Central Australia

Notes from Xanadu

We travelled to Bowral yesterday and enjoyed the Southern Highlands greeness, coolness and difference to our Inner West — very pleasant.

I have now a first-draft of the Cook-Book and am considering how to migrate it to my web server — not quite sure how to format each recipe as a separate page and will begin testing this.

Climate Change

A further example of the sorry debate over this problem:

Jonathan Leake, “Sea-level theory cuts no ice”, The Australian, 11 January 2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/sea-level-theory-cuts-no-ice/story-e6frg6so-1225817853987

CLIMATE science faces a major new controversy after Britain’s Met Office denounced research from the Copenhagen summit that suggested global warming could raise sea levels by more than 1.8m by 2100. The studies, led by Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of ocean physics at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, have caused growing concern among other experts. They say his methods are flawed and that the real increase in sea levels by 2100 is likely to be far lower than he predicts.

Jason Lowe, a leading Met Office climate researcher, said: “We think such a big rise by 2100 is actually incredibly unlikely. The mathematical approach used to calculate the rise is completely unsatisfactory.” The new controversy dates back to January 2007 when Science magazine published a research paper by Professor Rahmstorf linking the 17cm rise in sea levels from 1881 to 2001 with a 0.6C rise in global temperature over the same period. Professor Rahmstorf then parted company from colleagues by extrapolating the findings to 2100. Based on the 17cm increase that occurred from 1881 to 2001, Professor Rahmstorf calculated that a predicted 5C increase in global temperature would raise sea levels by up to 188cm.

Critic Simon Holgate, a sea-level expert at the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory, Merseyside, has written to Science magazine, attacking Professor Rahmstorf’s work as “simplistic”. “Rahmstorf’s real skill seems to be in publishing extreme papers just before big conferences like Copenhagen, when they are guaranteed attention,” Dr Holgate said. Most of the 1881-2001 sea-level rise came from melting glaciers that will be gone by 2050, leaving the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets as contributors. But contributions of these sheets to date has been negligible and researchers say there is no evidence to show that will change in the way Professor Rahmstorf suggests.

Professor Rahmstorf said he accepted many of the criticisms. “I hope my critics are right because a rise of the kind my work predicts would be catastrophic,” he said.

And yesterday I had the opportunity to talk to a well-connected climate change proponent and raised my doubts regarding the data and analyses that I have seen so far. I was told that:

1. There is absolutely no doubt that climate change is a human induced phenomenon.
2. The Bureau of Meteorology report is unequivocal that the climate is warming. That the previous Director of the BOM disagreed with the current stance was brushed aside.
3. The complexity of weather leading to often-inaccurate forecasts does not reflect on the BOM’s ability to analyse climate.
4. Another example of climate change is the acidification of the oceans.
5. An American neuro-surgeon was quoted as saying if he procrastinated in medicine as the politicians were over climate change, his patients would all be dead. I thought this ironic considering the current insurance debate and litigation in the USA health system.
6. Earth scientists, who take a long-term view like Ian Plimer, are wrong – unfortunately I can’t recall why.
7. The fire threat in South Australia was ludicrous as there was nothing there to burn.
8. I should have another look at the data, as I was wrong.

This is what I remember this morning and I could be mis-reporting him. But I was left with the impression what he said had the same cant I have been reading and listening too from both sides. I came home no wiser. What currently puzzles me is that after a career analyzing data looking for patterns and discontinuities, I cannot make any sense of what is currently being offered as proof by either side.