Showing that academics can cost the country more than they return, ANU’s Geoff Cary posits that there is an 80% consensus (an unmeasured, meaningless statistic) that there will be more fires in Australia 60 years from now.
This is an opinion about opinions of experts who use models that we know can’t predict temperatures. Not only is this “fact” already piled three layers of nonsense deep, the most abjectly stupid point is the fourth layer, the pretense that these models might, in their wildest dreams, be able to predict rainfall — which is an order of magnitude harder than just predicting global temperature. Predicting bushfires is dependent on knowing not just total rainfall in one region, but how that rainfall is spread throughout the year. Not to mention that bushfires depend on wind speed, wind direction, land-use (fuel load), and humidity.
Everyone knows that different climate models predict both higher and lower rainfall in the same areas at the same time, and the type of phrases used to describe the ability of climate models are: “low confidence” (National Centre for Atmospheric Research), “irrelevant with reality” (Koutsoyiannis ), or an “absence” of skill (Kiktev). Compare the different projections of climate models below, which model is right.
Predictions of changes in bushfire 60 years hence are thus equivalent to alchemists attempts to turn lead into gold. These are National Tea-leaf Readers, and they are not only afforded nice salaries and all the accoutrements, but given space in our national news as if they had something remotely useful to say.
Climate change means more fires: academic
Australian National University’s Geoff Cary said a projected lift in temperatures of more than 2C would probably mean much more bushfire activity across the country.
“There’s an 80 per cent consensus indicating that increased fire activity into the future is highly likely,” he told reporters in an online Australian Science Media Centre briefing.
Associate Professor Cary said in areas with wet climates, like Tasmania, bushfire risk could double over the same period.
“In the Tasmanian climate, the future scenario for 2070 which is warmer and drier suggested a … 70 to 100 per cent increase in area burnt,” he said.
However, he predicted bushfires would burn far less area in central Australia by 2070 as hotter, drier, weather reduced the amount of fuel blazes had to feed on.
“We predict a significant decrease in the area burnt,” he said.
On rainfall, there is almost always one model that is “right” because there are so many models and they all say different things.
Figure 2.Projected changes in temperature and precipitation for the 2050s. Left: United Kingdom Hadley Center. Right: Canadian Center for Climate Modeling and Analysis. Source:Rosenzweig and Solecki, Climate Change and a Global City, 2001.
Source: Columbia .edu
Here are comparisons of 5 different models over Australia. Is CSIRO Mk 3.6 the “right” model?
Figure 2.1.1: Leading mode of annual rainfall variability over Australia, from observations (Bureau of Meteorology), the CSIRO Mk3.6 and Mk3.5 climate models, and three leading international models: HadGEM1 (United Kingdom), GFDL CM2.1 (USA) and MIROC 3.2, medium resolution (Japan).
Source: Indian Ocean Climate Initiative
The IPCC AR4 report shows that over most of Australia precipitation increases and decreases are only shown in two-thirds of all the models, in other words, up to one third of the models might predict no change or the opposite result in exactly the same area.
As NIPCC explains, if we are going to use models to overhaul our economies we would hope they do better at predictions than being low or absent in skill, yet that’s exactly what Kiktev et al found when they compared five GCMs with observations:
“the results mostly show moderate skill for temperature indices and low skill or its absence for precipitation indices [italics added].” Kiktev et al
Models might get it right in some places, but Australia is one of the hardest:
“while most climate model simulations show low biases over Europe, inter-model variations in bias over Australia and Amazonia are considerable. “ Mehran et al.
The Koutsoyiannis studies showed that predictions didn’t just fail on the continental scale, they failed on the regional and local scale as well, and they were talking about 30 years, not 60.[ii]
Often precipitation projections from different models are blended together and averaged, as if adding up a cluster of failures will somehow produce accurate results.
New theories on rainfall suggest that the models don’t even have the basics right. We used to think that forests grow where the rain falls, but research now suggests that rain falls where forests grow.
