No honesty or diligence about #climate change or coral reef science from Bob Fernley-Jones at WUWT

As you know very well by now, science disinformers abound at Anthony Watts' blog wattsupwiththat.com. It's one of the reasons his blog exists.  It's not so that Anthony can write stuff. He doesn't do that much any more. It's so that disinformers and science deniers can comfort science deniers that their false opinions are promoted by other people. (Other reasons include making money, panhandling for jaunts, and trying to convince his readers that he's cleverer than the really clever people.)

Dead coral, Lizard Is. GBR. Credit: Greg Torda

Another case in point today, when a dud ex-engineer (so he says) called Bob Fernley-Jones (Mechanical engineer retired, Melbourne Australia) made up a whole bunch of stuff about coral reefs (archived here). I'd say it was so that he could try to portray himself as being cleverer than climate scientists and coral reef experts. Instead he's a Dunning Kruger case, and a whiner.

As well as that, Bob's article shows:

• disinformers will make up stuff that they think their readers want to read
• disinformers don't think much of the intellectual capability of their readers, with good cause
• disinformers are fairly confident that their readers won't bother to do any fact-checking, again with good cause.
• Bob is sloppy and careless, with missing links and missing diagrams. Actually, it's Anthony Watts who was sloppy in this case (he also got Bob's name wrong). Bob complained in the comments about some of the missing links and diagrams.
• Bob is a messy thinker, with a summary at the end that is meaningless, incomprehensible nonsense.

Bob Fernley-Jones' fixation on hot Marches toward coral bleaching

There are some things associated with climate change that seem to upset deniers more than others. Deniers don't care much about killer heat waves, record floods or major long-lasting drought. They do seem to get upset by reports of coral bleaching. Today there was an article at WUWT by some denier called Bob Fernley-Jones (archived here). Bob was writing about an article at The Conversation published more than four months ago, on April 29, 2016.

The article was about the extraordinarily hot temperatures in the Coral Sea in March this year. Here's the chart that was shown in the article, which I've copied directly from the Bureau of Meteorology:

Figure 1 | March temperature for the Coral Sea. Source: Bureau of Meteorology.

Dissenting view on Climate Change Action - No longer silent, but is it too little, too few, and too late?

Two members of Australia's Climate Change Authority have published a minority report, dissenting from a new report from the Authority.

Unlike the Climate Commission, the The Climate Change Authority (CCA) wasn't shut down when Tony Abbott became Australia's Prime Minister in September 2013. Instead it was left to all but disintegrate, with budget cuts and no filling of board vacancies until Turnbull took over as Prime Minister in September 2015 (half the board seats were vacant - 5 out of 10, for most of those two years). [Update: see article by Clive Hamilton and an article on the resignation from CCA of former Reserve Bank Chair Bernie Fraser, for more on this subject. Sou 6 Sept 16] The CCA was set up as an independent statutory body, or as independent as a government body can get these days, which isn't much. It's been a toothless tiger struggling along with occasional mostly wimpy reports promoted by government when it suits them, and buried when it doesn't.

The members of the Authority (ie the board) include Clive Hamilton, John Quiggin and David Karoly who were all appointed under the Labor Government in 2012. In the past, these three people were prominent advocates for climate action, and were willing to speak out fearlessly. They've been much quieter since they were appointed to the CCA. It's now six years since Clive Hamilton's book "Requiem for a Species". (Update: It's not as bad as I thought. See comment from MikeH below to articles by Clive Hamilton. Sou 6 Sept 16)

Australasian temperatures are unusual in the context of the last thousand years - Joëlle Gergis

You might recall how four years ago science deniers, led by that unsavory character Steve McIntyre, went beserk over a paper by Dr Joëlle Gergis and a team of scientists. The paper was originally published in Journal of Climate but the authors requested it be put on hold. What the researchers were reporting was that recent decades of temperatures recorded in Australia were warmer than at any time in the past millennia.

The paper has now been taken off hold and has been published in the latest issue of the journal. About the paper, Joelle Gergis has said:

We found that the nature of warming experienced in Australasia since 1985-2014 is unusual in the context of the last thousand years...Analysis of climate model simulations shows that the warming experienced since 1950 cannot be explained by natural factors alone, highlighting the role of human caused greenhouse gases in the recent warming of the region.

In the paper the authors describe research looking at proxy reconstructions of temperatures in the warm season in the Australasian region between 1000 and 2001 AD (see Figure 1 below). Since then Australia has got even hotter. The paper is very detailed and interesting, including discussion of the temperature changes over time. For example, the authors point out that in medieval times, warming occurred in the Australasian region later than in parts of the northern hemisphere. However the timing of the minimum temperatures in the Little Ice Age was similar to that in the northern hemisphere.

