Or “Droughts and Extreme Weather are Nothing New.” by Dr Bill Johnson
Outpourings of climate bulldust over recent decades have been more alarming than changes in the climate.
Drought and above-average temperatures during recent El Niño-dominated years from 2001 to 2010 were deliberately and relentlessly marketed as global-warming. Driven incestuously by WWF and its Wentworth Group; green groups; Climate Commissioners; and a bunch of pretend-institutes, superlatives flew-up every greasy-pole out through talking-heads into the community’s ear.
Australians endured an endless chatter-based marketing campaign involving the ABC, CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology that intertwined CO2; the hot/critical decade; Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) “health”; and the carbon tax; grinding them into our national psyche. Science was reorganised with rivers of tax-payers cash enticing once-proud universities to lend brand to the cause. Every hot/cold/dry/wet day, clamouring professors popped out of disused broom-cupboards across the land, waving models and “new reports”. It was an overt scientifically-disingenuous beat-up.
John McDouall Stuart’s exploration as reported in South Australia Register, Jan. 15th 1861, “The thermometer stood yesterday, in the shade 128 deg; in the sun 173.” How did the Bureau of Meteorology Manage to lose the William Creek Data?
Maybe they should read the newspapers to see that it did exist, and it was very HOT! Watch the video here:
What determines surface temperature at any spot on earth?
Apart from a tad of geothermal heat and a wisp of heat from nuclear power generators, every bit of surface energy (including coal and biomass) comes directly or indirectly from the sun. There is no other source of surface heat – everything else just stores, releases or re-directs solar energy.
Surface heat is maximised when the sun is directly overhead, near a peak in the sunspot cycle and when Earth’s orbit comes closest to the sun (perihelion). The hottest places on earth will be found near the equator, after mid-day, in mid-summer, at perihelion and when there are no clouds in the sky to reflect solar radiation. Temperature will be maximised when there is no cooling wind and no nearby surface water or moist soils to cool things by evaporation. Since higher temperature also occurs at lower altitudes, one of the hottest places on earth is Death Valley, a desert below sea level, where the temperature can reach 56 °C on a mid-summer afternoon.
Frigid temperatures are found near the poles, where solar energy is weak. The coldest place on Earth is Vostok at high altitude in Antarctica where the air is very dry and where the temperature can go as low as minus 89 °C with a cloudless sky in the dead of winter.
Since both extremes could occur simultaneously, Earth’s maximum daily temperature range is thus up to 145 °C. But at any single place, the diurnal variation is more likely to be about 15-40 °C.
Carbon dioxide has no effect on any of the above temperature drivers – it generates no new heat, cannot affect latitude, solar orbits, sun spots, altitude, season, time of day, clouds or the proximity of water. All it can possibly do is encourage plant growth, and intercept, absorb and redirect a tiny bit radiant energy passing either way between the sun, Earth’s surface and space. But that effect is almost exhausted at current levels of carbon dioxide. Doubling the carbon dioxide content from 400 ppm to 800 ppm (which may take the next 100 years) might possibly increase surface temperatures by up to 2 °C – not even noticeable compared to the daily temperature ranges we cope with now.
Everyone can feel the powerful warmth of the rising sun, the variations between summer and winter, the moderating effect of clouds and the shock of hot and cold winds.
But even if carbon dioxide levels doubled overnight, most people on earth would not notice any difference.
Keywords: Temperature, sun, solar cycles, water, evaporation, clouds, wind, feedbacks, carbon dioxide, weather, heatwaves, data manipulation, green energy subsidies.
It is often said that many people do not read the minutes of the last meeting.
For days now we have been hearing, about “unprecedented heat” and record temperatures. Naturally the government science and media arms are quick to blame carbon dioxide or man-made global warming for this (and every other unusual weather event).
Three comments:
Firstly, when the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) reports a “record” temperature, they mean “since 1910 in BOM’s adjusted records”. They ignore all records earlier than 1910 on the excuse such records were not taken in the shade according to their method.
Secondly, they have “adjusted” their raw data for various reasons, and the adjustments have generally “cooled the past” thus increasing the apparent warming trend, and increasing the chances that a recent heat wave will produce “highest ever temperatures”.
Thirdly, neither the BOM nor their lazy media megaphones have learnt to look at the past as recorded in newspapers of the times.
Rick Dean has had such a look and his report, taken verbatim from newspapers of the times, shows that heatwaves (and associated bushfires) are nothing new. He records at least 24 heatwaves in Australia in the period 1886 to 1929. For example:
In 1895 at Bourke there were 66 deaths from heat apoplexy over a period of six weeks, during which time the heat was never under 114 degrees shade heat and, what was worse, never under 100 degrees at night. The maximum temperature recorded under true shade conditions was 128 DegF (53.3 DegC). In Sydney in Jan 1896 the temperature reached 131 DegF in the shade (55 DegC). Publications at the times recorded many earlier heat waves back to 1791.
The Carbon Sense Coalition today accused the UN Warsaw climate conference and some world media of callous exploitation of human suffering in the recent typhoon in order to promote their international carbon tax levelling plans.
The Chairman of Carbon Sense, Mr Viv Forbes, said that the leaders of the global warming scare campaign who are blaming the use of carbon fuels for Typhoon Haiyan should read their own IPCC scientific report which makes no such claim.
