Australia has recently experienced a hot summer leading to calls of “global warming did”, but its actually been cooler than the time when the first convicts arrived in Australia back in 1790
Guest post by Craig Kelly MP
It’s been a scorcher. With the mercury soaring to 42.3 C in Sydney last week and the city in meltdown, the papers screamed, “This is climate change. It is here. It is real.” Even the taxpayer funded Climate Commission could not hide their excitement declaring, “it was hotter than before” and that “climate change” was responsible for the “unprecedented” extreme heat Sydneysiders were experiencing.
And with the satellites unable to detect any global warming for the last 16 years, and the IPCC computer modelled predictions failing to come to fruition, Labor Government ministers were quick to exploit the situation to claim the “extreme heat” was evidence of why the Carbon Tax was needed to “do the right thing by our children”. Yet they failed to detail how, when, or by how much (even to the nearest 0.0001 °C) that the Carbon Tax would change the temperature.
But I wonder if any of these people actually knew that Sydney’s so-called ‘record hot day’ on Tuesday 8th Jan this year, that had them screaming “Global Warming”, was actually COOLER than the weather experienced by the convicts of the First Fleet in Sydney way back in the summer of 1790/91 ?
For while the mercury peaked at 42.3 C last Tuesday at Observatory Hill in Sydney – more than 222 years ago at 1.00pm on the 27th Dec 1790 (measured at a location just stones-throw from Observatory Hill) the mercury hit 108.5 F (42.5 C) before peaking at 109 F (42.8 C) at 2.20pm.
The extreme heat of Sydney’s summer of 1790/91 is detailed by Watkins Tench (1758 –1833) in his book ‘A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson’ published in 1793. (Available to download from the internet for free, here).
Watkins Tench was British marine officer whom accompanied 88 male and 20 female convicts on the First Fleet ship the Charlotte which arrived in Botany Bay 20th January 1788. Watkins then stayed in Sydney until December 1791 when we sailed home to Britain and later went on to fight in the Napoleonic Wars where after a naval battle he was taken prisoner by the French and imprisoned on a ship in Brest Harbor.
Of Sydney’s weather of 27th December 1790, when the mercury hit 42.8 C (109 F), half a degree Celsius higher than last Tuesday, Tench wrote; “it felt like the blast of a heated oven”. But the extreme heat wasn’t restricted to the 27th Dec 1790. The following day the temperature again surpassed the old 100 Fahrenheit mark, hitting 40.3C (104.5 F) at 12.30pm.
And later that same summer, in February 1791, the temperature in Sydney was recorded at 42.2 C (108 F). Tench commented;
“But even this heat [of 27th Dec 1790] was judged to be far exceeded in the latter end of the following February, when the north-west wind again set in, and blew with great violence for three days. At Sydney, it [the temperature] fell short by one degree of what I have just recorded [109F]: but at Rose Hill, [modern day Parramatta] it was allowed, by every person, to surpass all that they had before felt, either there, or in any other part of the world. Unluckily they had no thermometer to ascertain its precise height.”
Tench also speculated on the cause of the extreme heat of the summer of 1790/91, and he didn’t blame global warming, coal mining, or failure to pay homage to a pagan god. Tench deduced;
“Were I asked the cause of this intolerable heat, I should not hesitate to pronounce, that it was occasioned by the wind blowing over immense deserts, which, I doubt not, exist in a north-west direction from Port Jackson, and not from fires kindled by the natives.”
Now global warming devotees may be sceptical of Tench’s records. After all, scepticism is a healthy thing. They may even seek to deny Tench’s measurements and have them purged from our history, sent down a memory hole – as the global warming texts & prophesies deem it heresy for it to have been warmer in Sydney way back in summer of 1790/91 than it is in the ‘unprecedented’ extreme heat of Sydney’s ‘globally warmed’ summer of 2012/13.
However, Tench’s meteorological recordings were undertaken following strict scientific procedure using a “large thermometer” made by Ramsden, England’s leading scientific instrument maker of the day. Tench also left a message for those that might seek to question the accuracy of the records;
“This remark I feel necessary, as there were methods used by some persons in the colony, both for estimating the degree of heat, and for ascertaining the cause of its production, which I deem equally unfair and unphilosophical. The thermometer, whence my observations were constantly made, was hung in the open air, in a southern aspect, never reached by the rays of the sun, at the distance of several feet above the ground.”
It also worth noting that in 1790, Sydney (population 1,715) was still surrounded by mostly natural bushland, where modern day Observatory Hill in Sydney (population 4,627,000) is now surrounded by the concrete, steel and glass of a modern city, not to mention the tens of thousands of air-conditioners pumping out hot air into the surrounding streets, nor the 160,000 cars & trucks that cross the Sydney Harbor Bridge daily and pass within 100 meters of Observatory Hill.
Further, the contemporaneous notes of the day concur with the empirical measurements. Lieutenant-Governor David Collins (1756-1810), in his book ‘An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales’ published in 1798 also commented on the incredible effect of the extreme heat of 1790/91 summer on the local wildlife:
“Fresh water was indeed everywhere very scarce, most of the streams or runs about the cove being dried up. At Rose Hill [Parammatta], the heat on the tenth and eleventh of the month, on which days at Sydney the thermometer stood in the shade at 105°F [40.6°C], was so excessive (being much increased by the fires in the adjoining woods), that immense numbers of the large fox bat were seen hanging at the boughs of trees, and dropping into the water… during the excessive heat many dropped dead while on the wing… In several parts of the harbour the ground was covered with different sorts of small birds, some dead, and others gasping for water.”
Tench also recorded the effects of the extreme heat of Feb 1791;
“An immense flight of bats, driven before the wind, covered all the trees around the settlement, whence they every moment dropped dead, or in a dying state, unable longer to endure the burning state of the atmosphere. Nor did the perroquettes, [parrots] though tropical birds, bear it better; the ground was strewed with them in the same condition as the bats.”
And even Governor Arthur Philip noted the effects of the extreme heat of the summer of 1790/91;
“from the numbers [of dead bats] that fell into the brook at Rose Hill [Parramatta], the water was tainted for several days, and it was supposed that more than twenty thousand of them were seen within the space of one mile.”
Yet 222 years later, reports of the mass death of birds and bats are more like to come from those sliced & diced by industrial steel wind turbines, than the heat.
Finally, Watkins Tench concluded on ‘climate change’ in Sydney back in 1790’s;
“My other remarks on the climate [of Sydney] will be short; it is changeable beyond any other I ever heard of”
Fortunately for the convicts and settlers of the new colony, Governor Arthur Philip and later Governors didn’t believe they could change that with a new tax.
===============================================================
Addendum from Anthony: Readers may also find my investigation into the thermometer at Observatory hill interesting: Sydney’s historic weather station: 150 meters makes all the difference.
Note also the current placement of the BoM weather station at Observatory Hill is surrounded by heat sinks. Here are my photos from June 2010.
Click for a larger image
Note how the BoM thermometer shelter is completely surrounded by urban heat sinks and wind breaks.
A 1972 study by meteorologists Rosea Kemp and John Armstrong found that since 1918 Sydney’s average annual maximum temperature, as recorded at the new site, was 0.7 degrees warmer than the average at the old site. Winter averages were up 1.6 degrees.
The old thermometer shelter at the observatory is the pyramid shaped slatted object at the left side of this photo:
It was more exposed to the breezes of the bay than the current location.
UPDATE: Reader kalsel3294 notes support for drought and high temperatures from 1789-1796 in the peer reviewed literature:
A quick search found this research regarding the South Asian monsoon noting the great drought in India of 1790 to 1796, noting also how the reduction in rainfall in 1789 preceded by a year droughts in “Australia, Mexico, the Atlantic Islands and southern Africa” A High-Resolution Millennial Record of the South Asian Monsoon …
http://bprc.osu.edu/Icecore/LGT00-3.pdf
Weather is not climate
Phew!
The foundation that Cagw is built on, that temperatures are higher now than ever before, is very shaky.
It would be interesting to see if those conditions in 1790 correlate with any records available for the timing of the arrival of the monsoon season in the areas to our north.
Real cause of our bushfires down under:
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2013/01/the-fires-the-greens-make-us-have
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/01/in-australia-if-you-try-to-clear-a-firebreak-on-your-land-you-could-go-to-gaol/
Leif Svalgaard says: January 14, 2013 at 7:02 am
Weather is not climate
“Weather differs from climate in that the latter includes the synthesis of weather conditions that have prevailed over a given area during a long time period—generally 30 years” – Britannica
30 years of weather is climate.
So weather is climate after all.
Anthony, do you have an estimate of of how much UHI adds to the current temperature?
2 degrees?
5 degrees?
Certainly in the UK cities are much warmer than the surrounding countryside.
A quick search found this research regarding the South Asian monsoon noting the great drought in India of 1790 to 1796, noting also how the reduction in rainfall in 1789 preceded by a year droughts in “Australia, Mexico, the Alantic Islands and southern Africa”
A High-Resolution Millennial Record of the South Asian Monsoon …
http://bprc.osu.edu/Icecore/LGT00-3.pdf
Heat sinks?
A sink consumes something. A source produces something. An air conditioner would act as a heat source for an outside thermometer. ie. by producing heat it makes the thermometer read higher than it otherwise would.
And also, climate is the statistical artifact of weather–that is, it’s weather that makes climate, and not the other way around.
From what Jo and others have discovered about CISRO over the years, I am surprised those 1790s-and-up records have not already been altered / purged.
Skeptical Science have put up a debunking of “warming has stopped for 16 years”, inspite of the UK MET Office admitting this is the case and adjusting their projections accordingly.
Looking forward to the counter point.
Leif, weather is not climate unless it’s hot, then it’s climate.
It’s not the skeptics who keep incorrectly equating weather and climate. It’s the people claiming this year’s and last year’s heatwaves are evidence of global warming who are guilty of this.
Beautiful. the AGW crowd does not remember history .The argument is that people in olden times
were: 1. inaccurate
2.ignorant
3. Not as “evolved”
Yet in my sailing days (not nearly as extensive as Willis’) I found that the “Lady Washington”
the Replica ship of Captain Gray’s expedition is faster under sail than power or even power and
sail .The Great “Tea Clippers could out run most steam ships of the day. The age of enlightenment was the real flowering of scientific curiosity .Instead of forward we seem to be going backwark into a rigid, near, inquisitional mindset that is not unlike the “Scientists” of the day that berated Galileo (who was niled because of “consensus” as much as dogma.)..
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 14, 2013 at 7:02 am
Weather is not climate
===========================
so which is it that we’re trying to control?
Who you gonna believe, a history book or a government spokesman. History can be sooooo inconvenient.
More Soylent Green~ Eh, they’re just taking a Leif out of the Skeptic’s playbook…
(sorry, have to get the puns in where I can!)
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 14, 2013 at 7:02 am
>>Weather is not climate<<
Not sure I see why you post that? – are you implying that the article is about weather conditions instead of climate? or that the article is trying to say that climate hasn't changed in some way?
I see it quite clearly as an article stating that past recorded temperatures were higher than those of the recent heatwave which suggests that the recent heatwave is indeed 'weather' and NOT climate (change)? The warmista like to use all and every possible 'record' as evidence of the AGW scam – when in reality, these may not be actual 'records' at all.
‘Now global warming devotees may be sceptical of Tench’s records. After all, scepticism is a healthy thing. They may even seek to deny Tench’s measurements and have them purged from our history, sent down a memory hole – as the global warming texts & prophesies deem it heresy for it to have been warmer in Sydney way back in summer of 1790/91 than it is in the ‘unprecedented’ extreme heat of Sydney’s ‘globally warmed’ summer of 2012/13.
######################
a skeptic would ask these questions.
1. was the thermometer properly calibrated.
2. since this was prior to the days of CRS can we trust it.
