Shock and furious anger at the vandalism of CSIRO: Larry Marshall wants to tear it down before anyone can stop him

The Australian Government is now in caretaker mode. After declaring an election is to be held on 2 July, the government will not be making any substantive decisions before the election, other than is absolutely necessary. All seats in both houses of Parliament are up for grabs in what is known here as a double dissolution. That sets the scene for who knows what. The current government is probably ahead slightly, but a lot can happen in the next 46 days.

While the government is not around to stop him, the newly appointed CEO of CSIRO is taking the opportunity to wreak havoc. He is ransacking and pillaging our most prestigious national scientific organisation, destroying decades of climate science. He is not tearing it apart to put back together. No. He is tearing it down. He is plundering our single biggest defense against climate change. Australia will soon be dependent on a very small number of remaining staff at CSIRO, plus the science carried out at Universities, and the Bureau of Meteorology. Larry Marshall is aiming to complete his destruction before the Federal election, while no-one in government can act to stop him. (They could, but by convention they probably won't.)

In Eric Worrall's logically fallacious opinion - aerosols and climate change

Some science deniers do not understand science. Some of them have made it their life's mission to not understand it. Others devote their retirement to writing nonsense on climate conspiracy blogs such as WUWT. One feature that's shared almost universally among climate conspiracy theorists is they excel at logical fallacies.

Figure 1 | Aerospan sun photometry station, Birdsville Australia. Credit: CSIRO

Take Eric Worrall at WUWT. In recent months Anthony Watts has been using Eric to write most of his very silly blog articles. Eric takes pride in his inability to reason. Today (archived here) he's written about a letter from a senior NASA scientist Brent Holben to Alex Wonhas, a senior CSIRO executive of CSIRO, which was published in the Sydney Morning Herald.  Dr Holben was requesting that CSIRO not stop its important work in researching aerosols.

Some early history about Australia's deeply troubled R&D organisation, CSIRO

Peter Hannam at the Sydney Morning Herald has been writing a series of articles about the deep troubles at Australia's flagship R&D organisation, CSIRO. Some of you won't be aware of the early history of this institution, so I thought I'd pull a few threads together to give you a taste.

Billy Hughes vision for a national focus on science

The origin of the CSIRO goes back to 1916, when the Australian Government established the Advisory Council of Science and Industry. The purpose was to put a national focus on scientific research. This was during the first World War when Labor politician William Morris ("Billy") Hughes was Prime Minister. It was Hughes who convened the conference in January 1916, with the purpose of establishing the organisation. The main offices were in Melbourne originally (Canberra didn't exist).

He..e..e..lp! We need our CSIRO climate scientists...

Hey, Malcolm Turnbull, Chris Pyne, Larry Marshall, Greg Hunt:

What the hell do you think you are doing?

We need our CSIRO climate scientists.

Australia's CSIRO dims the lights on climate and environment

If the article at the Sydney Morning Herald is true, then the CSIRO and Australian government have decided to dim the lights on climate science. Instead of researching climate science and climate change, the CSIRO management has decided to research how we can adapt to it.

It should not be a case of either/or. We need both.

Now applied research and development is the stock in trade of the CSIRO. That R&D organisation was established primarily for the "D" in R&D. It exists for the economic benefit of Australia. As with a lot of universities these days, it is expected to earn money through patents, licences, contracts and partnerships with industry and business. I've no problem with that. CSIRO has some very worthy successes. The problem I see is that in order for development there has to be research. Research precedes development in the R&D chain. If we don't properly understand what is happening and what is going to happen, then we won't properly understand what it is that we need to adapt to. So the question becomes - how are we going to adapt if we don't understand well enough what the future holds?

(Not) looking forward to hotter and drier...

Tonight I stopped by an AMOS presentation at which some of our top climatologists talked about the state of Australia's climate.  (Thanks all.) The strongest message was about where our climate is heading.

If the numbnuts at WUWT and Jo Nova's place and those who float around Andrew Bolt's blog waiting for a chance to proclaim AGW is a myth had seen what these people see, they'd be marching the streets campaigning for Tony Abbott to get off his bum and do something to cut carbon emissions.

Here is a slide that Dr Sophie Lewis of the University of Melbourne put up.

Sophie Lewis, AMOS presentation Melbourne, March 2014

She explained that she and David Karoly ran some experiments that demonstrated that the chance of having a year like last year in Australia without AGW would have been once only - in 13,000 years!  And last year wasn't even an El Nino year.