In years to come people will look back and marvel at how primitive our models were…
References:
[i] Anagnostopoulos, G. G., D. Koutsoyiannis, A. Christofides, A. Efstratiadis, and N. Mamassis, (2010). A comparison of local and aggregated climate model outputs with observed data’, Hydrological Sciences Journal, 55: 7, 1094 — 1110 [PDF]
[ii] Koutsoyiannis, D., Efstratiadis, A., Mamassis, N. & Christofides, A. (2008) On the credibility of climate predictions. Hydrol. Sci. J. 53(4), 671–684. changes [PDF]
Christopher M. Taylor, Richard A. M. de Jeu, Françoise Guichard, Phil P. Harris & Wouter A. Dorigo ‘Afternoon rain more likely over drier soils’ will be published in Nature on 12 September 2012. www.nature.com DOI 10.1038/nature11377
Kiktev, D., Caesar, J., Alexander, L.V., Shiogama, H. and Collier, M. 2007. Comparison of observed and multimodeled trends in annual extremes of temperature and precipitation. Geophysical Research Letters 34: 10.1029/2007GL029539.
Mehran et al, (2013) Evaluation of CMIP5 Continental Precipitation Simulations Relative to Satellite-Based Gauge-Adjusted Observations, J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 2169-8996, [abstract]
Paeth et al 2006 Improving Seasonal Forecasting in the Low Latitudes,
Other posts on rainfall
- Climate Models: 100% right except for rain, drought, storms, humidity and everything else
- Models get cloud feedback wrong, but *only* by 70W/m2 (that’s 19 times larger than the CO2 effect)
- We can’t predict the climate on a local, regional, or continental scale
But there’s an 80% consensus!
100
More from the good news,bad news dept.the bad news is there is an 80% CONsensus we get more bush fires,good news is they wont be as bad.There is a 97% consensus that mama nature has received our carbon tax money and used it to CONduct her own back burning and clearing.She just did not want to do it for nothing.Aint science wundaful.
91
‘there is an 80% CONsensus we get more bush fires’
Are wildfires in Australia natural?
‘Dr Sarah Perkins a climate scientist from the university of New South Wales…witnessing the fires first hand [bush fires in general are a way of life…the native vegetation have adapted to this fire regime…need fire to reproduce…however there’s two interesting things…one being that they are occurring very early in the season. We don’t usually get bush fires until December, January be even into February, its mid October here, spring here…bush fires during Spring are basically unheard of…this time of year these bush fires and intensity that make these events particular rare]…and man made climate change is that a contributing factor? [Absolutely without a doubt…I agree 100%, an element of human climate change…extremely warm winter and even the extremely warm 12 months we have experienced…the conditions for the bush to basically dry out, which make them prime for bush fires to occur]…assuming climate change will continue are you concerned? [Yeah I am concerned…looking at things like heat waves…should we continue to emit GHGs as we are…in the future it is likely we will see more events…because our winters are shortening and our springs are earlier…not only are we seeing conditions increasing we are also seeing more fuel load available too]…is this something that is going to increase globally? [certainly…there is a chance of an increase of wildfires in the future under increased greenhouse gas conditions] Dr Sarah Perkins.’
Now watch for yourself!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2IVYFMu13k
322
I mean this in the nicest possible way, but did you remember to take your medication this morning?
110
Shucks! I take them now! But in the meantime do you have anything of worth to add to the debate?
16
You first.
41
‘You first’, no.no, I asked first and the silence is deafening!
04
It is hard to hear anything with your fingers in your ears whilst screaming “But she is a climate scientist!” over and over and over again.
20
Now now Peter. Don’t be mean. You know BA can’t help himself but swallow anything a PhD-in-scares puts forward. If she “hasn’t heard” of bushfires in spring, in his world, that means there weren’t any…
150
A SELF-STYLED Taiwanese “prophet” was convicted of “spreading rumours” when he said a monster earthquake would destroy the island last month and fined $1380, a court said.
. . .
BAthe4th is the modern version of the loony with a sandwich board, standing on the street corner proclaiming the end of the world is 80% nigh.
Laugh at it, and take a wide berth & hope that law catches up soon.
90
In fact, of 48 major bushfires in NSW between 1926 and 2006, 11 occurred in October or earlier. That’s 23%. Only to climate change propagandists is nearly a quarter of all major events “basically unheard of” or are “particular rare”.
Perhaps you can start dealing with facts instead of relying on propaganda videos on YouTube.
181
And how many of the bushfires were anthropogenic, lit by arsonists?
110
Actually, one of those pre-October bushfires (I don’t know if it was one of the 11 major ones) was in July. It was lit by homeless people trying to keep themselves warm.
30
Well there’s your problem right there. I wouldn’t trust her or any of her alumni to be able to accurately locate Anzac Parade, let alone comment on bushfire mitigation or causation.