I find it amusing that people who question records prior to the invention of the CRS, so willingly accept them when they like the story.
@Mosher And I find it amusing that your BEST team unquestioningly uses pre CRS records without regard to exposure provenance.
Note also the update, there’s some paleo support for the Tench event. No doubt the uncertainty is higher for that 1790 reading, as evidenced by the larger swings seen if data prior to the invention of the CRS/Stevenson Screen in 1890. One wonders though, why your BEST data uses such readings back to 1760 without questioning exposure at all. In this case, we have a description of exposure from Tench, whereas the majority of records that BEST uses have no such provenance. Tench’s description of exposure and shading would eliminate about 90-95% of the daytime bias, but would not eliminate any nighttime bias due to IR. But, we aren’t talking about a nighttime reading or an average. We are talking about a daytime high temperature. I have a higher confidence in the high than I would the low or the average, because the main bias (sunlight) has been removed.
I can’t speak to the calibration of the thermometer, but neither can you nor can BEST in all those pre-CRS readings they used. Note that other datasets plotted in comparison don’t use those numbers.
I brought up this subject to Muller when I visited him at his home, and he’s dismissed the issue with a wave of the hand, since he was going for a dog and pony show in front of Congress rather than real science. No wonder they still have no peer reviewed papers published.
What’s good for the Goose is good for the gander ‘eh Mosh? I look forward to BEST addressing the pre-CRS exposure issues instead of playing drive by sniper.
“It was more exposed to the breezes of the bay than the current location.”
That may be, but similar to Oregon’s new AGW winds that are causing upwelling, hypoxia and ocean dead zones those Australian bay breezes are different and are now contributing to global warming.
All of which is consistent with Climate Models.
See how easy it is to be purposefully mendacious? Or delusional?
That’s where we’ve arrived in the Climate War. There’s barely anything we laypeople can do but apply mockery and sarcasm to the AGW devotees.
These two current stories below in the Seattle and Portland newspapers have brought out the devotees and their pandemonium of deceit and delusion.
This in particular is laughable:
“City agencies are calculating the local effects of climate change and how to respond and adapt to protect people and infrastructure, The Seattle Times reported.”
Primarily because their idea of preparing for climate involves no more than raising taxes and keeping the bureaucrats busying pondering things.
In reality it’s all a do nothing plan while perpetually pretending to be preparing to do something yet to be defined. some yet to be defined time in the future when they are certain adapting must begin.
The comment battles are just rich.
http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2013/01/global_warming_will_decrease_n.html
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2013/01/seattle_officials_calculating.html#incart_river
Same here in Philly. I have two temperature records stored on my computer. One is monthly weather statistics starting in 1790 and ending in 1846 (from a book published in 1847), the second a continuous daily record of average high, average low, and precipitation data starting from 1874 up to the current day I got from the Franklin Institute.
Every time the news proclaims some record event I like to look it up in those records. For example, lately our high temps have been in the 50’s. Sounds warm for a winter? Probably even unprecedented? Well, there have been 348 times that tempeartures in January have been greater than 55F in the month of January (~4% of the time). And there have been 12 days at or above 70F since 1874. One of the earliest warm days was Jan 12, 1890 with a high of 72F and a low of 40F.
Can you imagine the proclimations of Thermageddon(tm) if Philly would hit 72F by then end of this month???? Yet it has happened a dozen times in the past 122 years
Why can’t these guys check a little of the historical archives once in awhile?
Steven Mosher:
At January 14, 2013 at 8:04 am you say
I suspect the thermometer was correctly calibrated because its specification and manufacturer are known. However, that is not the main point.
The report says there are several documented accounts of very large numbers of bats and parrots being killed by the high temperature. Similar effects on wild life are not reported for the recent heat wave, and this is strong supporting evidence that the 1790 heatwave was hotter. Unless, of course, you have evidence to the contrary?
Richard
vukcevic says:
January 14, 2013 at 7:32 am
So weather is climate after all.
More of your usual nonsense.
For those who believe recent Australian droughts and flooding rains are unprecedented, look at this 1868 Sydney newspaper clipping:
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/printArticleJpg/60828173/3?print=y
Now we are producing a lot more heat than back then and in a temperature inversion it will hang around at low levels.
Good point Mosher. Give it a few degrees of uncertainty and it’s still pretty darn close isn’t it or not?
And that’s the point. Who gives a rat if it is 0.8c out…
From “A Meteorological Account of the Weather in Philadelphia from January 1, 1790 to January 1, 1847” by Charles Peirce, Philadelphia, Lindsay & Blakiston, 1847.
http://books.google.com/books?id=yXkWAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=philadelphia+weather&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GC_0UIbPNcXv0QGJ_ICwCA&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAQ
“January, 1790. The average or medium temperature of this month was 44 degrees. This is the mildest month of January on record. Fogs prevailed very much in the morning, but a hot sun soon dispersed them, and the mercury often ran up to 70 in the shade, at mid-day. Boys were often seen swimming in the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. There were frequent showers as in April, some of which accompanied by thunder and lightning. The uncommon mildness of the weather continued until the 7th of February.”
Now if people were swimming in the Delaware and Schuykill rivers today there would be a massive media blitz and everyone would be proclaiming Globall Warming. Yet that’s the way it was in January 1790.
Steven Mosher is correct in his comment at 8:04am: The real temperature in 1790 might have been even hotter than what was written down. The piles of dead bats and birds seem to attest to that.
“This basic knowledge (with which all real climatologists ought to be thoroughly familiar) about the real mechanisms of meteorological phenomena, and about the processes whereby climatic modifications are transmitted, is necessary for the analysis and understanding of climatic evolution, across all scales of intensity, space and time. To sum up, our subject is the clarification end explanation of the dynamics of weather and climate, past and present, in order to be able to delineate the probable scenario for the near future.”
Marcel Leroux, Dynamic Analysis of Weather and Climate, 2nd English Ed. 2010
Good find Mr. Kelly.
It was part of a larger pattern. The full text of this paper is available online.
See also: Doji bara famine
And then there’s the hockey stick…
Mann’s hockey stick ends with the largest El Niño of the 20th century. The raw unsmoothed data shows a huge spike (the blade -suggestive of exponential growth). Yet he nowhere in his paper does he mention that 1998 was an El Niño year. Although he does talk about El Niños including the “1791” (1789-83) one. Neither the 1790 or 1998 El Niños show up particularly strongly in the English instrumental temperature record (about the only one that goes back that far).
I think I know why El Niños don’t show up in Mann’s predominantly tree-ring based temperature reconstruction and why they don’t likewise even add to the long-term average temperature in his ‘shaft’. I think Mann does too. That is the greatest fraud of the hockey stick. But another time.
vukcevic
January 14, 2013 at 7:32 am
###
The Sonoran Desert is created by its unique climate which in turn supports the unique plant community that gives its biological definition. The climate is characterized by two rainy seasons, the summer monsoonal flow from the Gulf of Mexico, and the winter flows from the Pacific. It is this pattern that makes the Sonoran possible.
Your definition of climate is too simplistic. Climate is closer to being about the pattern of the average weather regime throughout a mythical average year. Climate is NOT weather, not even average weather.
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
Obviously the result of global warming brought about by all those cars and heavy industry brought by the prisoners… long before they were invented. Remember: “weather is not climate.”
Steven Mosher says: January 14, 2013 at 8:04 am
“….a skeptic would ask these questions.
1. was the thermometer properly calibrated.
2. since this was prior to the days of CRS can we trust it….”
I’d suggest the “dead bird calibration method” may have indicated there was some accuracy to the observations, Steve. (Ya bluddy nong!)
This is the very stuff that sent my on my skeptical path …. proclamations of newer high temperature and bigger fires and worse droughts …when old-timers were telling me they have seen all this before. And now, those old-timers are fading away, but with the Internet, we can find old news reports with intricate details of the extremes of earlier times.
Tales of dead birds and dry riverbeds need not be subject to calibration and adjustment to tell the story.
Steven Mosher wrote:
A skeptic would also ask why one has to go to a blog run by one honest individual, operating on a meagre budget, to get honest and detailed information, backed up with links to credible sources, about extreme weather precedents, rather than reading about it in the mainstream media or the IPCC reports.
Why should we trust the account of Watkins Tench more than those of the IPCC?
That’s easy, Tench, and people like him from times past, are beyond suspicion of having an agenda to promote a theory of man-made global warming.
——————–
markx wrote:
Cracked me up. Perhaps Mosher believes those dead parrots were just resting or pining for the fjords : )
I can hardly blame the Alarmists for whooping it up when they get a chance, for they are not getting all that many chances. However I think people are now starting to roll their eyes a bit when they do so.
For example, yesterday Alarmists had a chance to whoop it up because warm air flooded up the East Coast, and it was a degree warmer than it has ever been recorded atop Mount Washington, in January. However the short article about the event also mentioned the California chill, mentioning it was colder in Phoenix than atop Mount Washington, and also the meteorologist atop Mount Washington downplayed the thaw slightly by mentioning the coming arctic blast.
For those interested in watching the arctic blast develop, I highly recommend Dr. Ryan Maue’s twitter commentary, (and I don’t like twitter.) He includes links to amazing maps and charts which I think he largely creates himself.
http://twitter.com/RyanMaue
Here is a map of the arctic outbreak, as seen by a computer model, early next week.
http://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/290359265191931904/photo/1
@DesertYote
You are right. And that’s why it is meaningless to average Sonoran weather measures with those from other microclimates.
Out of interest, is the general concensus that the LIA had less effect on Australia/the Southern Hemisphere or does this suggest that, even in LIAs, huge temperature variations were possible??
If you don’t know where you are coming from you have no way to figure out where you are going.
Also out of interest, the third hottest July in the CET temperature record was in 1783, at 18.8C.
The 2006 record of 19.7C and the 1983 level of 19.5C are so much hotter than anything else it makes you wonder what drove them. The latter probably the El Niño. 2006, dunno.
Out of interest there are 20 years where temperature was > 18C but < 19C. Of those 20, 10 were before 1800 and ten were subsequent. This represents somewhat under 7% of the total records.
Two were higher.
Does suggest there hasn't been a radical shift in extreme July temperatures in the past 350 years in Central England, doesn't it??
There may have been a lower-level generalised warming though……
Rhys Jaggar:
At January 14, 2013 at 9:28 am you ask
The data matters and consensus does not.
There is much evidence that
(a) the LIA was colder than now as a global average
and
(b) e.g. the MWP was warmer than now as a global average
and
(c) the LIA and the MWP were world-wide (i.e. they were global events).
But at locations there were very hot weather events in the LIA.
Now (i.e. a global warm period) there are locations which have recently had very cold weather events.
Weather is not climate. The totality of all weather events provides climate.
Richard
Here the anecdotal evidence serves to confirm. In m yown experience, a heat wave some ten years ago wiped out the passerine birds of the area. For three days running the thermometer reached 108 F. Except for crows and vultures, not a bird remained alive. It took months for avian immigration to re-populate the area.
Such anecdotal evidence given in the above post of Craig Kelly, Member for Hughes, NSW, serves very well to confirm that a thermometer made by Jesse Ramsden of London was reliable.
According to Australia’s Weatherzone the record temperature for Sydney occurred on January 14th 1939 at 45.3 degrees C.
Oops, I forgot the link for Sydney’s official temperature record. There are lots of them.
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=weatherzone%20record%20temperature%20sydney%20january%201939&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&sqi=2&ved=0CEAQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fm.weatherzone.com.au%2Fnsw%2Fsydney%2Fsydney%2Falmanac&ei=JVD0UJ__Fu2S0QWeqoD4Dg&usg=AFQjCNHXBZYHtgblc-Hn1dTx5eqdVC2tqA
markx – you did it again – you sent me back to my Australian/English dictionary, an essential tool during my time in Australia if I were to be sure what my workmates were actually telling me:
nong: a simpleton or fool (imported from New Guinea pidgin by soldiers returning from WW II)
Perhaps all those dead bats and parrots were incorrectly calibrated.
