Agmates

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday launched an attack on opposition leader Brendan Nelson for saying the Murray Darling crisis is not the result of climate change:
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BRENDAN Nelson (pictured) was yesterday accused of being “blissfully immune” to the effects of climate change after he said the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin was not linked to global warming.

The Opposition Leader told the ABC on Monday night:

“What’s happening at the moment in the Murray-Darling Basin is a consequence of two things: mismanagement of the entire system for almost 100 years and also the worst drought in 100 years.

And it is quite wrong for people to suggest that what we’re seeing at the moment is a consequence of climate change.”

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Dr Nelson is 100% correct. In fact average annual rainfall has increased according to the very source that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd quotes - the Bureau of Meteorology.

There is no way anybody can blame the drought in Southern Australia on Climate Change, why because its all happened before.

In his attack on Brendan Nelson the PM says:

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“You need to get with the science on this,” the Prime Minister [kevin Rudd pictured] said. “Look at the technical report put together by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.”

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In fact it is Prime Minister Rudd who needs to look at the science on this. The report that the PM is referring to predicts more frequent and horrific droughts.

Ecological niche modeler Dr David Stockwell, has checked the report’s modeling and assumptions and found them seriously flawed:

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“The most worrying failure was that simulations showed increases in droughted area over the last century in all regions, while the observed trends in drought decreased in five of the seven regions identified in the CSIRO/Bureau of Meteorology report.

Therefore there is no credible basis for the claims of increasing frequency of Exceptional Circumstances declarations made in the report.

These results are consistent with other studies finding lack of adequate validation in global warming effects modeling, and lack of skill of climate models at the regional scale.”

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But wait Dr Stockwell is not the only person who says that the science that PM Rudd is relying on is dodgy.

Ian Castles, is the former head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics He’s also checked the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO’s controversial report on future droughts, that the Kevin Rudd wants Brendan Nelson to take a look at.

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The key finding of the report, as presented in the opening words of Australia’s Primary Industry Minister Tony Burke’s [ pitured] media release of 6 July, was that:

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‘Australia could experience drought twice as often and the events will be twice as severe within 20 to 30 years.‘ …

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What the Minister Tony Burke didn’t mention was that the report hadn’t been reviewed by outsiders….

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“As it happens, a peer-reviewed study of the prospective incidence of droughts in Australia has just been published.

The paper ‘Comparison of suitable drought indices for climate change impacts assessment over Australia towards resource management’ appears in the current (August 2008) edition of the International Journal of Climatology - the journal of the UK Royal Meteorological Society.

It is authored by four CSIRO scientists, three of whom were also authors of the BoM/CSIRO report (Freddie Mpelasoka, Kevin Hennessy and Bryson Bates) and two of whom were Coordinating Lead Authors of the IPCC’s 2007 Assessment Report (Kevin Hennessy and Roger Jones)…

In short, the simulations from the two models (of the CSIRO and the Canadian Climate Centre) suggest that in the medium-term (20-30 years) there will be a tendency towards a small increase in drought frequency in most of Australia, but with decreases in drought frequency in some areas.

Although the peer-reviewed study comes from several of the same scientists, it gives no support to the cries of alarm and disaster which have accompanied the release of the BoM/CSIRO report…

The impression given by the peer-reviewed paper is vastly different from that given in the report to the Australian Government.”

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Or would Mr Rudd like to read what Steve McIntyre had to say. A new scientific paper has tested 18 years of predictions by global warming models against real-world rainfall and temperature. The result found is that when compared to what has acually already happened the climate models are useless.

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“Geographically distributed predictions of future climate, obtained through climate models, are widely used in hydrology and many other disciplines, typically without assessing their reliability. Here we compare the output of various models to temperature and precipitation observations from eight stations with long (over 100 years) records from around the globe. The results show that models perform poorly, even at a climatic (30-year) scale. Thus local model projections cannot be credible,”

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However as demonstrated on the recent 60 Minutes program the Prime Minister has undying faith in the IPCC findings. He will let his ‘fact’ not be confused by any amount of new scientific data that does not confirm his beliefs.

Its now about ‘faith’ not science for PM Rudd.

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DAVID EVANS: I urge them [the Rudd Government] to look at the modern science, the evidence isn’t there. There is no evidence that carbon emissions cause a significant amount of global warming.

