The Climate will fluctuate. It always has, it always will. Get used to it. The Government Green Paper completely ignores the main question - should Canberra try to control the weather, or is it better to foster a strong Australia able to cope with whatever climate change brings us? The Government also justifies the need for action on completely worthless long term forecasts of Australia’s weather. Not even the IPCC claims an ability to forecast the weather beyond a few days, but the CSIRO has sullied its reputation by pretending they can project temperature and rainfall 30 years into the future. Why have they not revealed the calculations for these predictions? In the corporate world, anyone making such wild unsubstantiated claims would be quickly disciplined by the regulators. Public figures who repeat and embellish these scaremongering prophecies lack common sense and should also be called to account. The only credible weather forecast for such a long period is “It will Fluctuate”.

Minister Wong obviously believes that if we give her enough powers to tax and regulate, she can change the world’s weather. This belief is as silly as the CSIRO weather forecasts out to 2040. Man has never able to control the weather and there is no credible evidence that his activities have caused unusual weather. In fact, despite all the hot air about carbon emissions, the world has not warmed since 1998 and has been cooling for the last 6 years. Moreover, we have had extreme droughts, floods, ice ages and global warming long before man started using coal and oil.

Minister Wong should make sure Australia has the industrial ability and economic strength to cope with any adverse weather that occurs, be it floods, fires, droughts, snow, heat, cyclones or tsunamis. Poor people cannot cope with Climate Change and the Rudd/Garnaut/Wong carbon taxes will make every Australian poorer. This Deep Green Paper should be recycled and replaced by an enlightened White Paper outlining how to make Australia strong and prosperous. This will provide the best insurance for our children against any climate change. Read more here.

See also the poor ability to provide even 3 month forecasts here. See the real picture of rainfall in Perth region here.

This weblog lists three research findings that are in the peer reviewed literature, but have been completely ignored by the IPCC and CCSP climate assessment communities, nor have been refuted in the literature. These are just three examples of the level to which the scientific method has sunk to in climate science.

Observations of the spatial distribution of aerosols in the atmosphere in the lower latitudes, shows that the aerosol effect on atmospheric circulations, as a result of their alteration in the heating of regions of the atmosphere, is 60 times greater than due to the heating effect of the human addition of well-mixed greenhouse gases [from Matsui and Pielke, 2006].

A conservative estimate of the warm bias in the construction of a global average surface temperature trend resulting from measuring the air temperature near the ground is around 0.21C per decade (with the nighttime minimum temperature contributing a large part of this bias). Since land covers about 29% of the Earth’s surface, the warm bias due to this influence explains about 30% of the IPCC estimate of global warming. In other words, consideration of the bias in temperature would reduce the IPCC trend to about 0.14C per decade; still a warming, but not as large as indicated [based on Lin et al 2007].

The radiative temperature of the Earth is used by the IPCC and CCSP to represent the portion of the radiation emitted at the top of the atmosphere which originates at the Earth’s surface. However, the outgoing long wave radiation is proportional to the fourth power of T [T4], from Stefan-Boltzman’s Law, not temperature by itself. A 1C increase in the polar latitudes in the winter, for example, would have much less of an effect on the change of long wave emission than a 1C increase in the tropics. The spatial distribution matters, but this important distinction has been ignored.  A more appropriate measure of radiatively significant surface changes would be to evaluate the change of the global average of T4 with time. [Pielke et al 2007].

Until, and unless the climate science community returns to the proper scientific method of examining the climate system, policymakers will continue to be fed erroneous information. Only poor policy decisions can result due to this failure. See post here.

The Carbon Sense Coalition today claimed that all government efforts to stop global warming and cut carbon dioxide emissions were anti-life and against the interests of all mankind.  The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that this generation of foolish politicians are the first in history to complain about the beneficial effects that have always accompanied the periodic but short warm eras that punctuate earth’s history. The human story is intimately tied to the grand cycles of climate and the Chicken Littles should study these before squawking. Distant climate history is well recorded in rock strata, ice cores, tree rings, ancient shore lines, marine sediments, pollen distribution, fossil occurrences, coral reef growth, distribution of ancient vegetation, stalactite growth rings and carbon isotope ratios. More recent history is abundantly supplemented in clay tablets, cave paintings, rock art, ancient scrolls, inscriptions, historical events and records, monuments and epitaphs, the rise and fall of empires and direct records of temperature, sun spots, river levels, rainfall, droughts, floods, heat waves and bone chilling blizzards. 

