I'VE never meet Jo Nova in person. But she can write a good headline, and she cares about the truth. Her blog has never received any government funding, but it includes a lot of interesting facts and evidence on science-related topics.
Jo Nova in conversation. But not at the public's expense.
Meanwhile ‘The Conversation’ is a government-funded blog for university researchers that got $6 million dollars just a couple of years ago to employee staff to spout opinion.
Yesterday The Conversation was, as always, short on evidence, but its government-funded scribes could vouch for the Bureau of Meteorology. In particular, Andy Pitman and Lisa Alexander, both part of the global warming industry, authored a long piece about how you should trust them and the Bureau. But the discerning reader might be left wondering why?
Because, as Jo Nova explains at her blog today, they didn’t actually explain how and why it was necessary to change a cooling trend at Rutherglen into a warming trend.
Meanwhile, I’ve been reading a peer-reviewed paper by Blair Trewin, which details how the homogenisation technique employed by the Bureau is meant to work. The only problem is, the methodology as detailed in this paper published in the International Journal of Climatology (Volume 33, Pages 1510-1529) doesn’t actually seem to accord with the methodology as implemented by Dr Trewin at the Bureau of Meteorology. What I mean is, the peer-reviewed paper says one thing, but the output from the homogenisation technique shown in the ACORN-SAT reconstructions suggests something entirely different.
Something that is worth noting in the paper, is comment from Dr Trewin that, “but negative adjustments are somewhat more numerous for minimum temperatures, which is likely to result in ACORN-SAT minimum temperatures showing a stronger warming trend than the raw data do.” What he is saying, in plain English, is that ACORN-SAT may exaggerate the warming trend somewhat as a consequence of artificially dropping down the minimum temperatures. In fact, as I explained with reference to the Rutherglen temperature trends, the Bureau progressively drops down the minimum values from 1973 back through to 1913. For the year 1913 the difference between the raw temperature and the ACORN-SAT temperature is a massive 1.8 degree C.
The apologists, Pitman and Alexander, in their conversation suggest that, “the warming trend across Australia looks bigger when you don’t homogenise the data than when you do”. But this is not what the peer-reviewed literature says. And yet the take home message from their article is believe only this same peer-reviewed literature.
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More on Rutherglen, Pitman and Alexander in today's The Australian.
Brendon, I agree with you that Arctic sea ice is not normal. There is NO normal. The 1970s - or the period from the 1870s to around 1917 - were no more of a norm than the periods of meagre ice in the 1920s or just after the Napoleonic Wars.
As to why any of this happens, when we have climate science we will know a bit...which is better than the almost-nothing we have have now. It does not matter what "all the data" indicate when the data is hopelessly inadequate.
There is no normal or stable climate. There is no flat line of temps. After the highs of the Optimum we have had a succession of warmings and coolings, none of them remarkable. There were Minoan, Roman, Medieval and Modern warmings, among others. The attempts in very recent years to flatten these out - for what seems to be for purposes of politics and dogma - have been verging on outrageous. It was the original hockey stick (Marque One) from the 90s that started me on this skeptical track. That, to me, was the real denial of climate change.
The present warming is common and it is humdrum. The sea level rise (which has continued in unspectacular fashion since the 1700s) is only surprising in places where subsidence of post-glacial rebound make it look like a big deal. (In Juneau and Stockholm sea levels are sinking - but I promise not to "cherry-pick" them to prove that sea level rise is not real. Sea level rise is real, but it's a dribble and it's not new at all.)
I do not imagine that things happen without causes and consequences. But saying that you or "climate science" are in the know is what got us into this expensive mess. Having to rush in with a reason for Antarctic sea ice growth is for flim-flammers like Christian Turney or the SkS crowd. You start by admitting you don't know, not by christening some theory or journal "climate science" and saying that climate science knows, or that's how climate science understands. What you don't know, you don't know. Publish-or-Perish can churn out any amount of trash which is obsolete after a few years (so others can publish then perish). But when you don't know something...you don't know it!
I'm a total skeptic at present. I believe nobody has a clue about what the climate will be three months from now. That doesn't mean future climate is not knowable. It means future climate is not known. I promise to heap praise on the first person who successfully and consistently tells me, over a decade, what the climate will be in three months time from each prediction. I will lobby for them to get a real Nobel, and not one of those Norwegian Emmies they call Nobels and give to drongos.
And if anyone comes out with "peer-reviewed climate research" offering facile explanations for how Milankovitch cycles are "to blame" for the present warming I will treat it skeptically, like the "peer-reviewed climate research" of Briffa and Mann. It would make more sense than the battle of human GHGs versus human aerosols, but it would still be a big call. Chinese researchers reckon the MWP was warmer than the present, but, even if that is so, who knows if the present warming is over? It may have further to go. How can you make predictions about a planet you have hardly examined?
