Readers may recall the story Global Warming?……. It was warmer in Sydney in 1790 by Craig Kelly, MP in NSW Australia in response to some of the recent alarmist caterwauling in the press about the hot summer in Australia being a sign of ‘global warming’. He writes in with an update regarding criticisms by Steven Mosher regarding instrument calibration.
Kelly writes:
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Hi Anthony,
I’ve done a bit more research on the temperature measurements recorded by Tench in 1790 that I thought you might be interested in.
Firstly, it appears the measurements were taken in a purpose built observatory which stood at location of the current pylons of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. The Observatory was built and run by William Dawes.
There is a detail description of the Observatory in letter sent back to England. The Observatory had two thermometers not one. These were loaned to the First Fleet by the Board of Longitude.
One was made by Nairne & Blunt and the other one by Ramsden.
When the First Fleet stopped at Cape Town on the way to Sydney, Dawes refers to calibrating the instruments. William Dawes’ journal actually mentions making a comparison between the two thermometers, noting;
‘‘I observe when the thermometers have been long at nearly the same height that they agree.’’
When both Dawes and Tench returned to England at the end of 1791 (after having their requests to stay denied) they took the thermometers with them and returned them to the Board of Longitude.
Both Tench and Dawes were remarkable men, they would have done everything in their power to ensure the measurements were as accurate a possible. Gergis et al. (2009) has stated that William Dawes’ data is commensurate with present-day meteorological measurements.
Add this to the numerous ancedotes of bird and bat deaths, and I think even the most skeptical would have to agree that records are quite accurate.
Regards,
Craig Kelly
Federal Member for Hughes
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Some additions by Anthony:
The abstract of Gergis et al 2009:
This study presents the first analysis of the weather conditions experienced at
Sydney Cove, New South Wales, during the earliest period of the European settlement
of Australia. A climate analysis is presented for January 1788 to December
1791 using daily temperature and barometric pressure observations recorded by
William Dawes in Sydney Cove and a temperature record kept by William Bradley
on board the HMS Sirius anchored in Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) in the early
months of the First Fleet’s arrival in Australia. Remarkably, the records appear
comparable with modern day measurements taken from Sydney Observatory
Hill, displaying similar daily variability, a distinct seasonal cycle and considerable
inter-annual variability. To assess the reliability of these early weather data, they were cross-verified with other data sources, including anecdotal observations recorded in First Fleet documentary records and independent palaeoclimate reconstructions. Some biases in the temperature record, likely associated with the location of the thermometer, have been identified. Although the 1788–1791 period experienced a marked La Niña to El Niño fluctuation according to palaeoclimatic data, the cool and warm intervals in Sydney over this period cannot be conclusively linked to El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) conditions. This study demonstrates that there are excellent opportunities to expand our description of pre-20th century climate variability in Australia while contributing culturally significant material to the emerging field of Australian environmental history.
An account from Dawes journal extracted from Gergis et al 2009:
By September 1790, the settlers were fast realising just
how unpredictable Australia’s weather could be. Watkin
Tench remarks ‘it is changeable beyond any other I ever
heard of… clouds, storms and sunshine pass in rapid succession’.
But by the middle of 1790, Tench (1793) describes
the impact of dry conditions on the colony’s food supplies:
‘vegetables are scarce…owing to want of rain. I do not think
that all the showers of the last four months put together,
would make twenty-four hours rain. Our farms, what with
this and a poor soil, are in wretched condition. My winter
crop of potatoes, which I planted in days of despair (March
and April last), turned out very badly when I dug them about
two months back. Wheat returned so poorly last harvest’
(Tench 1793).
It appears that the summer of 1790–91 was a hot and dry
summer. Tench comments that, at times, it ‘felt like the blast
of a heated oven’. He goes on to describe the heat endured
during summer: ‘even [the] heat [of December 1790] was
judged to be far exceeded in the latter end of the following
February [1791], when the north-west wind again set in, and
blew with great violence for three days. At Sydney, it fell
short by one degree of [December 1790] but at Rose Hill [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…it must, however, have been intense, from the effects
it produced. 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’, though tropical birds, bear it better.
The ground was strewn with them in the same condition as
the bats’ (Tench 1793).
Gosh, “climate disruption” in 1790? It’s worse than we thought!
