The media has recently been reporting apparently unprecedented heat in Central Australia in the context of human-caused climate change. But is the current heat wave, with extended periods of days above 40^oC at Alice Springs really unprecedented? To answer this question it is necessary to examine the data.

There are two sites at Alice Springs for which readily accessible temperature data are available. The first is the Alice Springs Post Office commencing in 1878 and ceasing in 1953; the other is the Alice Springs airport commencing in 1941 and currently the official observing site for Alice Springs. The sites are about 10 km apart; the difference in January monthly mean maximum temperatures between the sites during the period of common observations (1943-53) was 0.2^oC with the airport being the warmer of the two.

For the airport site the January monthly mean maximum temperature for all years of record (1942-2012) is 36.2^oC. The monthly mean January maximum temperature for all years (1879-1953) at the Post Office is 0.3^oC cooler at 35.9^oC. The impression is that, when combined, we have a relatively homogeneous maximum temperature record for Alice Springs that spans 134 years.

The airport site is the basis for conclusions being drawn that warming has occurred during the second half of the 20th century. The 95th percentile for the monthly mean maximum temperature data is 39.0^oC; five years exceeded this value making the hottest Januarys 1994, 1999, 2004, 2006 and 2008, all in recent decades. The warmest year (2006 with a monthly mean of 40.0^oC) started with 12 consecutive days above 40^oC and with a subsequent 4 days above 40^oC. To date, 2013 is up with these previously hot months having experienced the first 14 days with temperatures reaching 40^oC or above. On these data alone one might conclude central Australia has been getting hotter.

The Post Office data, however, show a quite different picture. The 95th percentile value is 39.3^oC, or 0.3^oC warmer than for the airport. The hottest years from the Post Office record were 1879, 1881, 1887 and 1881, all in the late 19th century. The hottest year in the Post Office record was 1887 and had 11 days above 40^oC, a brief respite then another 10 days above 40^oC. Taken in isolation the Post Office record would suggest a very warm late 19th century with a cooling trend since.

When we plot the monthly mean data for both sites an extended pattern of cooling followed by warming emerges. Temperatures are now only recovering to the values of the late 19th century.

It is unfortunate that the Australian government has not considered it sufficiently important to digitise and make publicly accessible all of the meteorological records from earlier years. The Bureau of Meteorology website has a range of important statistics about changing climate but most are generated from data subsequent to 1910 and based on a digitised selection of those recorded. As a consequence, statements based on the post-1910 data that suggest an ongoing warming trend are incomplete and likely misleading.

There is fragmentary accessible data (such as the above for Alice Springs) and much anecdotal evidence to suggest that during the late 19th century over central Australia, western New South Wales and South West Queensland the temperatures were as warm as or warmer than for recent decades. Without ready access to the existing earlier meteorological data a faulty picture of a warming Australian climate is portrayed in official statements. However, based on the Alice Springs data, a coming period of cooling cannot be discounted.

William Kininmonth
Kew, Vic 3101
Australia

The Carbon Sense Coalition has created “The Gorbel Prize for Green Policies that have Inconvenient Outcomes”.

The Chairman of Carbon Sense, Mr Viv Forbes, said that so many green policies that appear to have useful environmental goals fail to analyse properly the long-term unforeseen consequences.

Quote:
Green politicians need to learn Newton’s Law of Government Regulations: – “Whenever government legislates to force an economic outcome, the long term effect will be equal and opposite to that intended.”

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the world of green politics, where laws designed to help the environment are harming the environment. To publicise this stupidity, the Carbon Sense Coalition has created “The Gorbel Prize for Green Policies that have Inconvenient Outcomes”.

The winner of the Inaugural Gorbel Prize is the UK government whose green policies aim to make it uneconomic to burn coal. So the tax-payer funded Green Investment Bank has loaned £100 million to help convert the huge Drax coal-burning power station in Yorkshire to burning “sustainable biomass”. This is part of a huge finance package of one billion pounds to get the biomass green tick, earn renewable energy subsidies, and avoid the need to buy carbon credits.

Where do they plan to get the “sustainable biomass”? Each year 7.5 million tonnes of wood chips will be imported from North American forests to replace 4.5 Mt of coal.

The land required to produce wood at this rate is immense – about three million acres of forest per year.

Also, wood is less dense than coal with less energy per tonne and a greater volume per tonne. Thus a greater tonnage and a far greater volume of wood have to be handled to get the same energy. This huge volume of wood has to be harvested, hauled, chipped, dried, trucked, shipped and stored using more carbon fuels – all to produce more expensive electricity.

There is one real benefit from the scheme. When the whole process is considered, using wood will put more carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere than using coal. This will make the forests grow faster.

The same goofy green policies that have pushed Drax into burning forests also apply in Australia. Maybe wood chips from our carbon credit forests will soon fuel Yallourn or Hazelwood power stations?

Such green stupidity will take us back to the BC era (before coal) when forests and hillsides were stripped bare of trees to fuel stoves, heaters, boilers, charcoal makers and smelters.

