Notwithstanding a data gap from 1791 to 1859, there appears to have been little or no change in the trends of monthly maximum and minimum temperatures for a period of 230 years, from 1788 to 2018, based on comparisons of two data sets—one recorded by First Fleet officer William Dawes, and one from the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM).
Gergis et al 2009, authors of a major study and compilation of the data, conclude that “Remarkably, the records appear comparable with modern day measurements taken from Sydney Observatory Hill, displaying similar daily variability, a distinct seasonal cycle and considerable inter-annual variability.”
This runs counter to the climate alarmism normally published by these authors.
Bushfires are normal events in this season in tropical and sub-tropical latitudes of the southern hemisphere – in Australia, Africa and South America. Even Captain Cook noted many fires in Eastern Australia in 1770, long before the era of “global warming” hysteria.
What is unusual is the number and ferocity of recent Australian fires.
Destructive bushfires need three things – a big load of dry fuel, hot dry winds and a point of ignition.
A big load of dry fuel, close to towns and buildings, in this season, is a sign of gross mis-management (seen most commonly in public lands). That fuel should have been raked, dozed or burnt in safer weather conditions.
Hot dry winds are not unusual in this season in these latitudes – no use whinging.
But how do 100+ bushfires start suddenly? Machinery occasionally starts fires but not 120 fires in a short time. There have been no lightning storms so who are the arsonists or idiots starting these fires?
Viv Forbes
Viv Forbes and his wife Judy have spent a lifetime in the bush of Queensland and NT. They were both volunteers in a rural fire brigade for over 25 years. They have fought many bushfires and have seen several fires lit – some deliberately, some naturally, some carelessly. One careless fire burnt out their exploration camp in Arnhem Land, another accidental “fire with nine lives” threatened their grazing property in SE Qld, and a deliberate fire on another property cleared a lot of lantana and leaf litter from their property and also made the adjacent National Park a much safer neighbour.
Below is a true unpublished story about one fire we fought on our grazing property during the Millennium Drought. We hope you find it interesting:
“The Fire with Nine Lives”:
Late on Tuesday, Nov. 12, high tides from the surrounding lagoon surged onto the more than 100 islands that make up Venice, flooding 85% of the city and damaging artwork and many historic sites. The mayor blamed climate change for the flood. Jim Steele wrote an excellent article about the event and climate change. The Great Flood of 1966 was the worst on record. Since then, Venice has been working on the long-delayed MOSE project which was supposed to prevent flooding. High inflows to the Venice Lagoon from the Adriatic Sea are driven by the strength of the Sirocco and Bora winds that cause local sea level to surge. There has been no trend in the winds. Steele wrote “Dwarfing the 1.4 millimeters per year of estimated sea level rise, from 1930 to 1970 Venice sank at the rate of 2.3 millimeters per year, largely due to ground water extraction. After addressing that problem, the rate of sinking slowed, but Venice continues to sink at a rate of 1 millimeter per year.” The 1996 flood happened during a low tide and the 2019 flood during a high tide.
This document aims to contextualise the scientific debate concerning Climate Change (CC) and Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Examining Earth history, it is indisputable that CC has been operating for many hundreds of millions of years, in cycles that span many different time-scales (millennial-plus to decadal), all without human influence. Understanding the causative factors in past CC provides a solid basis for framing the present debate. AGW is a notion which says that human activities, notably the addition of CO2 to the atmosphere, are causing an increase in the global heat budget. That higher-energy state of Earth’s environment it is argued sets the stage for damaging CC effects. Political and economic decisions have been influenced by this claim. Some of those decisions harm efforts to better the health and welfare of the world’s population, including both the poorest and those who are better off. If the CC and AGW arguments are incorrectly based, as we outline here, there is a need to re-consider those decisions.
CC in Earth History
Paleo-temperature (of atmosphere and ocean) is taken as a proxy indicator of climate, since climate is a complex concept that includes precipitation amounts and patterns, wind, etc whose history and future cannot be extracted or classified in a satisfactory way
Earth’s equatorial region has had a consistent temperature during the climate swings over hundreds of millions of years, but the polar areas have varied, thus altering the pole-to-equator gradient of heat energy, which is the principal driver of climate on the planet
Causes of CC (changes in temperature gradients) are dominated by orbital and solar effects, with added signals from volcanoes (both dust and chemicals), tectonics and plate motions, and biological feedbacks
Oceans (which cover ~70% of the planet) are the main heat reservoir, but with patterns of warmer and colder water distributions that reveal decadal and longer cyclicity that is not understood
Global Warming
Earth’s temperature has been generally rising since the end of the last ice age, with an apparent acceleration during the last century, but not since
Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have also been rising more uniformly, now reaching 410ppm or 0.04% of atmosphere
CO2 has been identified as a ‘greenhouse gas’, based on an argument that it traps and reflects heat
The physics of CO2 heat retention are over-stated, as only a tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum (wavelengths of heat energies) can be captured by this molecule
Because CO2 concentration is rising and is implicated in global warming, and because CO2 is a by-product of combustion, energy sources from fossil fuels have been demonised – via social and political suppression of their use, and a push towards 100% renewable energy
There are three key challenges to the idea that CO2 is the primary cause of GW:
Long-term records of CO2 and temperature show good correlation, but the CO2 concentrations lag behind temperature increases by thousands of years. Thus, CO2 increase is the consequence of rising ocean temperature, not the cause
Numerical models of climate systems, which involve simplifying assumptions and methods that are associated with serious artefacts, consistently fail to ‘predict’ the known past temperature patterns. Such models cannot justify the suppression of hydrocarbon fuels.