List of Instruments proper for making astronomical Observations at Botany Bay
Other related items include two lists that detail the instruments Dawes needed for his colonial observatory. ‘List of Instruments proper for making astronomical Observations at Botany Bay’ contains a great many items, but as the Board of Longitude — of which Banks was an ex-officio member by virtue of his position as President of the Royal Society — did not have sufficient instruments on hand, most of these were eventually crossed out.
Note the “two thermometers” in the list above.
List of instruments to be lent by the Board of Longitude for making astronomical Observations at Botany Bay
The ‘List of instruments to be lent by the Board of Longitude for making astronomical Observations at Botany Bay’ is a much shorter list; it served as a clean copy of what was actually available from the Board of Longitude.
Here is a photo from the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.
Thermometer with case, glass / mercury / metal / wood / shagreen, Nairne and Blunt, England, 1770-1800
Read more: http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=68006#ixzz2IKiUeerQ
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial
Lets see was the thermometer actually calibrated?
How accurate was it?
“Dawes thermometer is described as being: ‘by Nairne &
Blunt, small & divided only to every two degrees [°F], the
whole scale from 0 to 212 being in length 6.23 inches”.
My argument was rather simple and has not been answered.
For the past 5 years people have complained about the calibration and exposure of instruments.
Good honest skepticism. However, now when you have a record that you like ” It was warmer in 1790″ all that skepticism goes out the window.
There is no record of how close the dawes thermometer was to those it was tested against.
It was divided every 2 degrees of F.
The temperature was taken inside of a building. There is actually no record of where it was located
“Although the specific locations where Dawes positioned
the thermometers are unknown, McAfee (1981) suggests
that they were most likely in a well ventilated position inside
the observatory. There was no fireplace in the observatory,
and the rooms were fairly well ventilated with a canvas roof
on the circular observation room and a canvas shutter on
the roof of the main building (McAfee 1981). From the daily
range of temperatures, he suggests that there seems little
reason to suspect a very airtight or heated room exposed to
direct sunlight.”
Also, on many occassions people have complained about early records not haveing stevenson sheilds. You will all note that this objection I raised was not answered.
Here is what we know
“Figure 1 compares the mean seasonal cycle present in Dawes’s
18th century temperature observations (Tmax, Tmin, DTR)
with the modern day climatology of Sydney’s Observatory
Hill. Remarkably, there is very good agreement between
the two temperature records, with the exception of slightly
higher readings in the summer months and marginally cooler
winter temperatures in Dawes’s observations. This may be
due to the way the thermometers were exposed: that is, the
absence of Stevenson screens that shield meteorological
instruments from the influences of direct heat radiation and
provide adequate ventilation, moderating the registration of
extremes, which generally explains the differences between
20th century and earlier instrumentation (Nicholls et al. 1996;”
And then there is this
“Nevertheless,
Dawes’s 18th century temperature and MSLP data are
clearly successful in reproducing Sydney’s modern seasonal
cycle, albeit imperfectly. The ranges of daily extremes in
temperature and MSLP from the Dawes data compare well
with those from the modern observations for all seasons,
except for Tmax in summer, when Dawes’s data are likely
to slightly overestimate the highest maximum temperatures
due to inadequate thermometer exposure. These results suggest
that the record is useful for examining relative (rather
than absolute) climate variations experienced during the
first years of European settlement in Australia. ”
Opps. so, the document relied on here, actually undercuts the case. Now I suppose one can attack Gergis.
Bottomline. The records are the best evidence we have. If you want to be consistently skeptical about early records because of stevenson screen issues or calibration issues, if you want to be consistently skeptical about measurement precision, then I don’t thnk one can put too much faith in the claim that it was warmer in 1790 than now. Of course its possible, maybe even likely, but its hardly certain. On the other hand you can cherry pick when and where to be skeptical. When you do, I’ll be there.
Steven Mosher:
At January 19, 2013 at 2:50 pm you say
There is a difference between being skeptical and being stupid.
The parrots and bats are independently recorded as being killed by the heat. That is strong corroborating evidence that the 1790 heat wave was hotter than the present one. Unless, of course, you know different?
Richard
Steven Mosher says:
January 19, 2013 at 2:50 pm
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Dang, you must feel strongly about this.
Normally on this site, we only get your short poorly worded versions.
Thanks for the effort.
BruceC says:
January 18, 2013 at 1:38 pm
I submitted a comment on JoNova’s site, “Australia – was hot and is hot. So what?…” page, #95.
Below is a shorter version. You may be interested.