Two things are certain. The plasticky ball called Earth is mostly very hot, and it remains largely inaccessible and unexamined. Does that ever make you wonder?
Sea ice in Arctic is not normal Robert.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2010.png
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v479/n7374/abs/nature10581.html
"These results reinforce the assertion that sea ice is an active component of Arctic climate variability and that the recent decrease in summer Arctic sea ice is consistent with anthropogenically forced warming."
As for your reference to Milankovitch cycles Robert, please show me any peer-reviewed climate research support your claim that they might be to blame for the current warming. These cycles are currently in a slow cooling period expected to last for at least another 10,000+ years. But please go ahead and cite the climate science to prove me wrong.
i agree Ice is VOLATILE as it responds to warming. Why has Antarctica sea ice expanded? Because warmth is not the only factor. The change in polar winds and greater flow of colder water from melting glaciers have provided an environment for greater growth of surface sea ice. That's as climate science understands.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v505/n7484/abs/505491a.html
Nothing cherry picked, Brendon. All true and of consequence. There is a lot of sea ice in the world, and record extent in the south. None of this is daily or flukey. You should have been checking.
And, yes, low extent in the north (I've checked regularly for years, it takes a few seconds a week), just like a hundred years ago and two hundred years ago - though I can't give you satellite readings for those past minima (duh). Of course, navigability does not involve extent of ice but position of ice. At present you can slip through a ship above northern Siberia, which you could not do in 2007, even though there was less Arctic ice in that year at minimum. Ice is volatile, which should be obvious.
Rest easy, Brendon, none of this means much. Sea level rise and and ocean heat content (as far as one can sloppily measure) are consistent with real global warming, both the sort you get in interglacials and the upward wobbles within those longer term warmings. Bass Straight was dry a mere ten thousand years ago. Ask yourself how that could be. Widen your graphs and you'll see that nothing is soaring.
West Antarctica is volcanic. That does not have to explain changes in ice extent or glacial loss, since all sorts of things can be causes. Ice is VOLATILE. There is no need for a "match". But western Antarctica is VOLCANIC over a vast area, and around Thwaites in particular.
Why is there so much Antarctic ice overall in recent years? When we have actual climate science we may know more. We may even get to know why Arctic temps did that plunge in the 1960s, and why there was enough Arctic ice in the 1970s to help cause the global cooling alarm. (Yes, there was a global cooling alarm in the 70s. Many are trying to "disappear" it, just like a lot of people in future decades will try to say they were never sold on the present warming hysterics.)
And we are all cherry picking Brendon, since we live on a hot ball and know little about its innards and about the deep hydrosphere. The way "science" is going in this barbarous era of publish-or-perish, it may be some time till we do know.
Now say "cherry-picking" ten more times.
No I don't check the global sea ice extent looking to cherry pick one day every now and again. I look at all data.
To look at global sea ice without considering the cause (winds, flow of glacial melt) of change to the sea ice is simplistic, but that serves your purpose.
The Antarctic ice is mostly land-based glaciers and that mass is in decline.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50527/abstract
Why do you ignore this? Cherry picking!
Also why do you ignore the Ocean Heat Content since more than 90% of the warming is accumulating there? Cherry picking!
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
As for your claim that subterrainean volcanoes match melt, well you might want to check your sources because the maps don't align very well with the two separated by 1000s of kilometers in some cases. But to the casual observer, I can understand how you might have allowed yourself to be fooled.
Oh, and there's numerous peer-reviewed papers showing why this climate change is cause by GHG emissions, but of course you'll cherry pick which science to believe based upon your own predetermine outcome.
Brendon, I was referring to TOTAL - ie GLOBAL sea ice. Antarctic sea ice, which I did not mention, has been running way above average for a long time. It is not doubted that Arctic ice has been very low at September minimum in recent years, with 2007 and 2012 lowest in post-1979 sat record. Whether extent is lower than eg 1920s or post Napoleonic Wars it's hard to say, but it's quite possible.
Some coolists are of the opinion that this September's "recovery" is a sign of more ice to come, but, being a total skeptic, I don't see why that should have to happen. Nor do I think we should regard the advance of ice or of glaciers as more than yet another climatic problem for humans. In fact, I think it's silly to cheer for a recovery of Arctic ice, just as it's silly to cheer for the sun to rise. Arctic ice has been up-and-down like Berlusconi's trousers since forever. Stable Arctic is a fantasy, like stable climate.
You mean, you really weren't aware of the global sea ice extent in recent months? I'm no scientist, but I check out of interest. It also doesn't take long to find out that those melty western bits of the Antarctic are also the VOLCANIC bits. What is surprising is that this is an old, old fact that nobody would ever have bothered to deny or obscure - until you-know-what!