As an “expert”, as Heywood shows above, she defines 23% as “basically unheard of”. She is therefore unable to be trusted to do even the most basic research on fire frequency, and facts are clearly not factored into her opinion before spouting her mouth off with unmitigated falsehoods and distortions.
Kenso tech strikes again. Turney, Sherwood and his coloured pencils, England and now this clueless yo-yo.
171
You mean he’s progressed that far. I was under the impression he was yet to graduate crayons.
41
@Winston
January 24, 2014 at 10:19
‘Well there’s your problem right there’ so who should I trust? Winston or Dr Sarah Perkins a climate scientist from the university of New South Wales, or somebody who happens to be on the internet, hmm, a difficult one NOT!
05
How about trusting the data instead of appeal to authority. I know that concept is foreign to you eco-tard activists.
30
‘How about trusting the data’ and that’s what I do! Not listening to myths, wishful thinking or even out and out lies!
05
…and that’s why you agree that nearly 1 in 4 major fires are “basically unheard of” or are “particular rare”.
Get your hand off it. You just preach whatever ‘expert’ happens to agree with your opinion, even if it is wrong.
30
‘ You just preach whatever ‘expert’ happens to agree’ well that’s better than listening to non-experts and there is a lot of self appointed experts with hidden agendas, trying, but failing to debunk AGW!.
————————————
BA, in your world a self-appointed expert can never debunk AGW no matter what they say, unless they become “experts”, then you will say you knew they were right all along – -Jo
05
@Jo
‘in your world a self-appointed expert can never debunk AGW’ correct! Considering the amount of research and expense involved I would consider it an impossibility for somebody to discover a theory that debunks AGW and overcame basic physics!
———–
[Thanks. Case Closed. Nothing we say can change your mind, even if we are right. – Jo]
For example co2 is a GHG!
[This is really interesting and astonishingly surprising. After being on this blog for 6 months you do not realize that this is not what the debate is about? Really? – Jo]
05
‘[This is really interesting and astonishingly surprising. After being on this blog for 6 months you do not realize that this is not what the debate is about? Really? – Jo]’ You are having a larf are you not! All this extra warmth is coming from somewhere and its not from invisible fire breathing dragons! With thanks to Carl Sagan.
15
A larf? I am. I am. You are too funny.
41
You miss the point BA.
What we are discussing, is … “a Complex System, that has many variables that are strongly interdependent. This makes it difficult to know exactly which inputs contribute to an observed output, and the extent of each factor’s contributions.” [Carol Ormand, SERC]
“Because the variables in a complex system are so strongly dependent on each other, changes to system inputs can have unintended, [and] unanticipated consequences. This is one reason why accurate prediction of the behavior of complex systems is so difficult.” [IPCC, 2007]*
In fact, we don’t even know, nor can we ever be sure, that we have identified all of the contributing inputs.
Complex Systems exhibit, … “Chaotic behavior [that] is characterized by extreme sensitivity to initial conditions, fractal geometry, and self-organized criticality” [Turcotte, 2006]
* In all fairness, I must mention that the IPCC report, having stated the valid science, then goes on to say that all of the scientists who’s livelihoods depend on giving predictions that are newsworthy, “… overwhelmingly agree that our global climate is changing as the result of human activities”.
This caveat from the IPCC is in direct contradiction to the actual nature of complex systems, as described in the published scientific literature, and is obviously political, and designed to bamboozle the uninformed.
20
‘a Complex System, that has many variables’ yip and that does not mean that co2 is a GHG and is increasing due to the vast use of fossil fuels, BOTTOM LINE equals AGW!
05
Too stupid to understand.
Too arrogant to listen.
’nuff said.
20
From the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology: “Australia’s bushfire seasons.”
http://www.bom.gov.au/social/2013/04/australias-bushfire-seasons/
Sections include:
Southeast Australia—summer and autumn
New South Wales and southern Queensland—spring to mid-summer
Northwest Western Australia and the Northern Territory—winter and spring
Southern Western Australia—spring and summer
They even have a pretty picture that shows the majority of bush fires occur during spring:
http://www.bom.gov.au/social/2013/04/australias-bushfire-seasons/fire-seasons.png
00
80%? When did it go down? 😉
60
Hey, there’s 5 of them in the department, one of them disagrees.. until he gets sacked.
100
When he actually looked at the data.
30
When he did? Or others?
10
These people really are OCD aren’t they? How much evidence of madness has to be demonstrated before we start lockin’ ’em up?
170
Nick, it is getting around to that.
Better though might be to break down their walls and force them out into the sunlight. It must be very dark in the world they are living in.