BOM Special Climate Statement 43 – Interim 14 January 2013 (scs43c) describes the recent heat wave.
It was written by three (no less) Ph.D climatologists.
Table 1 shows the new daily maximum temperature records.
There are 52 records. Only 5 are from ACORN-SAT sites.
Table 2 shows the new daily minimum temperature records.
There are 19 records. Only 6 are from ACORN-SAT sites.
Table 4 shows state high maximum temperatures recorded each day of the event.
WA: 19 records, only 1 is from an ACORN-SAT site.
SA: 15 records, only 8 are from ACORN-SAT sites.
VIC: 15 records, only 7 are from ACORN-SAT sites.
NSW: 14 records, only 3 are from ACORN-SAT sites.
TAS: 11 records, only 1 is from an ACORN-SAT site.
QLD: 12 records, 9 are from ACORN-SAT sites.
NT: 13 records, 0 are from ACORN-SAT sites.
Table 5 shows state high minimum temperatures recorded each day of the event.
WA: 17 records, only 1 is from an ACORN-SAT site.
SA: 12 records, only 1 is from an ACORN-SAT site.
VIC: 11 records, only 6 are from ACORN-SAT sites.
NSW: 12 records, only 2 are from ACORN-SAT sites.
TAS: 11 records, only 2 are from ACORN-SAT sites.
QLD: 12 records, only 6 are from ACORN-SAT sites.
NT: 15 records, 1 is from an ACORN-SAT site.
“I don’t thnk one can put too much faith in the claim that it was warmer in 1790 than now…”
Perhaps someone made that claim, Steven, but I’m not aware of it. What I have always concluded from Tench’s journal is that horror heat involving nor’westers at summer peak is no new thing. I also concluded that the episode described by Tench was likely worse than any in my lifetime, though I wasn’t around in the lethal Australian summers of 1938-1939, 1895-1896.
“Warmer in 1790” is not the concern. Bloody hot in 1791, 1895, 1939, 1960 and 2013 is one message to take away. But the concern over the First Fleet heat wave is the persistence of northern and inland winds over long periods when, in addition, the temps are very high. Nor are we talking about years or eras. We are talking here about episodes. Parts of Sydney may have had record temps last Friday. I was living in Sydney in 1960 when we had our famous string of century temps. But the phenomenon raised by Tench, and which I experienced in the early 80s and around 2000, is something else again. That last time it happened I was living in the bush, in bird and bat country. I did not see any mass deaths as described by Tench, but i can sure understand that, if conditions got just a bit more severe, that would happen. The fudge theory that animals in modern times would find local dams and swimming pools is pretty weak. I have a dam and know the viable water holes in my area. The half-implied theory that Tench may have just lucked in on an extinction event can be safely put aside, I think. (Political necessity may have prompted that one.)
In short, Tench has left an invaluable description of an extreme weather event which is possibly worse than any such event in my lifetime, but not necessarily worse than events that occurred in the 1890s or late 1930s. Sydney was so dry by 1888, I imagine awful things must have been going on climatically. But I wasn’t there.
Tench and Dawes were fanatical about instrumentation. If anyone had told Dawes, especially, to invent or distort his observations he would have disobeyed. He was that kind of guy. Steven, I take your point that we can never know for sure about their temp readings. But that’s a problem that has persisted right into the present, is it not?
Steven Mosher says:
January 19, 2013 at 2:50 pm
I don’t disagree with your sentiment at all. However, you are assuming that everyone takes the Tench data ‘as read’ – which is clearly not the case. Indeed, the majority are slightly skeptical about the data, but the corroborating evidence would suggest that it is reasonably valid (i.e. that it was bloody hot!).
Now, IIRC, the purpose of the original post was to merely remind people that hot Sydney days had been recorded before – and that the so called recent ‘record’ in the current temporal record was indeed not actually a record at all (if Tenchs data is considered valid).
Now, personally, I don’t go much for all these so called climate/weather ‘records’ – as a geologist I know full well that all ‘records’ based on current datasets have almost certainly been exceeded in the past, whether 200 or 20000 or 20million years ago! So, although the author was perhaps trying to dumb down the current record claims – anything that brings a sense of reality to the situation is always welcome.
