Essay by Eric Worrall
Senator Malcolm Roberts schooling the green Aussie Senate Committee on Information Integrity on Climate Change Inquiry on the evidence.
One Nation Senator’s wild climate change claim
…
One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts asked a series of questions about science, including data showing cause and effect, when Dr Karl had an issue with his line of questioning.
“Let’s see if we can agree on something. Do you agree that the climate records show that the last 10 years have been the hottest on record worldwide?” he asked.
Senator Roberts immediately disagreed, claiming the past decade had been “cooler than the 1880s and 1890s in Australia”.
…
Dr Karl was left dumbfounded by the response.
“I feel like I’m talking to a schoolchild who says seven times two is not 14, but instead seven times two is a bicycle,” he said.
Senator Roberts said that response was “one way to make me look like a fool”.
“No, but all the scientists disagree with you,” Dr Karl hit back, adding that “99.999 per cent of the scientists” had a different opinion.
…
Read more: https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/one-nation-senators-wild-climate-change-claim/news-story/76d8ab81f626ebff36324b9ae8e4411f
A more complete record of the conversation is available on Senator Malcolm Roberts’ facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1200025185620305
There is substantial evidence Australia was scorching hot in the 1890s. The following is a picture of the Murray River, part of Australia’s largest river system, running bone dry at the height of the 1895-1903 Federation Drought. Imagine the Mississippi running so dry you could drive a horse and cart over the river bed, and you will get an idea of how devastating this event must have been.
The Federation Drought caused large scale ecosystem collapse;
Megadrought caused mega biodiversity loss
Researchers at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, have painstakingly reconstructed the nation’s ‘once in a century drought’ in the early 1900s, revealing that it caused mass ecosystem collapse and dramatic declines in plant and animal populations across more than a third of the continent.
16 JULY 2019
NEWS RELEASEAs part of efforts to prepare for and adapt to future droughts, CSIRO ecologists recreated the megadrought through historical records, including the study of tens of thousands of newspaper articles, to build a picture of the event’s effects on the nation published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
“With many of Australia’s landscapes more fragmented and degraded, and species under pressure from invasive plants and animals, a similar drought today could spell disaster on an even more devastating scale,” CSIRO researcher Dr Robert Godfree said.
Australia’s Federation Drought, spanning 1895 to 1903, was one of the world’s worst recorded megadroughts. Much of the country received less than 40 per cent of its average rainfall, and 1902 was the driest year on record.
“Australia saw widespread economic depression. In New South Wales, most rivers stopped flowing. Dust storms filled dams, buried homesteads and created ghost towns as people fled,” Dr Godfree said.
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Read more (includes video): https://www.csiro.au/en/news/All/News/2019/July/Megadrought-caused-mega-biodiversity-loss
Huge dust storms devastated farms and entire regions.
So, we have evidence that something pretty terrible happened in Australia, but is there evidence which can provide a global dimension to this Aussie megadrought disaster? Turns out there may be.
In the early 1900s, California suffered a series of severe flooding events.
1904, 1907 & 1909 – Sacramento Valley Flood
1905-1907 – Salton Sea Formation
There were also a bunch of other flood events in the USA during this period, such as flooding associated with the USA’s deadliest natural disaster, the 1900 Galveston storm which claimed 8000 lives.
The Wikipedia El Niño page lists 1903-1904 as a likely El Niño event, and National Museum Australia suggests the Federation Megadrought was caused by a strong El Niño event.
There are other ocean cycles such as the Indian Ocean Dipole, which also influence Australian rainfall. It would fit the narrative to claim all these cycles combined into a super cycle, but I didn’t find sufficient evidence to support this proposition.
There were other factors, such as poor agricultural practices, which likely contributed to the devastation, just as poor agricultural practices likely contributed to the devastation of the 1930s US dust bowl. But if human activity was the main cause of the Federation Drought, the drought wouldn’t have ended.