Anyone who studies these records will see that eras warmer than today are periodic but short chapters in the earth story.  The most recent major ice age ended a mere 11,500 year ago, when the Modern Interglacial commenced. Since then, earth has experienced five warm eras. In the first warm era starting about 4300 BC, the Sahara bloomed with plants, forests spread over Northern Europe and Canada and there was sufficient water for irrigation in Arabia. This era ended when blizzards and ice returned for nearly 1,000 years. Another short warm era started about 1450 BC, but was ended by another bout of cold dry weather that caused depopulation in Greece and Turkey and hardship everywhere. In the Roman Warm era, starting about 250 BC, the world smiled again and populations grew. But the warmth was cut short by the return of the snows which forced Vikings and Norsemen out of their frozen North to pillage and then colonise warmer southern lands.  Then we had the Medieval Warm Period, starting about 800 AD, a time of great achievement and prosperity. Farmers moved back into Scotland and Norway, Greenland was colonised and corn was grown. Vineyards produced wine near Manchester, in East Prussia and Norway. Even Tasmania warmed up. Trade and industry flourished and people had surpluses for culture and education. Cambridge, Oxford and Bologna Universities were founded and cathedrals and temples were built at Westminster Abbey, Notre Dame, Canterbury, Cologne, Florence, Castile and Angkor Wat.

But Jack Frost returned with the Little Ice Age starting about 1300 AD. Famine, food riots and disease again stalked Europe. Glaciers advanced, ice caps expanded, droughts and blizzards became more common and gales wracked Europe (and destroyed the Spanish Armada). Frosts killed orchards, North Sea cod moved south, food prices soared and farms were abandoned. In Scotland and Norway the capitals moved south and villages were abandoned. The Greenland colony perished. During the frigid years of the Dalton Minimum (1790 -1820 AD) Napoleon’s Grand Army perished in a bitter Russian winter.  Then in 1860, with no help from men burning coal or oil, earth started to warm again. This continued until 1942. A cooling spell from 1942 to 1976 had the Alarmists worried that the ice was about to return, but warming resumed from 1976 to 1998. Temperatures have been cooling slightly since then, despite the boom in burning of coal and oil.

Even a casual glance at climate and human history will show that the warm eras like today are far more beneficial for all life than the cold dry eras. People prefer warm climates. They do not flock to Alaska, Archangel or Antarctica for winter - they head for Bermuda, the Black Sea or Bali. All over the world, the human race is migrating towards the sun belts - Florida, the Riviera, and Capricornia - very few volunteer to live in Siberia or Patagonia. President Putin voiced what many Russians must think - “a bit of warmth would be welcome here”. Moreover, a bit of warmth would vastly increase the land suitable for growing food and fibres. On the other hand, a slight cooling would take much of the farmlands of Canada, Northern Eurasia and New Zealand out of production, and parts of Tasmania and Victoria may have to convert from producing wheat and dairy products to farming caribou or reindeer. Even the dumbest sheep in Australia knows that being warm, watered and well fed is better than being cold, thirsty and starving. Maybe we should give sheep a vote?

Disclosure of Interest:
Viv Forbes earns income from three carbon emitting industries, coal, cattle and sheep. He hates frosts, droughts and starving stock. He also uses cement, steel and electricity, buys diesel for his tractor, petrol for his car and gas for his barby. He uses trains and occasionally boards an aeroplane. He eats carbon based foods, pays taxes and uses government services funded by taxes on the carbon industries. All of these industries and services will be harmed by carbon taxes, emissions trading or carbon sequestration. He is also a scientist, investment analyst, computer modeller and political analyst. Like the great majority of Australians, he has a big vested interest in the outcome of this historic debate.

Read full pdf here. See the coalition’s very detailed and excellent submission to the Garnaut Review here.