We could argue about the scientific integrity of the temp data all day long – the endless possibilities that such and such a station had a duff sensor for a few days/weeks/months, or wasn’t properly calibrated against an approved source, etc, etc – this could equally apply to the data from last week, let alone from 200+ years ago! And don’t try claiming how the current data is all so good – as we all know that it isn’t ! As far as I know,there is still no complete (publicly available) record of the changes/adjustments to many datasets from raw records to current version (e.g Hadcrut, and IIRC even the CET has been tampered with but no-one recalls how?- let alone GISS!)
I am the first to be skeptical about anything written, recorded, spoken or witnessed – but in the absence of other validated information it should still be considered! I think that was the nuts and bolts of the original posts purpose – and, in the real world, this is excatly what needs to be done more often. The smell test, reality test, whatever different folks call it, is still important – different sources need to be corroborated and cross referenced and I reckon that this was the objective of the original post. In the case of old explorers, these guys were writing stuff down to keep their patrons happy in some cases, and for posterity or curiosity in others – comparing the two (or more) is always interesting!
richardscourtney says:
Australian heat waves are “invariably during El Niño years”?
Really? You know that? How?
At the risk of over-simplification, El Niño releases heat from the oceans to the atmosphere. More predominant westerly winds also push heat from the Australian interior onto the cities of the eastern seaboard where the majority of people live. Compare ENSO with Australia’s weather records if you don’t believe me.
The worrying thing seems to be the dichotomy between your assertions.
Which is exactly my point. 🙂
richardscourtney says:
The parrots and bats are independently recorded as being killed by the heat. That is strong corroborating evidence that the 1790 heat wave was hotter than the present one. Unless, of course, you know different?
The distribution of parrots and bats was far higher and more wide-spread in 1790 than today so I’m not sure that is a valid proof.
If Kelly is impressed with extreme high temperature of one little speck on a map of Australia (with two thermometers) over two Centuries ago, then he’d be really impressed about the ENTIRE CONTINENT OF AUSTRALIA reaching it’s highest ever recorded average temperature … only the week before last.
Bill from Oz says:
January 18, 2013 at 9:46 am
You could have picked a better day to post this. It hit 45.8 degrees Celsius in Sydney (Observatory Hill) today. Hottest day in the record – except of course the hottest ever recorded temperature in Sydney was January 22 1923 when it reached 47.2c. But what’s a couplde of degrees between friends.
Simon, many these days see half-understood climate patterns as buttons or levers (with tech-sounding acronym names) which can control climate “mechanisms”. God or Gaia pulls the PDO lever or pushes the ENSO button and such-and-such happens. Sometimes its the human “forcings” versus the natural “mechanisms”. I even know people of high intelligence who believe that by entrusting money to GIM or Goldman Sachs or the UN they can eventually get control of this climate console and make the sea levels and temps “stable” – and even bring down their fire levies!
Of course, it’s not like that. One does not need the intelligence of, say, an Adam Smith to understand that it doesn’t work in that neat and mechanistic way. The whopper El Nino of 1997-8 did not have much impact on Oz. Its impact has been classed as weak. The whopper of 82-83 had a whopper impact on us. To add to the contradictions, the weak El Nino of 2002-2003 had a very strong impact on Oz. This year we only started in El Nino territory, but still copped a drought and heatwave. ENSO is just a handy set of observations, and with more science and less dogma it may be even better understood in the future. Here’s hoping.
It’s like the bats and parrots. When no science is available, you have to fall back on the observations of observant people who were there. Like Goyder and Kidman, Watkin Tench was an extraordinary person who had his eyes and ears wide open. We should not now ignore such people because they did not live in the era of Publish-or-Perish. In fact, that may be a reason to trust them more.
Michael, can you give me the average temp readings for the ENTIRE CONTINENT OF AUSTRALIA in summer 1790-1791? Just ballpark will do. No need for info on summer 1938-1939 or summer 1895-1896. I’ve got the mortality rates for those seasons. The deaths tell me enough.
Australian Bureau of Meteorology claim of all-time hot day in Sydney falls in a heap when compared to more rural stations in surrounding regions
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=2025
Thanks mosomoso, I took up Simon’s challenge and was comparing my local weather station’s stats (in Melbourne) with the enso cycle. Counter-intuitively, there is no correlation at all! So Simon, please show your reasoning and data. I’ve heard that our weather lags enso by 4-5 months which would make sense since it would take a few months for the hotter water to push west to Aus in an el Nino.
