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.
peer review?-rubbish. It is now blogosphere review. Scientists( I use the term loosely) and politicians beware. Move with the times. The people will find the truth despite your best efforts.
Exactly what part of the IPCC report is peer reviewed?
I happened to mention in another thread only yesterday that we in Oz were feeling a bit left out because there hadn’t been an Australiagate yet, and that there surely must be one lurking somewhere, possibly connected with droughts, and then bingo!
WUWT: The site that delivers. Cheers, Antony, and also to Andrew Bolt whom I also follow daily.
In any case, the likes of Karoly, Rudd, Tim Flanneller and their ilk are indubitably perfectly familiar with a piece of research released by the University of New South Wales last year.
http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/news/indian-ocean-drought/
This work discovered that it is the Indian Ocean Dipole that is the chief influencer of prolonged droughts in southern Australia, even more so than El Nino/La Nina cycles. Its positive and negative phases govern the strength and moisture content of winds that sweep down across the continent and deliver rain to grateful paddocks.
Imagine that – it is a vast tropical and equatorial ocean that is actually responsible for rainfall patterns across a continent that it laps against, when there was such an obvious candidate in plants’ favourite food. Who’d a thought it?
One could be forgiven for thinking that in the light of this revelation, those people still carrying on with their “poisonous carbon” nonsense are not just disingenuous, they’re cynical charlatans intent on subverting truth and science for their own publicly opaque but highly guessable agenda.
Tony Abbott – please, hurry up and force an election and save us from these people.
I think we should note that the “Team” could not discourage GRL from publishing this paper.
From the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8503397.stm
Apparently Galapagos sea-lions are moving to Peru, due to global warming?
Of course the IPCC has a true fact. The fact is that there is climate, The unfortunate TRUTH IS THAT THE POWERS THAT BE AT THE IPCC have no idea what the climate is, or what it is going to do, or why it is going to do it. Perhaps if they develop carpal tunnel and can’t use their key boards they will have to look outside for their information. Oops forgot they now have voice recognition capable computers. That presents a whole new problem.
Oh well there is that one fact there is climate. I guess that will have to do.
Bill Derryberry
Lockart et al 2009: “It is therefore clear that increased air temperatures play a relatively minor role in driving evapotranspiration.”
Did anyone look at wind as a factor?
Stuart H (01:17:21) :”…Mr Karoly…made me see the holes in the AGW science through (his) clearly agenda driven, biased, ranting and immature attitude….”
RealClimate was what nailed it for me.
OT: Someone asked on another thread why we should care if the arctic sea ice should disappear. Here’s a brand new study that gives some possible details of why:
http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Protecting_ocean_life/Cost%20of%20Warming%20Arctic-FINAL%202%205%2010.pdf?n=4808
At this rate of _______-gates, we will surely have our very own Canukgate soon enough. Where did they take their references about the polar bears?
It seems to be an 18-wheeler.
Karoly is the genius who uttered this gem on Realclimate last year:
“Of course, the impacts of anthropogenic climate change on bushfires in southeast Australia or elsewhere in the world are not new or unexpected. In 2007, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report WGII chapter “Australia and New Zealand” concluded
An increase in fire danger in Australia is likely to be associated with a reduced interval between fires, increased fire intensity, a decrease in fire extinguishments and faster fire spread. In south-east Australia, the frequency of very high and extreme fire danger days is likely to rise 4-25% by 2020 and 15-70% by 2050. “
This Rudd-fellow…… sounds almost like a politician from Norway? hehe
When I saw the words “robust” and “simulated” I knew there was something …..voodo’ish about it.
R. Gates (07:24:03),
I hope you know that Pew paper is a steaming pile of crap:
As the late, great John Daly points out, the North Pole has ice free cycles. It is nothing unusual, simply natural climate variability.
The Pew Trust has a heavy pro-AGW agenda. That’s why your citation talks about the Arctic, not the Antarctic — which is growing more ice.
There is a MASSIVE conflict of interest in the UK. If you knew that your pension was being invested in enterprises that would be practically worthless if the AGW scam was exposed, do you think you would be willing to run news or articles that would expose the scam? And what if running news and articles that pumped up the value of your pension investments – would they get an airing?
It’s now known that the BBC Pension Trust, the Environment Agency Pension Fund and the Universities Superannuation Scheme are members of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC). UK Media, UK Government and UK Universities! It’s almost unbelievable.
IIGCC for its part is bankrolled and controlled by The Climate Group, a very powerful – perhaps the most powerful – lobby group for the Green agenda. The Annual report 2005/6 of The Climate Group declares in the notes to the accounts:
“IIGCC: Funding to manage and facilitate the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, a network of pension funds and asset managers seeking to be active on climate change.”
And also
“In addition to these programmes, The Climate Group is supporting…the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), a network of 26 pension funds and asset managers focused on addressing climate risk. The membership of IIGCC voted unanimously to transfer the management of the group to The Climate Group in late 2005.”
The Climate group says of itself:
“we’ve created a coalition of governments and the world’s most influential businesses…Through this coalition, we’re helping to set the targets, create the policies, build the confidence, and generate the political willpower needed to make the changes the world requires…”
But it also extends down to the humble consumer:
“Together is The Climate Group’s consumer engagement campaign. First launched in the UK in April 2007, the campaign is the country’s leading climate change campaign.”
The Climate Group has the following principles:
“We believe…climate change is an urgent problem that requires an internationally coordinated, collaborative response directed at substantially reducing global GHG emissions…We will therefore strive…To achieve significant reductions in GHG emissions…exploring mechanisms such as emissions trading, policies and laws to facilitate this.”