Four scientists, four scenarios, four more or less similar conclusions without actually saying it outright - the global warming trend is done, and a cooling trend is about to kick in. The implication: Future energy price response is likely to be significant. Late last month, some leading climatologists and meteorologists met in New York at the Energy Business Watch Climate and Hurricane Forum. The theme of the forum strongly suggested that a period of global cooling is about emerge, though possible concerns for a political backlash kept it from being spelled out. However, the message was loud and clear, a cyclical global warming trend may be coming to an end for a variety of reasons, and a new cooling cycle could impact the energy markets in a big way.

Noted presenters, such as William Gray, Harry van Loon, Rol Madden and Dave Melita, signaled in the strongest terms that huge climate changes are afoot. Each weather guru, from a different angle, suggested that global warming is part of a cycle that is nearing an end. All agreed the earth is in a warm cycle right now, and has been for a while, but that is about to change significantly.

Perhaps the best known speaker was Colorado State University’s Gray, founder of the school’s famed hurricane research team. Gray spoke about multi-decade periods of warming and cooling and how global climate flux has been the norm for as long as there have been records. Gray has taken quite a bit of political heat for insistence that global warming is not a man-made condition. Man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) is negligible, he said, compared to the amount of CO2 Mother Nature makes and disposes of each day or century. ? “We’ve reached the top of the heat cycle,” he said. “The next 10 years will be hardly any warmer than the last 10 years.”

Conference host, analyst and forecaster Andy Weissman closed the conference by addressing how natural gas prices and policy debates would be impacted by a possible climate shift that could leave the market short gas. This would be especially problematic if gas use for power generation were substantially increased at the expense of better alternatives. :If we’re about to shift into another natural climate cycle, we can’t do it without coal-fired generation. So the policy debate has to change,” he said. “Coal has to be back on the table if we’re ever going to meet our energy needs.”

As for natural gas: “Next year, may see a bit of price softening,” Weissman said. “After that, fogetaboutit!”.

Read Alan’s full account here.

Through its influence in the media and government (both bureaucracy and congress), the Greens effectively abolished nuclear power, curtailed domestic oil production, and left the American energy industry in the comatose state in which it abides to this day. Nor this was an error or overreaction - it was a deliberate effort to fulfill the Green agenda.What is the nature of this agenda? Greens were much more open about it during the early years of the movement. (As for example in the utopian novel Ecotopia.)

The end point of all Green efforts is a kind of Edenic state in which humans exist in “partnership” with nature. In which humanity is simply another species. In which the human “footprint” (a purely Green concept with no literal meaning) is reduced to a minimum. A world which has returned in large part to a pre-industrial state, where whatever small amounts of power are needed are provided by solar and wind. Where every last damn item is recycled. A kind of universal Northern California, where all living things from spirochete to grizzly exist in harmony under the cloak of Gaia.

Current energy policy—or non-policy, however you wish—lies at the very center of the Green agenda. It is the only element in which any progress has been achieved. First, we need to rid ourselves of our “addiction” to nukes and oil. Then we adapt to solar and wind, and.... Here it peters off into silence. Because no such second step has ever, or will ever be made. Solar, wind, alcohol, ethanol… all these are single-digit energy sources. (And the low single digits as well, able to replace perhaps two or three percent of power generation at best.) Replacement of oil and nuclear power is a fantasy. Therefore, the rest of the Green dream is as well.  But the gutting of the American energy sector remains the Green’s chief accomplishment, their single achieved step toward paradise. Read more here.

June temperatures (preliminary):
Global composite temp.: -0.11 C (about 0.32 degrees Fahrenheit) below the 20-year average for June.
Northern Hemisphere: 0.00 C (about 0.00 degrees Fahrenheit) above 20-year average for June.
Southern Hemisphere: -0.23 C (about 0.56 degrees Fahrenheit) below 20-year average for June.

May temperatures (revised):
Global Composite: -0.18 C below 20-year average
Northern Hemisphere: -0.05 C below 20-year average
Southern Hemisphere: -0.31 C below 20-year average

All temperature variations are based on a 20-year average (1979-1998) for the month reported. Global trend since Nov. 16, 1978: +0.13 C per decade.