50
If wew had better out of season controlled burning we wouldn’t have bushfires that got out of control in the first place.
We need to stop listening to the clueless Greens and clean up the forest floor through more consistent controlled burning.
200
If you continue to put more people in the the fire place, it is inevitable that more people are going to burn.
The green councils and shires have a lot to answer for preventing adequate and continued burn offs.
Couple that with restrictions and red tape on clearing trees from around your house, its a bloody wonder we haven’t “cooked” more people.
This latest piece of BS can be filed with the rest of ever increasing volume of alarmism rubbish.
Surely they have to pause and realize how rediculous they are.
The mainstream media is an embarassment to believe this rubbish is informative journalism.
And the bean counters are wondering why hits and circulation is down.
Yet blogs like this are going from strength to strength.
They need to lift their game and challenge every one these fruit loops.
100
Going by the “predictions” of the last six decades…we can safely say, with a 99.9999% probability, that the greenie infiltrators in the midst of the various DSEs have got it royally wrong wrt fire prevention and fuel reduction. Time to clean out the cockie cage!
60
The Warrandyte, Eltham area on the northern outskirts of Melbourne are a “green policy enhanced fire death-trap”.
”On Black Saturday the firestorm was only about 15 minutes away from here when the wind suddenly changed and drove it towards Kinglake instead,” he says. ”Most people in Warrandyte weren’t even aware it was coming.” Dick Davies, president of the Warrandyte Community Association.
“The Eltham Gateway has the potential to be a fire-fighter’s worst nightmare”.
In 2009 Packham was interviewed on television about the risk to life from future extreme bushfires. The focus of the nationally broadcast television interview was the Eltham Gateway’s region.Packham stated that future extreme bushfire fatalities could be “measured in the thousands”. David Packham, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University.
Full articles at links
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/on-the-road-to-oblivion-20131220-2zqus.html
http://www.elthamsdeathtrap.com/
20
Inside the climate circus tent.
“Mesdames et messieurs,
faites vos jeux!”
40
Jo,
Surface ocean water salinity has been changing for the last 3 decades.
In some areas the ocean water is getting fresher and in the equatorial areas, the water is getting more salty on the surface.
Like anyone who blames “global warming” and receives grants, http://www.whoi.edu/science/po/people/rcurry/
I suspect our “adjusted” atmospheric pressure difference in conjunction with the suns lack of activity to be the cause. Since the biggest evaporation machine is the oceans.
20
Jo,
Slightly off topic but an update:
I received this e-mail yesterday…
Mr. Lalonde:
It would be wonderful if you would submit your ideas to peer reviewed
journals. That would provide you the opportunity to engage experts across
the scientific spectrum to verify your findings, and would allow the
larger scientific community to know of them. I wish you luck in that
endeavor.
Sincerely,
— Jens
T. Jens Feeley, Ph.D.
Deputy Director
Strategic Integration & Management Division
Science Mission Directorate
NASA Headquarters, Room 3F26
Phone: 202.358.1714
Note: Tallbloke found that “peer-review” doesn’t exactly work when they submitted that journal.
50
Better start ramping up those Hazard Reduction Burns then!
20
If there are more State Parks and National Parks by 2070 AND if they are managed with the same level of skill we currently see, why would’nt there be more bushfires?
141
Tony, what do you think the error bars are on predictions of how big our government will be in 2070? Another variable to mess with their models…
61
That seems to imply…
that the chief cause of increased bushfire deaths is government red tape and mismanagement.
Fix the party politics system, we might get some contrasting options.
70
Yes, Yes and YES! But truthfully it is human caused. Even human use of carbon caused: Matches, burning pits, smoking, arson – there’s your increase in bushfires
20
“. . . our government . . . ”
Do you mean the one established under Agenda 21?
~~~~~
Jennifer M. has a fire post (up on the 18th) on which, at 3:52 pm, I placed a link to the USA FireWise program.
20
Also Jennifer Marohasy has a rainfall model on a laptop that outperforms BoM’s mega-ultra-supercomputer. Perhaps that is because BoM bought the base software from UK Met Office.
Lest anyone think I am being unfair, I do computer modelling as a side of my work. The IPCC ensemble models suffer from omitted-variable bias. Which is something that a neural network model like Dr Marohasy’s will tend not to fall into. If the ensemble modellers included full forcing from the Sun and oceanic cycles they would probably model medium term climate much better. But that would do them out fo a job, since it would then demonstrate that CO2 is harmless.
