Thanks to the help of many readers, I’m off to cover The 2013 AGU meeting, and I’ll be in San Francisco this week. I’m in transit today.
Readers might want to peruse the AGU Meeting program and see if they have topics/questions they’d like to see covered.
For those attending and wish to contact me, you can either use the WUWT contact form, or the AGU member messaging system from their web page.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
climateace says:
“Hottest spring on record for Australia:”
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/season/aus/summary.shtml
= = = = = = = = = = = =
[spring] BUSHFIRES MENACE HOMES AT THE BASIN
For three hours on Saturday night bush fires encircled The Basin, a township near Bayswater. More than 300 homes were menaced by the flames. This graphic picture was taken when the blaze was at its height. Yesterday the fire spread toward Ferny Creek and Sassafras
Argus, Monday, November 29, 1937
http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/page/583930?zoomLevel=2
Spring 2013 in Melbourne was rather cold and wet, as a matter of fact.
And there was an unusually thick blanket of summer snow at Thredbo last Friday.
Hottest snowfall on record!
ed
[“Hottest spring on record for Australia:”
And how many Millennium do those ‘records’ cover?
Yawn…………………]
You are quite right to yawn at your own comment.
[ Khwarizmi says:
December 8, 2013 at 6:42 pm
Spring 2013 in Melbourne was rather cold and wet, as a matter of fact.
And there was an unusually thick blanket of summer snow at Thredbo last Friday.
Hottest snowfall on record!]
I know Melbourne is an important city to its inhabitants but it occupies only a tiny fraction of the Australian continent. Trying to argue that Australia has not had its hottest Spring on record because you had a cold time in Melbourne is grossly unscientific.
One cherry-picked fire in Sassafras in 1937 tells us nothing except that you are willing to cherrypick.
Obamacare is to the Medical Industry as NAFTA was to the Manufacturing Industry.
Just a heads up.
Oh the joys of living in the south-eastern US. Yesterday the temperature dropped during the day and today the temperature will rise during the night. Such events are not uncommon in the winter here. This temperature map from a few days ago speaks volumes. It would not hurt my feelings if the temperatures stayed that warm all winter long.
:large
Melbourne is to Australia as Australia is to Earth.
Why are you cherry picking and then criticizing someone for following up the path you left?
——————————————
If I was there I might take the trouble to check out poster:
Wednesday AM
GC31C
Ecosystem Responses to Increasing Atmospheric CO2:
Moving Forward From First Generation Free Air CO2
Experiments Posters
8:00
A.M.
Moscone South:
Hall A-C l
————————-
On the other hand, I think I would pass up this one :
(and not necessarily because it takes place on Friday the 13th…..)
U52A 400ppm CO2: Communicating Climate Science
Effectively (Virtual Option: On-Demand Only)
[thisisnotgoodtogo
Melbourne is to Australia as Australia is to Earth.
Why are you cherry picking and then criticizing someone for following up the path you left?’
Incorrect. Australia is larger proportionally to Earth than Melbourne is to Australia.
It is an open string. Anyone can choose any topic. I chose to introduce two topics. In that context several respondents have cherry-picked isolated events as if they had any sort of logical weight.
One cherrypicked bushfire adds nothing to the Bushfire Report I cited. (I take this opportunity to suggest that people who, like me, are seriously concerned about the ongoing growth in their insurance premiums read the Report).
Neither does a cherry-picked cold spell in Melbourne add anything to the topic of Australia having its hottest spring on record.
“climateace,”
Victoria is not a tiny fraction of Australia. Victoria was cold and wet throughout spring.
There were no bushfires in Victoria during spring of 2013, unlike the spring of 1937.
What parts of Australia, then, were responsible for breaking the record?
Now in case you were born yesterday, or simply forgot…
= = = = = = = = = = = =
“DROUGHT will become a redundant term as Australia plans for a permanently drier future, according to the nation’s urban water industries chief…. “The urban water industry has decided the inflows of the past will never return,” Water Services Association of Australia executive director Ross Young said. “We are trying to avoid the term ‘drought’ and saying this is the new reality.”
(The Age, 2007)
“Drought is too comfortable a word,” said John Williams, the New South Wales state Commissioner for Natural Resources. “Drought connotes a return to normal. We need to be adjusting.”