PM KEVIN RUDD: I am not, myself, a qualified scientist. I’m elected as Prime Minister of Australia to act on the basis of the considered scientific advice.

TARA BROWN: But it’s never too late to continue the debate is it?

PM KEVIN RUDD: Look at your kids in the eye tonight and ask yourself this question - “If we have this much evidence available to us now “on climate change and just refuse to act, “then what are the consequences for them?” The alternative, however, is to just stick your head in the sand and hope it all goes away.

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Brendan Nelson should be telling Kevin Rudd “You need to get with the science on this”.

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Have Your say!

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Back on the 11th of July the CSIRO released its “Fuel for Thought” study predicting that fuel prices could go to $8 a litre ($35.20 per gallon if your an American). This made the daily news headlines across Australia at the time.

“The report bases its worst case scenarios on the assumption the world will reach peak oil within the next five years. Peak oil is when oil production hits its maximum annual rate, then starts to decline and is no longer able to match demand.

If the decline in production was abrupt, petrol would hit $8 a litre by 2018, it says.”

At the time Oil was $147 a barrel. On the CSIRO’s prediction it would soar to $653 a barrel. Mind you the CSIRO was the only ‘reputable’ organization I know of that was predicting a price anywhere near that.

I know its less than a month later but hows the CSIRO’s credibility looking as oil slumps to $118 a barrel and bowser prices are back around $1.40 a litre?

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Australia’s whole Emissions Trading Scheme is based on CSIRO research that has been independently found to be fatally flawed.

Watch here as a Bloomberg reporter Bernard Lo interviews Professor Ross Garnaut, the Author of the Green Paper that the Australian Government is basing its entire Emissions Trading Scheme on.

Watch what happens when Lo Grills Garnaut about the bleeding obvious - Australia’s pristine climate at about the 3m 50s mark. Then again at the 6m mark Garnaut rattled refers to the Australia’s leading scientific body the CSIRO modeling.

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Our friend over at Niche Modeling Dr David Stockwell has checked the CSIRO’s figures and assumptions behind the Scaremongering warning’s of more droughts, heat waves, cyclones thanks to global warming.

Based on the CSIRO reports both PM Rudd & Ag Minister Tony Burke have predicted dire consequences for Australia unless we adopt and Emissions reduction scheme by 2010.

Anybody who lives in the glorious climate that is Australia and has an once of common sense knows that it’s not getting hotter, so immediatley we thought the research was a crock.

After looking the modeling the CSIRO used and crunching the numbers Dr Stockwell has found that the CSIRO’s models are in fact worthless,

“Therefore there is no credible basis for the claims of increasing frequency of Exceptional Circumstances declarations made in the report. These results are consistent with other studies finding lack of adequate validation in global warming effects modeling, and lack of skill of climate models at the regional scale….

Except in the few cases noted above, the model simulations have no resemblance to patterns of observed droughtedness in the last century. We conclude the models have failed internal validation and no further testing is warranted.”

The above is consistent with a recent study that found that climate models of the type that the CSIRO have used are of little or no value when it comes to predicting future climate.

Kevin Rudd and his Labor government are about to plunge Australians into a world of Carbon Induced economic pain based on shonky CSIRO scientific data. WoW.

Exceptional circumstances drought conditions … will occur twice as often and with twice the area of droughted parts of Australia included.

Now this is a serious revision of the impact of climate change on drought.

When it comes to exceptional or extreme drought, exceptionally high temperatures, the historical assumption that this occurred once every 20 years has now been revised down to between every one and two years.

Exceptional circumstances drought conditions … will occur twice as often and with twice the area of droughted parts of Australia included. Now this is a serious revision of the impact of climate change on drought.”

Only problem is Mr Rudd and his team are drumming up a scare campaign on the climate based on Junk Science. Not good for they’re collective credibility.

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The Rudd government is basing its climate scare campaign on CSIRO modeling. You remember - Agriculture minister Tony Bourke said:

“While this is a scientific report, parts of these high level projections read more like a disaster novel than a scientific report.”

“What’s clear is that the cycle of drought is going to be more regular and deeper than ever.”

