Correction
Crikey writes: Re. “China Trip an all-star affair“. Yesterday we stated Jennifer Westacott was the outgoing CEO of the Business Council of Australia. Of course, she’s not going anywhere; it was recently announced Catherine Livingstone would replace Tony Shepherd as president. We’re happy to correct the record.
Heartfelt gesture
Ian Wright writes: Re. “Hand on heart” (Friday). I remember, back in the late ’50s, when hats were worn by most men and the WWI diggers were still marching strongly (most only in their 50s) on Anzac Day, my late father (served in both WWI and WWII) instructing me in this same gesture of civilian respect for military ritual.
It’s not purely an American custom, it used also to be seen in the UK, and I have read anecdotes of its enforcement by British Military Police in the British Occupied Zone of Germany as regimental colours were paraded through the streets of occupied towns and cities before the establishment of the Federal Republic (West Germany) in (I think) 1953 (or was it ’57?).
It was during the “Youth Rebellion” of the late ’60s and early ’70s that the custom, like standing in flm theatres for the British national anthem, fell into disuse. I’m no advocate for its return, but let’s get the history and provenance right.
Shining a light on impending Solargate
Ken Lambert writes: Re. “Risk? What risk? The fossil fuel industry walks both sides of the street” (yesterday). Giles Parkinson totes out the predictable mantra of the green industry. The consensus is a nonsense — the basics of climate science are not settled as evidenced by the recent discovery of an amazing symmetry of the Earth’s hemispheric albedo — a result not predicted by any climate model, and poised to rewrite the “science” of climate modelling.
There is plenty of something else going on in the earth’s climate system producing the stasis in surface temperatures despite steadily climbing CO2 emissions, little of which is explained by current models.
Climate science robustness is a fiction heavily oversold by the alarmist climateers to frighten the crowds and keep the grants flowing.
Solar energy successful — yes, for the owners with heavy government subsidies paid for by the non-solar panel consumers of inflated electricity costs. Cheap Chinese panels have exploded all over Australia — with no redeemable warranties because most of the solar spivs have hit the toe or are buried in a maze of trusts and legal entities under the expert supervision of the likes of the Gillard-Rudd government.
Will these panels last 10, 15 or 25 years? What is enough life to justify their real cost? What testing did Rudd-Gillard government do to establish the quality and durability of all the multitude of Chinese panels subsidised in Australia? What happens if they and their cheap inverters start cracking up prematurely? Will Gillard be able to help — a pro bono legal case run from Adelaide Uni against the solar spivs perhaps? Will Rudd run a Harvard Business seminar on his experience with batts, boats and solar panels? Tune in for the entirely predictable Solargate fiasco coming soon to a roof near you.
Well said Ken Lambert.
Ken,
Care to elaborate on why the symmetric hemispheric albedo to short wave radiation discovered by Voigt et al is a problem for AGW?
Anyway. There’s no stasis in surface temperatures (I take it you mean lower atmosphere temperatures, because global temperatures also include the oceans, the cryosphere and the ground).
The ‘pause’ was manufactured by cherry picking the data, starting with an abnormally warm year in 1998 due to a strong El Niño event and finishing with a cooler year in 2012 due to a moderate La Niña event.
As an analogy, suppose you have a coin rigged to give ‘heads’ on 60% of tosses. Suppose you toss it 60 times and record the result with each toss. You’d expect around 36 heads. If you divide the 60 tosses into sequential ’10s’, you’d expect 6 heads in each 10, but you wouldn’t be surprised if you got 5 or 7. Perhaps you’d be surprised if you got 4 or 8 heads.
Suppose you scan the results and note that ‘tails’ came up on the 44th throw. And on the 60th and last throw. And count heads or tails in the intervening 15, which happened to divide 60/40 as expected (9 heads and 6 tails) resulting in 9 heads and 8 tails for the last 17 throws, near enough to an even distribution.
You wouldn’t argue that the coin is fair based on the last 17 throws would you? Or note that in two of the 10s, you got 5 heads (so the coin’s fair) or 4 heads (indicating that the coins rigged towards tails) would you? Perhaps you would.
That’s precisely what happens with cherry picking data. Despite cherry picking, global lower atmosphere temperatures still increased by 0.01 degrees Celsius from 1998 to 2012 – statistically insignificant. But statistically insignificant only applies when the data analysed is randomly selected.
Another Elmer Fudd-style shotgun spray from Ken. His hand-waving in the direction of ‘the symmetric hemispheric albedo …’ sounds like the kind of argument frequently raised by proponents of Intelligent Design- ‘there’s something going on that proves our point, but we don’t know what it is’.
As Wayne Robinson has already asked, can we have an explanation as to how this is a problem for AGW.
Some facts to back up your assertions in para 3 would be useful, too.
Wayne Robinson
Last week’s Economist – a mildly warmist in climate change comment will tell you about the ‘pause’. So will Trenberth et al in a range of quotables over the last couple of years.
Here are a few new facts. Hansen’s original 0.9W/sq.m global warming energy imbalance from 2005 – assumed and built into many climate science papers has been reduced to 0.6W/sq.m by the man himself and others who have recently supported a similar figure or less. This a one third reduction in global warming over what was assumed until recently.
There is no coherent explanation for the ‘pause’ in warming evident over the last 15 years despite ever growing CO2 emissions and a theoretical increasing warming imbalance from CO2 and other GHG.
Asian aerosols, natural variability, funny ENSO cycles strong trade winds (yes it is more windy all over the oceans driving the heat down 2000m) are all being thrown around in current debate – definitely unsettled.
Last week’s Economist came up with a couple of explanations – at least one too many…..both can’t be right. How silly of climateers to produce too many explanations for the ‘pause’…they don’t realize that one right explanation is enough; and a surfeit of explanations to defeat the skeptics confirms that the science is far from settled.
Recent satellite data has confirmed that the TSI is indeed reduced by 4.5 W/sq.m originally posed in 2005 – and poo-pooed by leading climate scientists until last year. This recasts all the calculation of actual warming imbalance and particularly the true value of the Earth’s albedo or reflectivity to solar radiation.
And lastly, the very recent data on the albedo and emissivity of the northern and southern hemispheres which controls the incoming SW and outgoing LW radiation has shown an amazing symmetry within very tight tolerances. This result is not reproducable in current climate models due to the large differences in ocean and land areas and other factors between the hemispheres.
This fact alone is a non trivial discovery which will probably blow all of the current modelling out of the water.
Onya Tamas.
Love the Elmer Fudd analogy from ‘extra’ – could be my logo from now on…