Errors in IPCC climate science

Following on from my June 2012 post – Great Australian open borders experiment – come on down –
Well the great Australian no borders experiment is still running. The monsoon season dropped numbers in the summer but monthly numbers climbed sharply in March and could challenge the Nov 2012 record when April is complete.
Updated again 2 May using 3436 total for month to date from Michael Smith blog
Updated 28 Apr using 2899 total for month to date from Andrew Bolt blog
quoting a 27th Apr article in The Australian

I would not be surprised if at some point a radically larger ship is sourced – some cheap old freighter headed for the scrapyards might be cranked up and used to ferry a whole months arrivals on its last voyage.
Notes re numbers
up to June 2012 my own research
July to Dec 2012 Andrew Bolt Blog
2013 Jeff of FNQ at Michael Smith
When I get time I will work through Govt announcements and build my own totals again.

My attention was caught by this loaded and evocative headline in the Canberra Times “Plant life losing battle with emissions”, for an article introducing the latest whizz-bang new CSIRO paper, “The Australian terrestrial carbon budget”, Haverd et al 2013.
Haverd et al say – “The Australian landscape soaked up one third of the carbon emitted by fossil fuels in Australia over the past twenty years…”
Which is at odds with the 1992 CSIRO paper by R.M.Gifford which said – “The present modelled rate of net sequestration is of a similar magnitude to CO2 emissions from continental fossil fuel burning and land clearing combined.”
What amazed me though was that the current paper does not reference Gifford 1992 when eight of the ten authors are from CSIRO.
I expect to have more to say later but here are a couple of graphics.
I have been trying to find the number for the size of the Australian carbon sink, not annual changes but gross size – the only figure I can find is from the 1998 website CompleXia titled, “HOW BIG IS AUSTRALIA’S SOIL CARBON STORE?” which says, “Preliminary estimates suggest that Australia’s soil carbon sink is of the order of 48 Gt (Gifford et al. 1992).” Thats 48 gigatonnes, 48,000,000,000 or 48 billion tonnes. Just to get that number on scale compared to the figures below, that is 48,000 Tg or terragrams used in Haverd et al and also 48,000 Mt or megatonnes used by Gifford – a megatonne is 1,000,000 tonnes, one million tonnes.
Summary of the Australian territorial carbon budget, 1990–2011. from Haverd et al 2013.

and Figure 1 from Gifford 1992

Ends here

Just saw this on Anthony Watts – Boxer’s carbon tax proposal would enrich people already feeding from the public trough…
Note this quote – “It would impose a fee on carbon emissions at their source, such as coal mines, raising the price of fossil fuel energy.
But instead of giving the proceeds to the government, three-fifths of the money would be refunded to U.S. residents.”

Shades of GreenLabor in Canberra paying out Carbon Tax revenues to its low-income constituents and welfare recipients as “compensation” for rising electricity bills and other Tax impacts. We have all heard Labor figures gloating that they are “over-compensating”. Just another Socialist redistribution of the Nations wealth.
I only saw one commenter at Watts that picked up on the similarity to the Australian CTax.

I have read some rubbish from the ABC but this is right up there on a short-list of the very worst. Completely ignoring the years of corruption in NSW Labor.
Just Google the Wollongong planning scandal that was making headlines in 2008 exactly when the Bylong coal corrupt dealings were in gestation – dealings that for months have been exposed at ICAC.

Seeing this news from the ABC – Winds fan fire towards houses –
It seems to me that this is another case where a fire could have been snuffed out this morning if we had large multi-engined fixed wing water bombers to deploy.

So many fires last month ran for over a week – surely these aircraft would be useful to extinguish the worst of fires and make it possible for over-worked ground crews to mopup efficiently.
But then Australian public service administration is so stuffed up with Federal State rivalries and turf wars – then you have headquarters out to units on the ground communications – yeah maybe we are just not clever enough to use these aircraft.
Further to my earlier article re Dunalley fire SE of Hobart last month.
Question about large fixed wing air tankers, water bombers in Australia now – Dunalley fire timeline

Just saw this gem from New Zealand. – Rich-lister sues Aussie coal barons -
Remember the watchable Channel TV drama series Underbelly ? You get the idea.
I also have a vision of one of those cartoon snowballs that starts rolling down the hill, gathering diameter & momentum as it progresses causing increasing damage – well this ICAC process is something like that for the Australian Labor Party. At the ICAC site look for Operation Jasper. Will add more of an intro later but this from 26 May 2012 by Kate McClymont at the Sydney Morning Herald – And on that farm he had some mates – Conveys some flavour of the early action. This site by a local group has much interesting early material going back into 2010. Just Google – ICAC Obeid – and a stack of links will be laid out for you.