Were conditions during the Federation Drought hotter than today?
Despite this evidence of extreme conditions, possibly coinciding with an unusually strong planet warming El Niño, Dr Karl is claiming only 0.001% of scientists are prepared to consider the possibility that whatever caused the the Federation drought, a scorching hot prolonged drought which dried up Australia’s largest river system, also caused a significant spike in the continental temperature of Australia.
For the sake of open scientific inquiry, I sure hope Dr Karl is wrong. I don’t know that the years leading up to the drought and the Federation Drought itself were hotter than today, I haven’t seen Senator Roberts’ evidence. But given droughts in Australia are normally associated with hot, dry weather, and the Federation Drought is regularly referred to as a megadrought, the proposition that temperatures during that period were hotter than today seems plausible.
Why didn’t Dr. Karl provide a reasoned response to Senator Malcolm Roberts’ temperature claims? Perhaps Dr. Karl responded with bluster rather than reasoned argument because he didn’t know what Senator Roberts was talking about. Maybe Dr Karl sensed an intellectual trap, but he hadn’t done his homework, so he didn’t know where Senator Roberts was leading. Or maybe Dr Karl did know what Senator Roberts was talking about, but couldn’t think of a convincing response. Either way, Dr Karl provided a disappointing performance for someone who claims to be a public climate authority.
Despite the availability of temperature records stretching back into the mid 1800s, the official Australian instrumental temperature record starts in 1910, seven years after the official end of the Federation Drought. Though to be fair Aussie temperature records were sparse in the 1800s, and it is likely the Federation Drought itself was the motivation for a substantial expansion in Australia’s weather monitoring infrastructure.
Well, in the US, Tony Heller makes a good case records have been “adjusted” to fit the satanic gasses model, reducing early temperatures.
I doubt the Australian greens are more professionally honest.
Temperature charts for Australia clearly show it was just as warm in Australia in the 1880’s as it is today.
Temperature charts from around the world show it was just as warm in the 1880’s as it is today.
Even the Chief Bastardizer of the instrumental temperature record, Phil Jones, shows the 1880’s to be just as hot as the 1930’s. Look at any bogus Hockey Stick chart and compare the two periods. They are within a few tenths of a degree of each other.
Of course Phil Jones’ bastardization of the temperature record was fixed on showing modern temperatures to be hotter than any in the past (because CO2), so Phil did not see any reason to change the relationship between the 1880’s and the 1930’s, as long as both showed to be cooler than today’s temperatures.
The truth is the 1880’s, and the 1930’s were just as hot as it is today. Phil Jones even shows the three warming periods warming at the same magnitude.
Since it is no warmer today than in the recent past, there is no evidence that CO2 has anything to do with our warming as CO2 amounts do Not correlate with the temperatures. Sometimes when CO2 is increasing, temperatures are cooling, such as after the 1930’s, when the temperatures cooled by 2.0C into the 1970’s, while at the same time CO2 was increasing. No correlation.
Climate Alarmists have a distorted view of temperatures and this is because they think the bastardized Hockey Stick temperature chart actually represents reality. It does not. Not even close to reality.
This is where Dr. Karl goes wrong. He is living in a False Realty created by Phil Jones, the Climate Alarmist activist. Jones has fooled millions of people, including Dr. Karl, which causes them to do really stupid things that cause harm to the rest of us.
Dr. Karl needs to wise up.
So what if it was? Has the supposed warming during the past 125 years had a negative effect upon the country’s population, life expectancies, GDP, agricultural output, food production, general health levels, and overall welfare? Probably not a bit except the alarmists are always quick to try to make a big issue over a one minor variation or another. Fortunately, realists; i.e.,90% of the population, scoff at them.
Wouldn’t this mean that a return to cooler conditions (like those of the late 1800s) would actually be the CAUSE of the next Australian Megadrought?
Perhaps that 90% of the population should vote for realist politicians.