I’m willing to bet there was a lot less UHI in Syndey back in 1790.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 14, 2013 at 7:02 am
Weather is not climate
—
That’s only true for cold weather.
Anthony Watts: invention of the CRS/Stevenson Screen in 1890.
Immediately thought of the SS peeking over the roof of San Luis Obispo’s Andrews hotel in an 1886 picture. So I googled around and I find that most sources trace the invention back to the mid 1860s. Thomas Stevenson died in 1887.
Thou shalt not trust speech recognition software.
: > )
Steven Mosher says:
January 14, 2013 at 8:04 am
—-
I have seen very few people comment on lack of calibration for older records.
The complain has been the inconsistency with which those records were kept and the incompleteness of them in regards to the immediate surroundings.
Cold kills birds too! We have purple martins that return from Brazil to Minnesota to nest at our lake cabin each year. March of 2007 was very warm and the martins who depend entirely on insects for food came back too early. Most of our colony was wiped out when snow storms hit in April. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/special-reports/2007-apr-cold-event.html It took a couple of years for the population to recover. Birds are pretty tough though- yesterday I saw a robin eating frozen crab apples and it was 4 degrees F.
“Perhaps Mosher believes those dead parrots were just resting ”
Why does this remind me of a classic Monty Python skit?
Inversion?
Definition follows
– – – – – – – – –
Inversion (meteorology)
A temperature inversion is a meteorological phenomenon in which air temperature increases with height for some distance above the ground, as opposed to the normal decrease in temperature with height [i.e. normal is *warmer at ground level* and cooler aloft].
– – – – – – – – –
So … how does “producing a lot more heat” at ground level generate/contribute to an inversion?
Reiterating again, warm at ground level is the norm, the ‘inversion’ is the anomaly with warm air aloft capping the cooler air (and possible contaminates) below … ‘mixing’ will not occur between the low and cool air and the warmer air aloft during an inversion … adding sunlight will reverse this to normal conditions i.e. warm at the ground and cooler aloft …
.
Craig Kelly, a great Australian Federal Pollie who stood up in Parliament and had this to say about the Ginger Witch’s Carbon Tax:
http://galileomovement.com.au/blog/?p=158
Jim says:
January 14, 2013 at 10:56 am
Cold kills birds too! …
There’s a historic diary from the Gold Rush in California that recounts an extremely cold event in the Sierras – at Johnsville IIRC – at an elevation of about 5100 feet. The traveler, and his horse, sheltered in an empty cabin overnight due to the cold. When he went to sleep there were numerous small birds perching on joists below the roof. He was awakened by little frozen corpses falling on him.
Would stripping out the urban heat island effect have made it even cooler?
Latitude says:
January 14, 2013 at 7:50 am
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 14, 2013 at 7:02 am
Weather is not climate
===========================
so which is it that we’re trying to control?
Answer: The people
Heat sinks wouldn’t have mattered on Friday and Saturday. Where I live t Newcastle we got 40 and 44 degrees and it was like standing in front of a giant hairdryer with the north westerly blowing. On Saturday afternoon the southerly came in and the temp dropped 20C in about 1 hour. What a change.
Australia has come a long way since 1790 – they started out with crooks being the requirement for joining their general population and now they have crooks being the basis for membership in their government.
Two can play silly record hot/cold games. Global cooling is here and it’s real. /sarc
The Leif put it “Weather is not climate”
Australia is a land of extremes with droughts, floods and heatwaves coming naturally.
http://home.iprimus.com.au/foo7/droughthistory.html
http://australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/natural-disasters
Heatwaves in Australia
Australia has a long history of heatwaves. The worst recorded heatwave was in 1939 when 438 people died. This heatwave affected South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.
Heatwaves have accounted for more deaths in Australia than any other climatic event. Some of the worst heatwaves on record are below:
January 1896 – 437 people died
January 1908 – 246 people died
February 1921 – 147 people died
January 1927 – 130 people died
January 1939 – 438 people died
February 1959 – 105 people died
January 1973 – 26 people died
February 1981 – 15 people died
February 1993 – 17 people died
February 2004 – 12 people died.
The highest temperature in Australia was 50.7°C at Oodnadatta in South Australia in 1960.
Marble Bar in Western Australia holds the record for the longest days in a row when the temperature was above 37.8°C (100.04ºF) for 160 days in 1923-24.
The hottest day in Sydney was set in 1939 when it got to 45.3°C (113.54ºF).
http://www.ema.gov.au/www/ema/schools.nsf/Page/Learn_AboutHeatwaves_InMyBackyard_InMyBackyard
Comments by David Ross regarding Mega Ninos etc in the last millenium and in particular those of the late 18th century bring to mind annecdotal evidence of another strong El Nino of that period. In the austral spring of 1769 Captian Cook on the Endeavour made his first sighting of New Zealand. He arrived at a harbour he named Poverty Bay near the eastern most tip of the North Island, after awhile there he travelled south until he encountered the infamous Nor’ West winds that cross the Lower North Island (L.N.I.) and turn northerly through the strait that still bears his name. During heightened El Nino years the prevailing west-NW flow across New Zealand is squeezed and can periods of gale force winds off the east coast of the L.N.I. Cook deemed the sea conditions he met there harsh enough to force him to turn north again at a cape he named ‘Turnagain.’
After travelling up the east coast through the Cormandel Penninsula and the famous Bay of Islands on the leeward side of the North Island Cook once again came face to face with the formidable force of the “roaring forties” as he attempted to pass over North Cape at the top of the Island around Christmas of 1769. It took the Endeavour days to move out of the Pacific and into the Tasman Sea. After that he steered well clear of the treacherous west coast, the site of scores of ship wrecks since then.
The fact of the strong Nor Westers in November over the L.N.I. and the continuing strong westerlies over the top of the island at Christmas has all of the hallmarks of a very strong El Nino that year, very reminiscent of the ‘bad el Nino’ of 1982-83 experienced here in N.Z. with a prolonged east coast drought on both major islands, and the disastorous bush-fire season in parts of Australia.
Ian Cooper
It is fascinating to me that the rainfall cycle in Southern Africa’s summer rainfall region, which is lunar in origin (apparently) at 18.6 years, happens to coincide with this passage of time. Above there is a contributor’s reference droughts in 1790. That is 1790 + 18.6 x 12 cycles = 2013 and that happens to be where we are now.
Interesting, not so?
It appears to be the case that the Australian droughts might also appear in a 18.6 year cycle with ‘big wets’ in between. To detect these cycles in the presence of all the other ‘weather’ going on and to accept Lief’s maxim that weather is not climate, and that we are assessing climate here, a time series analysis must be used to support my hunch.
Take all the rainfall records and divide the whole thing into into 18, then 18.1, 18.2 (etc) year segments and past the numbers on top of each other. If you get a sine wave appearing out of what might look like mud for any or all years, you are on track to locating the lunar component of climate in Australia.
If you do this for Cape Town it is a 10 year cycle with a very clear sine wave function – 400 years of data is available. It has its own climate region outside the summer rainfall area of Southern Africa. No one knows why. How about that!
Sorry for the temps, Aus, but it was predictable.
Interesting article.
Here are a few more statistics. This is not to take away from the tragedy of lost homes. But as some old time bush residents have said – this is Australia and high temps have always been part of Australia climate and bush fires can always be expected.
The maximum recorded temp in Sydney is 45.7 C on Tuesday 8th of January 1913 according to an Australian newspaper report.
It was also 49.7 C at Menindee on 10 Jan 1939 and 48.7 C at Euston on the same day all in NSW
Maximum temperature Australia wide was in South Australia at Oodnadatta at 50.7 C 52 years ago even though the BOM have trumpeted that they have found it necessary to put an extra color in their temperature area charts to account for 50 C temps recently.On most days they have published a “scary” bright red map of Australia with not actual temps but computer generated predictions.
And as expected our “beloved” ABC were excitedly announcing a special program to look at how climate change was now causing the current heatwave and how temperatures could rise up to 6 C in future blah blah etc. i.e the usual drivel.
Peter Newnam says:
January 14, 2013 at 12:10 pm
Heatwaves in Australia
Given the current heatwave is being contributed to the delay in the arrival of the monsoons, thus allowing increased surface heating in the inland areas, how many of the heatwaves listed can be associated with similar monsoonal delays?
Sorry, should read “being attributed”
Just found this.
Tench and Dawes were certainly reliable and painstaking officers, and careful about instrumentation.
Just ask Watkin Tench’s best known and most recent editor, a man curiously quiet on the subject the horror El Ninos of the late 18th century: Tim Flannery. Yep, that Tim Flannery.
Incidentally the last few days in Sydney max temps has been in the early twenties and I’ve put on a jacket to go walking at sunrise.
@Jimbo says on January 14, 2013 at 11:47 am
When comparing a temperature measurement in a large urban area today to the same or very close location 226 years before, I would think the cumulative UHI would be on the order of several degrees C. Simply observe that there are often temperature differences of that magnitude when driving into or out of a large urban area from/to the surrounding countryside. I am not aware of any studies that have tried to quantify the UHI accumulated over centuries in the large urban areas that populate the Earth today, but I think the difference between the urban and surrounding less urban temperatures gives a good order-of-magnitude estimate. See UHI is real, in Reno at least.
Hey, history is the enemy of the righteous true believer. No one should look back as they might
learn something..
Craig says
Now global warming devotees may be sceptical of Tench’s records. After all, scepticism is a healthy thing. They may even seek to deny Tench’s measurements and have them purged from our history, sent down a memory hole
———-
You are BSing Craig.
But amusing to see that you are the one, right on queue, to run with the now cliched “it was hot 200 years ago so its perfectly normal and happens all the time” routine.
So back to thermometers. Anyone with a clue would know that thermometers were pretty accurate way back then. The real question for reliability is siting and stevenson screens. Don’t know if they were used at that time.
However record Sydney temperatures are not a crux for global warming. But maybe the fact that the whole of the Australian continent is affected by record temperatures is more important. And the frequency of such events is even more important over time if trends are to be assessed.
Mosher,
So you’re saying that the temperature in 1790 could have been even higher due to calibration issues?
Since the UHI in 1790 was less than it is today then the natural temperture more likely to be even higher yet.
Of course I mean “higher” than the recent high.
The most interesting part of the article was the description of the cause of the heat: hot winds coming in from the desert areas. This is exactly what caused the recent 40+ degree day in Sydney, so it is evidence that there is nothing unique about the weather pattern we have experienced (an unusual or rare event, sure, but not unique). Regardless of temperature, then, we are not in uncharted climatic waters. I’ll leave Mosher to argue decimal points and other irrelevancies as per usual.
BTW there was hysteria over the weekend, as our beloved Bureau of Meteorology issued a forecast for parts of Sydney of 45 degrees for Saturday. The actual temperature was 36 degrees in those areas (and a balmy 25 degrees for much of the day in my location; i believe it went slightly above 30 for about an hour at most)), with the BOM ‘surprised’ by ‘stronger than expected’ coastal winds that negated the hot desert winds they had been focusing on. No matter though it generated the necessary headlines…
Photos of weather stations again?
How did that wheeze work out for you last time, remind me?
REPLY: it has worked out great, though you obviously don’t have a clue – Anthony
@Mosher
“a skeptic would ask these questions.
1. was the thermometer properly calibrated.
2. since this was prior to the days of CRS can we trust it.
I find it amusing that people who question records prior to the invention of the CRS, so willingly accept them when they like the story.”
