Saturday 26 July 2008

The lie of blistering temperatures in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide

In an article published in The Australian it is claimed that extreme temperatures of more than 50C (122F) will become part of the climate landscape for the major Australian cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.

To call this claim 'scientific research' is to misuse the term completely.

How does it come about that such extreme temperatures could be predicted?

Read the article first...
MELBOURNE, Adelaide and Sydney will blister in temperatures of more than 50C by 2050, according to the first hard look at the impact of climate change on extreme weather.

The forecast is part of a long-term prediction that temperatures on the hottest day of the year will rise dramatically in parts of southern Australia, including the southern Murray-Darling Basin, much of coastal NSW, Victoria and South Australia.

But the study did not find evidence that other parts of Australia would be so severely affected.

"No one's ever looked at these numbers before," said Andy Pitman, co-director of the University of NSW Climate Change Research Centre in Sydney.

Scientists with the CSIRO and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology have also assessed the nation's future climate but they focused on average changes in extremes of temperature and rainfall due to climate change.

Along with graduate student Sarah Perkins, Professor Pitman analysed daily temperatures. "There is nothing wrong with what they did, but they missed that last bit of evidence that identified the 'extreme' extremes," Professor Pitman said.

The researchers first tested the effectiveness of many climate modelling systems by "hind-casting", testing how well they predicted past conditions.

After identifying the most reliable models, they simulated daily changes in temperature and rainfall as greenhouse gases increased in the atmosphere. They found the increase altered the pattern of warming for rare super-hot days.

To their surprise, there was also an indirect effect. Global warming led to a reduction in rainfall which, in turn, reduced evaporation. "If there's less evaporation, the land surface becomes hotter, a process known as positive feedback," Professor Pitman said.

That is why extreme events in places such as Darwin and Perth did not outpace those in the south: there's no feedback there.
...the research comes from analysing models and how they performed when hind-casting. Taking the most accurate models, as stated in the article, the models are then run forward in time to 2050 and, lo and behold, 50C is the answer.

Climate models are created by programming a number of algorithms related to well understood atmospheric physics. Past temperatures are then assessed against a model's output and adjustments are made until the model represents the historical record accurately.

For example, while CO2 rose from 1940 to 1975 the world's temperature fell. How did model makers overcome this inconvenience? By ascribing a cooling effect to particulate matter. What parameter was assigned to this cooling effect? Exactly enough to make their models correct. How convenient.

Adjustments like this are going on every day in every model.

Now, if you take one of these models and run it so that it produces a forecast then the reliability must be extremely questionable given that the fudges are statistically invalid.

Unsurprisingly, no model has ever accurately forecast the world's climate.

For these 'researchers' to take the model that has the best fudges so that they can hind-cast and then rely on the output to claim that Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide are in for 50C days can only be called one thing.

A lie.

Why a lie? Why not wrong?

Because these researchers know full well that models have no predictive ability and are created by a series of fudges.

Therefore, they knew what the result would be before they began their 'research'.

The Climate Faithful have, in my view, moved from being simply wrong to being downright liars.

They ignore the mounting evidence that they're wrong and are now screaming even more loudly that we're all doomed.

The scientific battle is all but over. Unfortunately, the political battle still rages.

Let's hope that in Australia we can avoid the destruction of our global competitiveness by the planned introduction of an emissions trading scheme.

(Nothing Follows)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

For example, while CO2 rose from 1940 to 1975 the world's temperature fell. How did model makers overcome this inconvenience? By ascribing a cooling effect to particulate matter. What parameter was assigned to this cooling effect? Exactly enough to make their models correct. - you really get more stupid every day, don't you? You still don't understand that CO2 is not the only factor that affects global temperatures, do you? If a model didn't include aerosol physics, it wouldn't give good results because there are aerosols in the atmosphere. You somehow think that because the models include aerosol physics, that that's a bad thing?

And yet again you make your retarded claim that no model has ever accurately forecast the world's climate.. Let's kill two birds with one stone here. Read this paper. It shows a) that models accurately predicted what would happen to the world's climate in response to the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, and b) that by virtue of that, we know that the treatment of aerosols in the models is realistic and not arbitrary as you claim.

Jack Lacton said...

Welcome back, Fudgie. Hope your stint in the sanatorium went OK.

The link you sent is member only.

Quoting the Climate Liar Hansen argues more strongly for my position than the Climate Faithfuls', as his work is constantly being shown to be one huge fudge.

Model B, for example, 'predicts' the world's temperature reasonably accurately for a shortish period but doesn't use real world data! which you well know.

He is the Lysenko and Hwang of climate science.

Anonymous said...

Hello anonymous, nice to have you back...Been kind of dull around here without you. - Presumably the paycheck finally cleared.

News from Oz is we are getting an ETS, but it looks like everything's going to be exempted.

BTW Jack, read an opinion somewhere that in a brilliant underhand maneuver, krudd is setting up the loopy prof G to take the fall when the whole ETS thing goes pear shaped, so he can walk away smelling of roses. Wondered if you had a view on that one.

Anonymous said...

So how do you go about understanding climate science if you can't access basic papers like the one I linked to? Obviously you couldn't even glean from the abstract that climate models, even back in 1991, were able to predict accurately what would happen to the climate in response to a sudden injection of aerosols from a large volcanic eruption.

What do you mean by doesn't use real world data? In your desperation to bury your head yet deeper in the sand, you appear to be making any old shit up these days.

Anonymous said...

I think Jack read the words James Hansen & Giss Climate model and knew that this paper would be a load of old shit and not worth reading. Anyway, it's not very bright posting members only links is it?

No-one takes Hansen seriously anymore. He might gave been relevant in 1988, but now he's behaving like a swivel-eyed loony.

Even his old mates at Hadley are appalled by his latest data manipulation.

Anonymous said...

What an astonishingly detailed fantasy world you live in. Hadley are appalled, are they? How about pointing us to a statement or press release showing that?