Transcript Climate Change

PhysCon 2015
 Climate Change - What happened to the Science?
 The ‘debate’ continues to rage. The Abbott government and the
Murdoch media (mostly) claim that climate change is not a threat – at
least not yet, while the Fairfax/ABC/Guardian side warns that it is.
What’s missing in all this? The SCIENCE of climate change! There are
arguments about whether temperatures have risen in the last decade
or how fast ice is melting, but these are actually side issues. Where is
the basic science? Fundamentally, climate science is about the physics
and chemistry of the atmosphere and about what the geological record
tells us about changing climates. Let’s try to fill this gap.
 Be sure to look for ‘Notes’ in the notes pages below the slides
 PLEASE NOTE: This is just a collection of a few
slides highlighting some recent developments as
well as some of the poor reporting of climate in the
Murdoch papers
Climate Science
What happened to
the Science?
Keith Burrows
Australian Institute of Physics
Education Committee
The ‘Hiatus’?
FOR 2015 SciCons:
Global Ocean heat content
(Nature Climate Change Jan 2015)
26 Jan 2015
2014
The hottest 20 years
•Include:
•All (14) years this century
•Only 6 from last century
•Last year (2013) was the
fourth hottest
•Except for 1998, the hottest
13 years have all been this
century.
•1998 was by far the hottest
year of the 20th century.
•1998 was the last year of a
strong El Niño
2014 – Hottest year?
“NASA later
admitted that
given the small
difference
between recent
temperature
highs and the
margin of error in
recording, it was
only 38 per cent
certain 2014 was
the warmest”
a
a
“After checking raw
data, Mr Homewood
said past
temperatures had
been adjusted down
by almost 2C and a
declining
temperature trend
over 65 years in the
raw data had been
transformed into a
sharply warming
trend”
(Oz 28 Jan 2015)
 But that
‘adjustment’
was at ONE
weather
station – in
Paraguay
“Berkeley Earth developed a methodology for automating
the adjustment process in part to answer the suspicions
people had about the fairness of human aided
adjustments.... the “biggest fraud” of all time and this
“criminal action” amounts to nothing.”
The Big Fraud?
 The Oz’s corrections of any of these
misleading claims?
FOR 2015 SciCons:
IPCC WGI Fig TS.9
Anthropogenic
and
natural forcings
Natural
forcings
only
Greenhouse gas forcings only
 An acoustic study involving 6 people in 3 households
who had complained about the wind farm
 They experienced “sensations” when the wind
turbines changed output
 A spokesman for Pacific Hydro, Andrew Richards,
said the report “was not a scientifically robust study,
not a medical study and that no cause-and-effect
relationship is demonstrated by the study”.
Download this publication from https://www.science.org.au/climatechange
An example
of absolutely
woeful
reporting in
“The
Australian”
Compare this
with what
Schmidt
actually said!
(Previous
slide)
It was prepared on behalf of the academy
by leading lights of the global warming
establishment. Some day the academy
may come to regret the arrangement...
...the international gurus of climate change
have become very good at having their
cake and eating it too. On the one hand
they pay enough lip service to the
uncertainties of global warming to justify
continued funding for their research. On
the other, they peddle a belief — this with
religious zeal, and a sort of subconscious
blindness to overstatement and the cherrypicking of data — that the science is
settled and the world is well on its way to
climatic disaster.
WHAT TOTAL
GARBAGE!!
Interesting book!
Unfortunately lacks
emphasis on the need for
good solid science in my
opinion
Basic
message:
We need to
talk with the
‘other side’!
The
politicisation
of the issue
has done
huge damage