No Mosher, while a real sceptic considers all facts provisional, he would not simply ask questions for the sake of creating FUD. He would seek out or consider any evidence as to why people during this era would be, for example, unable to accurately measure temperature. Were the instruments of the period unreliable? Given the instruments in use during this period, to what extent would calibration be an issue? Etc. If you have reasons present them.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 14, 2013 at 7:02 am
Weather is not climate
Well why are the CAGW folk pushing the weather variablility constantly of late,
and why are weather extremes now being pushed as proof of CAGW effects?!…….
When a year or so ago it was said by them always that …”weather is not climate”!?
[snip – off topic, unfounded accusations, drek. Be as upset as you wish. Keep it up if you wish to be banned – Anthony]
Thanks to Craig Kelly for a very relevant and sensible article. It is refreshing to see one of our MP’s who has not ceased to think and just hum along with the latest Warmist Jingle. The photos of the badly located present Stevenson screens was interesting and revealing. In 1790, the whole of Sydney would have been a leafy paradise. Now it is an electrified glass, concrete and steel jungle sucking up and re-radiating heat in summer.
Yes, I was wondering which record had been broken – turns out it was the same old one = the number of overstated claims of record being broken.
A real skeptic might ask since we have no confidence in the accuracy of most of our records, how can we proclaim any warming (or cooling, either)?
After all, all those dead birds and bats listed in the anecdotal records may have been killed by wind turbines. We just don’t know.
Friends:
The nasty little troll who hides behind the untrue alias of ‘Climate Ace’ is attempting to disrupt this thread with another of his offensive but content-free posts.
Please ignore him/her/it. Responses encourage him/her/it.
Richard
But Steve Mosher, why take sides. I thought you were supposed to be in the middle of this and know that weather only becomes climate change after many years of change. As a scientist, why take sides in an argument about one season? There is no verifiable change in climate, so looking for evidence of similar hot summers to help explain this to people is useful. Very useful. People have been told one side of the story. They need the missing picture. Don’t we want people to know the difference between climate and weather changes?
Murdoch media in Australia has this one today!
15 Jan: Sky News Australia: Hot weather records increase fivefold
Global warming has caused monthly records for heat to increase fivefold in frequency, according to a study by scientists in Germany and Spain.
In parts of Europe, Africa and southern Asia, the frequency of months with record-breaking heat has surged tenfold, said the study published on Monday.
The evidence comes from an analysis of 131 years of monthly temperature data, monitored at 12,000 points around the world, which are stored in a NASA database.
If man-made warming is stripped out of the equation, 80 per cent of the records for hottest-ever months would not have occurred, it said.
‘The last decade brought unprecedented heatwaves, for instance in the US in 2012, in Russia in 2010, in Australia in 2009 and in Europe in 2003,’ said Dim Coumou of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research near Berlin…
On current trends for global warming, the number of new monthly heat records will be 12 times higher in 30 years than today, the researchers said.
‘This doesn’t mean there will be 12 times more hot summers in Europe than today – it actually is worse,’ Coumou said in a news release issued by PIK…
The study, which was co-authored by scientists at the Complutense University of Madrid, appears in the journal Climatic Change.
http://www.skynews.com.au/eco/article.aspx?id=835793
Leif Svalgaard says:
“Weather is not climate”
But if there is not much change in the overall weather.. ie it can be very hot in Australia in summer !!
Then how the heck can anyone say that the climate has changed.
We are getting similar conditions to those that occured 100 – 200 years ago.
SO, WHAT HAS CHANGED. ? ………….. NOT MUCH AT ALL !
Murdoch’s Brisbane paper last week ran this cartoon:
Sean Leahy Cartoon from Brisbane Courier Mail: Hottest Day on Record: Climate Change Denial
http://www.leahy.com.au/leahy/comic.cfm?cid=2071
compare with NASA supplied no-flame pics:
14 Jan: Herald Sun Australia: Australian bushfires visible from space
ASTRONAUT Chris Hadfield has tweeted another amazing photograph of Australia’s raging bushfires from the International Space Station…
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/space-station-engineer-photographs-australian-bushfires-from-space/story-fncynkc6-1226553458564
Steven Mosher says:
January 14, 2013 at 8:04 am
2. since this was prior to the days of CRS can we trust it.
===========================================
Oh good grief…..if it was a whole degree different in over two hundred years
…who cares
it’s close enough
It’s 6:45 pm ET and just watching BBC here in Toronto…amazing how they can show weather for the whole world in a minute. What got me was the temps in Australia, he was quick to say that interior temps may get very hot approaching 40C(but without degrees shown on his map). When you saw the high for Sydney it was a cool 24C and then off to NZ where rainy and in the 20’s for much of the countries.
I spent 5 months near Christchurch 30 years ago working on a horse farm and the heat routinely cooked this Canadian, but the beer was terrific!
regarding the aussie bush/grass fires, remember the australian outback has had great rains/floods in recent years:
29 Sept 2012: Sydney Morning Herald: AAP: Megan Neil: Drought, rain and now grass fire risk
After the drought came the rain. And after that may well come the fires.
Last summer’s heavy rains have transformed large parts of the middle of Australia, with sparse desert replaced by waist – or even shoulder-high – grass in places.
It may look spectacular, but it also means Australia faces the prospect of huge fires burning for months across its centre.
Experts say the season could be a repeat of the summer of 1974-75, when fires throughout central Australia razed 117 million hectares – 15 per cent of the continent.
Millions of hectares could burn, bushfire expert Phil Cheney says.
All it takes is a lightning strike to set the grass alight, and once a wildfire takes hold it’s very difficult to put out.
“They will be very difficult to contain,” said Mr Cheney, the former head of the CSIRO’s bushfire research unit.
“It’s likely to burn for months.
“It will be in the tens of millions of hectares.”…
Heavy rain through Australia’s centre has sparked prolific grass growth. It’s now curing, or drying out, after recent drier weather.
The thick band of grass extends from the Indian Ocean in the west to the Pacific Ocean in southern Queensland and the Great Dividing Range in NSW.
“Essentially we’ve got a fuel bed that stretches from Sydney to Carnarvon, it goes right across the nation,” said Chris Arnol, assistant chief operations officer (country) at the Fire & Emergency Services Authority of Western Australia.
The Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre warns of the potential for above-normal bushfire activity across the middle of Australia, with grass fires posing the biggest risk this season…
“The centre, as everybody knows, has had heaps of rain, there’s heaps of growth and they are going to have heaps of fires,” Mr Packham said.
“I would expect massive fires in the centre.”…
Fire authorities have been talking about the risks this fire season, but the concern is that memories have faded since the last bad grass fire season, and for some reason the community thinks a grass fire isn’t as bad as a bushfire…
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/drought-rain-and-now-grass-fire-risk-20110929-1kyyv.html
26 Oct 2012: ABC: Chrissy Arthur: Simpson Desert travellers warned of fire threat
Birdsville grazier David Brook says it is impossible to fight all fires burning in some of the remote Channel Country…
Mr Brook says they have had multiple fires on the cattle station Adria Downs earlier this month, but getting machinery and equipment to sandhill country is impossible, so graziers can only protect critical country and let the remaining fires burn.
“These fires were started by lightning strikes – I think there were 15 going at one stage,” he said.
“They’ve subsequently burnt out…
***“They can burn for quite a long time now, with the whole country, even the stony areas, are covered with grass.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-26/simpson-desert-travellers-warned-of-fire-threat/4335270
13 Jan 2013: UK Independent: Kathy Marks: Australia heatwave: Even in the shade I felt as if I was standing next to an open furnace
As bushfires ravage the countryside and the mercury hits 48C, Kathy Marks talks to locals in one of Australia’s most resilient Outback towns to find out how they’re coping with the worst heatwave on record
“1972 we had the last roaster,” said Marilyn Reed, leaning over the counter in Bourke’s police station, where she works as an administrative assistant. “It was when I first came to town and I’ve never forgotten it. It was 121 degrees (Fahrenheit) for 10 days straight and 99 at night. I dragged my bed outside, it was that hot.
“There was no aircon in those days. We used to wet a sheet in cold water in the bathtub, wring it out and then sleep under it. It was the only way we could survive. During the day people would just go and sit in the river, up to their necks. And when you walked in the road – I never wore shoes in those days – the tar would stick to your feet.”
While every home has air-conditioning now, the locals are just as robust…
***The heatwave follows three consecutive years of floods…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/australia-heatwave-even-in-the-shade-i-felt-as-if-i-wasstanding-next-to-an-open-furnace-8449268.html
For those of you who don’t get the ‘pining for the fjords’ parrot references.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Parrot_sketch
Craig Kelly MP is a representative of the Liberal Party and, given his scientific interest, and indeed climate policy, given his concluding remark, it might be interesting for non-Australian WUWT readers to understand just what climate policies Kelly does support in practice.
Kelly’s Party officially supports AGW science.
Except that the leader of Kelly’s Party has stated publicly that, ‘Climate Science is crap’.
Take your pick.
Kelly says Fortunately for the convicts and settlers of the new colony, Governor Arthur Philip and later Governors didn’t believe they could change that with a new tax.
Kelly’s Party has pledged to spend $10 billion of taxpayers’ money to reduce Australia’s CO2 emissions by 5% by 2020.
Take your pick.
Kelly’s Party is the Party of the free market, free enterprise, free trade, big business and small government.
It has a policy to destroy Australia’s market-based carbon mechanism and replace it with BIg Government direct spending programs.
Take your pick.
Was it an El-Nino causing the heat wave of late 1790 and early 1791? People seem to forget that snow was seem at ground level in Tasmania in January 1788 as the first fleet sailed up to Sydney. Also remember, 12 days after leaving Capetown, the Guardian, the lead ship of the second fleet, struck an iceberg late Christmas eve 1789 and almost sunk.
The Dalton grand minimum is said to have commenced in 1790 but I suspect the extreme UV emissions of the sun had already been very low for several years – probably since the solar minimum of the early 1780’s (similar to what is happening now). Hence the Rossby waves would have been much deeper and so been causing the same sort of extreme weather that is being experienced at present. The problem is that the raw sunspot count does not distinguish between the different types of sunspots.
I hope Craig puts in a submission to the current Australian Senate Environment Committee’s inquiry into recent trends in and preparedness for extreme weather events. Even if he just submits what he included in this post it would be useful.
Climate Ace: you owe me an answer from a previous thread:
Climate Ace: I did not mention ‘acidification’. Stop pretending I did.
===========================
mpainter: You are the pretender; quit being evasive- For the second time, I ask what you mean by this statement:
“4) the impact on food availability caused by chemical changes in the oceans, for example, the possible collapse of Southern Ocean fisheries based on pterapods”
The insurance companies will be figuring out the appropriate market-based monetization of the CO2-influenced Coonabarabran fire as we speak. With 33 houses burned along with much pastureland, farm infrastructure, farm machinery and stock the costs will run into hundreds of millions of dollars. The Tasmanian fires, with over a hundred houses burned, will have cost even more. The fire season has some time to run.
The good thing for Australian farmers and home owners, If nothing has changed since 1778, is that fire premiums should only just keep pace with inflation!
But as all Australians who pay fire insurance know very well, the premiums have been rising faster than the CPI for some time.
Based on the polls, Kelly’s Liberal Party is likely to be the Australian Government later in the year. Consistent with either one of his Party’s positions on AGW policy, he might want to look at the way the insurance industry in Australia is profiteering by pretending that climate-related extreme events like storms, floods and fire, are costing them bigger and bigger payouts, and therefore that premiums have to keep rising faster than the CPI.
A lot of you (and Jo Nova as well) are trying to tell us that, in the past, Australia sometimes got hot in Summer.
Australia has always been famous for its freezing, snow-bound, winters, and cool, rainy, summers.
