Toppling the favourite. Slum Dog Millionaire begins as a short-priced favourite to be voted Best Film, now that the field has been settled, but I expect the theme developed by Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan to be used to good effect by the spin doctors pushing the case for the other starters — The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, The Reader and Milk. Mr Bachchan is among those who have criticised the film, suggesting that it “projects India as [a] Third World dirty underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots”.
Abetz and the airing of policy laundry. You have got to love the cheek of Eric Abetz. The Tasmanian Senator is lecturing young Liberals today on “Jeremiahs and snake oil merchants” seeking to shift the Coalition’s policy direction could cause the Liberal Party’s destruction. Such debates should be conducted within the private confines of the party. So what does he do? Give an advance copy of his speech to the Sydney Morning Herald so his particular piece of grubby laundry can be fully aired. Hypocritical? Yes, but unfortunately, it is probably the way to increasing influence.
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh got back to work this week to be greeted with these headlines: It’s not a good look in an election year when the power starts blacking out. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh got back to work this week to be greeted with these headlines:
It has made it devilishly difficult to decide whether to go for an early election or to hang on and hope for the best. Further blackouts in the middle of an early campaign would be disastrous. Hanging on while the number of unemployed rises could be even worse. Such are the choices leaders must make and Ms Bligh can at least be thankful that the charade of a united Liberal National Party is exposed further with every day that passes. The latest story that senior Nationals are searching for a way of breaking the agreement between the so-called merged parties to ensure that one of theirs can replace Barnaby Joyce in the Senate is just the latest example.
Disappearing on one side growing on another. It is a confusing thing this world climate business. This morning the radio was telling me that some silly people had been assuming that because weather stations in the Antarctic were recording colder temperatures that the great southern continent was not getting warmer. “Most studies of Antarctic climate change in the recent past have relied on weather records, which are located at the Antarctic research stations,” Professor Eric Steig at the University of Washington told the ABC’s AM program. “And most of those stations, there are 42 of them, are on the coastline or near the Antarctic coastline, with only two in the interior of the continent. Some of those stations have shown cooling in recent decades, including one of those in the centre of the continent at the South Pole, and that’s resulted in the popular notion that all of Antarctica is cooling.”
One problem with popular notions, it would appear, is that they do not tie in with what has been happening on the rest of the planet. So the good Professor Steig and his colleagues tackled the challenge of establishing what was happening across the icy interior of Antarctica. “What we did is we took advantage of the fact that, in fact, there is data. There’s over 25 years now of data from satellites, which provides an alternative way to measure the temperature,” Professor Steig said. By correlating the two sets of data, the research team believes it has come up with an accurate picture stretching back half a century, and it shows western Antarctica especially has been getting warmer by about a 10th of a degree every decade. “What we found, in a nutshell, is that Antarctica is not cooling,” Professor Steig said.
“Now some parts of it have been cooling, but only since the late 1970s, and only in certain seasons, primarily in autumn. On average the entire continent is warming and especially it is warming in winter and spring. Finally, west Antarctica, just like the Antarctic peninsula, is warming in all seasons.”
So there we have it. Just believe in the computer modeling that correlates the data so that actual readings at actual weather stations are shown to be misleading.
What radio cannot show, of course, is pictures and these from the National Snow and Ice Data Center don’t seem to be following the correct correlated course.
The first is a graph of what has been happening to the extent of sea ice over the last 25 years. Despite what we have just been told are the rising temperatures, the trend line of total ice coverage is steadily upwards from the 1979-2000 mean of 11.1 million sq km.
Looked at as a map, the data from last month shows a total area of 12.2 million sq km — 1.1 million sq km above the mean. There are clearly some parts of the continent where ice is disappearing and others where its extent is growing.
The variation in concentration from 100% ice to no ice is considerable.
In some parts of the Antarctic sea, the concentration is 50% greater than during the mean years and in others substantially less.