Damaging typhoons have been a fact of life in the Western Pacific for all of recorded history. In 1274, Japan was saved from invasion by Kublai Khan when a typhoon destroyed a huge Mongol invasion fleet. A second bigger fleet in 1281 was destroyed by another typhoon which was named Kamikaze or “divine wind” by the grateful Japanese. Typhoons were also frequent and severe during the Little Ice Age around 1670. (more…)
We are told, incessantly, that carbon dioxide is the main cause of global warming – it is not.
The primary source of surface heat is radiant energy from the sun. Minor heat comes from geothermal energy from volcanoes and hot rocks. Trivial quantities of local heat are brought to Earth’s surface by humans using stoves, cars, boilers, engines and factories powered by mined fuels such as coal, oil, gas and uranium. Even using “green” energy such as ethanol, wind or wood has a tiny temperature effect by transferring solar energy from farms and forests, to be released eventually as waste heat in cities.
Solar energy is more concentrated in equatorial areas and is moved pole-wards by the circulation of air (99.9% nitrogen, oxygen and argon), and by water and water vapour via evaporation, condensation and ocean currents. These processes are all driven by conduction, convection, latent heat and Earth’s rotation, not carbon dioxide. They are the major forces creating weather. Variations in solar cycles and cloud cover control longer term climate change.
Carbon dioxide plays almost no part in any of these dominant weather processes. Moreover, it does not burn, nor is it radioactive – it cannot produce heat.
More, as well as:
Spinning Carbon Scare Stories out of Nature’s Tornados
Keywords: Global warming, carbon dioxide, solar cycles, tornados, green energy in Europe, solar subsidies, renewable energy targets, blackouts, energy policy crisis, Green poison.
Tornadoes are a fact of life in USA, and the recent Moore, Oklahoma tornado is not unique – there have been many of similar strength and causing greater loss of life. For a summary on the statistics, politics and science of the latest American tornado see this report by Geoff Derrick using data from http://wattsupwiththat.com/.
Prominent climate alarmist James Hansen claims that the wisps of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere could melt all the ice caps, cause the ocean to boil and that would be the end for all of us.
Listen to the him trying to scare us witless:
Are we and the fishes and the corals in danger of being cooked?
The diagram below shows that the Pacific Ocean surface temperature is not rising – in fact it looks to be slowly turning into a cooling phase. The seasonal variations caused by the sun are obvious, but there is no correlation between this horizontal trend of temperature and the rising trend of the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere.
A recent report from friends who suffered terrible losses of buildings, fences, pasture and cattle in the Coonabarabran fire commenced with the ominous and oft-repeated message: “a raging fire came out of the National Park straight for us”.
There is only one way to limit fire damage – reduce the fuel available.
Fuel load can be reduced in three ways – by grazing animals, by planned small “cool” fires, or by mechanical reduction with slashers, mulchers or dozers.
Australia’s grassland landscape was created and managed by generations of Aborigines who were masters at using man’s most useful tool – fire. Every explorer from Abel Tasman (1642) and Captain Cook (1770) onwards noted the smoke in the sky and the burnt trees whenever they landed. This burning created the open grassland landscapes that dominated pre-European Australia. Aborigines lit fires continually, mainly to keep their fires sticks alight. Their small patchwork fires caused no permanent damage to the environment and fortuitously created and maintained the healthy grasslands and open forests on which many animals and Aborigines depended.
There have been two major changes to the tree/grass balance since European settlement. In the fertile well-watered coastal strip, large areas of thick scrub and open forest were logged and cleared for timber, farms, towns, roads, schools and the domesticated grasses of suburban lawns. Most of those trees have been displaced by those people who now, in ignorance, are also destroying the grasslands and remaining open forests by locking up land and preventing any form of regrowth control. Having destroyed much of the coastal forests and scrubs, they are now destroying the open forests and grasslands.
Misguided tree lovers and green politicians have locked the gates on ever-increasing areas of land for trees, parks, heritage, wilderness, habitat, weekend retreats, carbon sequestration etc. Never before on this ancient continent has anyone tried to ban land use or limit bushfires on certain land. The short-sighted policy of surrounding their massive land-banks with fences, locked gates, fire bans and exclusion of livestock has created a new alien environment in Australia. They have created tinder boxes where the growth of woody weeds and the accumulation of dead vegetation in eucalypt re-growth create the perfect environment for fierce fires.
Once ignited by lightning, carelessness, or arson, the inevitable fire-storms incinerate the park trees and wildlife, and then invade the unfortunate neighbouring properties. Many of today’s locked-up areas were created to sequester carbon to fulfil Kyoto obligations. Who pays the carbon tax on the carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere by wild fires? The green bureaucracies and politicians are clearly mis-managing their huge land-bank. Aborigines and graziers did a far better job. There should be a moratorium on locking up any more land and a return to sustainable management for existing land holdings.
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 40oC 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 0.2oC 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 36.2oC. The monthly mean January maximum temperature for all years (1879-1953) at the Post Office is 0.3oC cooler at 35.9oC. 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 39.0oC; 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 40.0oC) started with 12 consecutive days above 40oC and with a subsequent 4 days above 40oC. To date, 2013 is up with these previously hot months having experienced the first 14 days with temperatures reaching 40oC 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 39.3oC, or 0.3oC 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 40oC, a brief respite then another 10 days above 40oC. 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.
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