Science denier Bob Carter comes out as an ice age comether

Bob Carter, one of Australia's own climate science deniers, has written a letter to The Australian (h/t MB). Extract follows:

Heading for ice age

...we have a report by Sue Neales that the size of our grain harvest remains in doubt following severe frosts in southern NSW killing large areas of early wheat crops and also damaging wheat and canola crops in South Australia and Victoria (“Trifecta of calamities to deplete. crop harvest”, 12/9)

See below for more on the frost damage.

Is it unreasonable to be surprised that none of your writers, much less the government, has noticed that leading solar astrophysicists, such as Habibullo Abdussamatov from Pulkovo Observatory in St Petersburg, have for years been commenting on the declining activity of the sun?

Not true. In May last year Graham Lloyd wrote about the ice age comether, Habibullo Abdussamatov, with derision from anyone who read it. Graham Readfearn tells all.

These scientists are projecting a significant cooling over the next three decades, and perhaps even the occurrence of another little ice age.

Bob only mentions one "solar astrophysicist". Who are the others? Where are they hiding? Why can't Bob name any? Maybe because reputable solar researchers know that a dip in solar activity won't herald an ice age, little or big.

Obsessed as they are with a gentle global warming trend that stopped late last century, should the expected solar cooling eventuate, policy makers will rue the day they failed to heed the advice of independent scientists on climate change issues.

Bob Carter, Townsville, Qld

Habibullo Abdussamatov is a government scientist who heads up a space research division in Russia. It seems he favours lesser scientific "journals". Bob Carter used to be a researcher at a university, paid by government funding. He's paid a stipend by the Heartland Institute and is affiliated with a number of climate science denying groups. He's not an independent scientist.

Neither of them are climate scientists.

Both of them are "ice age comethers".

Both of them are in a tiny minority of scientists who deny climate science and not on any scientific grounds. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists know that humans are causing global warming. Whose advice should policy makers take?

Frost damage to winter crops in part because of the mild winter!

This is from an article by Lisa Castleman, Riverina Local Land Services (NSW Government)

...The occurrence of ‘Stem Frost’ in cereal crops such as wheat, barley, oats and triticale or pulse crops such as lupins, field peas and faba beans is rare but not impossible. Stem Frost can occur when a severe frost (less than -2°C) occurs shortly after a rainfall event and water has settled inside the boot only to be frozen by the frost which then damages the sensitive stem tissue in close proximity....  

...Frosts in winter are not unusual but an early sowing window this season and milder temperatures through winter has meant that many crops have developed quickly, making them more vulnerable to severe frost events. “Advanced crops with a run of severe frosts coinciding immediately after rainfall events is a combination that we rarely experience” said Ms Castleman who is based in Wagga Wagga.  

So the reason the winter frosts wrought such devastation is because the milder temperatures in winter (consistent with global warming, you'll note) meant that the crops were more developed when the frosts hit. The rain made the damage worse.

Bob Carter is not only not a climate scientist, he's not an agricultural scientist either.

Concern Trolling at the Australian: Graham Lloyd and his despicable war on science

They say that the best defence is attack. When you've not got a leg to stand on, when you've been found out for the despicable muckraker you are, then bare your teeth and snarl, then whine and whimper.

Apparently that's what Graham Lloyd, denier in residence at a newspaper called The Australian, thinks. He has no credibility in scientific circles. I know that sometimes scientists have to respond, just because he publishes his tripe in a national daily.

Graham Lloyd bills himself as an "environmental editor". What he does is quite different. He's a gutter press style of hack. He is so lazy that he's been known to copy disinformation from other gutter press rags - like that of his counterpart in the UK who writes for a sensationalist tabloid.

Attacking climate scientists and misleading the public about climate change seems to be part of Graham Lloyd's job description. I don't know if The Australian had the gall to write that in to his job description or letter of appointment, but maybe Graham figures that if he doesn't pull his weight in that regard, he'll be out on his ear. Facts aren't an issue for Graham. He doesn't let such details get in the way of his disinformation campaigns.