When pollitions buy into climate change you know their talking to create distraction If not you would think he would have also brought what he has referenced into the NOW Pollatitions are great spin doctors and only have something to say when it fits their agenda Here’s what’s taking place word wide, weather modification to controll the earths water buget WATER and oxygen are the keys to life not money. It’s my opinion thet their using weather modification to drive a new world wide TAX scam If they don’t come clean then don’t bother insuring anything http://usahitman.com/leaked-weather-modification-document/ One thing the hydroelectic system need is water http://www.snowyhydro.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Cloud-Seeding-14092012.pdf So why not redirect rain to their catchments . So while we talk in circles the reality regarding weather modification continues behind our backs Australia has already gone down this path of deceiving the the public back in the 50’and 60’s regarding nuclear testing. We the public are only as powerful as the questions we ask and were not asking the right questions to the right people. I hope you don’t mind Anthony me using your website as an example. A good well put together web site creates alot of traffic which is great for advertising and creates a income for Anthony and others who have the time and expertise to create them like Anthony’s great site, The problem is that avertisers are like shareholders they help fund the site through advertising their product or idears. So why would sites like WUWT and SKS want a end to the cimate debate the longer it goes on the more money is made through avertising on their site . Like this blog I’m responding to by a NSW polly who is more interested in going back to 1790 to destract people away from what’s going on in the NOW WEATHER MODIFICATION America plans to OWN the weather by 2025 and their working hard towards that goal. While the public debate the goverments are taking ACTION to carry out the agena of a word matrix system. In the right hands this could be a good thing but the question is there a HITLER out there we can trust to make life better for all mankind and not just a few. looking at history I dought it, there’s more chance of WW3 taking place. Or is it already in progress with these new weapons of mass destruction were we only SEE the reactions with no noticeable actions being carried out The best weapons are the stelthy ones You know the ones we can’t see. Who do we fight when there’s no identifiable enermy or target ? I sugest people take their CO2 blinkers off and start asking about weather modification and were there being carried out, more then likely happening in your back yard right now.
mpainter says:
January 14, 2013 at 5:47 pm
Climate Ace: you owe me an answer from a previous thread:
Climate Ace: I did not mention ‘acidification’. Stop pretending I did.
===========================
mpainter: You are the pretender; quit being evasive- For the second time, I ask what you mean by this statement:
“4) the impact on food availability caused by chemical changes in the oceans, for example, the possible collapse of Southern Ocean fisheries based on pterapods”
I don’t ‘owe’ your, or anyone else at WUWT, anything. I provided you with an answer. If it did not fit your acidification fetish I can’t be held responsible for that. I prefer the term ‘changes to ocean chemistry’ because the term ‘acidification’ is a term that BAU boosters love to hate.
But I thought this was in the Little Ice Age and that the LIA was global. I guess a spot on the earth the size of Sydney could be allowed to be warm – it’s mild +50 F in New York City and 30 -40 below in the eastern half of Russia..
RoHa
What I would like to know from Kelly is that since there is no AGW, since sea levels are not rising, since air temperatures are the same, since the oceans are not heating, since ocean chemistry is static, since there have been no change in droughts, heat events or cyclones, since CO2 is improving crop production by 10%, since Arctic sea ice is not disappearing, and since glaciers are not retreating, why is he going along with the policy of spending $10 billion on nothing?
Shouldn’t he just be using it to address the poverty that BAU has yet to fix?
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 14, 2013 at 7:02 am
Weather is not climate
==========
You have it backwards. The whole is not an example of the part, but the part is an example of the whole. For example:
Climate is not weather. true
A scientist is not Leif. true
Leif is not a scientist. false.
Weather is not climate. false
Rest assured that an Australian Liberal government, having announced massive expenditures for climate policy, will be easily able to divert those funds into any old thing, or simply not spend them at all. Didn’t Germany use enviro-euros to revert to coal power? They used the excuse of the nuke accidents in Japan to justify nice new infrastructure to exploit all those yummy new coal-field discoveries. The BoA coal plant near Cologne is a lignite burner, but a bloody efficient one. With the “carbon price” in the toilet, why not? Good luck to Merkel: she talks internationalist and green, but acts for Germany. She’s an adult. When can we have a few adults to run Oz?
The Libs may not have their own John McTernan, but they can still spin. You see, two can play the game of announcing massive expenditures with no intention of proceeding. Of course, Labor, having taken the economy to the pub, now has little choice but to announce and shelve.
Brent Walker asked,
“Was it an El-Nino causing the heat wave of late 1790 and early 1791? People seem to forget that snow was seem at ground level in Tasmania in January 1788 as the first fleet sailed up to Sydney.”
I have recorded the mountain snowfall in my part of New Zealand (the Lower North Island) since 1980. The only Januaries to have a visible snowfall in them were 1998 and 1999 during that period. This was at the time of the Grand El Nino. The only other time it came close to doing this was on Dec 30th 1982 during another Grand El Nino. In some locations El Nino’s bring heat and dry, whilst others cop wind, rain and sometimes snow when they don’t want it! Tasmania is at its most northen point the same latitude as me.
Conicidentally the spring/summer of 1998/99 was the fourth hottest on record for T-Max since records began in 1928. The hottest in order are 1934/35, 1937/38, and 1974/75.
I find the Right Honorable Mr. Craig Kelly’s article slightly odd. Of course 42.3 degrees C was not the hottest ever recorded in Sydney nor as far as I know was it claimed to be. Lieutenant Watkin Tench’s two books on conditions in New South Wales in the early days of British settlement are a valuable record. His temperature measurements are important and I have not previously seen any dispute about their accuracy.
But the Right Honorable gentleman would be better addressing the several all time records that were actually claimed to have been broken rather than disproving a claim that was not made.
Using the Sydney Observatory records, there were more days over 35C in Sydney from 1921-1950 than from 1981-2010. But I’m sure the new ACORN temperatures have been adjusted to take account of them.
There was a huge volcanic event that created huge clouds of steam when magma touched water in a crater in hawaii in 1790, these clouds travelled at 100mph, maybe this created the heat wave of 1790/91, see how easy it is to cherry pick your facts, I prefer a holistic view, NASA have been monitoring climate and weather since they decided to go to space, they had no other agenda other than understanding whats going on, they have mass amounts of data to refect their budget!
mosomoso says:
January 14, 2013 at 6:47 pm
Rest assured that an Australian Liberal government, having announced massive expenditures for climate policy, will be easily able to divert those funds into any old thing, or simply not spend them at all.
Such cynicism.
Kelly’s Party will spend the $10 billion, make no mistake about it. Part of it will be unemployment benefits rebadged as a Green Corps planting trees on public land even if there is not enough suitable public land to do it.
Part of will go to a rural pork barrel fund to grease the National Party constituents by way of soil carbon sequestration payments about which the science is far from settled. And part will go to their big business generator mates who want to retire outdated power plants and be paid by taxpayers to do it.
The biofuel subsidy for wheat farming constituents (those who haven’t been burned out in the 500,000 or so hectares* already burned out this fire season) and cane farming constituents will continue, and will be badged as AGW Action rather than as a Rural Rorts for YeeHa Mates Program.
None will be systemic market-based instruments even though they are a free market Party.
*I haven’t seen a breakdown between farming and non-farming land burnt so far. Over a hundred fires still going with over a dozen out of control, the new normal? so the final tally will be interesting to see.
Here is something else those arguing that adaptation is cheaper than prevention had better add to the costs of adaptation ledger. Nice pic of what AGW is going to do to railway lines.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/queenslands-heatwave-sees-concerns-for-western-rail-lines-as-temperatures-soar/story-e6freoof-1226553147443
REPLY: No, WEATHER PATTERNS (like a blocking high creating a heat wave) do that. AGW’s 0.7C rise over the last century does not. – Anthony
To anybody out there in fairy land who do not believe what the NSW RFS have to go through to please the green mob when planing a hazard burn it takes years and and huge amount of dollers before you can burn any bush, ask one of the chiefs they will tell you,, http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/
Relax. Chill. Abbott has to have a climate policy like he has to have an arts policy – for the luvvies, as well as for Turnbull and the doctors’ wives. While Turnbull is likely to be Minister for Goldman Sachs, even he can’t waste money like Labor.
I’m not suggesting Abbott and his ministry will be wonderful, or that they won’t waste dough or go a-pork-barrelling. They just won’t be Labor, or the GetUp Left. That’s a great start.
Climate Ace says: January 14, 2013 at 6:23 pm
I prefer the term ‘changes to ocean chemistry’ because the term ‘acidification’ is a term that BAU boosters love to hate.
=========================
Acidification is the term used in all the studies on the matter. Strange that you should be reluctant to use it. Perhaps you find it too embarrassing to speak of “acidification of the oceans”. Very well, call it what you like. By your statement “possible collapse of the Southern Ocean fisheries based on pterapods” do you mean the hyped-up claim that the shells of the pterapods will dissolve?
Climate Ace says:
January 14, 2013 at 7:45 pm
Here is something else those arguing that adaptation is cheaper than prevention had better add to the costs of adaptation ledger. Nice pic of what AGW is going to do to railway lines.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/queenslands-heatwave-sees-concerns-for-western-rail-lines-as-temperatures-soar/story-e6freoof-1226553147443
REPLY: No, WEATHER PATTERNS (like a blocking high creating a heat wave) do that. AGW’s 0.7C rise over the last century does not. – Anthony
Sure, sure. We all know about blocking highs and the IOD at perversely just the wrong setting when we also happen to be getting a late monsoon. As you rightly point out, that sort of stuff happens. As does the record-breaking temperatures and related damage to infrastructure, by direct heat and farm incomes by way of bushfire devastation.
But that is not the argument that AGW adaptationists make. Their point is that adaptation is cheaper than prevention. (Lord Moncton has argued this very case while he was taking time out from his Birther activities). I was reminding the adaptationists that they need to incorporate higher railway maintenance costs in their adapation ledger. While the adaptationists are at, it they can incorporate some of the recent (and ongoing) fire damage associated with the record high temperatures as well.
REPLY: Sure, why not? You could blame it on pixies too. – Anthony
mpainter
I am skeptical about your use of the term ‘acidification of the oceans’.
For believers in climate exceptionalism, as applied to Australia and evidenced by the latest heatwave, February, Victoria, 1851 should knock most of the stuffing out of that belief. But here’s more, relating to actual loss of life:
Australia’s most lethal natural disaster, the Victorian heatwave of 1938-1939, killed 438 people. On top of that, there were the Black Friday bushfires of January 13, 1939, which destroyed nearly 5 million acres, and affected three quarters of the state. Almost as lethal was the Big Heat of 1895-1896. which killed 437, and 47 in Bourke alone. Cyclone Mahina in 1899 is estimated to have killed 401 people. Our next most lethal natural disaster was another heatwave – 246 perished in 1906-1907. After that comes a list of cyclones and heatwaves, all occurring long ago, with the exception of the Black Saturday fires of 2009, which killed 173 people.
We live in a dangerous place called Australia. Black Thursday in 1851 – which killed a million sheep but not too many humans, may well be history’s most severe known inferno – and the horror El Nino of the early 1790s should have convinced us all of that. But the New Man at Year Zero is only interested in saying words like “unprecedented”, not meaning them. The hive mind will not allow more than a grudging and superficial peep into the past. The present exists, but only for spin purposes. The future is, of course, a model.
mosomoso says:
January 14, 2013 at 8:08 pm
Relax. Chill. Abbott has to have a climate policy like he has to have an arts policy – for the luvvies, as well as for Turnbull and the doctors’ wives. While Turnbull is likely to be Minister for Goldman Sachs, even he can’t waste money like Labor.
Whlle you are so persuasive that I am skeptical about the integrity of Kelly’s Climate Policy.
Skeptical is good, a real start.
Climate Ace,
How about that! Something that you and I agree on! That the hype about the acidification of the oceans is a cause for skepticism.
But Climate Ace, you never claimed to be an expert in chemistry, did you? or minerology.
