The New Year has not brought any resolutions to tell the truth about changes in climate and their possible extent and explanations. Below is a letter pointing out errors in an analysis by our very own Bureau of Meteorology, as reported in the Fin Review, and a graph from that body’s web site (provided by Bill Kininmonth) that confirms its reported error. I have included the full text the Ed was unable to fit.
Things have come to a pretty pass when both the two official agencies – the BOM and CSIRO – continue to chalk up analytical errors and/or failures to qualify explanations where “the science” warrants it. It is little wonder that the ABC and government ministers have reached a consensus of errors, as shown in Andrew Bolt’s article yesterday, also included below.
Des Moore
Hottest January Since the Last One
(Letter published in The Australian Financial Review, 8 February 2013.
Square brackets deleted by Ed)
You report that the Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed January 2013 as the hottest month ever, with the maximum more than 2 degrees above the average (“January confirmed as hottest month on record”, 4 February). However, this record appears to refer only to the last 30 years.
An examination of the Bureau’s records for January back to 1910 reveals virtually the same January maximum temperature in 1932 as in January 2013 [and a number of other Januaries with maxima more than one and a half degrees above the average.
Just as interesting is the Bureau’s 11 year running average. This shows virtually no change between 1930 and 1980, a period over which emissions increased quite strongly. Also relevant is that the subsequent increase of about 0.5 of a degree coincided with the Bureau’s shift in its official sites from Post Office sites to airports and its introduction of automatic weather stations.
When we experience hot (or cold) temperatures there is a tendency to conclude “this is the hottest (or coldest) we have ever had”. But any such conclusions need to be based on past records and qualified by their interpretation.]
Des Moore
Institute for Private Enterprise
January confirmed as hottest month on record
Letter published in The Australian Financial Review, 4 February 2013 by Peter Roberts
January has been confirmed as the hottest month ever for Australia by the Bureau of Meteorology, while January 7 was the country’s hottest day.
January 2013 has been confirmed as the hottest month on record by the Bureau of Meteorology as scientists release new predictions that rising temperatures will cause further extreme rainfall and flooding events.
The Bureau on Monday issued a special climate statement which confirmed the extended nature and record levels of the heat wave which began in late December and continued unabated across all states and territories during early January.
January 7 has been confirmed as the hottest day ever for Australia as a whole, recording 40.3 degrees.
The area-averaged temperature for the country exceeded 39 degrees from January 2 to January 8.
A total of 44 weather stations where data has been recorded for more than 30 years set record maximum temperatures, including Moomba which reached 49.6 degrees on January 12. Records that had lasted more than 100 years were broken in Sydney, Hobart, Larapuna, Cape Naturaliste, Tibooburra and Walget.
“The main part of the heat wave finally ended on the 19th (of January),” the Bureau says. “The 19th was the first day since 31 December, 2012 that it did not reach 45 degrees C somewhere in Australia.”
A separate review of global rainfall data by scientists at the University of Adelaide has shown that the intensity of extreme rainfall events is increasing as temperatures rise.
Lead author Dr Seth Westra says the results show rainfall extremes are increasing.
“There is a 7 per cent increase in extreme rainfall intensity for every degree increase in global atmospheric temperatures,” he said.
“Assuming an increase in global average temperatures by 3 to 5 degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century, this could mean very substantial increases in rainfall intensity as a result of climate change.”
Dr Westra, a senior lecturer in the university’s engineering department, said flooding could be expected to increase during the century.>
The trouble with facts on global warming
Letter published in The Herald Sun, 7 February 2013 by Andrew Bolt
DR Karl Kruszelnicki presents science on the ABC. Dr Craig Emerson is a minister in the Government that makes you pay a carbon tax. So the two should at least know the basic data about global warming.
Alas.
Kruszelnicki, one of Australia's "National Living Treasures", last week tweeted in outrage: "How does A Bolt get away with saying planet hasn't warmed in the last 16 years."
Emerson, the Trade Minister, replied: "Mr Bolt can have his own opinions but he can't have his own facts. Global temperatures are rising. Fact."
"Fact", Craig?
Late last year, the British Met Office released data showing no statistically significant warming for 16 years. Another data set from the Remote Sensing Systems Microwave Sounding Units even shows a slight cooling since 1997 though, again, it's not statistically significant.
Yes, Emerson could find yet other measurements showing a slight warming over that time, but not one of the main tools for measuring the world's temperature show any rise since that is statistically significant.
Let me explain "not statistically significant". It means the trend is so slight scientists don't know whether it's just caused by accident or background "noise".
More:Blog with Andrew Bolt
Emerson won't take my word for it, because I've been a sceptic since even before Chief Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery predicted "the rain that falls isn't actually going to fill our dams and our river systems". Splash, splash.
So let me quote the latest draft report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body that has most ferociously pushed the global warming scare.
It notes that "much interest has focused on differences (in global temperatures) in the period since 1998 and an apparent flattening in HadCRUT3 trends" (HadCRUT is one of the temperature measurements showing no real warming).
The IPCC insists that some jiggling of the temperature data it uses means "all products now show a warming trend since 1998" but it still concedes -- and this is the important bit -- "none of these are statistically significant".
None. Other prominent scientists are more upfront.
"The data confirms the existence of a 'pause' in the warming," confirms Professor Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The MITs Professor Richard Lindzen, arguably the world's most famous climate scientist, has argued for two years that "there has been no warming since 1997 and no statistically significant warming since 1995".
Even global warming evangelist Phil Jones, whose Climatic Research Unit was famously exposed by the Climategate emails, admits the data he prefers can't detect any significant warming over that time.
"I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95 per cent significance level."
And however you slice it, the warming we've seen is below or around the very lowest predictions made by the IPCC, as the latest IPCC draft report shows.
Add that to the mounting evidence of other dud predictions made by warmists.
No, we are not seeing more or worse cyclones and hurricanes. No, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide have not run out of water. No, the world's rice and wheat crops have not fallen, but they've set new records.
IN fact, "there has been no increase (in Australia) in the frequency of natural hazard events since 1950", says Professor John McAneney, director of research group Risk Frontiers.
Not surprisingly, then, the rest of the world seems to have lost Australia's crusading zeal to stop a warming that for now seems to have stopped itself.
In Australia, we're forced to pay a $23-a-tonne carbon tax. But in Europe, carbon allowances have crashed to below $6. In New Zealand the price has plummeted to only $2.
None of this is to say the world did not warm last century and will not resume warming at some stage.
But the truth is that the world over the past 16 years has not warmed as most climate models and warmist scientists predicted. The increasing disasters we were told to expect have not happened.
I'm shocked - but sadly not surprised - a minister of the Gillard Government does not know any of this, despite foisting on us a massive carbon tax.
I just wish an ABC science communicator did not keep him so dangerously ignorant.