Somewhat overloaded by the flood of media puff about the G20 – what did it ever achieve? I thought to myself – what glory days of the USSR?
Fair enough chasing the Wehrmacht back to Berlin in 1945 qualifies as glory days but then Allied armies deliberately stopped which left Berlin to the USSR. And hey lets not mention the Allies failing to push north from Italy in late 1943.
OK – back to glory days of the USSR – now here we have this group of technocrats and party apparatchiks in charge of one of the large populations on earth plus about a sixth of the planets landmass and untold resources. The population is so obedient they tolerate mass murder by famine – they tolerate the gulag of forced labour camps home to millions – they tolerate the charming secret police apparatus that can efficiently disappear any dissenter – they tolerate the system that keeps them decades behind western consumer progress – I could go on.
The truly amazing thing is that by the 1960’s or 70’s no leadership group emerged that could even half efficiently administer the place and see that production of goods let their people progress. They could do large rockets and large armies. All they had to add was to copy the production of a range of western consumer items – copy what the west was doing – not so hard you might think. When they wanted a western car – they turned to Fiat.
The USSR has to be the greatest bar none economic failure of the last 8,000 years – IMHO talk of “glory days” is wishful thinking.
Monthly Archives: November 2014
Wellington Dam near Collie in SW Western Australia overflows again
Funny that this dam often overflows – 2013 overflow events – yet the nearby Perth water supply dams are near useless – I wonder why? Surely it could FEZINIL CAPSULES are herbal over here viagra ordination medicine to increase the blood flow to penis during sexual intercourse. Stress: Stress is one of the major reasons for improved source of blood circulation and relaxation of penile muscles. prescription viagra prices deeprootsmag.org Before using this product, it is recommended to seek the advice of a fertility clinic, a gynecologist or a urologist. viagra buy in usa Yes, it will surely shine your life by increasing the level of testosterone that helps easy erection of the male ordering levitra online organ and to get maximum pleasure out of lovemaking. not be such a simple thing as managing catchment vegetation sensibly? In 2012 I wrote to the WA Minister on this issue – my letter and his reply is here.
Why are we wasting $Billions on “Carbon Farming” when Australia is naturally sequestering all our emissions without any human intervention ?
The ABC Landline had a segment – Carbon Farming – interviews with rent seekers claiming $Million dollar benefits. CSIRO has known for decades that “The present modelled rate of net sequestration is of a similar magnitude to CO2 emissions from continental fossil fuel burning and land clearing combined.” That is from the early 1990’s.
Now CSIRO knows even more –
Increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) have helped boost green foliage across the world’s arid regions over the past 30 years through a process called CO2 fertilisation, according to CSIRO research.- 3 July 2013
So why are we wasting megabucks paying a tiny minority of landowners to sequester carbon when our entire continent is naturally doing it for free anyway?
Reprising hot Januaries over Australia and while we are at it – how hot was January 1896
Remember the post two years ago by JoNova – Extreme heat in 1896: Panic stricken people fled the outback on special trains as hundreds die.
Since then of course the BoM has shouted to the rooftops that January 2013 was the “hottest evah”.
This issue has been given some impetus after the speech in parliament by the MP for the Federal seat of Dawson, Mr George Christensen. In his speech – which you can see on YouTube – Mr Christensen made the point that the 1896 heatwave was hotter than anything we have known in recent years.
I thought I would start by posting a series of BoM maximum temperature anomaly maps of 14 Australian hot Januaries from 1932 up to recent years. All maps made at this BoM site which will not go any earlier than 1911. I am working on a map for January 1896 –
What reasonable conclusions could be drawn from results of the 1887-1947 Adelaide experiment comparing thermometer readings in a Glaisher stand and Stevenson screen ?
This subject has come up in my previous post – The Conversation blog in discussing “was the 1896 heatwave wiped from the record?” – wipes BoM 1996 finding from the records –
In 1997 I published a Comment on the subject of the 61 year long Adelaide temperature experiment –
1997 Hughes, W.S. Comment on, “Historical Thermometer Exposures in Australia.” by N. Nichols et al. International Journal of Climatology, Vol. 17, pp. 197-199. Downloadable here.
The following are my Fig 1 Glaisher minus Stevenson maximums for the four seasons. The two pink S’s mark the installation of new larger Stevenson screens in 1898 and 1901. In my opinion the most reliable parts of the data are (marked with blue R’s) – the first five years to 1892 before the trends deteriorated to peaks around 1885-6-7.
In the first five years staff were more likely to be paying attention to the experiment. Then the few years 1898 to 1906 after the larger screens were installed also look to have consistent differences without drifts and jumps.
So I think a fair judgement would be that the 1°C summer max difference quoted by the BoM is probably far too high and reflects deterioration of the equipment or site of the experiment. A truer figure might be half of that. I can not find the chart data now – but it must be in BoM or Swinburne archives.
Minimum differences fall in a tight band around zero until a huge change sets in at 1938.
Text below is from my 1997 comment Continue reading What reasonable conclusions could be drawn from results of the 1887-1947 Adelaide experiment comparing thermometer readings in a Glaisher stand and Stevenson screen ?