60
Jo,
Have not seen any predictions on the size of gov’t.
Not the happiest thought to start the day…
30
In which case by 2070 there will be nothing left to burn.
30
Even if it were true what are we to do? Cut down all the trees? These climate “experts” really are sick in the mind.
40
These Nostradamus- like predictions consistently go beyond the lifespan of the authors. Just far enough into the future that they can’t be held accountable for gross errors during their lifetime.
However, the grants, gratuities, awards and retirement payola comes a lot sooner.
P.S. To lower the rate of bushfires – forget CO2 – just start by charging Pyromaniac arsonists with attempted murder.
.
70
Isn’t CO2 used as the fire-suppressing agent in some fire extinguishers? Using an argument similar to the warmist position that greenhouse gas backradiation produces an increased Earth surface temperature, why can’t it then be similarly argued that increasing atmospheric CO2 levels will reduce the number of bush fires?
10
CO2 is used in fire-extinguishers..
pretty easy.. just ramp up the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.. no more fire 😉
40
(off topic warning)
I do have one question about this whole mess. First of all thanks to the hard work and perseverence of many people, it’s plain to see that we will end up winning the scientific debate. The tide is slowly turning.
But this is about more than simply winning the debate. The global warming scare industry is now just that – a multi billion dollar global industry with its fingers in business, power, government, academia and media. It employs tens of thousands of people around the world (if not more). It has spawned a quasi religious belief in many of its followers.
Once the debate has been won and the science has been shown to be flawed, how exactly do we go about dismantling something of this size and penetration into almost all aspects of our lives? Is it possible, or will vested interested continue to rule?
141
You stop the money.
Then wait for next inevitable alleged man made catastrophe that needs heaps of cash so the “snake oil” salesmen can save us.
Just a shot in the dark but I reckon it’ll be the ice that’s going to “get”us next time.
50
Agreed, nobody holds major high profile conferences proclaiming the dangers of an imminent Eugenics crisis, since the money dried up.
It takes a lot of money to organise a conference which produces a book like this:-
https://archive.org/details/decadeofprogress00inte
10
History has continually displayed that good triumphs over evil. Once destroyed, vigilance will be required to ensure the phoenix does not rise from the ashes.
20
As soon as the populace realises that we have all been conned, anything green will disappear from shelves, companies on the gravy train will close and the “goat cheese” groupie will have to support a lot of out of work “Climate” scientist. If you need proof, have a look at the sugar debate, it took a bit to get into the news, now everybody is on the band wagon.
Me Think: maybe we can get the Climate.. scientist to become sugar scientist, if we arbitrarily divide them in 2 groups, one for and one against, give them equal research money, we should be able to sit back and watch live a “reality Sitcomm”………
10
Jo, can you please tell me why we bother?
These climate fat cats are driven by MONEY.
And to that extent, they are successful. Really what this amount to is a bunch of people who have cottoned onto the climate scam calling out the scammers.
Why don’t we just do something better with our time? These *** aren’t going to go away anytime soon.
43
Answer: because unless we bother politicians and governments these academics will go on misspending for as long as grants are available. The change in awareness and attitude has only come about through blogs such as Jo’s.
Cannot depend on the MSM. Interesting chart of The Guardian’s circulation figures which are in a death spiral (care as the electronic figures may not be included).
60
An important question here is: will there be more arsonists and/or arson attempts in 2070?
Australia’s population will continue to grow.
Ergo, there will be arsonists in 2070 and therefore more bush fires, so Geoff Cary is right.
What? Remember, this is climate science, so you can say any old BS in any prediction of the future and amazingly lots of not very bright people will believe you.
80
“Rain falls where forests grow.”
Isn’t the loss of forests at the base of Kilimanjaro the reason the ice mass (glacier) on the top has shrunk?
The interconnectedness of things at a REGIONAL level produces changes that, when thrown into the stew and stirred around (computations), produces a “global” change.
We really have to dissect global climate changes and determine how much is just regional changes with regional causes, misidentified as global changes with global causes by the “stew-making” process.
20
Doug, you’ve got the cart before the horse. Forests need lots of rain to grow.
00
I happen to know the guys re-writing ARR (Australian Rainfall and Run-off)
These guys are Engineers not government scientists. I would trust their opinion over ANY CSIRO climate scientist, any time.
They have been trying to use the climate models to see if they give any predictions of future rainfall.
Their conclusion, after quite a few years is that ..