So you can’t tell us about “changes to ocean chemistry” because they are beyond you.
Another would-be scientist from global-warmer land.
mosomoso says:
January 14, 2013 at 8:38 pm
For believers in climate exceptionalism, as applied to Australia and evidenced by the latest heatwave, February, Victoria, 1851 should knock most of the stuffing out of that belief. But here’s more, relating to actual loss of life:
Australia’s most lethal natural disaster, the Victorian heatwave of 1938-1939, killed 438 people. On top of that, there were the Black Friday bushfires of January 13, 1939, which destroyed nearly 5 million acres, and affected three quarters of the state. Almost as lethal was the Big Heat of 1895-1896. which killed 437, and 47 in Bourke alone. Cyclone Mahina in 1899 is estimated to have killed 401 people. Our next most lethal natural disaster was another heatwave – 246 perished in 1906-1907. After that comes a list of cyclones and heatwaves, all occurring long ago, with the exception of the Black Saturday fires of 2009, which killed 173 people.
We live in a dangerous place called Australia. Black Thursday in 1851 – which killed a million sheep but not too many humans, may well be history’s most severe known inferno – and the horror El Nino of the early 1790s should have convinced us all of that. But the New Man at Year Zero is only interested in saying words like “unprecedented”, not meaning them. The hive mind will not allow more than a grudging and superficial peep into the past. The present exists, but only for spin purposes. The future is, of course, a model.
I am skeptical about comparing pre- and post- airconditioning figures uncritically. You do know what I mean.
Nor should fire history be used without due reference to the differential in resources and capabilities for fire fighting available in various decades and centuries. People trying to escape bushfires on foot or by horse-back simply did not have the same capacity to escape as those with horseless carriages. Nor did they have access, by way of modern communications, to the latest in satellite-based fire warning systems. Nor is the vegetation like-for-like: another false assumption. The forested proportion of Victoria has declined considerably since at least some of the events you stipulate. Much of it has been turned to grassland. While grassland fires can be fast, hot and deadly, they are not a patch on your proper eucalypt crown fire. Not only have the forests been much reduced, they have also been much fragmented and separated by such fire-inhibiting infrastucture as six lane highways. Nor should you assume that there have been a comparable number of sheep available to be burnt to death for comparative climate study purposes. In fact the sheep population has varied by very large numbers inded.
I know all that sort of stuff is tiresome and tedious but you will appreciate that we skeptical AGW supporters do have to keep reminding BAU boosters to stick to the straight and narrow of thinking skeptically.
mpainter says:
January 14, 2013 at 8:58 pm
Climate Ace,
How about that! Something that you and I agree on! That the hype about the acidification of the oceans is a cause for skepticism.
I am skeptical about your credibility given your propensity to make things up.
Steve says:
January 14, 2013 at 7:02 pm
“…the Right Honorable gentleman would be better addressing the several all time records that were actually claimed to have been broken rather than disproving a claim that was not made.”
What “several all time records” would they be then?
Anthony
REPLY: Sure, why not? You could blame it on pixies too. – Anthony
I could but I am skeptical about pixies. I leave belief in pixies and diatomaceous metereorites to BAU boosters.
Craig Kelly is not doing anyone any favours by trying to gloss over the record heat Australia recently had – from reading his article he wrote it for political purposes. Maybe someone will let him know that Australia is not just Sydney. That Australia did have a record heat event where the average for the entire continent was above 39C for seven days straight. That’s never happened before in all the records going back a century. Despite all the advances in fire fighting and communication, It caused hundreds of fires and the loss of a huge amount of property, flora and fauna – domestic and wild.
It will undoubtedly happen again – with no thanks to the Craig Kellys of the world. Welcome to the new normal.
http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/ho/20130109.shtml
a basic climate pattern in centralAustralia.
drought->drought->lots of rain over a 2 year period-> flooding->stuff grows like crazy,-> gets warm, -> stuff dries off,-> lots of big bushfires everywhere -> eventually back to droughts
ITS A NATURAL CYCLE OF EVENTS !!!
Always has been, always will be, its a harsh country.
LazyTeenager says:January 14, 2013 at 1:07 pm
“…..However record Sydney temperatures are not a crux for global warming. …. … the whole of the Australian continent is affected by record temperatures ….. And the frequency of such events is even more important over time if trends are to be assessed….”
Waddyaknow, Lazy. Pretty much the point every commentator in here is making, (while noting that they did not have an Australia wide network of weather stations then, and putting in more thermometers in hotter places continually since then does NOT provide convincing evidence of a rinsing average…).
40 houses now gone and the Coonabarabran fire is still out fo control.
Steve Mosher. Yes it was properly calibrated. That thermometer was made by the most eminent instrument maker of that time and Tench was fully trained in the maintenance of the gauge.
Friends:
I am skeptical that ‘Climate Ace’ is human. The posts of ‘Climate Ace’ on this thread are typical of a badly written bot.
Responding to bots is pointless and triggers them to respond with asinine nonsense which disrupts rational discussion.
Richard
“I know all that sort of stuff is tiresome and tedious but you will appreciate that we skeptical AGW supporters do have to keep reminding BAU boosters to stick to the straight and narrow of thinking skeptically.”
Not tedious at all, since I make no assumptions. I could happily toss around speculations and factoids about light population compared to present levels, enormous modern regrowth areas with the concentration of agriculture, the half century of rain deficit which followed the Fed drought, in spite of flood events and periods of relief. I could talk about nearly all the individual months in my region setting their records for heat and drought in remote decades. (The heat records have been pulled; the rainfall records stand.) Yes, those hot and dry first decades of the twentieth century! Who knew when we had our triple header floods in the 1890s? Who knew the soaking of 1950 would change the game? Who in the parched thirties envisaged the big wets and big storms of the 1970s (with the odd drought chucked in, just because it’s Oz).
I’d have to discuss that with a true skeptic, who sees the contradictions and uncertainties, and the near futility of building future speculations on such confusion and complexity. But some use the word “skeptic” as a reverse psychology stunt, in the way the GetUp Left uses the word “free market solution” to describe a certain erosive tax. In the Age of McTernan you can do anything with words…but should you?
I have been following the climate change story for four years. I am just an amateur, but I like mysteries. I wrote this recently on another site, but after reading through the comments here, it seems that this would be a good place to ask my questions…After looking through some of the current graphs, I noticed a connection in one that matched with a thought that I had been repetitively posting for a bit. The thought was in looking at the Escalator graph {some other graphs also show this} , that the graph really shows two events within it’s boundaries of 1970 to 2012. Skeptical Science shows their answer to the Escalator as a single line always rising. While that is correct from a ‘start to end’ single line on the graph, their answer misses the detail of what actually happens. The warming on this graph occurs between 1970 and 1998. From 1998 to the present this graph goes sideways with maybe a small +or-. This was a point that none of the regular warmists could answer. I finally saw a revised line for the graph that removed several natural forcings to show the co2 on its own. The revised line was explaining why you can’t look at the graph as a two step proposition. Temperatures were also slightly shifted in comparison to other graphs. The net effect was to switch a part of the heat rise from 1970/98 into the 1998/2012 time frame, 0.22C of the rise. Maybe they stretched the high and low a bit to enhance the message. Anyway, while I was mulling this over I happened to come across the Multivariate ENSO Index. This graph explains why the “ramp leading up to the plateau” view of the Escalator is correct. The ENSO graph starts in 1950. Up until 1977, the trend is to the cool side, La Nina is dominant. There is a strong El Nino in 73/74, though. In 1977 the El Nino takes control and reigns for 21 years from 1977 to 1998. 1998 the marking spot of the change. The 4 biggest El Nino spikes on this 62 year chart occur in that 21 year window of time. Finally, a strong La Nina hits in 1998. The next El Nino in 2002 is a weaker system. As it starts to fade at the end of 2004, the Sumatra tsunami hits. A large plume off of the Indian Ocean is shot into the Pacific. While at the same time the main thrust of Indian Ocean movement from the tsunami heads SSW into Antarctica. This restarts the weak El Nino for two more years, till 2006. Since then La Nina is acting like it did in the 50s, 60s, and mid 70s. Since then temperatures continue to move sideways. Wouldn’t it be right to say that the 21 years of El Nino+ is a main component of the current heat signature. How long would it take for the oceans to dissipate that extra heat load? All of the El Ninos since 2000 have been weaker events. Is the 21 years of enhanced El Ninos a cycle? With the weaker spikes in the El Nino is it about to crash early into another La Nina in the near future? Is this a potential sign of a Maunder Minimum? …..At the last, may I point out that around 1790, the Dalton Minimum was just starting. Interesting that Napoleon was probably done in by the Dalton Minimum.
tobyglyn asks what all time records were claimed to be broken. These claims were not made by me, but by the Australian Bureau of Meterology.
These claimed new records include:
The highest national average temperature ever recorded on January 7, 2013: 40.33 degrees and
The longest period of consecutive days (9) with the national average temperature above 39 degrees.
There were other less important things claimed such as the highest temperature ever recorded in Hobart (A state capital just as Sydney is).
The point of my comment was not to agree with these claims, but to suggest that the Right Honorable Mr. Craig Kelly should address the actual claims and should not have wasted his time disproving something that was not claimed.
Bruce Friesen says: January 14, 2013 at 10:39 am
….. my Australian/English dictionary, …… nong: a simpleton or fool
Perhaps the above was apt in this case Bruce, but that definition comes over a little more harshly than my intended usage of the word, and my experience of its usage; ie, generally light-hearted criticism directed at someone who has said or done something rather silly or missed something obvious. (as per the urban dictionary definition below):
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nong
nong: in Australian slang, nong is used as a pretty mild and/or endearing insult. a bit of a twit, or idiot. nothing too mean or horrid is meant by calling someone a nong.
Climate Ace says: January 14, 2013 at 9:36 pm
I am skeptical about your credibility given your propensity to make things up
============================
“4) the impact on food availability caused by chemical changes in the oceans, for example, the possible collapse of Southern Ocean fisheries based on pterapods”
I quote you, and I do not make the quote up. Now, show us what you know about ocean chemistry and explain this assertion.
goldminor:
re your post at January 15, 2013 at 2:20 am.
There was a thread about the ‘SkS escalator’ on WUWT. I suggest you search WUWT for it (I could link to it but think you may benefit from other things you find using the Search facility at top-right on the WUWT home page).
In that thread SkS representatives initially defended the ‘escalator’ graph but upon their arguments being demolished they fell back on claiming it was a “joke”. (Yes, they really did! Take a look.)
The “two step proposition” has been explained in detail on WUWT by Bob Tisdale. Again, I think you would find it useful to do a search.
And deleting assumed “natural” effects of assumed magnitudes from the data to “reveal” the “CO2 effect” comes under the heading of,
If you torture the data enough it will confess what you want it to.
I hope this helps.
Richard
Dorothea Mackellar OBE (1 July 1885 – 14 January 1968) – Wrote this while in England (and homesick) at age 19 :
The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!
A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die –
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold –
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land –
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand –
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
The fires are worse for the same reason that the Colorado fires were last year, too much undergrowth for fuel thanks to the Greenfreaks.
It has been a bit warm- much cooler now though (here in Perth) – today the MSM (Channel 7) were trying to push that if last night’s minimum had been just 0.6c more it would have been a hotter minimum on that day in January since 193sumthin (probably 39) – all very meaningful as I am sure you will all agree 😉
Interesting that Observatory Hill recorded the highest temperatures across all those in the Sydney basin last week. It was similar on New Year day 2006 when the city (44.2C) and airport (45+C) reached slightly higher than the normally hotter western suburbs. Is Urban Heat Island effect being correctly accounted for ? Adding UHI onto the 1790 figure the temperature recorded by Tench might have been even higher (or more correctly last week cooler)? Best thing about this story is it comes from a conservative politician – Craig Kelly. Those who say there is no difference between Australian conservatives and ‘progressives’ on global warming policy, please take note.
