Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun digs up another issue with non peer reviewed World Wildlife Fund reports in the IPCC AR4. It turns out a new paper in GRL handily disputes the cause of the drought.
He writes:
Melbourne University alarmist David Karoly once claimed a rise in the Murray Darling Basin’s temperatures was “likely due to the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human acitivity” and:
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd grabbed the scare and exploited it:
BRENDAN Nelson was yesterday accused of being “blissfully immune” to the effects of climate change after he said the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin was not linked to global warming…
In parliament yesterday, Kevin Rudd attacked Dr Nelson, accusing him of ignoring scientific facts.
“You need to get with the science on this,” the Prime Minister said. “Look at the technical report put together by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.”
But the latest evidence shows that Rudd and Karoly were wrong. In fact, there’s no evidence in the Murray Darling drought of man-made warming, says a new study in Geophysical Research Letters, this new study:
Previous studies of the recent drought in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) have noted that low rainfall totals have been accompanied by anomalously high air temperatures. Subsequent studies have interpreted an identified trend in the residual timeseries of non-rainfall related temperature variability as a signal of anthropogenic change, further speculating that increased air temperature has exacerbated the drought through increasing evapotranspiration rates. In this study, we explore an alternative explanation of the recent increases in air temperature. This study demonstrates that significant misunderstanding of known processes of land surface – atmosphere interactions has led to the incorrect attribution of the causes of the anomalous temperatures, as well as significant misunderstanding of their impact on evaporation within the Murray-Darling Basin…
However, to accept the correlation [between temperature and rainfall] as the sole basis for the attribution of cause to human emissions is to implicitly assume that the correlation represents an entirely correct model of the sole driver of maximum air temperature. This is clearly not the case.
What’s causing the evaporation and temperatures is not (man-made) warming. It’s kind of the other way around: more sunshine, through lack of cloud cover, and lack of rain and therefore evaporation is causing higher temperatures.
And guess which scandal-ridden and alarmist IPCC report relied on Karoly’s claims? Reader Baa Humbug:
Karoly was cited very extensively in the AR4 WG1 paper.e.g. Chapter 9 9.4.2.3 Studies Based on Indices of Temperature Change and Temperature-Precipitation Relationships.”Studies based on indices of temperature change support the robust detection of human influence on continental-scale land areas. Observed trends in indices of North American continental scale temperature change, (including the regional mean, the mean land-ocean temperature contrast and the annual cycle) were found by Karoly et al. (2003) to be generally consistent with simulated trends under historical forcing from greenhouse gases and sulphate aerosols during the second half of the 20th century. In contrast, they find only a small likelihood of agreement with trends driven by natural forcing only during this period.
Not strictly on this thread, but more evidence of UK “Establishment” cover-up revealed.
Met Office Accused Of Suppressing IPCC Information
Mail on Sunday, 7 February 2010
The Meteorological Office is blocking public scrutiny of the central role played by its top climate scientist in a highly controversial report by the beleaguered United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Professor John Mitchell, the Met Office’s Director of Climate Science, shared responsibility for the most worrying headline in the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning IPCC report – that the Earth is now hotter than at any time in the past 1,300 years.
And he approved the inclusion in the report of the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph, showing centuries of level or declining temperatures until a steep 20th Century rise.
By the time the 2007 report was being written, the graph had been heavily criticised by climate sceptics who had shown it minimised the ‘medieval warm period’ around 1000AD, when the Vikings established farming settlements in Greenland.
In fact, according to some scientists, the planet was then as warm, or even warmer, than it is today.
Early drafts of the report were fiercely contested by official IPCC reviewers, who cited other scientific papers stating that the 1,300-year claim and the graph were inaccurate.
But the final version, approved by Prof Mitchell, the relevant chapter’s review editor, swept aside these concerns.
Now, the Met Office is refusing to disclose Prof Mitchell’s working papers and correspondence with his IPCC colleagues in response to requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act.
The block has been endorsed in writing by Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth – whose department has responsibility for the Met Office.
Documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveal that the Met Office’s stonewalling was part of a co-ordinated, legally questionable strategy by climate change academics linked with the IPCC to block access to outsiders.
Last month, the Information Commissioner ruled that scientists from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia – the source of the leaked ‘Warmergate’ emails – acted unlawfully in refusing FOI requests to share their data.
Some of the FOI requests made to them came from the same person who has made requests to the Met Office.
He is David Holland, an electrical engineer familiar with advanced statistics who has written several papers questioning orthodox thinking on global warming.
The Met Office’s first response to Mr Holland was a claim that Prof Mitchell’s records had been ‘deleted’ from its computers.