Rhetorical tricks from Graham Lloyd

Take what he's written today. He's fakes a whine and a whinge and makes up allegations out of thin air. All rhetoric no substance. A slimy attack by innuendo.

IT reflects poorly on key members of Australia’s climate science establishment that tribal loyalty is more important than genuine inquiry.

See the rhetorical trick? Graham comes out with a whine as if there really was "tribal loyalty" and as if there was some "genuine enquiry".

No, Graham. There was no genuine enquiry. This isn't a matter of tribal loyalty. The only thing your denialist propaganda brigade is genuine about is spreading FUD. Genuine but not open. You hide behind slimy innuendo and rhetoric. Just like that opening sentence of yours. What you have been engaged in for years now, is spreading disinformation about climate and attacking the integrity of hard-working scientists. It's your modus operandi. It's the essence of how you wage your ongoing war on science.

Graham then indulges in some ad hominem histrionics and writes:

Openness not ad hominem histrionics was always the answer for lingering concerns about what happened to some of the nation’s temperature records under the Bureau of Meteorology’s process of homogenisation.

Pure histrionics from Graham Lloyd. More rhetoric. More slimy innuendo. See what he's done? Was this the end game from the start? Make up some fake allegations. Call them "concerns" - in true concern troll fashion. Then when they are shown to be without foundation insinuate that the Bureau wasn't open from the start.

There were no lingering concerns by anyone. Graham concocted them. He manufactured a controversy when there was none. Was it all so that he could fill his slot for a few days? He could have written this latest piece three weeks ago and barely changed a word. He could have planned it out from the beginning. His sleazy tactics had a predictable outcome.

Graham thinks "oh, this is a good trick. Now I'll insinuate that the Bureau isn't transparent."

BoM’s independent peer review panel called for greater transparency. BoM did not heed the call and when questions were raised the reflexive response of its supporters has been to shoot the messenger.

The Bureau is transparent. It publishes more information than Graham ever bothered to look for. And shoot what messenger? Why should an organisation like the Bureau of Meteorology pay any attention to a messenger from the Denial Propaganda Machine? Does Graham really think that a worm like himself should be paid any attention at all? Someone so mired in the murky world of science denial that he goes to denialist bloggers instead of scientists, just so he can manufacture doubt where there is none?

For BoM’s defenders, the fact that scientist Jennifer Marohasy once worked for the Institute of Public Affairs is somehow more important than her call for clarity on why a cooling trend at several weather stations has been turned into a warming one by BoM.

Melbourne University professor David Karoly has called BoM’s inquisitors amateurs. And in yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald, Monash University astronomer Michael Brown said asking questions was an “attempt to deny a century of science that proves global warming has occurred and will continue to do so”.

If Professor David Karoly said that, he is correct. Dr Michael Brown is spot on. Jennifer Marohasy does not call for "clarity". She is a disinformer. Like Graham himself, I doubt she is the least bit interested in "clarity". Her business is the creation of uncertainty and doubt. Clarity would be the last thing that she or Graham wants. Take this very article from Graham as an example.

Graham continues with his unfounded innuendo. More rhetorical tricks.

It is entirely appropriate to ask public institutions to be open with real facts about actual events.

There you go. That's exactly what I was talking about. Graham has done a great job of creating a straw man. The Bureau of Meteorology is more transparent than almost any other agency. But Graham has gone out of his way to sow the seed of doubt and suggest otherwise.

The belated compliance by BoM to publish its reasoning is proof enough of what was the right thing to do all along.

What "belated compliance" is he talking about? He doesn't say in that article, but I found another article of his where he says there is a new page of information about ACORN-SAT.  He doesn't link to any "publication of its reasoning". Perhaps it is this explanation of ACORN-SAT. Oh no - that one's been up for ages. Perhaps it's this technical document with a detailed explanation of homogenisation and the The Australian Climate Observations Reference Network. Oh, no - that's been up on the website for ages. It was published in March 2012. Maybe it's this 2012 paper from the Bureau's Blair Trewin, if Graham ever bothered to read any science. Oh no - that's behind a paywall. You can't expect the "environment editor" of an Australian national daily to go to the trouble of reading science.

