ICAC and AGW
by Anthony Cox
Anthony Albanese, the soft face of socialism according to
Andrew Bolt, has released the State
of Australian Cities 2013 report.
Albanese in his press release says "City residents are more vulnerable
because of the Heat Island Effect (HIE) ... which can add up to four degrees to
temperatures."
Obviously
Albanese has made the most of the 10 minute briefing he would have had from the
Bureau of Meteorology [BOM] before he went out and fronted the press.
Unfortunately he, like most other pollies has taken whatever he was briefed
with as gospel. If he had bothered to do some of his own research and checking
[yes I know, stop laughing, a pollie doing his own fact-checking] he would have
found that the BOM doesn’t even think UHI will be a problem.
Blair Trewin in
his technical manual to the ACORN-SAT Australian temperature record can only
find a UHI effect in minimum temperatures and in only one of the major urban
areas Adelaide.
This suggests that either any urban influence on temperatures at these locations was already fully developed by 1910 or that anomalous urban warming was manifested as step changes, possibly associated with specific buildings or other developments in the vicinity, which were successfully removed in the homogenisation process. It is likely that the first explanation is the dominant influence at Sydney, and the second at Melbourne.
On the face of it this is ridiculous. Since 1910
Sydney has increased in population and size 10 fold. How could its UHI effect
be finished in 1910? Likewise how could the BOM’s “homogenisation process”
cater for particular buildings?
What is more likely is that the methodology used
by the BOM to “homogenise” or adjust temperatures is faulty. The new ACORN-SAT
temperature network took over from the previous High Quality [HQ] network,
corrected for the HQ biases but still found the same trend. I’m sure Albanese
can relate to those sort of corrections!
There is no doubt the BOM has had trouble with its
‘adjustments’ to raw temperature data. The bias in their adjustments is well
documented and noted in Stockwell and Stewart’s paper. Stockwell and Stewart list several areas
where bias was incorporated into the HQ network. Supposedly Trewin’s technical
manual overcame these biases in the ACORN-SAT. Yet at Table 6 and Figure 19 of
Trewin’s technical manual we see the list and form of the ‘adjustments’ made to
temperature to produce ACORN-SAT and overcome these biases in the HQ network.
These adjustments do not make sense.
For purposes of true adjustment neutrality the equality between negative
and positive adjustments over the whole of the particular temperature sites is
not important. The crucial point is whether those adjustments are neutral over
the particular sites. Table 6 and Figure 19 do not tell us whether there has
been equality of trend produced by the equality between negative and positive
adjustments. That is because a particular site can be overall negatively
adjusted but still have a negative trend produced by the adjustment and, to a
lesser extent, because overall the trend has been increased or made positive by
the adjustments, vice-versa.
In other-words, the adjustments have created a part of the trend. That
is wrong.
So, the
temperature information being provided to Albanese and which forms the basis of
the State of Australian cities report he was spruiking is problematic to say
the least. That doesn’t stop Albanese from claiming heat kills more people than
cold.
Common sense
tells us that cold is much more lethal than heat as numerous
studies have found. And the reason why people die in heatwaves is because green
policies based on the lie of AGW make using air-conditioners too expensive!
Albanese
continues the lie of the 2012-2013 summer being an ‘angry” one. This is simply not correct. The
satellite record is damning about the BOM’s claim of a record hot Summer:
This
comparison is conclusive. The satellite/BOM temperature comparison clearly
shows that the BOM ‘adjustments’ are misleading. The satellite record shows the
2012-2013 Summer as the 13th hottest since the more accurate
satellite record began in 1979, not the first.
Albanese’s
report also claims that the ‘angry’ Summer had Australia’s hottest temperature
of 49.6C at Moomba, South
Australia.
Again this is a blatant falsehood. The 1999 Australian Yearbook shows many hotter temperatures than 49.6C
in the past including 52.8C in Bourke in 1877. As part of its “homogenisation”
the BOM has removed or ‘adjusted’ all these past record temperatures.
Personally I’ve thought this winter has been as
cold as any for a long while; my subjective impression is also shared by what
is happening in the US.
But AGW has never been about the real world. It is
a manufactured world conjured up by models and computers programmed by green
zealots. Those very people are busy ‘adjusting’ the past to make sure it is
consistent with the lie of AGW.
This week saw the recommendation by ICAC that
former ALP NSW politicians be charged with fraud and corruption. Reality has
entered their cosy little make believe world.
Is it too much to hope that similar charges will
be laid against the main advocates and profiteers of AGW?