I'll let Joëlle Gergis tell the rest of the story, from her article at The Conversation. It's not just a story about the research, it's also about sexism, FOI harassment, and general misbehaviour of the sort the world has come to expect from "climate hoax" conspiracy theorists.

Maurice Newman, the Australian Prime Minister's business adviser and favoured conspiracy nutter

Did you know that our Prime Minister gets his science advice from a science-denying cleric, and his business advice from a "black helicopter"-style conspiracy theorising nutter.

Central England Temperature has fallen out of favour at WUWT

Some of you might remember how various WUWT-ers were hailing the temperature in Central England (HadCET) as heralding in an ice age. Two years ago a denier at WUWT was claiming that an ice age cometh, and pointed to HadCET - which, as you'll see below, indicated no such thing.  In June that year, David "funny sunny" Archibald made one of his famous failed predictions, that Central England was in for a cold spell. A few months later, a chap called Tony Brown claimed that HadCET showed temperatures were back to those of the 1730s, which was utter nonsense. (That is, they weren't!)

Now that particular temperature record has fallen out of favour. Not even the most ardent denier can deny it's got a lot hotter there in the past few years. I say they can't deny it, but they do, still.

Heat, Heat Waves and Angry Australian Summers (and Years)

I recently wrote a short article about the summer of 2012-13 in Australia. It got some reaction from one person in particular who was claiming the record heat couldn't be attributed to global warming, he postulated that it was caused by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (eventually having some comments moved).

Rum Runner's challenge

He also posed a challenge. Rum Runner wrote: (October 9, 2014 at 2:26 AM)

@Lou "Why do you think I run this blog?"
A sense of empowerment I suppose. On other people's blogs you'd have your ass handed to you on a plate in an open debate. But here you can just *pop* delete any responses that are a bit too challenging for you.

I assume that by Lou he meant Sou. Here are the comments Rum Runner would have been talking about.

Now since Rum Runner regards the prestigious Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society as "political advocacy", and says that therefore doesn't take his information from there; and since he doesn't seem to have recognised as Australians, the scientists who wrote the papers I referred him to, I'll admit it's not much of a challenge.

Still, I thought it worthwhile doing two things. First, reporting some of the latest scientific findings about the weather Australia experienced in 2012 and 2013. And secondly, briefly touching on the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) - what it is and what is known about it and its effects on weather - in Australia and elsewhere. (I've written about the PDO a couple of times - here and here.) This article is about the former. I'll be writing a separate article on the PDO in the near future.

Australia looks forward to still hotter from the extra CO2

There are four papers in the BAMS supplement relating to the years 2012 and 2013.

The first one is: "The role of anthropogenic forcing in the record 2013 Australia-wide annual and spring temperatures" by Sophie C Lewis and David J Karoly.

What they did was investigate the roles of anthropogenic climate change and natural variability in regard to the record-breaking heat of 2013.

(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 hottest year was no freak event: humans caused it

By Sophie Lewis, University of Melbourne and David Karoly, University of Melbourne

The Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed that 2013 was the hottest year in Australia since records began in 1910.

Unusual heat was a persistent feature throughout the year. For the continent as a whole, we experienced our hottest day on record on January 7. Then January was the hottest month on record, and the 2012-13 summer was the hottest recorded for the nation.

The nation-wide temperature record set for the month of September exceeded the previous record by more than a degree. This was the largest temperature anomaly for any month yet recorded.

Averaged across all of Australia, the temperature for 2013 was 1.2C above the 1961-1990 average, and well above the previous record hot year of 2005 of 1.03C above average.

What caused these extreme temperatures? Climate scientists have a problem: because climate deals with averages and trends, we can’t attribute specific records to a particular cause.

But our research has made significant headway in identifying the causes of climate events, by calculating how much various factors increase the risk of extreme climate events occurring. And we have found sobering results.

We previously analysed the role human-caused climate change played in recent extremes across Australia.

For various record-breaking 2013 Australian temperatures, we investigated the contributing factors to temperature extremes using a suite of state-of-the-art global climate models. The models simulated well the natural variability of Australian temperatures.

Using this approach, we calculated the probability of hot Australian temperatures in model experiments. These incorporated human (changes in greenhouse gases, aerosols and ozone) and natural (solar radiation changes and volcanic) factors. We compared these probabilities to those calculated for a parallel set of experiments that include only natural factors. In this way, natural and human climate influences can be separated.

In our previous studies, we then applied an approach (known as Fraction of Attributable Risk) widely used in health and population studies to quantify the contribution of a risk factor to the occurrence of a disease. Health studies, for example, can quantify how much smoking increases the risk of lung cancer.

Using the climate models, the Fraction of Attributable Risk (FAR) shows how much the risk of extreme temperatures increases thanks to human influences.