What Graham Lloyd is referring to is this page. A new tab on the ACORN-SAT information website, that describes adjustments in simpler terms so that even a nong like Graham Lloyd might, if he tried hard, be able to understand.

The other thing that Graham is saying is that if some denier blogger makes up stuff on a blog somewhere on the internet, Graham Lloyd expects the Bureau of Meteorology to shut down all its important ongoing work, and pay it any mind at all.

If the Bureau of Meteorology stopped what it was doing to respond to every attack on its integrity from piddly disinformers on denier blogs somewhere on the internet, it would never release any weather forecasts. Then Graham Lloyd might have something to complain about.

Concern Trolling

Graham Lloyd in his article was being a concern troll. He was pretending to be "concerned" about openness and transparency when there is already more openness and transparency than anyone could hope for. What he did was manufacture a controversy when there was none. When it was shown there was no controversy he resorted to slimy innuendo.

Graham Lloyd demonstrates not just a complete lack of integrity, but a determination to impugn the integrity of others. He is without honour. Without principles. A paid hack who long ago sold his soul to the disinformation devil.

Further reading

If you want to read more about The Australian newspaper's attack on the Bureau of Meteorology, Graham Readfearn has been keeping tabs on it. Not to forget Tim Lambert's excellent record of The Australian's "War on Science", going back over time.

Weather in Rutherglen with WUWT, Jennifer Marohasy and Australia's denier newspaper

Update: see below.

Once again we are drawn into the "making up stuff for the sake of a bad yarn" territory at WUWT (archived here) .

Anthony Watts has written about articles by science denier and "environment" writer for the Australian, Graham Lloyd and one of Australia's resident deniers, Jennifer Marohasy. They are raising a big kerfuffle about the record of temperature trends from the agricultural research centre at DEPI Rutherglen.

I'd normally leave it up to Nick Stokes of Moyhu to analyse denialist claims like this, but he hasn't done so yet. So I'll give it a shot myself.

Rutherglen is wine-grape country just north west of the Great Dividing Range in north eastern Victoria. As well as wine grapes there is dryland farming - animals and cropping, among other things. There has been an agricultural research centre there since the year dot. Well, since the late 1800s - doing viticultural research and education (from 1880), as well as other agricultural research from the early 20th century.  (There used to be two research centres, now one.)

My family has lived in the region since the 1950s. I worked for the Victorian Department of Agriculture in the early 1980s, was on the agriculture faculty at Melbourne Uni in the 1990s, headed the Victorian branch of the ag science professional body for a while, and have since done work with the Victorian primary industries department (including its research arm) so the research centre at Rutherglen is not unfamiliar territory, although I've never worked on site there.

Picking cherries in Rutherglen

Now what the deniers are complaining about this time isn't the mean temperature, nor the maximum daily. Nor is it the climatology of Australia or Victoria or even of the region. What they are talking about is the minimum temperature and in particular, the minimum temperatures up to around the mid-1960s early 1970s recorded at Rutherglen. That's more than forty years ago. A single weather station. The ultimate cherry pick.

I couldn't find another weather station close by that has records going back to the turn of the century, so Rutherglen is about it as far as I can tell. Here is a chart of raw average annual temperatures (from daily). I've included the raw records from Corowa, which is not far away on the Murray as well as Benalla and Wangaratta. Click to view larger.

Data sources: Bureau of Meteorology - Raw as recorded and ACORN-SAT

As you can see from the above, the raw records are shown as lower than the ACORN-SAT (adjusted/corrected) records for the period prior to the gap between 1959 and 1965. I'm not in a position to say why that is the case. I will say that the proper explanation is not nefarious intent. You can leave the conspiracy ideation to deniers who congregate at WUWT. There are any number of plausible explanations for why an algorithm would have detected a break in the record and made an adjustment, some of which I've described below.