Later, officials admitted they did exist after all, but could not be disclosed because they were ‘personal’, and had nothing to do with the professor’s Met Office job.
Finally, they conceded that this too was misleading because Prof Mitchell had been paid by the Met Office for his IPCC work and had received Government expenses to travel to IPCC meetings.
The Met Office had even boasted of his role in a Press release when the report first came out.
But disclosure, they added, was still rejected on the grounds it would ‘inhibit the free and frank provision of advice or the free and frank provision of views’.
It would also ‘prejudice Britain’s relationship with an international organisation’ and thus be contrary to UK interests.
In a written response justifying the refusal dated August 20, 2008, Mr Ainsworth – then MoD Minister of State – used exactly the same language.
Mr Holland also filed a request for the papers kept by Sir Brian Hoskins of Reading University, who was the review editor of a different chapter of the IPCC report.
When this too was refused, Mr Holland used the Data Protection Act to obtain a copy of an email from Sir Brian to the university’s information officer.
The email, dated July 17, 2008 – when Mr Holland was also trying to get material from the Met Office and the CRU – provides clear evidence of a co-ordinated effort to hide data. Sir Brian wrote:
‘I have made enquiries and found that both the Met Office/MOD and UEA are resisting the FOI requests made by Holland. The latter are very relevant to us, as UK universities should speak with the same voice on this. I gather that they are using academic freedom as their reason.’
At the CRU, as the Warmergate emails reveal, its director, Dr Phil Jones (who is currently suspended), wrote to an American colleague:
‘[We are] still getting FOI requests as well as Reading. All our FOI officers have been in discussions and are now using the same exceptions – not to respond.’
Last night Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the affair further undermined the credibility of the IPCC and those associated with it. He said:‘It’s of critical importance that data such as this should be open. More importantly, the questions being raised about the hockey stick mean that we may have to reassess the climate history of the past 2,000 years.‘The attempt to make the medieval warm period disappear is being seriously weakened, and the claim that now is the warmest time for 1,300 years is no longer based on reliable evidence.’
Despite repeated requests, the MoD and Met Office failed to comment.
Copyright 2010, Mail on Sunday
Methinks Rudd should ‘get with the science on this’ and apologize to Brendan Nelson, not to mention the Australian people for leading them down a carbon tax track all the while singing loudly “The science is settled, the science is settled…”
The worst drought in Australian history was in 1850, which resulted in “Black Thurdsay”, on 6th February 1851.
http://home.iprimus.com.au/foo7/droughthistory.html
here is what the Murray River looked like in 1915:
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/wiki/Water_levels_in_the_Murray_River
I lost count of all the SUV’s… Is that a coal-fired power plant behind those river gums? It’s criminal how these ‘people’ continue to perpetrate this fraud.
Here’s a passage from Dorothea Mackellar [c.1908]:
…I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains…
this place was like that well before we got here… get the picture KRudd?
Rudd will ban Wattsupwiththat soon he is a real piece of work!.
Check these photos of the Murray River in 1914 and 2007…
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/wiki/Water_levels_in_the_Murray_River
You’ll know that AGW is really true when KRudd goes to the IMF to raise money to put the Sydney harbour Opera House on stilts.
Drum roll,
Com’on, someone do a cartoon, – please.
Not just robust, but zesty, too!
Okay, everyone I know in Australia who lives outside of the big cities knows that the problem is not climate, or weather, but gross mismanagement of water resources. Apparently dams are out of fashion. So everyone who opposes proper water management as practiced in every other first world country should be legally barred from complaining about drought or floods.
And a question for the hippy-generation politicians running the show: which is more important: the two-toed guppy moth you’re theoretically protecting, or your tax-paying voters?
Aaah I don’t think even their page numbering is right!
And I bet their reports are not even on recycled paper
Meanwhile, Professor Phil Jones from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit – the expert at the centre of the Climategate scandal – said he had considered suicide and had death threats over leaked emails which appeared to show scientists rigging the data. Prof Jones, 57, has stood down during a probe and accepts he should have worded some of his emails differently. But he added: “I stand 100 per cent behind the science. I did not manipulate or fabricate any data.”
———————————————————
I suppose that would depend on what your definition of ‘manipulate’ is.
well timed Anthony, I asked richard north to have a snoop as the africa gate disaster quotes seemed very close to whats waffled here, ie no crops in 50 years whatever..
“[21] The relative roles of air temperature and SSH on
evapotranspiration rates can be approximated through simple
calculations. The 2002 drought had an extra 1.5 hours of
bright sunshine per day than the 1952–2008 average.