Notes on data released July 7, 2008: A La Nina Pacific Ocean cooling event continues to drive tropical and global temperatures: Globally, June 2008 was the coolest June since 1999, according to Dr. John Christy, diector of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. While the La Nina is a tropical event, cool temperatures covered a large portion of the globe. Among the past 30 Junes, June 2008 was the third coldest south of the Antarctic Circle, fourth coolest in the Southern Hemisphere and fifth coolest in the tropics. The Antarctic continent saw its third coldest June in 30 years, with temperatures averaging -1.53 C cooler than the seasonal norm. Portions of Anarctica south of Australia were as much as 5.5 C (9.9 degrees Fahrenheit) colder than seasonal norms for the first month of winter. While La Nina has caused global average temperatures to fall by more than 0.7 C (about 1.26 degrees F) since January 2007, June was only the eleventh cooler than normal month since January 1999.

See full size image here.

Color maps of local temperature anomalies may soon be available on-line at: http://climate.uah.edu/. The processed temperature data is available on-line here .

As part of an ongoing joint project between UAH, NOAA and NASA, Christy and Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the ESSC, use data gathered by microwave sounding units on NOAA and NASA satellites to get accurate temperature readings for almost all regions of the Earth. This includes remote desert, ocean and rain forest areas for which reliable climate data are not otherwise available. The satellite-based instruments measure the temperature of the atmosphere from the surface up to an altitude of about eight kilometers above sea level. Once the monthly temperature data is collected and processed, it is placed in a “public” computer file for immediate access by atmospheric scientists in the U.S. and abroad. Neither Spencer nor Christy receives any research support or funding from oil, coal or industrial companies or organizations, or from any private or special interest groups. All of their climate research funding comes from state and federal grants or contracts.

The Rueters news article by Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent on July 1 2008 is titled “Midwest floods show signs of global warming”. This article is an excellent example of the bias that exists in the communication of climate information to the public.

Excerpts from the article illustrate this bias; “Floods like those that inundated the U.S. Midwest are supposed to occur once every 500 years but this is the second since 1993, suggesting flawed forecasts that do not take global warming into account, conservation experts said on Tuesday.  ‘Although no single weather event can be attributed to global warming, it’s critical to understand that a warming climate is supplying the very conditions that fuel these kinds of weather events,“‘said Amanda Staudt, a climate scientist with the National Wildlife Federation. “Warmer air can carry more water, Staudt said in a telephone briefing, and this means more heavy precipitation in the central United States. Big Midwestern storms that used to be seen every 20 years or so will likely occur every four to six years by century’s end, she said.”

This is, unfortunately, not a news article with a scientific basis.  Dr. Staudt presents no evidence that this flood event is due to warmer air and an increase in atmospheric water vapor. Water vapor, for example, has been shown to not have increased over North America.

She also ignored evidence that flood losses are actually decreasing in the United States; i.e. see U.S. Flood Damage 1929-2003 [posted June 16 2008 on Prometheus].

See larger image here

Moreover, she fails to present peer reviewed papers that document an observed change in the weather events that caused this flooding. Indeed, the reason for the flooding was the unusually persistent cool air west of the flood region which provide a strong frontal boundary between the air of polar origin and the humid tropical air to the east.  The attribution of the floods to global warming, rather than the actual cause of the flood due to a persistent frontal boundary, exemplifies the misuse of science to promote a particular perspective on climate science. Both Dr. Staudt and the reporter, Ms. Deborah Zabarenko, have misrepresented this issue.

Read full post here.

Dear Jennifer,

The shallows near Dobu Island off Papua and New Guinea have active underwater fumaroles pumping out virtually pure CO2. The sea grass is extraordinarily lush and healthy and there is very healthy coral reef a few metres away.

Both photos show bubbles of CO2 which continually flow. I collected samples of gas years ago for a vulcanologist and he reported back to me that it was “virtually pure CO2”. Unfortunately the water had poor visibility the day I shot the pictures, but it is often clear.

Bob Halstead

Also sea Floor Anthoni’s excellent site we have listed before here.