The Conversation blog in discussing “was the 1896 heatwave wiped from the record?” – wipes BoM 1996 peer reviewed finding from the records
“The Conversation” has this recent blog article – FactCheck: was the 1896 heatwave wiped from the record? – which is critical of the speech in parliament by Commonwealth MP for the Federal seat of Dawson, Mr George Christensen. In his speech – which you can see on YouTube – Mr Christensen made the point that the 1896 heatwave was hotter than anything we have known in recent years.
In The Conversation blog under the section headed “Hot history?” the authors mention the long running experiment at Adelaide started by Charles Todd in 1887 where he compared temperatures in a Stevenson screen with an older style Glaisher stand – an experiment which ran on for 61 years to 1947. The blog says – The results of this 61-year experiment show that summer daytime temperatures measured using the Glaisher Stand are, on average, 1C warmer than in the Stevenson Screen. The blog goes on to say – “And this was at a well-maintained station…”. I will show at a later blog post that this 1°C figure is likely to be exaggerated.
The Conversation blog fails to mention that the BoM has a peer reviewed paper which published the results of this experiment.
The 1996 BoM peer reviewed paper – Nicholls, N., R. Tapp, K. Burrows, and D. Richards. Historical thermometer exposures in Australia. Int. J. Climatology, 16, 705-710. – can be downloaded here.
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The blog omits a critical quote from page 709 of the 1996 paper which says – “Over the year, the mean temperatures were about 0.2°C warmer in the Glaisher stand, relative to the Stevenson screen.” So in terms of correcting annual mean time series – we need only subtract 0.2°C from questionable pre 1910 readings – I say let the BoM do that.
But let us return to the claim about Adelaide on The Conversation blog – “And this was at a well-maintained station…”.
Following the 1996 BoM paper above – I obtained data from the 1887-1947 Adelaide experiment and published a reply in the International Journal of Climatology detailing my analysis of the 61 years of monthly data.
1997 Hughes, W.S. Comment on, “Historical Thermometer Exposures in Australia.” by N. Nichols et al. International Journal of Climatology, Vol. 17, pp. 197-199. – downloadable here – I produced charts of the seasonal differences – Glaisher minus Stevenson for both maximum and minimum – and it is plain that the 61 years of data is riddled with inhomogeneities producing a dogs breakfast of poorly understood jumps, steps and trends in the differences. This shows that the experiment was far from “well maintained”. Unpublished reports by Swinburne researchers show that records of the 61 year experiment were not well kept.
Daily “extremes” errors from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology
The BoM enjoys beating up “extremes of climate” – this page of New South Wales highest maximum temperatures for 2nd November 2014 has a string of glaring errors –
Scone SCS might have been transposed from the previous day because SCONE AIRPORT AWS (061363) registered only 26.3. Lostock Dam, Pindari Dam in the far north and Yass also look to have been transposed from the previous day.
Yarras, 60km west of Port Macquarie also looks too high at 29° and is not reflected in the daily contour map below.
So that whole area of light pink and light brown contouring SE of and surrounding Scone looks dodgy. (Hat tip to reader Ian George)
Green renewable energy enthusiasts hoping to buy back the Berlin electricity grid
Yes that’s Berlin, Germany – what about Berliners who actually want reliable electricity – do they get any say.
The Australian ABC reports – Berlin citizens looking to buy back electricity grid in aim of using more renewable energy
Without fossil fuels, hydro or nuclear it could easy be a case of – Ich bin ein Berliner in der kalten und dunklen. Thanks Google for translating.
Australian Bureau of Meteorology claims that NSW has had its hottest October ever – does the data really back up their claim ?
As reader Ian George has pointed out the BoM in their monthly report for New South Wales say – New South Wales in October 2014: Warmest October on record
Following Ian’s lead I have averaged all the District mean monthly max’s and added them to this map of BoM rain districts – I have shaded orange districts that topped a 4 degree anomaly.
This next map shows the NSW maximum anomaly for October.
As Ian says there are serious differences between the maps – for example – here are many places within the RED +4 degree anomaly contour which did not register a 4 degree anomaly for October according to the district stations listed by the BoM.
Wanaaring, Bourke, Nyngan, Moree, Walgett, Lightning Ridge, Collarenebri, Narrabri, Gunnedah Resource Centre was 4.1 but Gunnedah Airport only 2.3 (UHI in Gunnedah??), Coonabarabran, Inverell, Forbes, Parkes, Deniliquin, Corowa, Tocumwal, Griffith, Lake Cargelligo,
On the other hand I noticed Katoomba had a 4 degree anomaly but is way outside the RED contour.
On balance it looks like Ian is realistic to wonder – “One wonders if the BoM has a flawed shading formula which does not really reflect the actual temperatures.”
This could be a work in progress.
“Merchants of Doubt” movie exposing “professional climate sceptics” to be shown in Canberra
The Canberra Times reports – Climate sceptics in focus at the Canberra International Film Festival – I have looked online for the DVD but no can find. If anybody can get a copy – please let me know where.
When I saw the headline I thought the “Kill Climate Deniers” movie was out in record time.
The movie seems to be from the book by Erik M. Conway and Naomi Oreskes.