Errors in IPCC climate science

On 7 May the BoM’s Brad Murphy was quoted on ABC news item headlined, ‘No hope’ of drought-breaking rains for Qld”.

Weather forecasters say hopes of drought-breaking rain in Queensland are over, because the La Nina pattern has petered out.

Forecasters say the recent La Nina caused the flooding in Queensland last summer but ended too soon to be considered a drought-breaker.

Senior climatologist Brad Murphy says it is about to get a lot drier.

“Up in the north you’ve had most of the rain you can expect for the next six months, until the next wet season,” he said.

“There is going to be the odd rainfall around over the dry period, but farmers shouldn’t be counting on getting any more rain between now and the next wet season.

“It’s very hard to say, I mean we can’t put one season down to global warming if we’re looking at over a long period of time,” he added.

“The monsoon finished a little bit earlier than we would have liked and the rainfall in the last couple of months has been quite low.”

Doctor Roger Stone from the University of Southern Queensland says the chances of drought-breaking rain over the next three months are only about 10 per cent.

Just in the first half of June, most of the southern part of Queensland outside the wet tropics, (which are of course now in dry season mode) has experienced good rains as this BoM map for June to date rain anomalies shows.

Poor old BoM, shot down again.

See also “BoM forecast dry in Queensland contradicts their 23 April modelled rainfall Outlook”

This is a very readable and concise summing up of reasons to be skeptical of the IPCC. I have converted David Henderson’s speech to an html page here

[Note by WSH, this post re-written 24 May. The webpage speech of David Henderson is unchanged]

Summary

David Henderson recently commented on a major presentation by Professor Mohan Munasinghe, a Vice-Chair of the IPCC. He argues that today’s received opinion on climate change issues incorporates three mutually reinforcing and unwarranted
presumptions:

1. That the official policy consensus, as widely interpreted today by governments and international agencies, mirrors prevailing scientific opinion and goes no further than it would warrant.
2. That prevailing scientific opinion must now be viewed as no longer open to serious question.
3. That the process of review and inquiry from which prevailing scientific opinion has emerged, and in particular the IPCC process as its leading element, are professionally above reproach.

In his view, all these beliefs are unfounded. They show a lack of awareness respectively of the present extent of overstatement, overconfidence, and ingrained bias.

Not for the first time, Henderson draws attention to the failure on the part of treasuries and finance ministries across the world to treat climate change issues in an inforrned and resourceful way.

Terry Dunleavy of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition makes great sense explaining the potential costs of Kyoto to the NZ economy in the NZ flagship daily press, The New Zealand Herald.

Read what free lance investigative journalist Ian Wishart says, “THE KYOTO CONSPIRACY How Enron hyped global warming for profit”.

The New Zealand Centre for Political Research has several articles questioning the NZ rush to Kyoto. Just two are, “Exposing the Climate Change Agenda” by Dr Muriel Newman and “The IPCC – On the Run at Last” by Professor Bob Carter.

Al Gore Calls Myanmar (Burma) Cyclone a ‘Consequence’ of Global Warming. Gore claimed global warming is forcing ocean temperatures to rise, which is causing storms, including cyclones and hurricanes, to intensify.

Lets take a look at the FACTUAL EVIDENCE.

First the lower troposphere in the tropics has been COOLING over 16 months.

When we take a closer look, the NASA Earth Observatory has a series of illustrated articles on Cyclone Nargis including this map showing its formation and track.

We see it forming NE of Sri Lanka in late April.

Lets look at Sea Surface Temperatures (SST) for that area in late April, viewing SST global anomaly maps at this NOAA (USA Govt) website.

This anomaly map is from 27 April to 3 May and shows SST’s were if anything slightly cooler than normal.

You can go to this NOAA archive and check back for earlier weekly SST anomaly maps and there are no relevant warm anomalies.

So I say to Al Gore, please ex-Senator Gore, check your facts before speaking to the world.

It is tough news for the warmers but the 16 month long cooling trend continues.

See here for IPCC supporters vainly trying to sound wise while they explain events.

(Thats the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) in Australia.)

Yesterday the media ran variants of this story below quoting BoM forecasters - ‘No hope’ of drought-breaking rains for Qld
And “Rain hopes go, level 6 water restrictions to stay”
And in the Canberra Times, that faithful mirror of BoM press releases, “Hopes of drought-breaking rain fall”.
Note the BoM mantra several times through the article and at the very end, “Several years of above average rainfall are required to remove the very long-term deficits.” What odd cargo-cult like thinking for one of Australia’s premier scientific bodies. As if “Nature somehow owes us some rain entitlement”. Weird. A National delusion over rainfall.

What a huge about face from the latest BoM Outlook (only 2 weeks old) which is for above average rain over ALL of Queensland for the months May, June, July.

“National Seasonal Rainfall Outlook: probabilities for May to July 2008, issued 23rd April 2008 Higher seasonal rainfall favoured in parts of north & east Australia”.

Thus it appears Professor Andrew Vizard from Melbourne is correct when he says BoM three month Outlooks are often “totally useless”.

It has been apparent to me for years that BoM Outlooks are a waste of money and should be stopped and the BoM has the nation believing predictions of global warming for decades into the future.

An Alice in Wonderland situation indeed.

This is the opinion of Bruce Haigh, writing an article about the future effects of climate change, Weather the Weather, at newmatilda.com Bruce Haigh is a retired Diplomat who now farms near Mudgee; he irrigates grapes and olives. Bruce writes and comments on domestic and international affairs; he regularly presents at conferences, seminars and training sessions in relation to water issues and strategic planning.
I am bringing some rainfall data to Bruce’s attention.
I am fascinated to hear what readers think of this idea about Australia becoming a military dictatorship.