(Cosmos, 2007)
“The pattern that we’re seeing now in the weather in Australia is very much the pattern was predicted by computer models as much as a decade ago. We will have to get by with less water. The CSIRO’s telling us that. We’re seeing it now, in the evidence before our eyes in our rivers and creeks, and of course the computer models in the global models have been predicting just this now for some years. I think all evidence says that this is our new climate and we have to get by with less water than we’ve ever had before.”
Tim Flannery, 2007
“Hopefully Australia will see the value and urgency in taking climate action before the last puddle dries up, since unrestrained greenhouse gas emissions are projected to accelerate drought and desertification.”
http://climateprogress.org/2006/12/19/australias-facing-worst-drought-for-1000-years/
= = = = = = = = = = = =
Where did that “permanent” Australian drought go? Did it hide in the oceans or in a stadium wave?
Why do children in the U.K. still experience snow?
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2010
Finally, do any of the failed prophesies of a religion ever bother you?
Climateace… of course you would own the effects of decarbonisation too won’t you. Please tell us which statements about climate action you are confortable owning.
You are ok about 30,000 extra deaths last winter in the UK alone from carbon taxes
You are ok at the poor being deprived of corn, or sugar or other rich simple carb source so that you can burn ethanol in your car
You are happy to carpet 15 square kilometers of the earth with solar panels ( no gaps) for every gigawatt of power capacity mankind needs.
You are ok with birds being torn up, deafened, blinded, or burnt by the effects of windmills and concentrating solar collectors,
You are ok with indigenous peoples in Africa being forceably removed from their lands and killed to make way for carbon credit earning plantations.
You are OK with burying planetary oxygen for millenia underground
You really think after cyclone Haiyan we should respond by constructing more windmills and solar farms instead of building storm shelters
You are comfortable spending a few trillion dollars on reducing warming by 0.001 degrees instead of immunising the worlds children, and ending wotld hunger
You are comfortable, shoving a world only 0.8 degrees away from the famine and pestilence of the little ice age where 1/2 of Europe died, back toward an ice age.
You are certain that research into climate change of +0.8 degrees in 150 years is more important than research into cures for cancer, SIDS, and malaria
Do you understand the meaning of misanthropist ? If not then go look it up. Then my friend, for a picture of one, look in the nearest mirror and think about the millions that died in the little ice age or are condemned to death, disease or perpetual poverty by your ideology.
PS, I might add mr/ms climateace that the Australian BOM last year changed the way it calculated records for continental Australia and so this spring was in fact the hottest on record, since ….. wait for it… last spring, using this metric. I might add that as much as I aspire to supporting this nation (Australia) I still understand the global in Global warming to mean more than just Australiia. Now, what was that about cherry picking Climateace?
No need to change the name. But I agree it could be made more pronounceable. For alphabet soups like IPCC this is best done by the judicious insertion of a few extra vowels.
IPeCaC
Talking of Australia, the carbon tax apparently has worked in reducing emissions of CO2. The figures are in, the science is settled, Australia’s emissions dropped ~0.1% (Apparently) in the first year. That’s ~0.1% of ~1.5% of ~3% of ~400ppm/v CO2. No-one here is attributing the reduction to the economic downturn.
Mainstream media TV news can no longer reach critical brainwashing mass anymore. What do they get, maybe 300, 400, 500 thousand viewers on their TV channels these days? Virtually no one goes there. That’s essentially nothing in our country of over 300 million.
The Weather Channel reflects that dilemma with their new cheep bland video graphics. Who gives a crap about their crap anymore? Nobody is watching anyway.
bobl
You are making things seem much more complicated than they really are.
The only thing I ‘own’ is my home insurance rate increasing much faster than the rate of inflation. Still, I am lucky. Other British and Australian homeowners can no longer get insurance at all. The insurers might be greedy, true, but here in Australia we live in a capitalist society and, IMHO, the investors are enttiled to their profits for the risks they take. But floods and fires in certain areas keep chewing up the profits.