We would all be better off if Drax burned coal, produced cheap electricity, saved those forests and, to satisfy green dogma, planted a token forest of new trees.

For those who find the above unbelievable, here is one reference:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-25/biggest-english-polluter-spends-1-billion-to-burn-wood-energy.html

Another:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2290444/Madness-How-pay-billions-electricity-bills-Britains-biggest-power-station-switch-coal-wood-chips–wont-help-planet-jot.html

And here is a detailed report on combustion products from carbon fuels:
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/coal-combustion.pdf

Nominations are invited for future recipients of the Gorbel Prize.

Meanwhile, Al Gore gets $100 million from Big Oil. See:
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/010313-639260-gore-helps-oil-financed-anti-semitic-platform.htm

More:

• It’s Official – Carbon dioxide is non-Toxic
• Hobbling the Competition
• “Blue Skies are Falling” – a new climate soap opera
• Greedy Gas Giants Gazump Gullible Greens
• Climate Policies create Costly Electricity
• It’s Summer, Stupid, and it’s Usually Hot
• Count your Blessings – a Fairy Story
• The Last Word
• Lord Christopher Monckton is returning to Australia and New Zealand

Read the full report: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/gorbel-prize.pdf [PDF, 147KB]

Keywords: Gorbel Prize, Drax burning wood for electricity, costs of green energy, announcing climate disasters, gas giants gazump greens, electricity costs, heat wave alarms, energy blessings, Christopher Monckton.

Carbon is the essential building block for all living things.

But life cannot exist without energy.

The primary energy of the solar system is nuclear energy – it powers the sun which floods the Earth with solar radiation; other nuclear reactions release heat deep within the planet. But solar energy alone cannot create or sustain life.

Earth’s primeval atmosphere had three natural gases that contained the essential ingredients for the first plant life – carbon dioxide, the food for plants; water, the drink for plants; and ammonia, which probably supported the first primitive life forms. It also had methane, the first natural (non-fossil) hydro-carbon fuel. Ancient atmospheres had far more methane and carbon dioxide than is present today (but no runaway global warming).

Life emerged in water when primitive plants using solar energy and the magic of photosynthesis took carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to create sugars, fats and proteins in their leaves, stems, roots, seeds and fruits. Their exhaust product was another natural gas – oxygen.

Millions of years passed, and slowly the plants consumed carbon dioxide and added oxygen to the atmosphere.

Primitive animals then evolved; they used oxygen to extract carbon energy stored in plants. They consumed these carbon fuels and exhausted carbon dioxide. Life is truly a carbon equation.

Carbon fuels such as wood, biomass, coal and oil are essentially preserved organic materials that store solar energy. When burnt in air they release stored energy and exhaust the same valuable by-product – carbon dioxide.

The human race depends totally on carbon based foods that are derived from the gas of life, carbon dioxide, plus nitrogen, minerals and water. And since the invention of engines, humans have come to depend on reliable, efficient, energy-dense, portable carbon fuels to grow, harvest, transport, refrigerate, process, distribute and cook food. The exhaust product from all of these engines is an important stimulant to the growth of all plants.

Without carbon dioxide, no life would exist. And without carbon fuels, modern cities would starve within weeks.

A tax on carbon is thus a tax on life.

Viv Forbes

By Mike Williamson
12 January 2013

There has been much comment on our summer heatwave. This prompted a search for the history of temperatures in S.E. Queensland.

The longest continuous record of local temperatures was from Amberley: the data set was begun in late 1941 and is still active.

See: http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=36&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_c=&p_stn_num=040004

The record shows that the highest monthly mean maximum temperature for the month of January in each year was way back in 1942 and has not been surpassed since. (See Figure 1)

Figure 1 (click to enlarge)

The linear trend for the years 1942 to 2012, shows is a slight rise in the temperature trend. This is not surprising as the Earth’s temperatures have had several rising phases ever since the last Ice Age ended over 10,000 years ago.

The Amberley data shows that the highest mean maximum January temperatures appear to be fairly similar when they periodically occur. However the lower mean maximums appear to be creating the very slight upward trend.

This does not then appear to support the man-made global warming hypothesis since if carbon dioxide is retaining heat in the atmosphere it should do so at all temperature levels, whether high or low. If carbon dioxide is causing the heating, why is carbon dioxide rising steadily whereas temperatures are not?

A Short Observation on Bushfires

Grass, peat, leaves and timber all ignite at temperatures well above 40^oC. Even highly inflammable, easily ignitable, kerosene needs a spark exceeding 200^oC for combustion to be initiated. Therefore heat wave temperatures cannot cause fires. Something else ignited them. Once ignited, hot temperatures and high winds make the fires more severe, but something else ignited them.

[Mike Williamson is a Graduate Fuel Technologist/Chemical Engineer, with experience in minerals processing and applications of coal technology. He is now retired and has no connection with industry of any kind. As a self-funded retiree he relies upon lifetime savings for his quality of life in retirement. No one paid him or asked him to produce this.]