Bloomberg news service quoting the German Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences saying that, “Parts of North America and Europe may cool naturally over the next decade, as shifting ocean currents temporarily blunt the global-warming effect caused by mankind”. At the UK Met Office HQ for Global Warming Gurus, the Hadley Centre, Research scientist Richard Wood, says “Natural variations over the next 10 years might be heading in the cold direction,” Wood said. “If you run the model long enough, eventually global warming will win.”
Note: At the Leibniz site, follow link on right hand side to, “New Nature Paper: Will global warming take a short break ?”

Thanks to Harold from Seminole Florida for the lead to these articles. As he says, “UN is waffling and spinning on cooling ?”, exactly Harold.

The Federal Minister in Australia that is.

Dear Minister Wong,

I note your press release re the Governments newly released $12.9Billion water plan.

The water plan will, sadly, fail to deliver value to Australia because it repeats the same mistakes that have dogged water policy for over a decade now.

Many years of Green anti-dam dogmas given prominence in the media, have tended to inhibit water utilities and Govts. from augmenting or building additional dam sources. This has led to inadequate planning for new supplies and continues to blight Australian water policies. More recently, pessimistic climate predictions from CSIRO, often recycled by media-prominent doomsters and naysayers, has led to policymakers moving away from natural water supplies. The reality of rainfall data going back to the late 19th Century usually tells us that the recent dryer years post 2000 are no worse than earlier dry periods.

You should be suggesting to State Govts that they harvest available, cheaper, low-impact, natural-water close to their metropoli, such as -The WA Govt. should abandon plans for a second $1Billion high-impact seawater desalination factory for Perth.

You could suggest the WA Govt harvests readily-available, cheaper, low-impact natural water close to Perth, such as -

[1] Manage the existing Perth dam catchments so as to easily increase yield per year equal to the 45 GL per year production from your $500 Million Kwinana seawater desalination water factory - which could then be mothballed at great savings to taxpayers.

[2] Today, start cutting down all of the water-hogging Gnangara pines and save at least a similar amount of pumping capacity.

[3] Harvest for cheap desalination a small proportion of the slightly saline water that currently wastes to sea every year in the Avon, Murray and Collie Rivers. Easily producing say 50 GL per year. You could ask the WA Govt if it is feasible to raise the dam wall at the Wellington dam, thus increasing storage.

Shortcomings in WA water policy are covered in greater detail in a downloadable 3 page Word doc report at my internet site: “There never was a rain shortage to justify seawater desalination for Perth’s water supply“.

In the case of the Victorian Govt, you should suggest they amend their short sighted National Parks legislation and build a dam on the Mitchell River and stop planning the money-wasting $3Billion high-impact, seawater desalination factory. Give taxpayers a break for once. Another internet report on Melbourne water issues; is critical of a CSIRO / BoM map and shows several rainfall histories which demonstrate cyclic dry periods going back over 100 years.

In the case of the NSW Govt, they should be told to amend their National Park expansions of previous decades to allow new dam(s) on Rivers north-west of Sydney. They should also cease wasting taxpayers money on the high-impact, needless, multi-$Billion, Kurnell seawater desalination factory. In the case of Sydney I have web pages commenting on the dubious application of CSIRO climate modelling; and various graphics demonstrating cyclic dry periods in the rainfall history of the Sydney region.

In the case of Canberra, the Govt is throwing away money on plans for a waste-water treatment plant to produce small amounts of very expensive water. You should suggest that they actually make a start on one of their perfectly feasible dam projects. I have an internet article on Canberra water resources at;
“Canberra water supply, sensible options sidelined by Govt in thrall of IPCC climate models.”

You should address the issue of how the Murray Darling Basin Commission failed to prevent the construction of the colossal water storages on Cubbie station and explore ways to return a majority of these flows to the Darling River where they belong.

The issue of so called “allocations” must be addressed: How ridiculous it is that Govts are allocating water that does not exist in some years.

You should check the feasibility very carefully before using taxpayer funds to subsidise domestic water tanks for urban areas. In most cases these tanks produce very expensive water and it is far more economic of Australian financial resources to augment scheme-water supplies to meet demand. If wealthy people are happy to spend money on water tanks, they should check their facts but that is their business.

Depleting Snowy Mountains scheme water on Snowy River so called environmental flows is unsound and wasteful; benefits a small number of people who have political leverage, and should cease. The Snowy River as it runs, after the Snowy Mountains scheme diversions, has ample catchment to provide for adequate environmental flows. Considering that the exact shape of this or that river catchment has been formed by geological accident over millions of years, it is a silly (Green) proposition that Australian interests are served by this diversion of Snowy Mountains scheme water. In this case Australian interests are best served by the water being retained for flows in the economically more important Murray River.

These are some sound ideas to go on with, all of which will tend to reduce individual householders ever-rising water costs, and increase the resilience of water supplies.

Yours sincerely,

Warwick Hughes

NASA has just drawn our attention to their interesting map of the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) anomaly for April 14–21. As NASA says, “…while the La Niña was weakening, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation—a larger-scale, slower-cycling ocean pattern—had shifted to its cool phase.”

This issue is important to the “greenhouse” debate and arguments over the causes of “global warming” because the ~1976 PDO shift to more positive anomalies can be seen clearly as a warming jump in many long term temperature data. A warming jump that looks unlikely to be caused by small steady increases in the trace gas, atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Much is written on the PDO and just 2 other pages include “The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)” with a long term graphic of monthly anomalies and, “A Pacific interdecadal climate oscillation with impacts on salmon production”