Monthly Archives: December 2010

News and Views, Water

More expensive and paranormal spin from Canberra water utility ACTEW

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Starting sometime in 2009 the Canberra water utility ACTEW ran a TV advertisement showing a large crowd of people carrying 10 litre buckets of water and tipping the water into Googong Dam – which was less than 50% full in 2009. I thought at the time, “..what a waste of our money pushing this propaganda on us”.

For some factual background here is a graph showing annual water consumption for the ACT – ACTEW reports by financial year which in Australia ends on 30 June.

Canberrans have responded well to Govt water restrictions as this graphic shows – from pre-restriction levels of about 63GL per year, consumption dropped to an average 52 for 2004-2007, then from 2008-2010 has averaged 44.5.

Canberra water consumption and rain

We have had a wet 2010 in eastern Australia (particularly late in the year) and many dams are overflowing, including ACT dams.

Airport rainfall for calendar 2010 is 840mm with two weeks to run. Mercifully we have been spared the 2009 “bucket” TV advert for months now.

However in recent weeks a new ACTEW TV advertisement has burst forth. I have tried to record the audio and I am pretty sure this is the gist – but may not be exact wording. Please correct me if I get a point wrong.

If anybody could possibly ask a six year old to record a video clip for YouTube – please send me a copy.

Here is my best recording of the words spoken.

Continue reading More expensive and paranormal spin from Canberra water utility ACTEW →

BoM Australia, News and Views, Water

Canberra water utility praises ineffective “Seasonal Streamflow Forecasts”

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I noticed this article reporting on a BoM – CSIRO initiative to forecast river flows a few months in advance. I just hope they use better models than they employ for the hopeless BoM rainfall and temperature Outlooks.

What caught my eye was the gushing praise from ACTEW our Canberra water utility – whose business model seems to be to charge households increasingly rapacious water bills, and pay increasing money to Govt, while keeping water restrictions permanent as dams overflow and during the dryer times tipping large amounts of water away as “environmental flows”.

The catch for ACTEW is that their praise is exposed as unfounded puff because the BoM – CSIRO “Seasonal Streamflow Forecasts” web pages publish a check on the results of their forecasts in the form of a Table “Summary of skill scores”. Unfortunately for ACTEW forecasts for the two catchments relevant to ACT water supply, Cotter and Queanbeyan both rate pretty poorly. ACTEW comments at the end.

Continue reading Canberra water utility praises ineffective “Seasonal Streamflow Forecasts” →

IPCC, News and Views

Washington Times says; “Scams die hard, but eventually they die…You can get all the hotel rooms you want this week in Cancun.”

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I liked this at the end of this excellent article which reports how many warmist Washington politicians have stayed away from Cancun.

“When the thrill is gone, the thrill is gone, as star-crossed lovers have learned through the ages, and when a scam collapses, it stays collapsed. The thought is enough to warm hearts all across the globe.”

Thanks to the Washington Times.

Continue reading Washington Times says; “Scams die hard, but eventually they die…You can get all the hotel rooms you want this week in Cancun.” →

News and Views

Joke of the day

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Over at ABC Online we have an article bemoaning the drop in public support for “climate change” as an important issue for Australians.

At the end of the piece there are eight bold headings – the fifth is “Sceptics given a platform”. They claim that “Most media outlets, including the ABC..” were even handed giving time/space equally whether scientists were pro-“climate change” or whether they were sceptics – who the article terms “..a tiny rump of gold-diggers..”.

This claim of media evenhandedness is simply hilarious. I would estimate the ABC and most other Oz media would be at least 10 to 1 biased against climate sceptics.

I hear pro-IPCC people complaining that “The Australian” is pro climate sceptics – however I seldom read that paper – but maybe they are more even handed.

News and Views, Water

Australian media lies about rainfall

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Just lately after our 8 days of the Great 2010 East Coast Monsoon – I am getting a bit weary of TV news interviews of people from flooded towns making variants of this standard “knee jerk” claim; “..ten years of worst ever drought and now we get flooded out..”.

A woman from Dubbo has been all over TV news on the weekend with this sort of statement. It puzzles me that TV news journalists or editors can not be bothered to make basic checks on the net that take seconds using Google.