Percentage hot days at all Australian GHCN stations
One has to wonder why Dr. Karl can’t find charts like this. They are all over the place.
It looks like Dr. Karl is denying reality. Climate Alarmists do this a lot.
Can you tell us the sum and mix of stations through that period?
Coz ,you know if the number of stations reduces then so will the % of 100F recordings.
Also, there is a very good reason why the BOM do not go further back than 1910 – because we cannot know the exposure of thermometers before that date, whether recorded in a Glaisher or Stevenson screen, or indeed whether hung on a veranda?
https://theconversation.com/factcheck-was-the-1896-heatwave-wiped-from-the-record-33742#:~:text=%E2%80%A6%20are%20hung%20under%20verandahs%20and,secondary%20conditions%2C%20giving%20misleading%20values.
“Meteorologist Clement Wragge, in an 1886 report (Wragge, C. L. 1886. Meteorological Inspection and Proposals for a New Meteorological Organisation, Report to the Colonial Secretary, Brisbane, presented to the Queensland Parliament, 14 pp.), pointed out that some thermometers:… are hung under verandahs and over wooden floors; others are placed against stone walls and fences. Such exposures (not to mention the several remarkable instances of thermometers being placed and observed indoors) give results which are not only not intercomparable and so valueless to meteorology, but which are affected by artificial and secondary conditions, giving misleading values.”
“Number of days each year where the Australian area-averaged daily mean temperature for each month is extreme. Extreme days are defined as those where daily mean temperatures are the warmest 1% of days for each month, calculated for the period 1910–2023. © Bureau of Meteorology”
Now, I’m sure you must agree that just as we must take account of UHI we must also take care we get apples to apples comparison right through the historical period, as in ensuring the measurement is made under as close as can be determined in the same manner.Yes?
After all you lot kick up enough fuss over modern station siting.
Or does it not matter as long as the warming is on the left hand side of the graph??
I don’t see you mentioning airport siting at all.
Ant loves junk station data… The more bad urban sites and airports , the better. !!
And let’s not forget the massive cooling of past data by “homogenisation” and “adjustment” at a large proportion of sites.
So what’s changed about the “diversity” of recording stations siting and calibrations these days?
How many of the UK’s stations for example don’t meet the WMO’s standards?
I also understand that the BoM’s calibrations based on 1-second selected readings are not ‘kosher’.
The probity of all temps constructs is risible.
Australian historic temperature, using UAH to avoid too much urban warming since 1979
Same applies to my above comment, and in addition would you accept just 25 stations to represent the entirety of the Australian temperature record today, especially if the series were not spacially and altitudinally selected and biased towards warmer stations.
That’s a question BTW.
Also this is Roy Spencer’s plot of Oz surface temps vs UAH TLT:
Spot the difference ….
Each station represents itself. Nowhere else. Averaging them together is bogus.
But strangely the Murray River has not dried up again since the late 18thC early 19thC.
That data should be subjected to Fourier Analysis.
A linear trend line does not should the frequency content, meaning it hides periodic variability. I look at that and see multiple sine waves some with periods longer than the interval plotted.
UAH Australia between major El Nino events
Malcolm Roberts is as close as Australia will get to Lee Zeldin. Roberts is a gem and has been taking down the CO2 jockeys for a long time now. Hopefully he will stay strong and in good health to get a grip on power and get Australia to move away from UN economic crippling dictates.
“99.999 per cent”
That immediately disqualifies him as any kind of expert. The true number is 97%. Or is it 42.
Don’t panic
And don’t throw in the towel.
Or drink too many Gargleblasters.
Yes. It’s an interesting figure. It means the complement is 0.001 per cent or 0.00001 as a fraction. And that in turn suggests a cohort measured at 100000. So who is this 1 in 100,000? Could he be named?
On the other hand perhaps Dr Karl is innumerate.
