Posts tagged…Climate
Century trends in Victorian temperatures
Mon, Aug 17 2009
There are a dozen or so rural Victorian weather stations, of the 255 listed as reporting maximum temperature data to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, that have records stretching back to years before 1900. I have found them by skimming through the listings on this page at the BOM website. It has a helpful graphic that dynamically displays the record length.
I thought it might be interesting…
Read more…Temperatures for June in Victoria
Tue, Jul 14 2009
June 2009 was not as warm as June 2008, but still 0.8° C above the average for 1961-1990, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. There have been ten hotter Junes since 1950.
Carbon tariffs, permits and subsidies
Thu, Jul 09 2009Gary Horlick, Washington trade attorney, former senior official of the Commerce Department and a very fine analyst of WTO law, sets out some of the impossibly tricky technical questions in plain langugage
"Perhaps the biggest international trade challenge -- and one on which a lot more work needs to be done -- is how the mechanics of international trade will work if each of the hundred and ninety…
How bad is global deforestation?
Sun, Jul 05 2009
The short answer: if the data is reliable (it may not be) annual forest 'loss'—mostly conversion of land to agriculture—is small: a fifth of one percent and slowing. Does this small loss of forest add to net CO2 emissions, or reduce them, or make no difference? It's not clear.
In this post I take a look at the FAO data on global deforestation rates, just to get a feeling for the size of the…
Temperatures for May in Victoria
Sun, Jun 14 2009
Temperatures in May 2009 were 0.52° C above the historical average.
Plimer review: more from G Schmidt
Sat, May 23 2009Dr Gavin Schmidt has further criticisms of my review of Plimer (and of Plimer's book). I'm happy to reproduce them as emailed (presuming again that he has no objection). He has three main points concerning the Wegman 'cluster' analysis of the Mann authorial relationships; whether the Hockey Stick article was a 'fraud', and; whether Plimer's account of paleo-climate variability matters to current…
U.S. and Global Temperatures: a correction
Fri, May 22 2009
Dr Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeler at NASA and a principal author of the Real Climate weblog, has emailed me to point out an error (mine) in my review of Ian Plimer's Heaven + Earth.
I said that I had learned from Ian Plimer that NASA had reversed it's claim that the ten years following 1995 were the hottest ten years of the century when Steven McIntyre showed that the record belonged to 1934.…
Plimer’s Heaven + Earth
Mon, May 18 2009
I have finally finished reading and skimming Ian Plimer's thick book Heaven + Earth. I found it admirable for being a comprehensive and intelligent account of relevant evidence on climate change. I did not like it so much for the writing, or for the organization of ideas in some places, but that's a quibble in light of the book's strengths.
Prof. Plimer's book looks like a text book (and weighs…
India says ‘no’
Wed, Apr 15 2009Even IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri considers India is 'very unlikely' to change its opposition to emissions targets (for India).
"'If the question is whether India will take on binding emission reduction commitments, the answer is no. It is morally wrong for us to agree to reduce when 40 percent of Indians do not have access to electricity,' said a member of the Indian delegation to the…
How bad is polar ice loss?
Sat, Apr 11 2009
News reports everywhere are picking up the theme of 'alarm' over the extent of ice cover at the poles.
"‘What we’re seeing is very dramatic,’ said Andrew Fleming, remote sensing manager at the British Antarctic Survey. ‘It’s very worrying.’ Scientists believed the effects were linked to the ‘very strong warming’ at the poles, he said. The Antarctic peninsula has warmed by more than 3ºC in the…
A WTO ‘code’ on carbon tariffs
Thu, Apr 02 2009Gary Hufbauer, Steve Charnovitz and Jisun Kim from the Peterson Institute have produced a small book that recommends a way to deal with the vexing—but probably inevitable— conflict between future UNEP obligations to control GHG emissions and WTO provisions on keeping markets free from regulatory distortions at, and behind, the border for goods and services.
The book helpfully and accurately…
A climate rebuttal
Wed, Apr 01 2009
A strong message with good science behind it.