Later, she told us that years like last year's record hot year will be the norm by 2050.  By the end of this century, years like last year will be considered cold.  Well, not cold of course, but a reprieve of sorts from the stinking heat that will be the norm if we keep emitting CO2 at the rate we are.

Sophie Lewis at AMOS presentation
How the record hot 2013 will soon be the norm and by 2070 will seem "cold"

Other speakers were Dr. Karl Braganza (BoM), Dr. Scott Power (BoM), Dr Penny Whetton (CSIRO) and Dr. Ailie Gallant (Monash).  I was held up at a meeting and missed Karl and Scott's talks, but Ailie's presentation was every bit as good as expected and so was Penny's.

It's one thing to read reports like the State of the Climate 2014.  It's quite another to see and hear climate scientists discuss what is happening.  We know what is happening because we are living it.  But seeing what's before us is something else altogether.

Here is a graphic from the State of the Climate report, showing how much different parts of the country have warmed over the past century or so.

Source: State of the Climate 2014, CSIRO and BoM

As for the future, the report states:

Australian temperatures are projected to continue to warm, rising by 0.6 to 1.5°C by 2030 compared with the climate of 1980 to 1999; noting that 1910 to 1990 warmed by 0.6°C. Warming by 2070, compared to 1980 to 1999, is projected to be 1.0 to 2.5°C for low greenhouse gas emissions and 2.2 to 5.0°C for high emissions.

There's a chance of Australia being five degrees Celsius hotter by 2070! Sheesh.  Last year was bad enough, I cannot imagine the world that my great nieces and nephews and their children will have to learn to live with if we keep going the way we are.

Here is a chart from the same report showing the changes in rainfall:

Source: State of the Climate 2014, CSIRO and BoM

We live down in the south east corner - the bit where it says "very much below average" to "lowest on record".  With an El Nino maybe coming, I figure it's time to get the water tank connected properly.  In south eastern Australia it's going to continue to get drier and hotter.  Could be a drought coming, it might not be this year or next.  Then again, it might.  Time to resurrect that old motto: "Be prepared."


More in keeping with HotWhopper was what was waiting for us outside the theatre - some chemtrail kooks.  Yes, I guess we have them too :(

Credit: Sou at HotWhopper

Australia's getting hotter! Five times increase in "very warm" months

Australia's CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology have released the 2014 State of the Climate report.  We're almost one degree hotter than a century ago.  This is global warming.

7/10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1998, with 5x increase in frequency of very warm months http://t.co/MXKSpA5xcm #SoCAus ^CS
— CSIRO (@CSIROnews) March 3, 2014

From the CSIRO press release:

State of the Climate 2014: A clear picture of Australia’s climate

A definitive report on observed changes in long term trends in Australia’s climate has been released today by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.

Click here to download the report.

4 March 2014
Bureau Chief Executive Dr Rob Vertessy said temperatures across Australia were, on average, almost 1°C warmer than they were a century ago, with most of the warming having occurred since 1950.

“Australia’s mean temperature has warmed by 0.9°C since 1910,” Dr Vertessy said.

“Seven of the ten warmest years on record in Australia have occurred since 1998. When we compare the past 15 years to the period 1951 to1980, we find that the frequency of very warm months has increased five-fold and the frequency of very cool months has decreased by around a third.

“The duration, frequency and intensity of heatwaves have increased across large parts of Australia since 1950.

“Extreme fire weather risk has increased, and the fire season has lengthened across large parts of Australia since the 1970s.

“We have also seen a general trend of declining autumn and winter rainfall, particularly in southwestern and southeastern Australia, while heavy rainfall events are projected to increase. Australian average annual rainfall has increased slightly, largely due to increases in spring and summer rainfall, most markedly in northwestern Australia.”

CSIRO Chief Executive Dr Megan Clark said Australia has warmed in every state and territory and in every season.

“Australia has one of the most variable climates in the world. Against this backdrop, across the decades, we’re continuing to see increasing temperatures, warmer oceans, changes to when and where rain falls and higher sea levels,” Dr Clark said.

“The sea-surface temperatures have warmed by 0.9°C since 1900 and greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise.”

CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology play a key role in monitoring, measuring and reporting on weather and climate, contributing to improved understanding of our changing global climate system. State of the Climate 2014 is the third report in a series and follows earlier reports in 2010 and 2012.