THE CLIMATE MODELS HAVE “ZERO SKILL” WITH RESPECT TO RAINFALL.
110
Hi Andy,
Strangely enough, a number of those on the Steering Committee and Technical Committee are CSIRO or ex CSIRO, others are BOM, some are from Universities such as UNSW. I’m glad you trust their opinion.
Speaking of trusting opinions, Mark Babister, Chair of the ARR Technical Committee, defended the actions of the four engineers at Wivenhoe during the 2011 floods. I’m sure he appreciates your support.
One of the members of the ARR Technical Committee, Dr Bryson Bates (of the CSIRO btw), is an expert in climate impacts on water resources, and has co-authored chapters and reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
He was a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) second, third and fourth assessment reports, and the convening lead author for the IPCC Technical Report on Climate Change and Water. Dr Bates shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with other IPCC authors and Mr Al Gore.
http://www.csiro.au/people/Bryson.Bates.aspx
Are you saying he refers to his own work as crap?
24
I’m talking about face to face comments.. NOT comments that have been through the climate publication mill.
There is still a lot of money and influence floating around that is very pro AGW and its related agendas.
If you are in one of these big agencies such as BOM, CSIRO, UniNSW climate dept, AHU climate dept..
you MUST send out the “right message” in any report of briefing or publication…
Your job is on the line otherwise. (Although you are probably only in that job because you made the ‘right noises” to start with)
So NO, I do not trust ANYTHING about climate that comes from reports any of these big climate groups, no matter who they are.
Likewise, I cannot use my proper name, or the name of any of the people I talk to.
When you can’t discuss these climate issues openly for fear of your job or your next contract…….
…..the whole situation is just WRONG !!!!!
ps.. I’m hoping that the more sane heads prevailed and the next iteration of ARR is NOT full of climate change clap-trap !!
52
AHU climate dept
darn.. who are they ???
ANU climate dept
10
Hi Andy,
So you have gone from trusting their opinion to saying they are a pack of liars just because they want to keep their jobs and you can’t trust anything they say.
Interesting about-face there old son.
I’m sure Bryson would love to see your comments.
Don’t forget, the world is a much smaller place than you could ever imagine.
25
PS.. the name “Long Distance Voyager’
you are just back from the southern ice/ocean are you 🙂
40
Touche!
10
GAH! Are there no Moody Blues fans left?
10
Tell you what.. seeing you seem to know Dr bates,
why don’t you ask him, in private, how close his IPCC work is to what was published in the ‘summary for policy makers’ and what finally appeared in the IPCC reports. ?
02
That sort of information Andy often carries a lot more weight for the man in the street who can identify with the engineers a lot easier than he can with some high living, goat cheese circle dwelling, ivory tower climate academic.
It certainly does for me as Engineers unlike climate warming academics and warmist science advocates, have to deal with the real world and find and create solutions to real problems.
So thanks for that info which backs up a heck of a lot of other research papers into climate models that I have been reading of late, all of which are pointing to the total failure and therefore uselessness of climate models when they are used to try and predict the future global and regional climates.
40
Since we’re talking about engineers and their blunt appraisal of obvious facts… here’s a little quip to emphasise the point…
A pessimist says: “That glass is half-empty.”
An optimist says: “That glass is half-full.”
An engineer says: “That glass is twice as big as it needs to be.”
(Sorry, sounds better after a few drinks.)
50
A realist calls it as it is, “half a glass”.
10
Still makes sense.
00
Trouble is, ROM, many of the climate guys come through what is called “Environmental Engineering” courses.
They are often the ones that really struggle with the general engineering stuff in first year, before they head off to do enviro.
20
Hi Andy,
Now , let’s see : from the ARR Technical Committee
Dr Bryson Bates : BEng (Civil Hons1) PhD
Prof George Kuczera : BEng etc
Professor Martin Lambert: Civil Engineer, Head of School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering University of Adelaide
Dr Rory Nathan : BEng etc
Dr Bill Weekes: BSc, MEngSc, etc
Mark Babister : BE(Hons), MEngSc,
Associate Professor James Ball : BEng (Civil), Master of Engineering, Doctor of Philosophy
Professor Ashish Sharma : Professor and Future Fellow (ARC) in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
From the Steering Committee :
Doug Hargreaves : PhD (University of Leeds), MSc(Distinction) (University of Leeds), BEng (Queensland Inst. of Technology)
You get the idea.
22
The above are not “climate” guys , they are engineers first and foremost.