Well it turns out that those CSIRO reports had never been peer reviewed. Ian Castles the former head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics has now reviewed them and found among other irregularities including that the CSIRO paper used by the government to whip up the panic predicted only “up to 20% more droughts over most of Australia by 2030”.

That the Rudd Government is claiming “Australia could experience droughts twice as often [i.e., 100% more frequently] within 20 to 30 years.” is an outrageous distortion of what was presented.

The Simpson video below demonstrates that you should always be skeptical of any computer modeling done and presented by anyone who has something to gain from the outcomes projected.

Now you have watched the video have a look at the IPCC graph based on computer modeling of global temperatures. This was published in 2001. The last seven years the temperatures have not increased but actually cooled. Does the steep frightening dramatic rise on the graph remind you of the predictions for Lisa’s teeth? Does me.

To see a larger version of the map - click here.

Here is Lord Monckton’s summary of his review of the IPCC modeling:

• The IPCC’s 2007 climate summary overstated CO2’s impact on temperature by 500-2000%;
• CO2 enrichment will add little more than 1 °F (0.6 °C) to global mean surface temperature by 2100;
• Not one of the three key variables whose product is climate sensitivity can be measured directly;
• The IPCC’s values for these key variables are taken from only four published papers, not 2,500;
• The IPCC’s values for each of the three variables, and hence for climate sensitivity, are overstated;
• “Global warming” halted ten years ago, and surface temperature has been falling for seven years;
• Not one of the computer models relied upon by the IPCC predicted so long and rapid a cooling;
• The IPCC inserted a table into the scientists’ draft, overstating the effect of ice-melt by 1000%;
• It was proved 50 years ago that predicting climate more than two weeks ahead is impossible;
• Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth warmed;
• In the past 70 years the Sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years.

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Have Your say! When you hear the term ‘computer modeling’ do you immediately become a skeptic like I do?

In todays Brisbane Courier Mail the Headlines scream - “The Future is Grim reveals Climate Change Report”

Courier Mail reporter Peter Michaels reports -

QUEENSLAND will become hotter and super-cyclones will batter the coast as far south as Brisbane by 2070, the nation’s top scientists have warned.

“In a top-level ministerial briefing note (that was just by coincidence, funny that) seen by The Courier-Mail, the Reef and Rainforest Research Centre, the co-ordinating body for the nation’s 15 peak scientific bodies, offers stark predictions about climate change.”

Thats the spin - what a pity a professional journalist does not check the facts. He’s what the so called global warming has done in creating Super cyclones in Queensland from none other than the governments own Bureau of Meteorology.

It would have taken Mr Michaels about 5 minutes to find that information.

Scientists are also saying that they can’t find a trend in cyclones. Independent Scientist are questioning the CSIRO’s findings that temperatures are set to soar and drought’s become as frequent as every second year.

The standards of mainstream journalist in Australia is on a downward spiral. It would seem that they are happy to write and print anything that the Government spoon up to them without verifying its credibility.

I wonder if Prime Minister Rudd told them that they sky was falling would they print that. - just maybe?

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Last week in Australian Dire Climate Change Prediction Just a Fantasy we questioned the validity of climate change reports prepared by Australia’s supposed leading scientific research organization CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific & Industry Research Organization).

Those reports were extensively quoted by by Federal Agriculture minister Tony Burke & Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in the mainstream media to convince Australians to act now on climate change or perish.

Tony Burke:

Federal Agriculture Minister Tony Burke has likened a scientific study into links between climate change and drought to the final chapters of a disaster novel. Mr Burke today released a joint assessment by the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO, which found that what are now considered to be one in 25 year climate events could become as frequent as once every one to two years.

Kevin Rudd:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has told ABC1’s Insiders the report paints a very disturbing picture about the future of droughts in Australia…

“Exceptional circumstances drought conditions … will occur twice as often and with twice the area of droughted parts of Australia included. Now this is a serious revision of the impact of climate change on drought.”

Shock Horror - we’ll all be doomed screamed the mainstream media - without questioning the validity of the reports, after all they were quoting Australia’s own CSIRO. Well I was skeptical and so too were our readers. See readers Comments.