One thing you'll notice is where Benalla overlaps with Rutherglen in the earliest records for Benalla, the difference in raw minimum temperature is much less than later on (I've highlighted the two bits to look at). This suggests that BoM was not in error in regard to Rutherglen.

Editing the Environment out of Existence: Graham Lloyd and The Australian tell Big Fat Lies

UPDATE 2: Media Watch did pick up on this tonight (23 Sept 13).  Good for them!
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3854782.htm


UPDATE: The Australian has printed this in its weekend edition today (h/t John Quiggin):

It didn't pick up on all the wrongs in the Lloyd article, it didn't fix the original article and it didn't stop The Australian from publishing more wrong claims about the IPCC and climate science in the same edition today (Saturday 21 September 2013).

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Graham Lloyd is a science denier.  Graham Lloyd is "Environment Editor" of a national newspaper and a science denier.  Graham Lloyd peddles disinformation, is "Environment Editor" of a national newspaper and is a science denier.


Australian climate hawks knew that already.  Here is the latest evidence for this - archived here.

Editing the Environment out of Existence

My thinking is that Graham takes his job title the wrong way.  In most newspapers the title of "Environment Editor" signifies someone who reports to the public on newsworthy matters relating to the environment.

In Graham Lloyd's case he and his paymasters are trying to edit the environment out of existence.

Tim Lambert of Deltoid for many years chronicled the Australian's War on Science.  Now the Australian is waging a War on our Future.  By editing out the environment they are also editing out the future for humanity.  But they know that already.  The question is - do all their readers know that?

Today's Battle - Big Fat Lies

In today's effort to hasten the sixth major extinction, Graham Lloyd starts off with a big fat lie (archived here):

THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest assessment reportedly admits its computer drastically overestimated rising temperatures, and over the past 60 years the world has in fact been warming at half the rate claimed in the previous IPCC report in 2007.

I've dealt with that wrong statement already - more than once.  It's not merely disinformation it's a lie.  It's been all over the internet that it's a lie.  If Graham Lloyd wasn't aware of the fact when he lazily and willing repeated the lie that David Rose told, then he is a very poor journalist (well, he is that anyway).

The previous IPCC report stated that between 1956 and 2005 the world had warmed by 0.13 degrees:

The linear warming trend over the 50 years from 1956 to 2005 (0.13 [0.10 to 0.16]°C per decade) is nearly twice that for the 100 years from 1906 to 2005. {WGI 3.2, SPM} 

Graham Lloyd writes (see below) that since 1951 the world has warmed by 0.12 degrees.

Compare 0.13 degrees for one period and 0.12 degrees for a slightly longer period.  Where is the fifty per cent?  Not there. I did my own calculations and got similar results.  Both numbers are accurately reported by the IPCC!  Graham Lloyd is telling a Big Fat Lie.

(Did anyone else notice the reference to the IPCC "computer"?  Oh my!  Does Graham really think the highly complex and sophisticated earth system models are run on a little laptop operated by one of the 12 employees of the IPCC?)

Graham Lloyd Tries to Shift the Blame for his Big Fat Lie

Graham continues:

More importantly, according to reports in British and US media, the draft report appears to suggest global temperatures were less sensitive to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide than was previously thought.

The 2007 assessment report said the planet was warming at a rate of 0.2C every decade, but according to Britain's The Daily Mail the draft update report says the true figure since 1951 has been 0.12C.

Here Graham shows what a seedy character he is.  He uses a slimy gossippers 'trick' of spreading lies while blame-shifting "I'm only telling you what I heard!".  But he refused to tell you that what he read was wrong.  It's a lie.  If he adhered to a code of ethics he'd not have printed the lies.  He's been reporting on climate for years so surely he is familiar with the content of the IPCC reports.  If he didn't know that David Rose has a reputation as a disinformer then as an editor he has a responsibility to take two minutes to check the IPCC report itself.  But Graham does know that David Rose tells lies because he reports as much.  To see how he uses the lies he knows that David Rose told, read on.

How's this for Seedy Spin?