Just like I said above.
That is why ARR probably WON’T contain much of the climate change nonsense.
There are no “Flannery’s” among them. !
————————————————————
Thank goodness ARR is not being done by the mob at UNSW !!
They are the ones with the political agenda.
02
“said a projected lift in temperatures of more than 2C ”
News guys… It just isn’t happening !!!
Its stopped… NATURALLY, and is about to head downwards (only a bit, I hope)
40
I am surprised that this item from Steve Goddard has not received more attention.
Goddard says he has found proof from within NOAAs own temperature charts that they have adjusted the data to create more than 1C of warming over the whole of the contiguous USA over a century. USA is a very large part of the global average calculation.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/just-hit-the-noaa-motherlode/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_January_19_2014
If you put wrong information into numerical climate models then you are going to get wrong predictions out.
60
Good. I sent a message to Jo separately asking whether she could do a critique on Goddard’s conclusions which, if correct, alter the playing field completely. I too cannot understand why this is not front page blog news.
60
He found proof that the adjustments were not the cause of the large warming trend but that it was incorrect calculations of the adjustments that made it appear that there was warming after 1998. Could this sorry farce get any worse?
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Mmmmmmm. That’s ~ 36 hours and no even “holding” response from Jo. Methinks Peter C that there I something amiss. Either Goddard’s analysis has flaws or the conclusion is incorrect. This site correctly bangs on about Lowawhatevehisnameisky so I’m sure the facts on this one will emerge eventually.
00
The academic secret for success in this area is to first work out one’ s retirement age then push the predictions past that date by say ten years. Voila no come-back. Look how it all went pear shaped when the AGW modellers stated they would have to rethink if their predictions were wrong after only 15 years.
Probably also best to take the family holidays in Bali rather than the Antarctic?
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whether right or wrong about what he has found, i agree it’s odd Goddard’s NOAA Motherlode piece hasn’t been discussed on the sceptic blogs.
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The extreme Greens have greatly increased the danger of bushfires by limiting the clearing of fuel on the ground including burning off operations, and as a direct result fires are far more dangerous. As the Greens like to put their brand on what they refer to as green objectives and achievements I would like to recommend that from now on we refer to Greenfires.
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Burning off operations in NSW at least used to be conducted in May, where early a.m dew was helpful in keeping things nicely under control for managing burn offs safely.
I am reliably informed that this ceased for no explicable reason in 1994 (in our local area at least). Deliberate policy- QED.
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The “SOS” site refers to them as “Green Infernos”.It has graphic footage of one in Canberra and points out the next one is due for Eltham[Victoria]which would become a death trap for thousands as the roads would be quickly overwhelmed.
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I was re-reading “Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Persig, a philosophical narration from the 70’s. Some older members of our community may remember it.
There is a passage that says ” There is no single event for which there is not an infinite number of hypotheses, in the end, it is reality that determines the validity if the hypothesis.’
Reality is certainly on its way for the war mists.
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The fact that the Green Looney’s and Labour through the Councils,have stopped the controlled burn-off of the bush and the fact that most Fires are started by Arsonists,you might be forgiven for thinking that it would help their cause in promoting AGW.
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Would they stoop so low? I believe that they do. The loonie left
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Over the years a great many fires have been started on roadsides by cigarette butts, and in bad conditions even cigarette ashes.
00
Another frank article in The Australian today.
I’ll copy and paste in its entirety for the benefit of the readers that don’t subscribe to the online newspaper.
When scientists call other scientists, deniers to cover their own denial of the pause then I would say it is the beginning of their end.
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Maybe there are two reports? Do I really have to press the “sarc” button?
In WUWT I read “In a joint press conference NOAA and NASA have just released data for the global surface temperature for 2013. In summary they both show that the ‘pause’ in global surface temperature that began in 1997, according to some estimates, continues. Statistically speaking there has been no trend in global temperatures over this period. Given that the IPCC estimates that the average decadal increase in global surface temperature is 0.2 deg C, the world is now 0.3 deg C cooler than it should have been. –David Whitehouse, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 21 January 2014″
Whereas above “While some media outlets are repeating the myth spread by deniers that there has been a pause in warming, the NOAA data confirm that the trend of global warming is continuing. It also confirms that we are seeing more extremes of weather, as the science has been warning us to expect for 25 years.”