And @Michael – I’ve been searching for an Australia-wide average temp so I can check this broken record. Please where did you find it recorded? I can’t find it? In fact I’d never heard of that statistic until the record was broken. I can see maps of Australian temps, showing where was hot, where was cold, but nothing about the whole of Australia.
Lewis P Buckingham says:
January 19, 2013 at 1:09 pm
Hi Climate Ace Jan 18,2013 at 10:08 pm
Thanks for your conversational reply.
As I write I am listening to ‘my’ flock of Eastern Rosellas as they squabble and argue feeding on my lemon scented gums. They woke me up this morning ,a great way to rise.
I am sorry you have been called the names of some of the more significant mass murderers of the twentieth century.I do not in the slightest think that way of you and on this site hope that moderators will put in the word SNIP, and we all get on with our lives.
As for my FAIL, remember that my terms are purely descriptive, as a good scientist should,and observational.I have no idea what your day job is,unless you happen to say.
You are a journalist because you are a writer,and a political adviser because you keep on making political comments such as “we need intelligent people in parliament’.
But this debate is not about intelligence, but about observation and facts.So it is important to look at as many facts as possible, not the preferred ones that fit the theory or hypothesis.
One of the most noticeable things about the Platycercus eximius is its enormous range.
On of the first things I noticed about parrots when exploring the Lane Cove River as a child, later as a Jackaroo at Hillston, on those desertified grasslands and in central Australia is their ability to find cool places when they are hot.
When treating them, especially eximius, we return these little birds to their flock, the same applies.
This is unsurprising.
They have core genetics for survival deep in their physiology that leads them to cool water and shade.They survived the dinosaurs.
No doubt these birds survived the medieval warming and the little ice age, so sure they have a propensity to adapt well.But what about the other part of adaptation, the environment.
As far as we know the area that these parrots flew into was a forest with permanent water that still flows from the rocks at Milson’s Point and cool gullies. Behind it sat the enormous Macquarie Marshes, nowadays called wetlands,where Centennial Park and Redfern now stand.
Nowhere to be seen was a modern city.
Now this discussion is not actually about the past theory of AGW, but asks the question
Was the extreme temperature then,three years after the colony was founded, any different to that of todays extremes?
Those birds had the benefit of millions of years of evolutionary adaption, flew into an area where shelter was available, and still died.Those present said it was from the heat.
Perhaps they were right.
Thank you for your reply. The problem with your point of view is that it is speculative: interesting, but speculative. There is absolutely no basis for deducing conclusions based on comparative bird and bat deaths now and two hundred years ago in Sydney.
Just to give you an idea of just how speculative your views are, consider the case of the Galah. There Galahs at all were not recorded in the Sydney Basin 200 years ago. When first encountered by explorers over the next 50 years or so, Galahs were encountered only in hotter, drier parts of the continent. (There was quite a strong correlation between primarily seed-based (as opposed to tuber-based) hunting gathering economies by Indigenous people and first encounters with Galahs). Another way of looking at this was that Galahs were only encountered in the hottest, driest parts of the interior of the country.
They are now common in the Sydney Basin. Those seeking to use birds to demonstrate that this means that Sydney is now hotter and drier than it was 200 years ago would be wrong, of course. They would be wrong unless they control all the relevant variable. This does not pseudo sceptics reading Tench and making learned comparisons between bird and bat deaths then and now.
Precisely when the self-proclaimed skeptics need a bit of scientific skepticism, it is missing completely.
BTW, I have said, and I will say it again. I neither am, nor ever have been, either a journalist or a political adviser.
Remove the urban heat effect and the temperature is 2-3 degrees less. No more scare talk.
“Those seeking to use birds to demonstrate that this means that Sydney is now hotter and drier than it was 200 years ago would be wrong, of course.”
Well, I never met such an odd person, holding such bizarre opinions on no evidence, but if I ever do…
On another topic all together, those summer nor’westers in 1790-91 must have been shockers to kill so many birds and bats at such a rate. Domestic budgies were perishing in the last such event up the coast here, but of the millions of wild birds and bats in our region, I observed no deaths at all. Do I conclude that none died from the dehydrating on-shore blasts during the more recent event? I am no such speculator. Let’s just hope that, with a new and vastly more efficient coal power industry, humans will have the benefit of air conditioning during the inevitable heatwaves and coldwaves to come – especially those summer nor’westers!
We must insist on cheap, abundant energy for all. Australian commerce and industry deserve this advantage, and must have it. It is achievable and nothing less is acceptable. We have to wash the green goo from our minds: it has nothing to do with Conservation and everything to do with self-loathing.
