gebn.org, is registered to Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, and the company is also listed as the site’s administrator. The group’s president, James O. Hill, a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said Coke had registered the website because the network’s members did not know how.
“They’re not running the show,” he said. “We’re running the show.”…
http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/well/2015/08/09/coca-cola-funds-scientists-who-shift-blame-for-obesity-away-from-bad-diets/?referrer
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A bit O/T but couldn’t help but share this BS about “sea level rises” for Moreton Bay suburbs (Brisbane).
Utter tosh !
Residents should sue over this crap !
Griffin, Petrie, Bray Park and Murrumba Downs under threat according to new flood mapping :-
http://www.couriermail.com.au/questnews/moreton/griffin-petrie-bray-park-and-murrumba-downs-under-threat-according-to-new-flood-mapping/story-fni9r1i7-1227477486715#load-story-comments
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So there goes another few hundred million dollars of CAGW costs – this time representing a decline in property values because all of a sudden someone is living in a flood zone.
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What happened about the inquiry that was reported to be underway into land rezoning for housing development along the banks of the Brisbane River in flood prone areas that were approved when Labor had control of the City Council? This was reported after the last massive flood.
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What exactly would it take to make the sheeple or politicians understand that CAGW is a hoax?
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It’s starting to look like massive civil unrest is the only course of action remaining………..
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Nothing short of a clear cut global cooling signal will rouse the sheeple from their brainwashed slumber.
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Similar to the UK winter of 1962-63.
‘In January 1963 the sea froze for 1 mile (1.6 km) out from shore at Herne Bay, Kent. The sea also froze inshore in many places, removing many British inland waterbirds’ usual last resort of finding food in estuaries and shallow sea. The sea froze 4 miles out to sea from Dunkirk, and BBC television news expressed a fear that the Strait of Dover would freeze across. The upper reaches of the River Thames also froze over…’
wiki
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In the USA we had Great Lakes ice extent blowing away all records for two years in a row. The ice extend normally runs around 2% to 3% and it was 40% and 25%.
A historic storm last winter dumped more than 7 feet (2.13 m) of snow on the Buffalo New York area in only three days. Buffalo normally gets around 8 feet of snow during an entire winter season. There were 30 major roof collapses and as many as 100 minor collapses.
Last winter waves were freezing off the coast of Massachusetts and Tangier Island (a Chesapeake Bay island located approximately twelve miles from the Eastern Shore of Virginia’s mainland) had to have an icebreaker get supplies to them. This is around 150 miles SOUTH and east of Washington DC almost in the ocean.
The media ignored all this and played up the ‘hot’ weather and drought in California.
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Amazing, eventually they will see the light of day.
Carrying on from E.M. I warming to the idea of a half Gleissberg, which has a 50 year periodicity.
As you know the Centennial Gleissberg is not strictly an 88 year cycle because of SC length.
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Is there any statistical correlation between the EHFL and the population of progressive/left/Green types?
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I suspect an as yet unidentified inner city Mosquito that sucks blood from people who consider that socialism is progressive and injects them with a brain damaging virus that attacks the areas where common sense and tribalism instincts are stored, the common sense disappears and the tribalism is enhanced. The group think no questions mentality prevails.
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Dennis
If you rephrase that in reverse and apply for a research grant you may well pick up a sinecure!
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what annoys me most with ABC today (& the rest of the CAGW-infested MSM) is their continuing pretense that politicians are going to prevent the world’s temperature rising by more than 2 degrees celsius (what could be more laughable?) when there’s already a “consensus” Paris won’t achieve that, and their claim that Obama’s plan is “ambitious”:
9 Aug: Indian Express: Shyam Saran: An inconvenient truth
The conference in Paris is unlikely to result in an agreement that can address the challenge of climate change.
(The writer, a former foreign secretary, served as the prime minister’s special envoy for climate change)
The agreed template is essentially a “pledge and review” approach, with each country submitting voluntary contributions to addressing global climate change in the form of intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) and accepting some form of international review of implementation…
***From the INDCs submitted so far, and those anticipated in the next couple of months, it is ***certain that the aggregate of these pledges will not be sufficient to keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees centigrade, which is the stated objective of the negotiations…
The “pledge and review” mechanism goes against the original intent and purpose of the UNFCCC concluded in 1992…
In the China-US understanding on their respective climate change commitments, China agreed to peak its GHG emissions by 2030…
In the latest announcement by Obama, the target has been revised marginally upward to 32 per cent reduction by 2030. If these targets are examined in the light of current emissions trajectories of the two countries, both may converge around 14 tonnes per capita of GHG emissions by 2030.