For further information and to download the full report:

• Bureau of Meteorology www.bom.gov.au/state-of-the-climate/ [external link]
• CSIRO State of the Climate - 2014

State of the Climate: fast facts

Temperature

• Australia’s mean surface air temperature has warmed by 0.9°C since 1910.
• Seven of the ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1998.
• Over the past 15 years, the frequency of very warm months has increased five-fold and the frequency of very cool months has declined by around a third, compared to 1951–1980.
• Sea-surface temperatures in the Australian region have warmed by 0.9°C since 1900.

Rainfall

• Rainfall averaged across Australia has slightly increased since 1900, with a large increase in northwest Australia since 1970.
• A declining trend in winter rainfall persists in southwest Australia.
• Autumn and early winter rainfall has mostly been below average in the southeast since 1990.

Heatwaves and fire weather

• The duration, frequency and intensity of heatwaves have increased across large parts of Australia since 1950.
• There has been an increase in extreme fire weather, and a longer fire season, across large parts of Australia since the 1970s.

Global atmosphere and cryosphere

• A wide range of observations show that the global climate system continues to warm.
• It is extremely likely that the dominant cause of recent warming is human-induced greenhouse gas emissions and not natural climate variability.
• Ice-mass loss from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets has accelerated over the past
• two decades.
• Arctic summer minimum seaice extent has declined by between 9.4 and 13.6 per cent per decade since 1979, a rate that is likely unprecedented in at least the past 1,450 years.
• Antarctic sea-ice extent has slightly increased by between 1.2 per cent and 1.8 per cent per decade since 1979.

Oceans

• The Earth is gaining heat, most of which is going into the oceans.
• Global mean sea level increased throughout the 20th century and in 2012 was 225 mm higher than in 1880.
• Rates of sea-level rise vary around the Australian region, with higher sea-level rise observed in the north and rates similar to the global average observed in the south and east.
• Ocean acidity levels have increased since the 1800s due to increased CO2 absorption from the atmosphere.

Greenhouse gases

• Atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase due to emissions from human activities, with global mean CO2 levels reaching 395 ppm in 2013.
• Global CO2 emissions from the use of fossil fuel increased in 2013 by 2.1 per cent compared to 3.1 per cent per year since 2000.
• The increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations from 2011 to 2013 is the largest two-year increase ever observed.

Future climate scenarios for Australia

• Australian temperatures are projected to continue to increase, with more hot days and fewer cool days.
• A further increase in the number of extreme fire-weather days is expected in southern and eastern Australia, with a longer fire season in these regions.
• Average rainfall in southern Australia is projected to decrease, with a likely increase in drought frequency and severity.
• The frequency and intensity of extreme daily rainfall is projected to increase.
• Tropical cyclones are projected to decrease in number but increase in intensity.
• Projected sea-level rise will increase the frequency of extreme sea-level events.

A sign of the (hot) times...Heat wave forecasts from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology is piloting a new product - a heat wave forecast.  It's a new product that is based on a specific definition of heatwave conditions for Australia.  This is: three days or more of high maximum and minimum temperatures that is unusual for that location, plus it takes into account conditions preceding the hot weather, allowing for whether people have acclimatised to the heat or not.

As I understand it, the same temperature over consecutive days in September might rate as a heat wave that wouldn't rate as one in February, because people would have been acclimatised to summer conditions in February.  Not that we won't have heat waves in February.  That's when we can get the worst of them.  Just that the temperature would probably have to be consistently higher than it would have been in September, to be classed as a heat wave.

In the same way, what is considered a heat wave in Cairns might not be considered one in Melbourne, because Melbourne, despite being much further south of the equator, can get quite a bit hotter than Cairns.

We're heading for a heatwave over the next few days.  I've animated the BoM charts below.

Source: BoM

The heat wave maps will help service providers such as power companies, ambulance, hospitals etc, as well as ordinary people.

You can read more about the new product and its purpose here.  And here is a 2013 technical report from CSIRO on heat waves, written by John Nairn and Robert Fawcett.

Rising seas - maybe one or up to two metres this century

What do "a lot of scientists" think about sea level

If we're going to plan infrastructure for the next few decades, should we plan for the minimum projected sea level rise or the maximum?  I'd argue for the maximum.  It's fine if it doesn't happen but if it does we don't want to get caught out.