Even knowing something is a lie doesn't stop Graham.  He'll stoop to anything for a chance to destroy the planet.  Denied the opportunity to spread another lie - Rose's ludicrous "crisis talks" lie, Graham uses a gutter press tactic - the "forced to deny" approach.  He writes:

Last week, the IPCC was forced to deny it was locked in crisis talks as reports intensified that scientists were preparing to revise down the speed at which climate change is happening and its likely impact.

Or "have you stopped beating your wife?"

How can such a person be "Environment Editor" of a national newspaper?  Is he devoid of values and ethics or does the Australian itself demand of him that he spread disinformation, innuendo and lies?  Of course he'd never get a job with any reputable newspaper so he's a bit stuck if he wants to get paid for deceiving the general public.  I guess he could freelance for PrisonPlanet or InfoWars or Canada Free Press.

Thing is, given that Graham Lloyd reports that the IPCC showed David Rose up in this lie, why does Graham Lloyd repeat all the other lies told by David Rose at all, or if he must repeat them surely he should let his readers know that David Rose lied!

The facts are buried deep

Way down, after Graham has done his "duty" he decides that he'd better make a weak attempt at pretending to be an environment editor rather than an environment wrecker.  He writes what "is believed".

It is believed the IPCC draft report will still conclude there is now greater confidence that climate change is real, humans are having a major impact and that the world will continue to warm catastrophically unless drastic action is taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The impacts would include big rises in the sea level, floods, droughts and the disappearance of the Arctic icecap.

Believed by whom, Graham doesn't say.  The report hasn't yet been released.  It won't be released until the end of the month.  Which is why people like Graham Lloyd are getting in early.  To try to get people to not believe their eyes or what they read in the papers.

The rest of the article is junk.  He writes about the incomprehensible comments Judith Curry made to David Rose and what fibs Matt Ridley wrote in the Wall Street Journal plus more on a "forced to deny" garbage.

The Lies of Graham Lloyd and The Australian should not be tolerated

The appalling behaviour of Graham Lloyd and the Australian should not be tolerated in Australia.  Our media has a responsibility to portray facts.  I don't know what can be done.  I'll make this contribution but I hope that there is at least one other person who has the integrity and clout to do more.

To read more about the reaction to this War on our Future, here are some other reports and commentary.  As you can see - the disinformers are simply repeating each other's lies and spin.  That's all they have in waging their war against the environment and their war on humanity's future:

Phil Plait on Bad Astronomy at Slate

Dana Nuccitelli at the UK Guardian and more here

HotWhopper - here and here and here and here

Maybe the ABC's Media Watch will help expose the disinformation from Graham Lloyd.  You can help by sending them a tip. - And they did!  (Thanks, people!)

Meteoric Research at Lake E and The DuKEs™** Feeble Battle

Meteoric Research at Lake El'gygytgyn: the most continuous archive of information about past climate change from the entire Arctic borderlands

There has been some "meteoric research" done at Lake El'gygytgyn (bit of a tongue-twister), which is in the Arctic in Russia.  Looks to be a wealth of information and I can't wait to read this second paper on the sediment core from Lake E in Science next Friday (?).  (The first one is here.) For those of you who can access it, it's pre-released in Science Express.  Otherwise, you can read about it in the Guardian and ScienceDaily and probably elsewhere.

The paper is called: Pliocene Warmth, Polar Amplification, and Stepped Pleistocene Cooling Recorded in NE Arctic Russia.

There were 16 authors of the paper, led by Julie Brigham-Grette, Professor of Quaternary/ Glacial Geology and Arctic Paleoenvironments in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Like reading a detective novel: the most continuous archive of information about past climate change from the entire Arctic borderlands - from ScienceDaily:

"While existing geologic records from the Arctic contain important hints about this time period, what we are presenting is the most continuous archive of information about past climate change from the entire Arctic borderlands. As if reading a detective novel, we can go back in time and reconstruct how the Arctic evolved with only a few pages missing here and there," says
Brigham-Grette.

A huge meteorite, perhaps a kilometer in diameter! Telling a story going back more than 3 million years...