But then Dr David Stockwell, a leading expert on ecological niche modeling, decided to check the CSIRO’s figures and assumptions, and found, surprise surprise:

….it is highly likely the confidence intervals were grossly underestimated and so it is also likely that only one or two regions (SWWA) show statistically significant increase in predicted droughts, not 3 or 4 as claimed by the authors. I am more confident in my original assessment that the results show no significant increase in drought due to greenhouse warming in almost all regions of Australia

Stockwell’s conclusion is hampered by the fact that can’t get all the data and calculations the CSIRO used to fashion the latest of its alarmist reports.

He’d asked the CSIRO to hand over the data for this peer-reviewing, but got this answer:

I’m not able to hand over the data from the 13 models, due to restrictions on Intellectual Property, but I can describe the methods used to determine statistical significance.

The CSIRO refuses to expose its analysis to experts for checking by independent Scientists even though Stockwell, believes it is seriously flawed.

The CSIRO’s report is the basis for a renewed Government fear campaign that could lead to the spending of billions of dollars on a problem that may not exist.

Scientist Steve McIntyre in Australia’s leading Science blog “Climate Audit is scathing of the CSIRO in his article on the issue.

As I had said in comments on the issue CSIRO now stands for Completely, Scary, Incredulous, Rubbish, Organization.

Convincing the Australian public that it must act now on climate change is actually more critical too the Rudd governments survival. See this excellent appraisal of the situation by the Australian Editor Paul Kelly to understand what is happening here. Government caught in Carbon Crunch

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Have Your Say! What do you think.

Last weekend Senior weather forecasters Predicted the best soaking rains for 2008.

“We’ve been watching several computer simulations for the past few days and they are indicating that some of the best rain for 2008 is likely next week, and this is forecast to fall over some of our worst drought affected areas,” Mr Whitaker said in a statement.

“Widespread rainfall totals of 25 to 50mm are likely over large areas of western Queensland, western NSW, northern Victoria and South Australia from Monday to Friday.

Well this is where the rain fell.

The map above is from the Bureau of Meteorology from the 1st to 10th of July. Areas that received over 25mls (1 inch) are green. You can see for yourself how accurate these prediction were just a few days out. They were wrong - what a surprise.

Apparently the scientists can’t be accurate 3 days out, but 30 years from now they can. What a ridiculous assumption / conclusion that is.

Each day we hear of the dire predictions for our rainfall and temperature in 20-30 and 50 years time. We are expected to take this computer modeling seriously (and unbelievably State and Federal governments are) when they aren’t even remotely accurate just days ahead.

Climatologist Stewart Franks an expert in hydro-climatic variability at the University of Newcastle in NSW said scenarios set out by Ross Garnaut in his Emission Trading Scheme recommendations were simply wrong. He said

“The whole idea that you can say that by 2030 or 2040 rainfall will be a certain percentage less is a complete nonsense because it ignores the natural variability,”

Read all that Stewart had to say in an article in this weeks Australian Newspaper. Garnaut scenario ’simply wrong’

New South Wales Treasurer Michael Costa caused a stir this week when he called parts of Professor Garnaut’s report “Chicken Little arguments” (You know -The Sky is falling”) In his column in the Australian he says:

“For example, claims from some quarters that the Great Barrier Reef would be destroyed if Australia, which emits less than 2 per cent of global greenhouse gases, does not adopt an ETS are patent nonsense.

Chicken Little arguments are no substitute for getting right the important details on issues of far-reaching consequence.”

Photo 2: Below is a BOM map showing the % of rainfall received across Australia for the last 2 years compared to the mean.

Federal agriculture minister Tony Burke (pictured below) earlier this month released a joint assessment by the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO. In particular, the study found exceptionally high temperatures would occur almost yearly, while low rainfall would almost double in frequency from current figures. He said:

“While this is a scientific report, parts of these high level projections read more like a disaster novel than a scientific report.”

“What’s clear is that the cycle of drought is going to be more regular and deeper than ever.”

Minister Burke even though he was being serious is quiet correct. It is just science fiction.

Finally, lets keep it all in a bit of perspective. Heres the BOM map showing the area of Australia that is in drought for the last 2 years. To paraphrase Stewart Franks - we have seen it all before and we’ll see it all again. The good seasons and the bad.

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Have your Say! Am I “barking mad” or is all the climate change hysteria something these people are going to look back at and be very embarrassed about?