There’s more here about the web that Robert Napier has spun (formerly of WWF, now head of the Met Office).
http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/eco-imperialism-every-environmentalists-dream/
In this post I asked the question why there hadn’t been a fuss kicked up about what Napier and his cronies have been up to. Now perhaps we know why – because peoples’ pensions rely on the myth of AGW being sustained. This state of affairs hasn’t just come about by chance. There can be no question that governments, the UN, and advocacy groups such as WWF have conspired to bring about this dreadful state of affairs.
OT: Quote of the day….
“Steve Stengel, director of communications for Nextera, said they [sic] company is undeterred by opposition and plans to press ahead with the project near Priceville.”
This, after a crowded room of 400 people screaming at the company to get out of their community (i.e. wind farms)
http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2437671
What gobbledygook. Why don’t they just say, “Look, whatever it is, YOU caused it. Now shall we place this on your Wallaby or Koalacard?”
Another example of the IPCC’s peerless non-review process at work. AR4 has turned out to be nothing more than a synthesis of the wild imaginations of journalists and politicians. The IPCC will go down in history as a science fiction and sex novel writers guild.
OK, hang on. I think we need to distinguish between two things. First, this is a legitimate scientific controversy where there are conflicting peer-reviewed papers. Yes, its true that IPCC always seems to take only the alarmist view when there is a conflict, and that’s a problem. And yes, its true that some of the peer-reviewed alarmist science is pure junk. But this situation should not be labeled a ‘-gate’ because the IPCC did rely on a peer-reviewed source.
The second situation is more serious, namely the use of non-peer reviewed sources (particularly the use of political advocacy literature) in preference to peer-reviewed sources in order to promote alarmism and to manipulate financial markets. We saw this with Glacier-gate, Amazon-gate, Africa-gate, Water-shortage-gate, Rising-cost-of-disaster-gate, etc.
Let’s not dilute the message by labeling issues that fall into category 1 with the ‘-gate’ meme. We should reserve this for only category 2 problems.
If anyone is interested, the 30 day weather forecast for the area covered by the Murray Darling Basin is one of exceptionally wet weather.
Maybe, this is co-incident with a sharp decline in the El Nino phenomenon.
Many years ago – early 1990’s, the NSW government had a project to build dams in more straegic locations. They succumbed to the AGW scare with fatalism and the projects never took off – they were told to get used to a future of more droughts, less rain, and consequently the dams would be useless. In fact, if you look at the rainfall statistics from the burea meterological pages, they have remained constant over the century.
It would have been good precaution to have continued with the dam project to capture rainwater, and not to have heeded so closely the dire prognostications.
Further to my earlier post, here is a link to a piece of blatant advocacy work to EU Heads of State.
http://www.iigcc.org/docs/PDF/Public/IIGCConEUEnergyandClimateChangepackage.pdf
There is a single signatory:
Peter Dunscombe
Chairman, IIGCC
Head of Pensions – Investments, BBC Pension Trust Ltd
I rest my case.
R. Gates (07:24:03) :
“OT: Someone asked on another thread why we should care if the arctic sea ice should disappear. Here’s a brand new study that gives some possible details of why:”
Sounds like they start with an assumption, then only look for problems. They never consider things like forest expansion, shorter shipping routes and even the possibility that open waters might have a significant negative feedback. The report is completely biased which makes it worthless. Are you always this easy to fool?
There’s hope yet, should this be verified. The climate change centre of the Uni of New South wales think they’ve hit on the cause that leads Australia to suffer from droughts. They say its the Indian Ocean dipole, so if they can predict what that will do, then they can plan where make farms and change water management
http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/news/indian-ocean-drought/
anyway, the drought in Oz at the moment isn’t considered by scientists to have been caused by so called “global warming”. A lot of it is water policy: precious water supply to sensitive industries has increased 20 fold – and diverted away from households. Fact. According to CSIRO, bushfires have been part of Australia for millions of years, and much of the vegetation evolved with fire and has characteristics that promotes its spread. They also think that the 20th century had higher than average rainfalls. (How they know that given the rather recent statistical record…).
here’s a recent extract of bushfires and why they happen
http://www.publish.csiro.au/samples/Grassfires%20sample.pdf
…particularly “A Historical perpective” and pages 3-4
the point being made about the impact of Europeans on bushfires which was a domain previously mastered by Aboriginals. However, there are no temperature records from this period. Now, given that there has been no warming at all in the southern hemisphere for at least the last 25 years (NASA CRUT< NOAHH) then regardless of the drought taking place at the moment, we can reasonably assume that the present one is not the most severe, and that it very likely before records began, temperatures could have been higher and heating periods more prolonged. Certainly throughout the southern hemisphere during the period 1868, some 50,000,000 were killed as the result of the drought in the southern hemisphere in a 3-4 year period that turned vast regions of Australia from greenland to desert and killed millions of livestock, and the bushfires burned for weeks.
Karoly’s paper was based on the same logical fallacy as the entire IPCC position: “We can’t explain what happened any other way, so our explanation must be true!”
The IPCC slogan should be: “Certainty through Ignorance!”
Of course, as the new GRL paper proves, there are other ways to explain what is observed, and those ‘other ways’ fit the observations and known science a whole lot better! The same is true for climate change as a whole. There have always been better explanations for the observed temperature changes, regionally and globally, than the AGW theory. Plus, the AGW theory can not explain Holocene climate change before the 20th century at all. Not only does the IPCC have to ignore the better explanations for recent climate change, it has to erase all evidence of historical change before the 20th century. So they are not just being ignorant, but willfully ignorant. That makes it a scam and a fraud, perpetrated on the the entire world, producing unprecedented cost and harm along the way!
Of course, I have also held a position against all evidence to the contrary. For a very long time, I believed that humans were more rational than irrational. I think I need to change my position on that one.