"Lake E" (that's easier) was formed 3.6 million years ago when a meteorite, perhaps a kilometer in diameter, hit the Earth and blasted out an 11-mile (18 km) wide crater. It has been collecting sediment layers ever since. Luckily for geoscientists, it lies in one of the few Arctic areas not eroded by continental ice sheets during ice ages, so a thick, continuous sediment record was left remarkably undisturbed. Cores from Lake E reach back in geologic time nearly 25 times farther than Greenland ice cores that span only the past 140,000 years.

The Arctic was very warm way back in time, when CO2 was not much higher than those of today...a sign of things to come:

"One of our major findings is that the Arctic was very warm in the middle Pliocene and Early Pleistocene [~ 3.6 to 2.2 million years ago] when others have suggested atmospheric CO2 was not much higher than levels we see today. This could tell us where we are going in the near future. In other words, the Earth system response to small changes in carbon dioxide is bigger than suggested by earlier climate models," the authors state.

The research doesn't just provide answers it raises some intriguing new questions, the answers to which will add to knowledge about past climatic events:

The sediment core also reveals that even during the first major "cold snap" to show up in the record 3.3 Million years ago, temperatures in the western Arctic were similar to recent averages of the past 12,000 years. "Most importantly, conditions were not 'glacial,' raising new questions as to the timing of the first appearance of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere," the authors add.

An Incredible Achievement, Phenomenal and Difficult

The Guardian article gives a glimpse into the difficulties faced by the scientists (my bold):

"It's a phenomenal record," said Prof Peter Sammonds, at University College London. "It is also an incredible achievement [the study's work], given the remoteness of the lake." Sixteen shipping containers of equipment had to be hauled 90km over snow by bulldozers from the nearest ice road, used by gold miners.

But this incredible achievement, this phenomenal, difficult and dangerous work was all for nothing if you follow the deniosaurs.  They could have just asked Tony!

DuKE™ 1: Anthony Watts Dimly DuKEs** it Out

Anthony draws on his years of anti-science blogging and solid paleo research (not!) and decides that the "researcher" (he doesn't say which of the 16 researchers) forgot about the Isthmus of Panama. (Read together with Lunt et al (2008) here.)  This researcher, according to Anthony "simply skipped over this important detail is pushing the idea that CO2 was the only issue."  

Scientists "don't know nuffin'" - if only they'd asked Tony

I expect Anthony's trying to say that not only all the specialists conducting this research, but the editors of Science and the paper's reviewers "don't know nuffin'".  Oh my! If only they'd remembered (or just asked Tony). It would have saved them years of work.

Warning: The Auditor is on the warpath

Anthony goes on to issue this dire warning that The Auditor is On the Warpath, which will no doubt leave all the scientists quaking in their boots and wishing they'd never embarked on such a foolish venture:

I’m sure Steve McIntyre will be interested in getting a look at the sediments and the dating methods to see if there are errors there.

 He finishes by telling his rabble that scientists should do what he does, ignore all prior knowledge of physics, chemistry and biology and instead make up stuff out of thin (but CO2-enriched) air (my bold).

Lately, it seems that paleo research has made some very broad assumptions, and almost always in the favor of the theory.

Duh!

DuKE™ 2: The Australian Raises the White Flag

On another front, Graham Readfearn has devoted some space to pointing out how Graham Lloyd of/and The Australian are so far into science denial that they are now "too fringe for Monckton".  Earlier this week Lloyd wrote a piece regurgitating some idiocy promoted five years ago by the Dragon Slayers (who don't 'believe in' greenhouse gases).  He reckons we might be "heading for an ice age". Wow!

Can they fall any lower?

Tim Lambert kept up with The Australian's War on Science for many years.  Seems to me The Australian has raised the white flag and signalled it has lost its war.  Now they are reduced to pushing fantasies that are even too much for the potty peer.

Time for Barry Bickmore to come up with the First and Second Laws of Graham Lloyd and The Australian.

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**DuKE™ - Collective noun for science deniers suffering from the Dunning Kruger Effect.