Dr. K is an alarmist pure and simple. He loves to talk about Hiroshima bombs worth of energy added by human co2. = 2 watts/square metre. He fails to add that the sun adds 168-240 watts/sq.mt. He believes that that 2 watts is very important regardless of the fact that any extra heating from that 2 watts has never been extracted from the noise of nature. Dr K is just another simple, embarrassing, climate zombie fool…….
I once tried to calculate how many 15 kiloton Atomic Bombs it would take to melt, in 1,000 years, all the Laurentide Ice Sheet that covered all of what is now Canada in roughly 2 miles thick ice. The best I recall, it was a staggering amount of bombs – as I recall, it would 10,000 Hiroshima equivalent bombs a day, every day – for 1,000 years. It’s a difficult problem to calculate because you have to get correct the Kilo-Calories to melt ice, the amount of heat energy in 15 kiloton bombs, etc. No doubt my calculations were wrong, but it was a fun exercise trying. I still hold that the number of atmoic bombs to melt the glacier is a huge number. Now I think I’ll ask ChartGPT.
WOW. I WAS way off. Still, I didn’t include the part of the Lauretide that was in what is now the USA; a much smaller amount, but Chicago area was under a mile of ice.
According to ChatGPT…
“If we want to calculate how many Hiroshima-equivalent atomic bombs would be needed to melt the entire Laurentide Ice Sheet over the course of 1,000 years, here’s the breakdown:
1. Total Energy RequiredWe calculate that the energy required to melt the entire Laurentide Ice Sheet is about:
Energy required≈8.35×1018 joules\text{Energy required} \approx 8.35 \times 10^{18} \, \text{joules}
Energy required≈8.35×1018joules2. Energy Released by a Hiroshima Bomb:The Hiroshima atomic bomb releases approximately:
Energy per bomb=6.3×1013 joules\text{Energy per bomb} = 6.3 \times 10^{13} \, \text{joules}
Energy per bomb=6.3×1013joules3. How Many Bombs Total:As we calculated earlier, it would take about 133,000 bombs to melt the entire ice sheet:
Total bombs≈133,000 bombs\text{Total bombs} \approx 133,000 \, \text{bombs}
Total bombs≈133,000bombs4. Bombs per Day over 1,000 Years:Now, we want to distribute the total energy over 1,000 years (365,000 days):
133,000 bombs365,000 days≈0.36 bombs per day\frac{133,000 \, \text{bombs}}{365,000 \, \text{days}} \approx 0.36 \, \text{bombs per day}
365,000days133,000bombs≈0.36bombs per dayFinal Answer:To melt the entire Laurentide Ice Sheet in 1,000 years, you would need to release energy equivalent to about 0.36 Hiroshima bombs per day, which is roughly 1 bomb every 3 days.
This scenario assumes the ice sheet melts continuously, and the energy from each bomb directly contributes to melting, ignoring other physical and environmental factors.
Would you like to explore how other environmental factors might affect this rate?”
It shouldn’t be too hard to work out.
Area of Canada in m2 = 9.985 ^12.
Depth of ice = 2000m
So volume of ice is about 2 ^13 m3.
Ice is slightly less dense than water but the coast line is irregular and so is the depth guess, so let’s say the mass of water is also 2^13T, this will keep the sums simple.
Let’s say the ice is at a temperature of 0C and is melted to form zero C water. That requires 334kJ/kg, or 3.34^8 J/T.
So the energy required is 6.68^21 J, (from 3.34^8 x 2^13).
The bomb dropped on Hiroshima released 66.9 ± 8.4 TJ of energy. Which is close enough to 67 ^12J
So diving 6.68^21 by 6.7^13 is about 100 million.
Obviously if I’ve made any simple mistakes, please correct them.
97% was Cookes false number, the real level was 3%!
Obviously, Dr Karl is a shill for the alarmists, he has swallowed the whole green blob
and continues to regurgitate it at every opportunity- how sad. But sadder he has indoctrinated multitudes of parents and children into his caring green ways that bastardise truth and reality.