Congratulations Mr Kelly, strawman of the year….so far.
@ nick [kermode]..
congratulations.. most worthless, pointless, post of the year, so far
until your next post ,
Some people seem to believe that the entire continent of Australia is burning / melting. It is not. We are having a very mild summer in North Queensland, and the rains are very late (looks like this week they may break). I am told by many who have lived here for decades that this causes the rest of Australia to get very hot, as the cooling winds from the rains are not generated. Sounds pretty simple and believable to me.
As for the article, I am very pleased that a politician from Australia is willing to get up and be heard on this matter. The CO2 fear-mongering Labor party have lost several state election by landslides. I believe they will also lose this year’s federal election, and we can put this nonsense behind us. Very recent political history here has proved to me that the state/federal government should continue (as some are arguing it should be abandoned), as it acts as an effective buffer to extreme and unpopular governments such as we have now.
For people mentioning the lack of “dead fauna” as being a measure for comparison… did Sydney Cove/Elizabeth Farm/Rose Hill of old have more or less sources for fresh water compared to today.
When did Sydney have its first swimming pools and fountains? Where there many large sandstone dug/laid chlorinated pools made by convict labour? Because on many a hot day, I have seen all types of birds swoop in to pools (non salt water) all over Sydney to get a swig of fresh water. Not sure they had that convenience back then. Hence the high mortality rate.
Jer0me says:
January 15, 2013 at 2:02 pm
Some people seem to believe that the entire continent of Australia is burning / melting. It is not. We are having a very mild summer in North Queensland, and the rains are very late (looks like this week they may break). I am told by many who have lived here for decades that this causes the rest of Australia to get very hot, as the cooling winds from the rains are not generated. Sounds pretty simple and believable to me.
As for the article, I am very pleased that a politician from Australia is willing to get up and be heard on this matter. The CO2 fear-mongering Labor party have lost several state election by landslides. I believe they will also lose this year’s federal election, and we can put this nonsense behind us. Very recent political history here has proved to me that the state/federal government should continue (as some are arguing it should be abandoned), as it acts as an effective buffer to extreme and unpopular governments such as we have now.
Kelly’s Party’s Party Platform includes:
(1) Acceptance of AGW
(2) A target of reducing CO2 emissions by 5% by 2020.
(3) Spending $10 billion of taxpayer’s money to do so.
(4) Achieving 60% of their target through soil carbon sequestration at a cost that farmers say is impossible and scientists say won’t happen.
If you like that sort of hypocritical stuff from Kelly and his polly colleagues, you can have him.
mpainter
I did not raise the term ‘acidification’. You did. Stop implying that I did.
You owe us an explanation for why you used this term.
mosomoso
Not tedious at all, since I make no assumptions.
Excellent. We are agreed that the magnitude of the consequences of past weather events in Australia are not directly comparable with the magnitude of the consequences of current weather events in Australia.
Which reminds me that we now have had had around 150 houses burned at a time when heat temperature records are being set. Fortunately, most of the humans in the firefronts had horseless carriages or the results might have been much, much worse.
MeWhoElse says: January 15, 2013 at 7:05 pm
For people mentioning the lack of “dead fauna” as being a measure for comparison… did Sydney Cove/Elizabeth Farm/Rose Hill of old have more or less sources for fresh water compared to today.
……. Because on many a hot day, I have seen all types of birds swoop in to pools (non salt water) all over Sydney to get a swig of fresh water. Not sure they had that convenience back then. Hence the high mortality rate.
Very true and an interesting point.
But the main topic of this discussion is whether or not this is unusually hot for Sydney, and therefore an indication of sudden (relatively speaking) anthropogenic warming.
Records and eyewitness accounts would indicate that Sydney indeed endured similarly hot spells prior to the advent of the possibility of any major anthropogenic effects on the climate.
Now, were they exactly the same conditions as seen recently? Who can tell? But they are very likely close enough that it brings into question any attempt to promote recent events as a harbinger of CAGW. If events like this now occur every year or two for the next 10 years I would probably start to worry.
But, as of this point, it is just another weather event, similar to ones which have occurred infrequently over the few hundred years of recording we have.
On the other hand, Climate Ace, the conditions of 1851 and 1939, just as examples, may have been far worse. You don’t know. I don’t know. Houses have often been destroyed at times when heat temperature records are set. Last summer, in my part of Oz, was the coolest I have experienced in my 63 years. This means very little, if anything. Fire conditions here were far worse nineteen years ago, in a previous heatwave. This gives no guarantee that the coming February will not be bad for fires. Last weekend being our first serious heatwave in nine years, I’d quite forgotten how handy an electric fan can be. Will next summer bake me, and ruin my bamboo shoots again? You don’t know, and I don’t know.
In my region, every month except August set its highest heat record between 1910 and 1919. August was hottest in 1946. Drought records tell a similar, though not identical, story. Should I therefore assume that the coming February will not be the hottest since records began, here on the midcoast of NSW? Should I assume it will be cooler than last February, based on a “trend” I’ve cooked up? Never! I simply don’t know. And you don’t know.
The entire northern hemisphere, except for a few patches, is experiencing a rigorous winter, all sorts of records are being broken, though many stand – especially those records set in the coldwave of Eastern Europe, 2012. Does this mean there is a new Ice Age coming? People who predict a new Dalton or Maunder are not much different to those who promote CAGW. They don’t know, but they have invested too much personal vanity or prestige in their pronouncements to back down. But they don’t know. And you don’t know. You don’t have a clue.
Just enjoy this warmish patch of the Holocene. It’s not great, but it’s about as great as it gets.
mosomoso
If it is individual temperature records you are fussing about, world heat records are outstripping world cold records by a very large margin indeed.
Climate Ace, says: January 15, 2013 at 7:20 pm
I did not raise the term ‘acidification’. You did. Stop implying that I did.
You owe us an explanation for why you used this term.
==========================
mpainter says: Again I quote you:
“4) the impact on food availability caused by chemical changes in the oceans, for example, the possible collapse of Southern Ocean fisheries based on pterapods”
Again, please explain your statement, Climate Ace, so that we here at WUWT can see how much you really do know, and then you can add a feather to your cap: Ocean Chemistry Ace
MeWhoElse
Your point on watering points is interesting like-for-like comparisons would be extremely difficult.
The Tank Stream, the main source of water for the infant colony in Sydney, is now entirely underground. The local forest type is endangered and Sydney’s avifauna has also changed significantly.
The experiment of Sydney is one-off and not replicable, if for no other reason but the extinctions in the Sydney Basin.
The event described by Tench is no ordinary heatwave. It is high summer heat combined with dry north westerlies. Basically, it is late winter/spring wind pattern combined with summer scorching, so there is no relief, not even right on the beach. It occurred around 1980 and again around 2000 in my lifetime. While there were some domestic animal deaths around here in 2000, none of the countless parrots, bats etc were dropping dead as described by Tench in the 1790s. Is that because of alternative water sources? Or was the First Fleeters’ event of even greater severity? I don’t know, and I can take comfort in knowing that the ignorance is general.
These foul north westerly events, like all weather disasters, have their own personalities and duration. None is replicable, much is forgotten. Try hard enough, and you can explain the old ones away and endow the more recent one with “climate exceptionalism”. If one were to occur again in the near future, it would, of course, be fitted right into a CAGW script. But even the present Northern Hemisphere coldwave is being fitted to that script. Really!
By the way, imagine me “fussing” about new temp records? Or worrying that more heat records than cold records might be broken? If sea levels and temps are trending up since the middle of the nineteenth century, you won’t catch me complaining. I quite liked the slight cool-down and extra moisture in the seventies…but I wouldn’t enjoy watching glaciers eat my village. Let’s just hope we don’t get some major vulcanism around the same time as the temp drops for other reasons. Brrr. Pass the lignite, quick.
From the figures posted here and at JoNova’s site it would appear Sydney has been cooling.
Here’s the full Sydney Observatory Hill story in a chart.
http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/Observatory_Hill_Full_Adjustments.png
The red line is the original raw data from BoM.
The blue line is the data after the adjustments made by Simon Torok in 1996.
The black line is the adjustments made, the amount and when.
The chart on the right shows the type of adjustment and the reason.
The photo shows the actual site today with it’s obvious UHI effect.
http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/Observatory_Hill.png
the circle surrounding the area is a highway emerging from a tunnel under the site.
Similar adjustments have been applied to the total Australian temperature record.
mpainter
Please explain why you used the term ‘ocean acidification’.
Has no one noticed that 1790 – 1810 (approx.) was Solar cycle 5 and we are now in solar cycle 24, which is mirroring cycle 5 in the number (or lack) of sunspots.
Maybe the sun has an influence on what is happening here on earth, and since it is a 200 year period no one has the memory. Watkins Tench and ships logs, and other weather recording people’s data could be a valuable resource.
Climate Ace says:
January 15, 2013 at 7:15 pm
I’ve never liked any politician much (apart from my erstwhile state MP & Premier, Barry O’Farrell, but that’s mainly because I’ve met him several times), but I’ll take almost anything over the lying welsh woman we have now.Even Rudd was better!
Climate Ace
Marine life, including corals, thrive with more CO2, and the pH of ocean water varies annually by +/- 0.3 around an average of 8.1. It hasn’t been neutral (7.0), let alone acidic, in 600 million years.
Climate Ace says: January 16, 2013 at 12:19 am
mpainter Please explain why you used the term ‘ocean acidification’.
========================================
mpainter says:
Again, for the third or fourth time, I quote you:
“4) the impact on food availability caused by chemical changes in the oceans, for example, the possible collapse of Southern Ocean fisheries based on pterapods”
A number of papers (several have been posted at WUWT) by alarmist type scientists address what they call “acidification of the ocean”. You have declared that your above statement refers to something else, but you repeatedly refuse to explain.
I consider your refusal to acknowledge and support your above statement as immature and unscientific. Perhaps you now wish that you had not made the statement. Well, in that case, simply retract it.
mpainter
Please explain why you raised the term ‘ocean acidification’.
Ron C. says:
January 16, 2013 at 5:06 am
Climate Ace
Marine life, including corals, thrive with more CO2, and the pH of ocean water varies annually by +/- 0.3 around an average of 8.1. It hasn’t been neutral (7.0), let alone acidic, in 600 million years.
I have not used the term ‘acid’ or ‘acidification’. You may want to address this to painter who has some sort of fetish about the term acidification.
I would accept a statement something like: ‘Marine life as a whole thrives in remarkably diverse chemical and temperature environments. The chemistry may include large variations in such parameters as salt concentration, dissolved oxygen and high concentrations of specific elements in the vicinity of Black Smokers. The temperature environments may demonstrate large daily, seasonal and annual variations.’
I am sceptical about your statement that marine life, including corals, thrive with ‘
more CO2, implying as it does that all marine life thrives with more CO2. For example, changes in temperature regimes are already have large impacts on the distribution of many marine species. Basic ecological principles would tell you that the can’t possibly all be thriving as a consequence.
Jerome
Just as a matter of some significant curiousity, were you to meet Kelly, would you ask for an explanation about the clear contradiction between what he writes in WUWT and the climate policies he and his Party supports?
Or is it that you simply hate Gillard so much that the contradictory and wasteful nature of Opposition policies on climate are completely irrelevant?
BTW, you mention O’Farrell. I agree with you. He is a breath of fresh air after his graft-ridden predecessor governments.
janama says:
January 15, 2013 at 11:28 pm
From the figures posted here and at JoNova’s site it would appear Sydney has been cooling.
Well, a large of the rest of the country has been frying in record temperatures so we might all have to shift to Sydney.