When the trends are mapped it is clear to see why scientists are so concerned about what is happening to the ice shelf where the Antarctic continent points up towards South America. Here the ice concentration looks to be falling at around 20% a decade, but there are equally parts where the ice concentration is increasing at a similar rate.
Spare Me!
Increasing warmth means more moisture captured by the driest content; this forms more ice. While I’ll leave it to others to speculate on the increased solar reflection of this ice and effect on local temperatures the bottom line is that more ice in Antarctica is direct evidence of global warming.
Happy to discuss
tom
Political arguments are not published in peer review scientific publications Richard McGuire.
The ‘science’ of AGW is based on computer modeling.
The data sets used are notoriously often withheld and are difficult enough even if they were to be peer reviewed! The interpretation of the significance of many data sets is in dispute.
The assumptions about relationships between variables necessary for the complex computer calculations are vigorously disputed.
These are complex computer models and as always in computer science the old adage applies:
S.h.1.t. in = s.h.1.t out
AGW computer modeling is not ‘science’ in the traditional sense nor in the sense understood by the average joe in the streeet.
Lastly the politicisation of this issue has made many groups and individuals rich.
As Deep Throat famously exhorted Bob Woodward: “Follow the money!”
Thanks Richard for this array of facts and analysis.
Wouldn’t we love to know when credible information will emerge from the confusion that you have rightly described. Certainly Prof Steig presents so much contrary analysis that one is well tempted to dismiss his whole report.
On the other hand tom redston makes a point that only serves to confuse further, whether it is valid or not.
It all comes back to the point that if global warming is happening today, the die is cast and there is little we can do that will change the trend during this century. Far more important therefore is it to put our energies into assessing and developing strategies to MANAGE the effects and the outcomes of what is happening – if it is!!
So does this really show global warming?….and if so to what extent., ie catastrophic or is it a natural occurance. When Gore and Hansen tried to “deny” that the medival warming period did not exist ie through their “hockey stick” graph, I became a bit sus about the whole agenda. “Consensus” tells us that CO2 rises AFTER the planet warms, so really AGW is a myth and we should be planning a totally different approach instead of trying to reduce carbon which will be a waste of money. I have been a “greenie” for a while and see polution of our water supplies as a far more important issue and the destruction of our forests. This global carbon tax will just take our money into the hands of people like Gore.
Just a quote: One which he tries to wriggle out of….
We need to get some broad based support,
to capture the public’s imagination…
So we have to offer up scary scenarios,
make simplified, dramatic statements
and make little mention of any doubts…
Each of us has to decide what the right balance
is between being effective and being honest.”
– Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology,
lead author of many IPCC reports
Chris Simpson raises a couple of hoary, hackneyed, sceptic debating points……First ,neither Gore or Hansen had anything to do with the authorship of the so called Hockey Stick……It is not ,and never has been, “their Hockey Stick.” …… The Hockey Stick is a climate reconstruction produced by scientists Mann, Bradley and Hughes (MBH)…… The MBH climate reconstruction first came to prominence in the IPCC’s 3rd report…..It was vigorously attacked by the denial industry, because it challenged their contention that the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than recent decades……Wikipedia has good write ups on both the Hockey Stick controversy and the Medieval Warm Period……..More importantly on these pages one can compare the MBH reconstruction against nine others……None of the other nine reconstuctions show the Medieval Warm Period being warmer or as warm as recent decades….Which begs the question, why has the denial industry not gone after the other nine authors, accusing them of fraud and dishonesty ?………”CO2 rises after the planet warms up”……. This has happened in the past……. The initial warming is believed to be caused by variations in the Earth’s solar orbit…. Increasing CO2 levels were a feedback………Today however this is not the case, according to the scientific consensus……… it is the anthropogenic production of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is driving the warming……All this informaton is freely available on web sites like http://www.skepticalscience.com…..Finally to Stephen Schneider….. Yes he could have chosen his words more carefully…..To be fair to Schneider people should view the whole statement at Wikipedia, before passing judgement…..Not just the bits used for denial industry propaganda.