Facts are that Dubbo flooded just before Christmas 2009 – not quite a year ago – so peoples memories can be amazingly short.

Now going back to November 2008 – there were floods at Tamworth and I posted on strange comments from the NSW Premier – then Nathan Rees.

That post included drought maps for NSW and you can see there was no drought for the northern half of NSW from 1st Nov 2005 – to 30 Oct 2008.

Making drought maps now at this BoM site and you can see there is no drought over the vast areas of most of Australia for 36 months, 1st Dec 2007 to 30 Nov 2010.

So I think people claiming “ten years of drought” or a “decade of drought”, should be careful to check facts about exactly what it is they are claiming.

I notice this Sydney Morning Herald article from yesterday with another classic media lie.

“But the soaking has done little for Sydney’s dams, with only one millimetre falling over Warragamba in the seven days to yesterday morning.”

I take their yesterday morning to mean the 4th. Taking a quick look at daily rain data for 28th November – 4th December for stations in the huge Warragamba catchment, I find, Lithgow recorded 129.2, Bowral 112 and Taralga 85.

All useful rain that falls free from the sky and will run down creeks to Warragamba Dam. Simply stunning misinformation from a huge media company.

They could have also checked the Sydney Catchment Authority website to find this, 100mm rain for the week ended 2nd Dec.

Added on 7th – just saw this incorrect reference to “..a decade of drought..” in another Sydney Morning Herald article. “Farmers say goodbye drought, hello flood”. They talk about the Warren Shire which is in the northern half of NSW where long periods of the last decade have been drought free.

BoM Australia

#5 BoM Spring Outlooks – rain and temperature – more hopelessly wrong models

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Here we go again – another month and the BoM Outlooks seem to be getting worse – if that is possible.

Starting with rain – how do they get SW WA so EXACTLY WRONG ??

They have a win with the predicted wet in SE Qld-NE NSW – I will not quibble over the tiny green patch near Glen Innes which really should be in darker blue.

The predicted dry in Victoria & Tasmania turned out wet or average.

The predicted dry in Nth Qld turned out really wet.

Vast areas of the continent predicted to be so dry or average turned out REALLY REALLY WET. All in all – a waste of taxpayers money.
BoM rain Outlook spring 2010

Maximum temperatures were correctly predicted in that same SE Qld-NE NSW zone where the rain Outlook had a win.

The West WA warmth was not predicted – a few points for the little win around Broome – then the predicted warmth in SA-Vic-Tas turned out to be non-existent – like the huge predicted hot patch across north Australia. Large areas of the continent centre were predicted average and warm but turned out anomalously cool to varying degrees – (added 4th Dec) – I would award a few points for the E-W trough shape in the Outlook which is partly copied by the two cool patches. IMHO – overall a pretty miserable and useless failure.

BoM max temperature Outlook failure spring 2010

The Outlook for minimum temperatures (nights) suggest there must be a serious lack of reality in the BoM – how could you go with a model predicting such a hot result ? – in the face of months of failures. I think AGW has got to their collective judgment. Did nobody raise a hand to say that the real Australia was unlikely to have this extent and degree of hot nights ?

The wins in WA, SE Qld-E NSW, Top End and far nth Qld are outweighed by the negatives over the remaining large areas. I like the way the largest area with a 75% prediction to be above average – turned out to approximate the largest area of cool anomaly. (added 4th Dec) – note how in the minimum Outlook the contours have a broadly domed shape with the red hot peaks in the NT and Nth WA – while the actual weather results are exactly opposite with the major cool area representing a “topographic low” in the contouring. Another example of the BoM being EXACTLY wrong.

BoM minimum temperature Outlook failure spring 2010

Can I remind readers of the peer reviewed paper from 2005;
“Verification and value of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology township seasonal rainfall forecasts in Australia, 1997-2005
AL Vizard, GA Anderson and DJ Buckley”

Then there is a 2008 paper looking at correlations with SOI

News and Views

Japan rolls hand grenade into Cancun Climate Cabal

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Not the most auspicious start for this much ballyhooed but hopefully doomed talkfest.
As would be expected green interests are trying to put the best spin on the disaster. Australia’s Crikey has this – a variant on the “she’ll be right” theme.

Fascinating to watch what our standard GreenLabor MSM can make out of examining the entrails.