Anyway, full credit to Dawes and Tench for taking such pains to be precise in such adverse circumstances. Many thanks to Anthony and Craig for reviving the memory of these men. Prospect is actually Tench’s Prospect, but his name has fallen into disuse. At least we have Dawes Point.
Climate Ace Jan 20 2013 at 1.57 pm Thanks for your reply.
Speculative your views are ,consider the case of the Galah’
The Galah is indeed interesting.My first meeting was at a windmill site at Moolbong on the Trida road.The day had been really hot, it was January and as the sun set a flock of Galahs flew in from the dry grassland around me an sat on the wire fence chattering and fighting with each other.
Later I was out riding all day and came across an oasis, a flooded claypan teeming with life in the middle of the desertified baking hot plain.
It was then that I realised that these parrots adapted by finding shade and water in extreme heat.
Once Europeans cleared the coastal areas, including Sydney, the habitat changed and these adaptive birds moved in.
Look then at eximius.These parrots, or at least their forebears were already here in Sydney when the First Fleet landed, and they are still here.
Of course the Galah was not, so sure I would not consider it as a useful proxy for anything in Port Jackson in 1790.
So unless the eximius has radically changed in its adaptive behaviour and physiology it is a useful proxy for heat stress.
Now the range of eximius is enormous.It covers large temperature ranges.As you seem knowledgeable about all this you must have looked this up.It covers a big chunk of the south east of the continent of Australia.
Those temperature ranges are well outside the probable rise in global temperature say in the last two hundred and twenty years.
We know that Port Jackson was covered in forests, mud flats mangroves, and had adjacent wetlands.
So as a line of enquiry I have set up a hypothesis.Now as you may be a scientist you know that a hypothesis is at best a guess. Maybe a good guess, but still a guess.
My hypothesis is that it was so hot on that day back in 1790 that the birds’ core temperature rose so suddenly that they seizured and fell from the sky. If the seizuring did not kill them, then they died of trauma on impact.
You see, that’s what I observed in one of them on that extreme hot and fateful day last week.
Now two hundred years of genetic drift does not protect a bird if it going to be cooked in flight and not have enough time to achieve available shelter, falls from the sky and impacts.
A reasonable conclusion is that the temperature than was extreme.
Those present thought that it was the heat.So do I.
BTW I have been sort of following your discussion of bushfires.
I note you observed the Canberra fires of a decade ago.
I agree that crown top eucalypt fires are deadly.
Climate Ace says: January 18, 2013 at 8:47 pm
Ace goes to a lot of trouble to find odd reasons why actually recorded historic temperatures may have been in error, and puts up a whole fog of suggestions as to why dying birds and bats may have been some sort of an erroneous artifact of settlement.
From a statistical viewpoint it changes little … similar temperatures have been recorded previously. Even if current temperatures do prove to be a whole 1 or 2 degrees C higher, (and lets not venture here into UHI or even climate models and their ‘projections’) at this stage this is still meaningless. It is simply a temperature anomaly. Should it occur every day for a month, or every year for the next three to five years or ten years, or even once every decade for the next five decades, we would have something to discuss.
Right now we have every climate event, be it hurricane, flood, snowstorm, or heatwave being triumphantly held up as definitive proof of [apply here the latest climate catchphrase].
Philip Shehan says:
January 21, 2013 at 6:21 am
The article from which the above quotes were taken is by Tim Flannery, who also edited and wrote the forward to my copy of Watkin Tench’s journals. Flannery is no politically correct bleeding heart.
Phil, You may perhaps be thinking of a different Flannery, I believe:
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Flannery
Dear HB,
In answer to your query, here’s are some reference for Australia’s nation-wide average maximum temperature being broken during the recent heatwave:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-08/heat-wave-creates-new-australian-records/4457282
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-08/outback-roads-melt-as-australia-records-hottest-day/4457116
[PS: temps are in Celsius, not Fahrenheit for Australia]
Dear Michael
Reports on the ABC are not ‘sources.’ The national average figure is a previously unheard-of metric generated by models using temperature records that are both unreliable per se and adjusted in ways and for reasons that are not disclosed.
Fixed that for you.
hi there i am the master chief spartan 117 moniting weather your right 212 degrees ferhinite 100 degrees celcius means we need too evacuate planet earth and move too our universe full of halo rings