The 97% was popular before Cook. Came from a survey where very few even responded, but they went with 97% anyway.
I thought it was obvious I was being facetious.
Yes, the 97% was bogus and the reality was ~3%.
“Claim: 99.999% of Climate Scientists Agree” Meaning if you can find 3 Climate scientists that disagree, then you would need to find 30,000 that agree. How big was this poll?
Ref: “Australia’s population passed 27.5 million in 2025”
“Dr” Karl’s assertion is largely based on his definition of “Climate Scientist”. For him, a Climate Scientist is only someone who believes entirely in the catastrophic anthropogenic greenhouse gas caused global warming narrative. Any who don’t believe are, per defaltam, not “Climate Scientists”. It’s classical circular reasoning, which if he was able to step outside of his ideological bubble, I think he would have the cognitive ability to see. His arguments are not scientific though, they are religious. He is defending the religious dogma of Scientism from those he sees as heretics.
You miscalculated. If you find 3 that disagree, you would need to find 300,000 that agree.
Interesting cut from a 1952 paper showing just how warm the period around 1900 was…
In the 1890’s, the Murray River dried up, and people and cattle could walk across it. That is what I call a drought.
Not as rare as you might think which is why a system of locks and weirs were constructed along its length. Before that paddle steamers were routinely stuck in pools of water between the dry spots and the Darling and Murray Rivers were frequently unnavigable.
Here’s a contemporary account of the 1896 heatwave.
https://joannenova.com.au/2012/11/extreme-heat-in-1896-panic-stricken-people-fled-the-outback-on-special-trains-as-hundreds-die/
Dr. Karl has been a 99.99% captive of the ABC since forever.
A finer example of the results of the socialist Fabian Society movement’s “The Long March Through The Institutions” would be hard to find.
Once a children’s TV presenter, always a children’s TV presenter.
Once upon a time they were called boys and girls-
(783) Julius Sumner Miller: Lesson 10 – Atmospheric Pressure – YouTube
99.999% is what I think you meant to post.
Dr Kruszelnicki’s honorific title is due to him having graduated as a medical doctor in 1986, he also holds a Bachelor degree in physics and a Master degree in Biomedical Engineering (Wiki).
There’s no evidence that he has any more authority to pontificate on climate than anyone else including Senator Roberts.
To be hailed as a “public climate authority“, all one has to do is preach the dogma of “the settled science narrative”.
Ideology / religion swamps the mind’s capacity for rationality / reason.
“That’s not a drought. THIS is a drought”.
We’ve got to outdo the USA on something 🙂
It is claimed that is because the Australian temperature record prior to 1910 is unreliable due to instrument housing, siting etc. which is odd given that the alleged global temperature record is quite happily published back to 1880 (GISTEMP) and even 1845 (HADCRUT,BEST).
They are just trying to hide the high temperatures that occurred before 1910.
Climate Alarmists lie or spread lies unwittingly. It’s the only way they can survive.
OK, but I suspect Dr K was frustrated that Roberts did the usual politician thing and answered a specific question with an irrelevant answer.
Dr K asked whether Senator Roberts agreed this decade is the hottest on record, and Senator Roberts disagreed, and claimed the 1880s and 1890s was hotter.
If Dr K had asked “why do you believe that?”, Senator Roberts would have given his reasons.
How does that equate to “Roberts did the usual politician thing”?
In fact it is quite the reverse. I remember losing all respect for Brian Cox when he pulled a similar stunt on Australian TV.
USA was warmer in the 1930s,40s as were many other places…. so the term “worldwide” is total nonsense.
The so-called “global average temperature” is a totally BOGUS concept anyway.
And the way fabrications like GISS just make it up from sparse erratic surface measurements, and basically no ocean measurements is also totally farcical
2m land measurements affected by all sorts of urban and other issues… combined with unmeasured sea surface fakery…
This is no sort of science.