This morning the news is all abuzz with the bushfire threat to townships just SE of Glenmaggie in Gippsland, Victoria.

Cowwarr, Dawson, Glenmaggie, Heyfield, Seaton, Toongabbie all have warnings issued. Weather radar shows the fire ignited west of Mount Useful about 1pm yesterday 17 Jan and moved SSE steadily to where it is now breaking out of bush into inhabited areas. Use the slider to control the image – local time is in bottom left where it says “(Updated on Server)”
I would like to know what was done to fight this fire yesterday ?
And where are multi-engined fixed wing air tankers when you need one ? Answer – sitting idle in the USA.
Just another shambles.

The Bureau of Meteorology through the media is prone to quote the 46.4 degrees temperature recorded in central Melbourne on that day – also spruiked as all time Melbourne hot day. Although what exact relevance the temperature in the middle of the huge and growing Melbourne urban heat island (UHI) has to conditions on the fire grounds – I do not know.

It is worth remembering that the maximum temperature at Kilmore Gap on Black Saturday was 42.7 – that is the nearest recording available to where a power line failure ignited the Kilmore fire – which amidst Govt Fire Authorities confusion – birthed the Black Saturday disaster.
Read the rest of this entry »

I am asking about air tankers on the scale of the P-3 Orion, or DC-10 or Boeing 747, people may know of others, does anybody know the whereabouts of any of these aircraft ? Who controls their use ? Thinking of the disastrous Dunalley fire SE of Hobart Friday 4 Jan 13. ABC map of Dunalley fire.
Can people please post any links to dated photos of fixed wing air tankers working this month – thanks.
Added after posting: The answer here seems to be – there are none. Great photo of BAe-146 air tanker dropping fire retardant in California. So with all our wealth in Australia we go into a summer without any medium & large air tankers. I wonder who decided this ?
Back to the Dunalley fire – here is the Dunalley fire smoke plume on weather radar from midday until 5pm – judging from the first smoke signal ignition was before 1pm – note local time is in the lower left where it says (Updated on Server) UTC is GMT I think.
Table below shows Dunalley weather from BoM site in town. Temperature is first column – the next 4 cols are not vital then the last 3 cols are wind direction, wind speed and wind gusts in km hour.

Dunalley Timeline – work in progress
[1] Ignition likely near ~midday as radar shows first smoke pixel at 12.54pm. Most fires do not make enough smoke to show a signal on radar – and wind was fairly quiet so fire was probably not making sufficient smoke to be detected by radar for an hour or so until 1pm.
[2] Temperatures at Dunalley at time of ignition were only 30 to 35 degrees – see above screen save from BoM page. The time prior to 2pm was the window of opportunity for an aerial attack to suppress this fire.
[3] Note in the table how wind and temperature increased sharply between 1.51 and 1.57pm which fits exactly the time radar shows the smoke signal rapidly increasing. From that time on the fire would have quickly become more difficult to suppress.
[4] The passage of the fire in Dunalley is shown by the 54.9 and 49.9 temperatures at 4.22 & 4.23pm.

Question I am interested in is – “what were authorities doing from midday till 2pm when the fire in relatively quiet winds should have been easiest to put out”

This shambles just gets worse – “Red Centre carbon farming blueprint knocked back”
and announced over the New Year hols by the Govt compliant ABC. Will we ever know the truth.
I have three earlier notes on the subject.
Qantas makes announcements about buying carbon credits
Then -
A month is a long time in carbon farming – QANTAS with egg on their face
and in November
Commonwealth public servant ‘decision makers’ slaving away for $20 per hour