There has been quite a bit of interest in sea levels lately.  On WUWT today Anthony Watts has posted an article by Bjørn Lomborg who is scoffing at Justin Gillis on NPR. Bjørn Lomborg wrote the following, presenting it as if it were a direct quote (which it wasn't) as:

Justin Gillis tells NPR how much sea levels will rise:
“experts believe sea levels will rise at least 3 feet in the next century, and that number could be as much as 6 feet.”

The links in the WUWT article all went to some facebook pages but I figured it would be worthwhile seeing what Justin Gillis actually said in that interview.  So I googled  and found that the supposed quote was from a summary of an interview on NPR from 21 March this year - and it wasn't a direct quote.  Here is what NPR reported:

Gillis says experts believe sea levels will rise at least 3 feet in the next century, and that number could be as much as 6 feet.

A pretty serious problem

So then I went to the interview transcript to see what Justin Gillis actually said and came up with with this.  Note the section I've printed in bold italics.

DAVIES: So the melting of the land ice will contribute to sea level rise, unlike the melting of the ice in the ocean?

GILLIS: No question about that, and in fact the ocean is rising already. Many people know this. It's gone up about eight inches or so in the last century. That doesn't sound like much, but if you can imagine a very gently sloping shoreline, even eight inches of sea level rise has meant a whole lot of erosion. And in fact people have spent billions of dollars along the coastlines of the United States battling erosion already.

Now we're trying to understand, well, how much more sea level rise are we going to get over how long a period? The essential question is really how fast will this unfold. And a lot of scientists lately have been coming to the conclusion that we could fairly easily see three feet or so of sea level rise in the coming century and, you know, possibly as much as six feet.

So if we get that much, that's going to start to become a pretty serious problem.

The context: "The essential question is really how fast will this unfold."  and "we could fairly easily see three feet or so...". There is no "at least three feet" in the transcript.  That was what NPR said, not what Justin Gillis said.  See how in the various repeats a nuanced but informed speculation is turned into a bald certainty by NPR and then presented by Lomborg as a direct quote from Justin Gillis?  And the denialists call people who accept mainstream science "alarmists"!  It does pay to do your own research.

Now Lomborg insists that Justin Gillis is wrong (in what he didn't say) -  and refers readers to a recent AR5 draft, which I think he's arguing Justin Gillis should have seen back in March when he did the interview.  Time travel is no barrier to contrarians and lukewarmers.  Lomborg writes:

So, Gillis tells us the one end of the spectrum is 3 feet and the highest 6 feet, while the the UN says 1 foot to 2.7 feet. His *lowest* estimate is higher than the *highest* of the UN Climate Panel’s new, higher estimate.

Well, no he didn't tell us that.  You are wrong there, Dr Lomborg.  What Justin Gillis reported was "a lot of scientists have been coming to the conclusion that we could fairly easily see three feet or so of sea level rise in the coming century..."

The one bit of progress at WUWT is that they are touting the IPCC as the 'bible' on climate, for a change!

CSIRO confirms that we could see one to two metres by 2100, but probably no higher

What does Australia's CSIRO have to say on the subject?  I found this report, which reports "recent progress in understanding sea-level rise and also clarify confusion around interpretations of the IPCC sea-level projections".  The CSIRO report is not definitive.  For example:

Recent interpretations of geological data suggest that at the time of the last interglacial (~125,000 years ago), when sea level was close to today’s value, there was a period when “...the average rate of sea-level rise [was] 1.6 m/century.”14 This demonstrates that sea-level rise of 1 m or more by the year 2100 is plausible. (page 8)

...There is increasing concern about the stability of both the Greenland and the West Antarctic Ice Sheets leading to a more rapid rate of sea-level rise. While our understanding of the relevant processes is limited, it is important to recognize that the uncertainties are essentially one-sided. That is, the processes can only lead to a higher rate of sea-level rise than current projections. (page 9)

The CSIRO booklet has a lot more information and sets out the factors affecting sea level quite well.  The main message is that ice will melt and seas will rise and they won't stop rising at midnight on 31 December 2099.  The other main message is that we have the power to limit the sea level rise, should we feel inclined to do so.  There is more on this page on the CSIRO website:

The AR4 explicitly states that larger rises cannot be excluded and its projections for sea-level rise do not give a best estimate or an upper bound. Note that since publication of the AR4, Pfeffer et al. (2008) have argued that a rise in excess of 2 metres is "physically untenable," and that a maximum rise of 0.8 metres (near the upper end of the IPCC AR4 projections) is more plausible.