02
To quote Jo in her first para
I know Jo that as the proprietor of this very widely read and very respected climate blog you have to show considerable discretion in your use of language but the term nonsense to adequately describe this utter and complete BS from the usual suspects at the ANU hardly covers first base on the true level of mendacity and the sheer unmitigated out of this world climate science academic stupidity behind this claim.
Here we have the usual batch of climate catastrophist ANU academics who in their usual hubris are arrogantly claiming to be able to predict climate, temperature, rainfall, drought, bushfires and fuel loads 50 to 60 or more years into the future across a 3000 km wide continent when they can’t even accurately predict one of the World’s and Australia’s major weather and climate shaping events, the timing and the phase of the periodic and next ENSO event more than a few weeks or a month or so ahead.
Educated idiots fails to adequately cover the intellectual qualities of the individuals who make these types of claims which are becoming one of the root causes why the whole global warming cult is now falling flat on it’s face in the eyes of an increasing portion of the citizens who unlike the increasingly out of touch ivory tower dwellers in climate academia, live in the real world of industry and commerce where common sense is still a guiding principle.
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“ducated idiots fails to adequately cover the intellectual qualities of the individuals who make these types of claims which are becoming one of the root causes why the whole global warming cult is now falling flat on it’s face in the eyes of an increasing portion of the citizens who unlike the increasingly out of touch ivory tower dwellers in climate academia, live in the real world of industry and commerce where common sense is still a guiding principle.”
Gold!
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ROM, it’s called Marxism.
20
My climate model has spewed out some new “worrying” facts
1) in 70 years time the world will be warmer
2)the sea level will rise, much more water will be available for evaporation (warmer seas etc…)
3)Rainfall will increase expotentially (?)
4)we will have to use napalm to ignite fires in the tropical forest of Tasmania
5)the increased rainfall will make the rural fire brigade obsolete
6)due to the increased lopsided weight of the world, the earth axis will shift
7)the price of condoms will skyrocket
Any scientific newspaper that would like to publish my scientific research, please contact the writer via this page……
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Yeh Peter so’s mine.
1.It’s telling me I’ll be well into my second century of birthdays and pushing onto my double ton.
2.But its assuring me not to worry because in all probability I’ll be dead.
Stupid model and to think I was going to apply for a grant to develop it.
Come to think of it……..
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And thank you for the headline, Jeremy Bentham .
00
AGW will cause more people to play with matches by 2070, thats why there will be more fires.
I mean lets face it, we wont be allowed to have electricity so we will be burning dung (our own) for cooking (wont need heat) so there will be more fires.
I dont see why you guys find that hard to believe.
/sarc off
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it’s no use trying to rebuke the claims of the alarmists with science and logic. they know what they are touting is rubbish. its not their strategy. their strategy is to do whatever it takes to implement their agenda, and if that involves fraud, propaganda, distorting science, giving jobs to pals, pal-review, extorting funds from taxpayers and telling lies then so be it. It’s classic Saul Alinsky and Cloward & Piven. It’s no use using logic and science to fight this. A new strategy is required. One which makes them pay dearly. Time to stop being logical and nice.
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“Everyone knows that different climate models predict both higher and lower rainfall in the same areas at the same time”
As mentioned.. this where the phrase ‘zero skill” comes in
Strangely , if they all predicted in the same direction, as the temperature models do, this is termed “robust”
DOESN’T say anything about any resemblance to reality, though.
The guy I was talking to also re-iterated Jo’s statement above.. saying something like, “about half predict with more rain, about half say less rain.. so on average, they predict.. NOT MUCH CHANGE HAPPENING”
Which is actually very close to reality.. 😉
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There could be as many as 1,000 land use variables alone that they simply have not got a clue about, like stocking levels of sheep and cattle, natural levels of wild pigs, goats, deer, possums, wallabies, kangaroos, wombats. Formal human fuel reduction burns, informal fuel reduction burns by private landowners, informal fuel reduction procedures like people slashing paddocks, logging, clearing land for conversion to pasture, clearing land for residential subdivision, the numbers of arsonists, the number of idiots, the number of sparks caused by welders, brush-cutters or bearings failing in wheat harvesters, crop levels, new forestry plantation levels and even the number of Army training exercises
Long range forecasters, where those forecasts contain hundreds or thousands variables are simply delusional.
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One would hope that you could set that at zero from now on.
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Gees, I dunno Vic.
According to some of the ABC tribe, Indonesia are getting pretty antsy at us…
because we went a few nm over the boundary to rescue/turn-back a boat
and because KRudd listened in on some phone calls or something like that.
(nb: nm = nanometres)
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