***These are extraordinarily high figures for the two largest emitters in the world and can in no way be described as ambitious.
India’s per capita emissions are about 1.7 tonnes per capita currently and even the most elevated trajectories do not predict an increase beyond 7-8 tonnes per capita by 2030. It is difficult to understand why India is being asked to “step up to the plate” in the light of the US-China understanding…
Between the years 2014-35, out of a total projected investment in energy of $48 trillion, about $23 trillion will be devoted to fossil fuels and only $6 trillion to renewables and $1 trillion to nuclear.
***The conclusion is inescapable. The world is far from transitioning to a low-carbon growth path…
http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/an-inconvenient-truth-2/
compare the above with this from Peter (all politics, no science, no facts, love Malcolm) Hartcher:
11 Aug: SMH: Peter Hartcher: There’s only one science Tony Abbott trusts – political science
VIDEO: How do the various alternatives for tackling carbon emissions stack up? Environment editor Tom Arup walks us through the options.
As we know, Tony Abbott once described himself as a “weather vane” on climate change; the winds that blow him about are political.
Otherwise why would he classify coal as good and wind farms as bad? Do rocks and wind turbines have moral qualities?
This is not about an open minded examination of energy markets. Like all of this government’s big decisions, it’s about ideology and politics…
The political rubric is:
1. If the argument is decided mainly on climate or environment considerations, Labor wins.
2. If it’s decided mainly on electricity prices, the Coalition wins.
So Labor will be telling us that we have to deal with dangerous climate change; it will promote its ambition to increase Australia’s renewable energy share to 50per cent over the next 15 years.
And the government will be telling us that it is dealing responsibly with climate change, while Labor’s plan would be a giant wrecking ball shattering the economy. The winner is not the one who can provide the best answer. It’s the one who can set the question. If the election is a referendum on the environment, Labor wins. If it’s a referendum on electricity prices, the government wins…
You won’t hear Abbott pointing out that all Australia’s coal-fired electricity generators are scheduled to be retired over the next 10 years.
You won’t hear him saying what Moody’s credit rating agency said in its Monday report on the coal sector: “Coal remains a main fuel source for electricity production worldwide, but the concerted efforts by large coal-importing nations – including the US, China and Japan – to move towards renewable sources and natural gas continue to reduce demand for coal.”
Or even citing last week’s speech by his Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, pointing out that China’s imports of coal declined by 37.5per cent year on year in the first six months of this year…
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/theres-only-one-science-tony-abbott-trusts–political-science-20150810-givu74.html
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I will not stand for socialism masquerading as environmentalism: Tony Abbott 2014.
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Turnbull is lying by omission as well (remember he has an inner-city electorate). The bulk of Chinese coal imports is in coking coal as China has very little coking coal deposits of its’ own [I do believe I’ve said this before, clearly to deaf ears :)]
The reduction in Chinese coal imports is mostly in thermal coal, as Chinese power demand backed off slightly and the Chinese are slowly but steadily improving the production rates of their own thermal coal mines
While we’re on the “what annoys me most about …” theme is the stupidest of possible comments on mining, as espoused by demagogue Alan Jones (and repeated by our very own, dare I say it, Pat), viz: “I’m not against coal mining, just where it’s mined”
Mining operations occur where the deposits are (try mining where the deposits are not) … and not every deposit is worth extracting in current market conditions. This is akin to the inviolability of the space-time continuum
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But Pat, they will achieve that. 2 degrees is at the bottom of their range, and is also the estimate of change of doing nothing. So do nothing, and get 2 degrees – at worst. Then …. “I told you so”…. And give us more money.
Very clever. The b . (I’d better not complete that.)
Cheers,
Dave B
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Thanks Pat,
Sounds like India is already formulating a reply of “He!! NO we won’t cut our economic throats.”