(even if temperatures could be averaged.. which they can’t..)
That would assume of course that Dr Karl did mean global average temperature. perhaps you could provide that link? But of course it was in the Australian parliament, and speaking of hot temperatures should have been restricted to Australia.
It very much depends on the context of the discussion.
Basing a judgement on snippets is cherry picking.
Without reading the entire transcript but given the venue, you might be wrong. You might be right. I am not going to dig deeper into this.
The 99.999% discredited Dr. K from the gitgo.
Wasn’t that such a puerile, performative, cringe-worthy stunt?
Had a handful of random sheets of paper, and tossed them on the floor, saying in the most virtuous manner such a lightweight could muster – “there’s your proof!”
Wot a wanker!
You have it quite the reverse. Roberts answered an irrelevant question with a specific answer.
This is a video of the exchange:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh3OWtqzIAY
You know someone has no clue when they pull the “consensus” card; physics is not decided by politicians.
Australian media outlets have pet experts like Dr Karl for climate change and Dr Gail Iles for space science expert commentary.
Sadly, both have strong expert proficiency in making stuff up when real answers are needed. Time for these “experts” to hand in their badges. They harm proper science more than they help it.
I cringe when they go into invent mode.
Geoff S
Tangential, but the Salton sea was created by an irrigation failure on the bypass channel from the Colorado river. Although the normal irrigation channel had a gate to control flow, the bypass was installed without one. Interesting history of the area. Pretty much a toxic dead lake now.
The worse part is does not need to be that way.
All the opinions in the world (plus $5 in cash) will be enough to buy a $5 cup of coffee. Dr Karl is obviously ignorant and gullible, in saying “all the scientists disagree with you”. He is just assuming that “all scientists” agree with Dr Karl!
He seems slightly presumptuous. The well documented 1895-96 heatwave in Australia is probably one of the reasons (if not the main one), that the BOM declared that official temperature records prior to 1910 were “unreliable”.
Dr Karl obviously doesn’t consider people like Fourier to be “scientists”. Fourier, who revolutionised the study of heat with his “Analytical theory of heat” in 1822, stated that the Earth loses all of the heat of the Sun to outer space, plus a little internal heat.
I tend to value the opinions of Fourier, supported by theory and experiment, rather than the self important bluster of Dr Karl.
Well he does have a show on the ABC called “How things work” trouble is, the show is nothing about how things work, but how things are made, e.g. chocolate, chips, cheese, cricket balls, ginger beer, etc etc. nothing there in the show about showing how it works.
While I quite like the show, it’s not showing how things work. To me that would be showing say a petrol engine and explaining how it converts petrol into motion – that’s how things work. Now if he went to an engine factory and showed an engine being put together, then that’s how things are made, a completely different concept. I guess that says it all about him.
99.999% says it all about him.
According to Wikipedia, February 1898 saw Melbourne set a still-standing record mean maximum for February of 30.2 °C (86.4 °F). And July 1899 in Melbourne (again), the mean minimum temperature of 3.8 °C (38.8 °F) is the lowest on record.
That being said the Melbourne page itself doesn’t include such figures in its climate section so it’s unclear if the locations presented are different, the data is from a period outside officially recorded history, or just inconvenient and so ignored.
From 1930’s history:
“One hundred German scientists say Einstein’s theory is wrong”
Einstein’s rebuttal was very simple.
“One would have been enough”
I feel sorry for Dr Karl, as he is in the grip of the Climate Cult but doesn’t know it.
If Science means anything, it means open enquiry and skepticism, not dogma.
They lie brazenly knowing the press will never call them on their disingenuity.
99.999% of the scientists, or 99.999% of the climate scientists?
You CANNOT be allowed to call yourself a “climate scientist” if you don’t agree. !
Are the stations in the same locations? Did they mount over parking or A/C condenser? Are they still not reporting temps under -40°? Have the sites been peer reviewed for compliance to international standards?