Ron C.:
Climate Ace is an ignorant person who has received some AGW indoctrination.He is aware of his ignorance and takes no pride in avoiding error.
Climate Ace does not understand that corals and marine life are composed of CO2. He is trying to attribute degradation of the oceans to CO2 without understanding such basics as ocean chemistry. To engage him in any discussion is fruitless, he never will concede a point because he lacks the ability to understand the matter.
Just swapping factoids here, which is all we mostly do about that barely understood thing called climate. I note that Sydney had just the one day of extreme heat last week: 42.3C on Tuesday 8th, though some of the minima would have been uncomfortable for sleeping. (Recorded maxima and minima only ever tell part of a story, don’t they?) Up here on the midcoast we had our big heat on the Saturday following, though Sunday night was very uncomfortable. (Monday we pulled out the jumpers!)
I well remember Sydney’s Big Heat of January 1960. We got four days of extreme heat in a row, with maxima ranging from 39.4 to 42.4 at Observatory Hill, hotter at the airport and elsewhere. Of course, that was the month and year Oodnadatta recorded its 50.7. (The 53.1 shade temp at Cloncurry on 16 January 1889 had no Stevenson screen, but the 19th century was certainly no pussycat when it came to climate in Oz.) Being the forgetful, impressionable creatures we are, we like to remember the period from 1950 to 1979 as nice and wet. But after 1957 drought crept from the centre to the edges, till there was severe general drought by the mid-sixties. I’m told Tassie was a tinder box for those 1967 fires.
From all this I have learned that climate does, indeed, change. (Just ask those SA farmers who ventured over Goyder’s Line in 1865). I’ve learned that some people know a bit about past and present climate, but nobody has a clue what future climate will be.
And I learned long ago, way back in1960, that you can, indeed, fry eggs on the footpath.
mpainter says:
January 16, 2013 at 4:41 pm
Ron C.:
Climate Ace is an ignorant person who has received some AGW indoctrination.He is aware of his ignorance and takes no pride in avoiding error.
Climate Ace does not understand that corals and marine life are composed of CO2.
I am skeptical about your claim that corals and marine life are composed of CO2.
A skeptic would ask who is Steve Mosher and why is an English major with no scientific background a part of the BEST team?
Earth to Right Wing, please Google the word “Global” thank you.
Climate Ace says:January 16, 2013 at 5:49 pm
mpainter says:
January 16, 2013 at 4:41 pm
Ron C.:
Climate Ace is an ignorant person who has received some AGW indoctrination.He is aware of his ignorance and takes no pride in avoiding error.
Climate Ace does not understand that corals and marine life are composed of CO2.
===================================
Climate Ace: I am skeptical about your claim that corals and marine life are composed of CO2
================================
Ignorance confirmed. Without the CO2 dissolved in the oceans, there would be no calcium carbonate.
Hey, maybe we shouldn’t be talking about Oz weather while so much of the “globe” is freezing its nuts off. (Even on a thread about Oz weather.)
Here we are whining about what tough times we had with heat and drought between Federation and 1950…and North America in the 1930s had dustbowls and China had floods that, if they weren’t “extreme”, will certainly serve till the real “extreme” comes along. (I won’t dare define “extreme” till instructed by our Green Betters.)
And just when you think you have a handle on this whole warming thing, what with the US heatwave…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NWS-NOAA_Europe_Extreme_minimum_temperature_FEB_5_-_FEB_11,_2012.gif
But that wasn’t so much cold as “extreme”, right? And all the ice and snow were actually “precipitation”, right? Am I learning to talk like a good “global” citizen?
Climate Ace infers that crops have been burnt in the following rant ‘The biofuel subsidy for wheat farming constituents (those who haven’t been burned out in the 500,000 or so hectares* already burned out this fire season)’ This is nonsense as he well knows crops were harvested throughout the grain growing areas in November and early December. The black ground will benefit farmers and will reduce chemical use for next cropping season.
mpainter
Climate Ace: I am skeptical about your claim that corals and marine life are composed of CO2
================================
Ignorance confirmed. Without the CO2 dissolved in the oceans, there would be no calcium carbonate.
I am skeptical that you know the difference between ‘composed of’ and ‘dissolved in oceans’.
If a whale were ‘composed of’ CO2 it would be a very big balloon indeed.
Keep them coming.
mosomoso
Still trundling out your ‘factoids’?
And your climate science credentials are what, exactly, Mr Kelly?
REPLY: And what are yours, you anonymous coward hiding behind a fake name? – Anthony
“Still trundling out your ‘factoids’?”
Yep, it’s what we do, you and I. Amazingly, you don’t know you do it. You actually think you can confirm a global trend from an Australian summer heatwave, such as we have in various forms every few years. Records are being broken! Houses are burning! “The new normal?”
But I can see that my raising past climate, and contradictory modern events such as the present Indian coldwave, is annoying to you. I should stop now….but wasn’t it a hoot when England copped it’s worst known heatwave in 1976, right in the middle of the Global Cooling Scare? The poor old CRU ! Company, halt! About turn!
Fudging everything with factoid, bias, re-definition, modelling, smoothing and adjustment? In the Age of GetUp and John McTernan, is that the new normal for Australia?
Climate Ace says:January 16, 2013 at 8:28 pm
mpainter
Climate Ace: I am skeptical about your claim that corals and marine life are composed of CO2
================================
Ignorance confirmed. Without the CO2 dissolved in the oceans, there would be no calcium carbonate.
I am skeptical that you know the difference between ‘composed of’ and ‘dissolved in oceans’.
If a whale were ‘composed of’ CO2 it would be a very big balloon indeed.
Keep them coming.
=========================
Climate Ace is the fellow who thought to instruct us on “chemical changes in the ocean”, and here shows his ignorance of calcium carbonate and its role in sea life, thinking to hide his ignorance behind a whale.
Well, Ace, your whale is not big enough, for this is a blog frequented by people educated in the sciences. They know that CO2 is an essential component of the shells and tests of sea life, combining with calcium to form calcium carbonate, the mineral that makes up the tests of your pterapods, forams and other plankton, and shells of benthonic forms such as pelecypods, gastropods, etc., as well as corals. They know these things, and they wonder what you are doing here.
Next test, Ace: how else is CO2 removed from the ocean as calcium carbonate?
Sydney now 45.7º
Rob Banks says:
January 17, 2013 at 8:25 pm
“Sydney now 45.7º”
Yes, that’s very hot but Hobart is 20C, Melbourne 22C, Adelaide 24C, Perth 26C, tropical Cairns and Darwin are both 30C and Brisbane is 29C.
Summer in Australia!
Fool. Some places will be colder due to Global Warming. Global is the key term, not Local. Britain for example stands at risk of losing the Gulf Stream current which keeps it temperate and warm. Global warming is overwhelmingly evident if you care to look beyond single examples and look at the body of evidence. What a waste of a brain, stop being ridiculous.
Factually incorrect rant
Sydney reached 45.7 degrees at 2:54pm today, breaking the previous record of 45.3 set in 1939
Hottest temperature ever recorded in sydney occurred today: 45.8 deg C
If the logic of the article was that “sydney was hotter in 1790 so there is no global warming”, does that imply that since there was a record temperature today, there is global warming?
Oops Mr Kelly, spoke a few days to soon. 45.8 today. 3C hotter than your strawman argument. Not to worry I am sure you will just shift the goalposts or move on to your next factoid.
Ho Ho Ho……yeah right, [snip . . site rules, ad hom . . mod]
Hi Mod, wasn’t aware that speculation was ad hom….did not attack the man at all nor comment on his motivation. Anyway….
[you put words in his mouth to use to mock him . . ad hom . . there is enough in this thread without resorting to schoolyard stuff . . mod]
Thanks Mod, point taken. Will just wait with bated breath for Mr Kelly’s next article.
Today in Sydney — 45.7 in Sydney city, 45.7 in Bankstown, 46.1 at Camden, 46.4 at Sydney Airport. More bushfires and lives lost again today.
yien:
Your post at January 18, 2013 at 2:19 am says in total
Yes, Australia is having a heat wave and there are associated bush fires which have resulted in loss of lives which is very sad.
But, at issue is to what – if any – extent the heat wave and the bush fires result from human activity.
Some bush fires were probably started by humans, and the ferocity of the fires has probably been affected by policies on frequency of induced burning and forest management.
But there is no evidence that human activity has added to the heat wave except as local urban heat islands which are not pertinent to the bush fires.
Record temperatures are being set over the short recording period but the heat wave is not unprecedented as Tench’s documents show.
Richard
Here’s my two bits regarding calibration, the laboratory instruments I used for temperature monitoring were mostly ±1.5°C. That was the rating. I found good agreement with physical constants, but the only one I encountered regularly was liquid nitrogen at -196°C. My type-K thermocouples generally read within half-a-degree of -196°C when I was pushing LN2 into my temperature control chamber. (Note, type-K is not rated for that low.) So, in my view, any measurement claiming better than half-a-Kelvin accuracy is silly. I still say so after considering Mosher’s arguments. (And that makes fractional warming claims silly, too, IMHO.) The new satellite measurements and Argo are different, but that pretty much indicates incomparable too.
Sally Morris says: January 17, 2013 at 11:38 pm
Fool. Some places will be colder due to Global Warming
============================
This is one of the best yet. Terminal brainwashed.
And so they bleat out of their frantic panic-peddling, to the amusement of the whole world. And, amplifying the screeches is the impending sweep at the polls this year. Global warmers will soon be history in Australia, as the Aussies say “Never Again!”
***
David L. says:
January 14, 2013 at 8:24 am
Now if people were swimming in the Delaware and Schuykill rivers today there would be a massive media blitz and everyone would be proclaiming Globall Warming. Yet that’s the way it was in January 1790.
***
Roanoke VA recorded an astonishing 87F in late Jan ~1930.
I recall 80F for two straight days in late Jan 1973 in western MD. We even waded in a farm pond for the novelty.
What temperature does it take to kill a ‘bat’?
Something above 42 degrees, according to this paper.
Climate change and the effects of temperature extremes on Australian flying-foxes Proc. R. Soc. B February 22, 2008 275 1633 419-425; doi:10.1098/rspb.2007.1385 1471-2954
“According to an ongoing temperature analysis conducted by scientists at NASA, the average global temperature on Earth has increased by about 0.8C (1.4F) since 1880, (left 1880-1889) compared to today (right 2000-2009” http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/16/2012-10-warmest-years-on-record
A new all time record high was recorded in Sidney January 18. 45.8C or14.4 F. this is much higher than that discussed in the OP even without considering that the OP record was not properly housed. The original stories of the heat in Australia did not claim records in Sidney. the hothouse continues there. How hot can it get?
michael sweet:
At January 18, 2013 at 2:20 pm you ask
It can probably get as high as the hottest heat wave during the Medeaval Warm Period but nobody was measuring then so nobody knows what that was.
Your phrase “all time” only means since measurements began.
Richard
Hi Richard,
“It can probably get as high as the hottest heat wave………………but nobody was measuring then so nobody knows what it was”
Good point that Michael should take note of. The word unusual can be used in that point with out caveat but the word unprecedented definitely requires one. Everyone should read the very first point in the Climate Commissions report under “Key Messages”. Then after reading the entire document consider this part of Mr Kelly’s first paragraph…
“Even the taxpayer funded Climate Commission could not hide their excitement declaring, “it was hotter than before” and that “climate change” was responsible for the “unprecedented” extreme heat Sydneysiders were experiencing.”
“it was hotter than before”…… very sciency…before when?……quote is fabricated and not in document
“unprecedented”………mentioned several times but with very prominent “Key Message” caveat
” “unprecedented” heat Sydneysiders….”………….. nowhere to be seen. In fact Sydney does not even rate a mention. Strawman. And lucky it was a strawman as otherwise on his own premise he has now already been proven wrong.