Average temperatures are no longer increasing despite the inexorable rise of CO2
Human activities are not the driver of global warming (or cooling). Earth’s systems are governed by processes that operate over a wide range of time- and length-scales, many of which far exceed the usual scope of human perceptions. The demonization of carbon is scientifically unjustified.
There has been NO significant sea level rise in the harbour for the past 120 years, and what little there has been is about the height of a matchbox over a century.
Along the northern beaches of Sydney, at Collaroy there has been no suggestion of any sea level rise there for the past 140 years. Casual observations from Bondi Beach 1875 to the present also suggest the same benign situation.
A rush to judgement by local councils and State Governments by legislating harsh laws and building covenants along our coastlines now seems misplaced.
The falsehoods and mendacity of the IPCC and climate alarmists should be rejected out of hand, and efforts be made to ensure that science, not propaganda, defines our school curricula in matters of climate and sea levels
By Ian Plimer
The 27th COP event is preceded by breathtakingly shrill predictions of forthcoming disasters from speculated catastrophic climate change. Here are a few cold hard facts:
No one has ever proven that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming. For more than two decades I have been asking scientists for this proof. If proven, it would also have to be shown that natural carbon dioxide emissions, 97% of the annual total, don’t drive global warming. This also has never been done. Furthermore, if had been proven that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming, there would be endless citation of the dozen or so seminal scientific papers demonstrating this proof. Instead, there is obfuscation and deafening silence.
Continue reading at Quadrant: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2022/11/the-biggest-public-policy-disaster-in-a-lifetime/
By Sanjeev Sabhlok Senior leader and overseas coordinator of India’s Swarna Bharat Party
The Modi government has been shovelling scarce taxpayer resources into solar energy, with a further $6.5 billion promised till 2022. This is over and above indirect subsidies that people pay through higher electricity bills because of renewable energy certificates. And while Donald Trump did the right thing by walking out of the Paris Agreement, Mr Modi unthinkingly remains committed to it and Niti Ayog has been touting subsidised electric vehicles.
Our party disagrees with this approach. First, because we oppose subsidies for any industry. But second, because we believe there is a strong case to impose Pigovian taxes on solar energy given the economic and environmental harm it causes.
Solar energy can do a few useful things. It can power a radio in an off-grid location. But it can’t support our day-to-day life.
Just to keep you abreast of what is going on in France…
You may have heard of the Yellow Vests, who triggered our president Macron into embarking on a “Grand Debate”, mainly on the internet. It is mostly a closed questionnaire with circular arguments on the most surreptitious ways to shoehorn the energy transition, without offering to question its legitimacy in the first place. However, looking closely at the fine print, contributors like associations can still express an open opinion.
On our side Rémy Prud’homme is an emeritus professor of economics, former consultant to the OECD, occasionally to the World Bank, and visiting professor at the MIT. As such he is our chief economist within the steering committee of the French Climato-Réalistes. He came up with the attached “ENERGY TRANSITION IN FRANCE: USELESS, COSTLY, UNFAIR”, initially in French of course. See: https://saltbushclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/energy-transition-in-france.pdf [PDF, 346 KB]
We thought you may like to know that we Froggies are enduring the same attacks as everywhere in the western world and that we like to voice our concern.
Sympathetically yours,
Pierre Bouteille, on behalf of the French Climato-Réalistes
We live in the coldest period of the last 10,000 years”, says
glaciologist, Jørgen Peder Steffensen, who takes us back in time to the Greenland ice cores and reveals the secrets from the past.
There was the First Atlantic Warm Period about 7750 BC
Second Atlantic Warm Period about 7000 BC
First Saharan Warm period about 5800 BC
Second Saharan Warm Period about 5000 BC
Egyptian Warm period about 3200 BC
Sumerian Warm Period about 2200 BC
Minoan Warm Period about 1200 BC
Roman Warm Period about 0 BC
Mediaeval Warm Period about 1000 AD
Modern Warm Period about 2000 AD
All the warm periods prior to the current one have been warmer (in most cases substantially warmer) than the modern warming that we are having hysterics about.
There have been five significant Little Ice Ages scattered between these warm periods.
If you can explain how man-made carbon dioxide was the temperature driver for these events please go ahead and tell me.
Until you do there are, for me, better explanations, principally the magnetic field of the sun.
Roger Dewhurst
Roger is a retired geologist who spent much of his life studying climate history written in sedimentary rocks.
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