In our earlier study of our record hot Australian summer of 2012-13, we found that it was very likely (with 90% confidence) that human influences increased the odds of extreme summers such as 2012-13 by at least five times.

In August 2013, Australia broke the record for the hottest 12-month period. The odds of this occurring increased again from the hottest summer. We found that human influence increased the odds of setting this new record by at least 100 times.

Recent extreme temperatures are exceeding previous records by increasingly large margins. The chance of reaching these extreme temperatures from natural climate variations alone is becoming increasingly unlikely. When we considered the 12-month record at the end of August, it was nearly impossible for this temperature extreme to occur from natural climate variations alone in these model experiments.

We have just completed a preliminary investigation of contributing factors for the record Australian temperature in the 2013 calendar year.

In the model experiments, it is impossible to reach such a temperature record due to natural climate variations alone. In climate model simulations with only natural factors, none of the nearly 13,000 model years analysed exceed the previous hottest year recorded back in 2005.

Australian annual temperature changes (relative to 1911-1940 average) for observations (dashed black) and model simulations with natural influences only (green) and with both human and natural influences (red). The grey plumes indicate the range of values simulated across nine global climate models used. Average Australian temperature anomalies are indicated for 2013 and the previous hottest year on record in 2005. David Karoly & Sophie Lewis.

In contrast, in model simulations including both natural and human factors, such as increasing greenhouse gases, record temperatures occur approximately once in every ten years during the period 2006 to 2020. (On a mathematical note, as there is no instance in which the record hot yearly temperature occurred without human contributions, the FAR value is one.)

Probabilities of annual average temperatures for Australia from climate model simulations including natural influences only (green) and both natural and human climate influences (red) for model years 2006-2020. The vertical lines show the temperature anomalies observed in 2013 and in 2005 (the previous hottest year observed). David Karoly & Sophie Lewis

Clearly both natural climate variability and global warming from humans contribute to recent temperature records. Natural variability always plays a major role in the occurrence of weather and climate extremes. But in the case of our recent hottest year on record, human-caused global warming made a crucial contribution to our extreme temperatures.

Our extensive catalogue of 2013 record-breaking events in Australia occurred in a global context of increasing temperatures that must be considered. Globally, 2013 will likely rank as the 6^th hottest year recorded.

So to return to our question, what caused the 2013 record hot year across Australia? Simply put, our climate has changed due to human activities. Recent extremes, such as this hot year, are occurring well outside the bounds of natural climate variations alone.


Sophie Lewis is a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

David Karoly receives funding from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science and the Australian Antarctic Division. He is a member of the Climate Change Authority and the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.


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

If we cut CO2 emissions today...or Dunning and Kruger visit WUWT again

Update: See below for ABC news item on the horrid but expected decision of this new government to disband Australia's Climate Commission. (The website is still up here.)

---

Anthony Watts has a cartoon by Josh as part of an article (archived here) telling his readers about how PM Tony Abbott has shut down the Climate Commission.  The cartoon is this one:

(you wouldn't) Credit: Josh - who suffers a serious case of the Dunning Kruger Effect
Source: Home of the DuKEs - WUWT

The object of the cartoon is Professor Tim Flannery who chaired Australia's Climate Commission.  Tim Flannery is not a meteorologist but he knows more about climate than all the deniers at WUWT and elsewhere put together.

If you read the top and bottom of the quote, you'd see that Josh (and presumably Anthony Watts) don't understand much about CO2 or climate.  As you'll see if you don't already know, Tim Flannery is, of course, correct.

One gets the feeling that Josh and Anthony Watts believe that a mere cut in CO2 would result in a drop in temperature.  That's pretty silly of them.  Any old cut in CO2 won't drop temperature.  As long as more CO2 is being added to the atmosphere than leaves it, then energy in the earth system will increase and temperatures will keep going up.  CO2 is a greenhouse gas and what it does is absorb IR radiation.  The more CO2 there is the less quickly will earth radiate energy to space.  That's why earth is heating up.

What the science says about CO2 and future temperature

I thought it might be worth writing an article about what the science says if the world suddenly stopped emitting any and all CO2 and what would happen if we started to cut emissions.

More certain of the temperature rise before the end of the century ...

...after that it's up to us

Last night I posted about the Roger Bodman. Peter Rayner and David Karoly study on my other (serious) blog, reposting an article from The Conversation.

I notice that Anthony Watts wrote an article on WUWT with no snipe other than his slightly misleading headline.  Enough to get the ratbag Dismissives showing off their wilful ignorance and general disdain for learning.

Here's the chart with the Bodman et al estimated range for business as usual labelled MAGICC:

Scary enough for you?  Do fake skeptics really think the temperature is just going to stop rising altogether once the clock ticks over to 2100?