Posts tagged…Climate
Feb 09 Temperature in Victoria
Thu, Mar 12 2009
About 1 degree above the average 1960-1991 February temperature, but only the fourth hottest February this decade (despite the cruel record temperatures of 'Black Saturday'). Well below the records in the mid-1950s, the mid-1960s and the early 1980s.
Effect of a market ‘fix’...
Mon, Feb 23 2009Contrary to the spin, emissions-trading discourages conservation:
"But the fact is once emissions trading comes in, every tonne of emissions saved by households simply frees up an extra permit that will allow big polluters to increase their emissions. This is because emissions trading relies on a fixed number of pollution permits being in circulation at any point in time. While most people…
Read more…Climate ‘tipping’ points fall down
Thu, Feb 19 2009If you're alarmed by claims—sometimes from official sources—about CO2 from thawing permafrost or cataclysms caused by a slowing or reversal of the "Meridional Overturning Circulation", then relax!
It looks like neither one nor the other of these exotic risks stands up to scientific scrutiny.
The evidence on cap-and-trade
Wed, Feb 18 2009"The problem in Australia is not that the wrong policy won in the battle of ideas. The problem is that the battle never took place. We need to have this debate. If the Government is determined to introduce further climate change policy, there are plenty of reasons a carbon tax may be better than a trading system." Op Ed by John Humpreys in The Australian
Exactly!
Naive forecasts outperform IPCC
Tue, Feb 17 2009![Mean and maximum errors in a naive forecast of temperature 1850-2008 [Green et. al.]](http://www.inquit.com/images/uploads/NaiveForecast.gif)
In a straightforward but important paper, Green, Armstrong and Soon demonstrate that there is no reason to develop elaborate 'forecasts' of temperature. The forecasts of the CGM models, they predict, will be no better over policy-relevant periods of 20, 50 or even 100 years than a naive forecast that assumes future temperatures will be the same as today's.
"Global mean temperatures were found…
Staticulation on rainfall from the BOM
Tue, Feb 17 2009Dr David Jones, head of the Bureau of Meteorology's (BOM) National Climate Center, if accurately reported, relies on staticulation rather than evidence in remarks about drought and climate change:
"While climate scientists warn a single event such as Victoria's deadly bushfires cannot be blamed on climate change alone, Dr Jones said the conditions were 'totally typical of climate change at the…
Obama’s science advisor hates science
Tue, Feb 17 2009
Second update: I have to revise my assessment—made after reviewing his publication history—that Dr John Holdren is 'something of a crackpot' (now over the fold).
This transcript shows that Holdren is a publicist for fashionable apocalypses with little sense of proportion or respect for evidence that might get in the way of his hyperbole. He could reasonably ask, of course, to be excused for…
Little evidence fires due to warming
Tue, Feb 10 2009
The Financial Times reports that Mr Kevin Hennessy, a principal research scientist at CSIRO and a contributing author on the IPCC's reports, claims "Continued increases in greenhouse gases will lead to further warming and drier conditions in southern Australia, so the [fire] risks are likely to slightly worsen"
If Mr Hennessy is relying on the same assessments as he made in the 'Drought…
What the carbon caps will cost
Sun, Feb 08 2009
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The Reserve Bank of Australia's quarterly Statement on Monetary Policy (6 Feb, 09) contains the latest estimate—using the Treasury model, is my guess:
"Overall, assuming an emissions permit price of $25 per tonne of CO2-e, it is estimated that the net result will be to reduce GDP growth by…
The last time it reached 115°
Sat, Feb 07 2009
Update: High winds, record temperatures and fire have created a horrible reprise of the 1939 disaster: possibly 40…
Victorian temperature fell in 2008
Thu, Jan 29 2009
The updated Bureau of Meteorology data for 2008 show that the 'anomaly' has fallen back to just over 0.3 of a degree. This graph (click the thumbnail) has been created from BOM data using the R code from this post.
EC cooling on Global Warming?
Tue, Dec 16 2008"Each of the 35,000 solar jobs in Germany, for instance, is subsidized to the tune of €130,000. According to estimates by the Rhine-Westphalia Institute for Economic Research, green subsidies will cost German electricity consumers nearly €27 billion in the next two years." extract from: Benny Peiser in the WSJ