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as for our neighbours obsessing over CAGW, not so in The Philippines, it would seem!
10 Aug: RTCC: Philippines plan for UN climate deal lacks credibility, says official
Climate Change Commission member says govt appears insincere over meeting post 2020 carbon cutting goals
By Heherson T. Alvarez
The official attitude seems to be that, since the Philippines is not a significant emitter, the crucial pledges should be made by the industrial nations. This attitude is so wrong…
***Equally important, by seriously defining our INDCs, the Philippines will also be in a position for priority assistance with regard to finance, technology, and capacity-building from international funding agencies…
At the moment, a major difficulty is that many of our policymakers appear to be swayed by conventional macroeconomic goals dependent on coal and fossil fuels…
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/08/10/philippines-plan-for-un-climate-deal-lacks-credibility-says-official/
About the writer: Heherson T. Alvarez is a Commissioner of the Climate Change Commission. A two-term Senator, he chaired the Senate Committee on Environment for ten years. In February 1995, he convened the First Asia-Pacific Conference on Climate Change in Manila. He currently Chairs the Advisory Board of the Climate Institute, one of the oldest think-tank environmental group based in Washington.
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***more politics from Hartcher & an opportunity to give another airing to the ridiculous Galaxy/Climate Inst survey. note the CSIRO’s survey results are taken to be pro-CAGW, without any evidence to explain how come:
11 Aug: SMH: Peter Hartcher: Climate change: CSIRO axes annual attitudes survey, delays 2014 results
The CSIRO has cancelled its annual survey of Australians’ attitudes to climate change and won’t release the results of its 2014 study until late this year.
The delay, says Labor, means the public will miss out on information that counters the Abbott government’s “scare campaign” on climate issues.
The science agency had conducted the annual survey for five years, mostly in July and August, often polling the same people to create a long-term view of how Australians view global warming and their support for action…
It is understood financial constraints are a factor behind the change…
(LOL) Most surveys find Australians overwhelmingly support action on climate change, with about two in three people saying the government should take the issue more seriously, according to a report released on Monday by the Climate Institute…
“Tony Abbott is sick of all the reports that show Australians want climate change action,” said Mark Butler, Labor’s climate change spokesman…
Greens deputy leader and environment spokeswoman Larissa Waters said the government’s “pathetic” carbon reduction targets indicate it is beholden to its “big polluting donors”.
“The Abbott government needs to start listening to everyday Australians scientists and the international community, instead of blocking his ears and acting as a puppet for the dying coal industry,” Senator Waters said…PLUS MORE CRITICISM
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-change-csiro-axes-annual-attitudes-survey-delays-2014-results-20150810-giw6i1.html
more ABC respect for the office of PM:
11 Aug: ABC: Warwick Smith: Abbott’s love of coal is holding us back on emissions targets
The barriers to deeper cuts are neither economic nor technical, and it’s abundantly clear that Australia, one of the richest countries in the world, can afford much more substantial cuts to greenhouse gas emissions than the Prime Minister is offering.
***The Government has previously committed to targets in line with keeping global temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius…
***For instance, the US is promising 26 to 28 per cent cuts on 2005 levels but will achieve it by 2025, making it significantly more ambitious than Australia’s 26 to 28 per cent by 2030…
***Any genuine effort to keep global temperature increases below 2 degrees will eventually require us to almost entirely stop burning fossil fuels…
While we will see the steady demise of the coal industry, we will also see the emergence of low-emissions alternatives to many products and services…
By contrast, the Government’s Direct Action plan for reducing emissions is soundly rejected on efficiency grounds by virtually all economists…
***We have seen the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank create vast sums of money (referred to as quantitative easing) to avert crises in the financial sector. Why not create money to avert a crisis in the atmosphere? I can hear gasps of horror from the financial semi-literate but it’s simply a sign that they don’t understand the reality of post-Bretton Woods monetary economics. If carefully managed to avoid inflation risk, this project could be almost costless and generate substantial economic stimulus…
it is clear that this low commitment is purely about protecting Tony Abbott’s beloved coal industry at everyone else’s expense…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-11/smith-abbotts-love-of-coal-is-holding-us-back-on-climate-action/6689112
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