And once the insurers start giving up insuring we really do know that the ‘doubt’ game is over, don’t we?.
anthony had a thread called “18 Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest – Hansen’s alarmism on parade” about this study and i just noticed Popular Mechanics gave it plenty of space, ending with this excerpt:
3 Dec: Popular Mechanics: Jerry Bellinson: Climate Scientists: IPCC Is Wrong—We Need a 1-Degree limit on Warming
James Hansen and Jeffrey Sachs of the Columbia University Earth Institute lead a new study disputing the IPCC conclusion that the world can withstand a 2 degree Celsius increase over preindustrial level. Anything more than 1 degree, they say, could lead to disaster.
Most of the questions at the press conference, which was attended by a couple of dozen journalists, came down to this: “Why even propose a carbon tax, since politicians will never enact it?” Sachs argued that there is widespread public support for some kind of action on climate change, and that what has been lacking in building support for a tax is a practical vision for how to cut U.S. emissions, probably through improved electrical infrastructure, efficiency, renewables, and next-generation nuclear power plants. And, he admonished, “Don’t say something’s never going to happen. I was in the Kremlin in December 1991 the day the Soviet Union ended. Anything is possible.”
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/climate-change/climate-scientists-ipcc-is-wrong-we-need-a-1-degree-limit-on-warming-16228387
REALITY:
8 Dec: UK Telegraph: Emily Gosden: Axe carbon tax to keep lights on and cut energy bills, says ScottishPower chief
ScottishPower says tax will force coal plants to shut too soon and push up bills
Britain’s unilateral carbon tax should be scrapped before it causes blackouts, pushes up household bills and makes the UK uncompetitive, ScottishPower argues.
Keith Anderson, chief corporate officer, warns that the “carbon price floor” (CPF), which taxes companies for burning fossil fuels, will make Britain’s remaining coal plants “largely uneconomic by around the middle of the decade”…
Writing in Monday’s Telegraph, Mr Anderson also calls for a review of Britain’s £12bn programme to install “smart” electricity and gas meters in every home, suggesting costs should be cut to reduce the impact on consumer bills.
Several coal-fired power plants have already shut this year under EU rules to help curb acid rain and pollution. About a dozen plants remain operational and provide about 40pc of UK power…
But a combination of further EU rules and the carbon tax, which increases steeply every year, means most of these coal plants may be forced to close by 2015 or 2016.
“Abolishing the CPF, or freezing it at the current rate, would help to reduce upward pressure on bills, improve UK competiveness and help in cost effectively maintaining security of supply,” Mr Anderson says…
Manufacturing bodies and consumer groups both attacked the Chancellor for failing to cut or scrap the carbon tax in last week’s Autumn Statement, despite the Prime Minister’s pledge to “roll back” green levies… (READ THE REST)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/10504524/Axe-carbon-tax-to-keep-lights-on-and-cut-energy-bills-says-ScottishPower-chief.html
MORE REALITY: IN AUSTRALIA, AN OBSTRUCTIONIST SENATE IS THIS WEEK TRYING TO DELAY THE REPEAL OF OUR CARBON TAX UNTIL NEXT YEAR WHEN THE GOVT HAS THE NUMBERS, EVEN THO THE NEW GOVT WAS VOTED IN TO GET RID OF IT.
Patrick
[Talking of Australia, the carbon tax apparently has worked in reducing emissions of CO2. The figures are in, the science is settled, Australia’s emissions dropped ~0.1% (Apparently) in the first year. That’s ~0.1% of ~1.5% of ~3% of ~400ppm/v CO2. No-one here is attributing the reduction to the economic downturn.]
Just as well the Abbott Government is going to get rid of the carbon tax spend $3 billion pf taxpayers’ funds on direct action. That should fix the problem, eh?
I leave it to a financial genius to tell the difference between a tax and a tax.
“bobl says:
December 8, 2013 at 7:41 pm”
Yes indeed the BoM did excatly that, CHANGE the way they calculate temperatures for Australia. Still there are those who forget that little inconvienient fact. I do recall Climateace has a vested interest in the “carbon economy”, he has a farm somewhere that he wants to use as a “carbon farm”, or something like that if I recall correctly from another thread. Abbotts direct action plan will prevent Climateace from “farming” carbon under the previous Govn’t carbon tax.
Just in case people were discombobulated by bobl’s herd of unicorns here is a direct quote from the BOM site:
‘Spring 2013 was the warmest on record for Australia in terms of both mean temperatures (anomaly of +1.57 °C) and maximum temperatures (anomaly of +2.07 °C).’