( Amazing..and they know this? how?? I suspect simple is describing More than the calcs)
Using
the PBL model under wet land surface conditions and forced
with typical sunny conditions, the average actual evapotranspiration
was simulated. On average, an extra 1.5 hours of
bright sunshine, instead of the alternative cloudy conditions,
provides approximately 0.32mm of additional evapotranspiration.
In contrast, an increase in air temperature of 2degC
causes only an additional 0.076 mm of evapotranspiration
over the entire day.
Aw..whats the point of debating it , its bloody fiction anyway, using a model of wet surface? huh? if it was sunny it wouldnt be all that wet here for very long! average actual? simulation..
shhesh!
I will be so GLAD to see KRudd and Wrong OUT on their butts!
“House of Cards” – the problem has been constant BS amplification. 0.6°C over a hundred years just doesn’t get people on board so it gets ramped up to “worse than we thought” (nice and non-quantifiable) when that doesn’t work we get “X months to save the planet”. Manning up (or down) the data doesn’t matter – it’s all for a good cause. The problem is that after you “sex up” the results somebody comes along and adds their little bit before re-using them.
Drought in the MDB, floods in the MDB or MDB not doing much at all – anything will do if it supports the narrative.
I get the feeling that Vicky Pope saw this coming last year when she warned against ramping up the rhetoric too far. Eventually a card falls and the whole lot – good science and bad – tumbles.
“Prof Jones…. added: “I stand 100 per cent behind the science. I did not manipulate or fabricate any data.””
But how much did you hide, laddy?
Geoff Sherrington (01:24:58) :
‘The good Prof David would have a brain able to occupy a week long conference on psychiatry, to use the “Fawlty Towers” comment’.
Not kind, Geoff.
True….but not kind.
Sorry, a bit off topic, I know, but a “heads up”:
“You and Yours” tomorrow (BBC Radio 4) are inviting opinions about the public having been swayed for or against the AGW dogma in view of the recent IPCC revelations (and other things), if anyone is interested. Might be a good idea to deluge the biased-BBC with your comments and E mails…
Does this sound like every scientist that is quoted in IPCC has committed fraud to get AGW funding?
Re: Zorro (Feb 8 03:09),
Good one zorro. I’ll suggest that to Jo Nova. She is dapper with the toons
The logical trilemma involves dogma, circular reasoning, and the infinite regression. The IPCC and pals seem to have dogma and circular reasoning down pat. I wish they’d get around to working on an infinite regression. Keep ’em busy for a while.
“What are these “facts” you speak of, that you cite as proof, that you want people to accept”
“Facts are for losers.”
Stuart H (01:17:21) :
I also remember him from the ‘debate’ around the Great Global Warming Swindle. I also lost a lot of respect for Tony Jones that night.
Karoly was a disgrace to himself and science the way he presented himself that night. He was like a kid in a candy shop having a camera all to himself and wouldn’t stop and let others talk.
Incidentally, I just finished watching Q and A on ABC TV, where Kevin Rudd was asked questions by a group of young people. One young bloke got up and asked about if he is going to question the IPCC, and Rudd trotted out his ‘4000 scientists in white coats’ line. He also re-iterated his plans for an ETS and blamed the Senate for spoiling everything. I don’t think he plans to back away from his ETS anytime soon.
The couple of planted questions in the audience was sickening. The first one was ‘what’s your new election slogan going to be’. I just sped through until someone asked a real question (thanks Tivo for sparing me an hour of KR)
Patrick Davis (01:50:22) :
But in Western Australia, it’s worse than we thought.
http://www.watoday.com.au/environment/climate-change/wa-drought-could-be-worst-for-750-years-20100205-niee.html
The strange thing is that the Bureau of Meteorology seems to be completely unaware of this terrible drought:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/rain_maps.cgi?map=contours&variable=drought&area=aus&period=3month®ion=aus&time=latest
By the way, I wonder has there ever been as little drought as this map suggests in Australia in historical times?
Facts? Just the facts? Get yer data here at:
O & Al Gore’s Weather (OAGW): What’s this? “long duration”? “unusual snow storm”?
Who’s Izzi?
““The storm is going to be a little bit of an unusual snow storm because of the long duration that’s expected,” Izzi said.”
…-
“Blustery, lengthy storm could produce “blizzard-like” conditions”
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/2035498,winter-weather-chicago-snow-storm-020810.article
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/013302.html
Someone could write a whole book about IPCCGate.
As I understand it, rarely less than 20-25% of Australia on any given day is stressed with drought. So now the dry areas are displaying more drama to back up claims and blame.
If we didn’t have roads and romaing video cameras feeding this to TEEVEE< the problem would be prevented. Such was the case over 40 years ago.
The WWF just seems to keep surfacing in these reports. As more and more information comes to light, it will be interesting to see the extent of this group’s involvement.