So based on the best information I can find from CSIRO, seas may well rise by 3 feet (one meter) and could go as high as six feet (two metres) by 2100 but are not likely to go higher than that this century.  But they will keep rising over the coming centuries.

Many of you will have read the following on The Conversation or at RealClimate.org or elsewhere.  It is more confirmation that we cannot be complacent about sea levels.  Dr Levermann also talks of an upper limit this century of around two metres, same as Justin Gillis reported the 'experts' as saying and the same as reported by the CSIRO.

The inevitability of sea level rise

By Anders Levermann, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

Small numbers can imply big things. Global sea level rose by a little less than 0.2 metres during the 20th century – mainly in response to the 0.8 °C of warming humans have caused through greenhouse gas emissions. That might not look like something to worry about. But there is no doubt that for the next century, sea level will continue to rise substantially. The multi-billion-dollar question is: by how much?

The upper limit of two metres that is currently available in the scientific literature would be extremely difficult and costly to adapt to for many coastal regions. But the sea level will not stop rising at the end of the 21st century. Historical climate records show that sea levels have been higher whenever Earth’s climate was warmer – and not by a couple of centimetres, but by several metres. This inevitability is due to the inertia in the ocean and ice masses on the planet. There are two major reasons for the perpetual response of sea level to human perturbations.

One is due to the long lifetime and warming effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Once emitted carbon dioxide causes warming in the atmosphere over many centuries which can only be reduced significantly by actively taking the greenhouse gas out again. This is because both the amount of heat and carbon dioxide the ocean can absorb is reduced, and so the temperature stays up for centuries or even millennia. Of course, not cutting emissions would exacerbate the problem even further.

The other reason is that both the ocean and the ice masses are very big and a warming of the surrounding atmosphere will only penetrate slowly, but inevitably, into them. As a consequence their sea level contribution continues even if the warming does not increase. Sea level rise over the last century has been dominated by ocean warming and loss of glaciers. Our recent study indicates that the future sea level rise will be dominated by ice loss from the two major ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica – slumbering giants that we’re about to wake.

Sea level rise contributions over 2000 years from: 

ocean warming (a), mountain glaciers (b), 

Greenland © and Antarctic (d) ice sheets. 

The total sea level commitment (e) is about 

2.3m per degree of warming above pre-industrial.

It is easier to understand a future world that has adjusted to a new equilibrium of higher temperatures than it is to understand the dynamic (perhaps rapid) transition from today’s world to a warmer one. That is why we used physical models for the ocean, the mountain glaciers and the big ice sheets to compute how the systems would be different if the world was warmer.

What we found was that for each degree of global warming above pre-industrial levels the ocean warming will contribute about 0.4 metres to global mean sea-level rise while Antarctica will contribute about 1.2 metres. The mountain glaciers have a limited amount of water stored and thus their contribution levels off with higher temperatures. This is over-compensated for by the ice loss from Greenland, so that in total sea level rises quasi-linearly by about 2.3 metres for each degree of global warming (see figure).

How fast this will come about, we do not know. All we can say is that it will take no longer than 2,000 years. Thus the 2.3 metres per degree of warming are not for this century. They need to be considered as our sea level commitment – the sea level rise that cannot be avoided after we have elevated global temperatures to a certain level.

Ben Strauss of Climate Central has considered the different possible future pathways that society might take and computed which US cities are at risk in the long-term. He poses the question as to what year, if we continue with greenhouse emissions at current rates, we will have caused an inevitable sea level rise that puts certain cities at risk.

According to his analysis, within the next few years Miami in Florida will be committed to eventually lie below sea level, while our future actions can still decide on whether we want to one day give up cities such as Virginia Beach, Sacramento, Boston, Jacksonville or New York City.

This is a decision society has to take for future generations. We will need to adapt to climate change in any case, but some things we will not be able to adapt to. Society needs to decide whether we want to give up, for example, the Tower of London, or to put the brakes on climate change so that we don’t have to.


Anders Levermann does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.

And if you're not sick and tired of reading about sea levels, there was another article by Justin Gillis recently in the NY Times - you can get it here.  In it he talks about a new paper by O'Leary et al on the possible catastrophic collapse of ice sheets in the last interglacial - as a warning of what might happen this time around - though not immediately.

And if you want more still, you may be interested in this new article by Andy Revkin on Dot Earth.