And, for those interested in cherrypicked responses, yes, we do have our bushfire plan up to date and our valuables and our treasured photos where we can grab them quickly. Luckily there are still insurers who want to take us on and we can still afford to pay the ever-increasing premiums.
We had 600 houses burn in our city not so long ago, so it pays to be prepared.
Dear curiousnc,
You wrote: … if you look at the climate over a wider scale there is this terrifying portent that already the climate might have shifted away from a much colder mean temperature, rapidly, and in response to a relatively smaller change in GHG.
Please do not be terrified of portents. There is enough to worry about without fretting over portents, especially irrational ones.
Let’s look at some wider scales. For 99% of the last 250,000,000 years, the earth has been warmer than today. A mere 20,000 years ago was the LGM (Last Glacial Maximum), the coldest the Earth has been since the Karoo Ice Age in the Permian Epoch. Look it up.
We are today barely 4°C warmer than the nadir of paleoclimate on a geologic scale. That ain’t much, but sadly the planet has been cooling for the last 8,000 years. We are slipping back into another oppressive Ice Age stadial.
Any shift towards warming should be welcomed. Warmer is better. Warmer means longer growing seasons, more rainfall, more bioproductivity, more biodiversity, more Life In General. Warmer is better for humanity, too. Most of humanity lives where it’s warm. We are tropical animals. Our main foodstuffs are tropical, too (corn, rice, wheat, etc.). With the exception of the Little Ice Age, all of human civilization has occurred when it was warmer than today.
If CO2 can warm the planet, then by all means let ‘er rip. If not, then at least we can say we tried. In any case, CO2 is The Essential Nutrient of Life, and more is better.
Tell your friend that you endorse and support life. Life is a good thing. It beats the alternative.
Felicitatus ex plus caloris
‘Patrick
Yes indeed the BoM did excatly that, CHANGE the way they calculate temperatures for Australia. Still there are those who forget that little inconvienient fact.’
I am happy for you to demonstrate that BOM is, in fact, incorrect and that Australia has just NOT had its hottest spring on record. Over to you on that one. A passing sneer by yourself and bobl at BOM does not carry any scientific weight, BTW.
‘I do recall Climateace has a vested interest in the “carbon economy”, he has a farm somewhere that he wants to use as a “carbon farm”, or something like that if I recall correctly from another thread. Abbotts direct action plan will prevent Climateace from “farming” carbon under the previous Govn’t carbon tax.’
Yes, to the farm. You will be happy to know that we have had very good rains in our area and that we have, as a result, our full irrigantion entitlements: money in the bank.
But wrong to the rest of it. 100% wrong. Paying farmers to carry out soil carbon sequestration, has been for six years, one of the three main pillars of direct action. Mr Hunt, the Minister for the Environment, is just now conducting a six month consultation period on the DAP, after which I fully expect to be able to bid (Dutch auction style) to get paid for sequestering soil carbon. That is if the pesky soil scientists and economists don’t talk the Minister and the Government out of their policy. They mostly reckon it is bullsh*t.
BTW, does it bother you that you have made stuff up about me?
“climateace says:
December 8, 2013 at 7:58 pm
That should fix the problem, eh?”
What problem?
Did anyone else notice the hurricane season end with not so much as a minor passing of gas?
It just vanished very quietly…
patrick
‘That should fix the problem, eh?”
What problem?’
Of what to do with $3 billion of taxpayer’s funds, including mine, of course.
We have a Government that patently does not believe in the science much at all and thinks that climate science ‘is crap’, that is too cowardly to admit it, and that is fully committed to spending billions of dollars on a problem that it believes does not exist, in a way that is the least-cost effective option of all, in order to fail in reach an emissions reduction target that it does not believe in.
If you can make sense of the Abbott Government’s approach to AGW, be my guest.
Bill H
tsk, tsk. I have amended your post to demonstrate how silly it really is:
‘Did anyone else notice the typhoon season end with not so much as a minor passing of gas?
It just vanished very quietly…’
climateace says:
December 8, 2013 at 8:29 pm
Wow… Differentiation between ocean regions is not your specialty. How silly is that?
I digress. Lowering myself to the level of others…