January 2013 breaks Australian record for hottest average temperatures

[gary]

In an article in the Sydney Morning Herald today, journalist Peter Hannam reports that
with just a few more hours of data to collect, the average of maximum and minimum
temperatures throughout Australia for the month of January will be 29.7C degrees.
The article reports that tally was 1.79C degrees above the long-term average.





Article here -
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/giant-heatwave-delivers-hottest-january-on-record-20130131-2dn5i.html#ixzz2JWwJLbxc

[atkinsonr]

From this SMH article, Jan 8th (http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/records-will-keep-tumbling-with-blistering-heatwaves-here-to-stay-20130108-2cetq.html)

[clive milne]

And let's not forget that 2012 was a La Nina year.

Even at this early stage, the economic impact of climate change is significant ($100 billion in the US for the last 12 months from crop loss and storm damage) No figures on costs associated with bush fires or floods in Australia as yet.

.... and the oceans are still decades away from reaching any semblance of thermal equilibrium with the changes we have precipitated.

ie) even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow,
the CO2 we have already pumped in to the air will guarantee us
double the global warming that we have already experienced.

[pgc hunter]

Certainly did not feel it here, infact this January is officially colder than last year's. :rolleyes: If anything, this January had a lot of cold nights, lots of cold gusty evening seabreezes and southerlies and an endless parade of clear but hopelessly poor seeing nights. But then again, what else is new in Melbourne :mad2:

All of Christmas, New Years and Australia day were cold here, far removed from anything resembling traditional Australian holiday weather.




:rolleyes:

[2stroke]

You do know its a myth right and nothing more then a ploy to reap tax payers money? It's a massive debate and any real scientists will back that climate shift is a natural cycle of the planet and there is evidence upon evidence to prove this fact. You should think about just one volcano and the amout of CO2 it spews out vs china alone. Its like saying we should stop farting:rofl: Carbon tax is just away around increasing the GST, and does it help the climate or government pockets?

[madbadgalaxyman]

The physics of climate change is straightforward....there is some additional energy in the climate system, and temperatures rise.

But policy makers are not fools, and they are pointedly doing nothing about mitigating climate change because policy has to be costed and measured and has to be effected over a specific period of time.....
you can't base policy on current climate models which are so poor that they cannot predict the amount of temperature rise and the timescale for the temperature rise.

In the absence of reliable predictions of how much temperature rise and over what period, which are 'actable" facts on which people will probably start to do something, climate change zealots resort to a generalized "we're all doomed" type of scenario.

[andyc]

Unfortunately, "myth" describes just about all you said there. There is no 'massive' scientific debate... There is a manufactured debate, with science on only one side, so-called 'skeptics' on the other. All the planet's annual volcanic CO2 emissions about match Florida's annual CO2 emissions. Volcanoes emit about 1% as much as humanity (http://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming-intermediate.htm), even the biggest single recent eruption, Pinatubo, emitted 42 million tonnes as compared to humanity's 29 billion tonnes. I suspect you've read too much Ian Plimer (http://www.skepticalscience.com/plimervsplimer.php) and not enough real science.:eyepop:

The idea of 'natural cycles' always entertains, by having no natural physical mechanism by which the current massive increase in energy stored by the planet might be happening. And they neglect that we've already observed, using the incoming and outgoing spectrum of Earth (Harries et al 2001; Philipona 2004), that this energy imbalance is due to CO2. Our CO2 emissions. So these "natural cycles" (climate elves?) need to explain both the warming and why the 100-year old physics knowledge of CO2 is uniquely not working this time!

A consequence of an increased energy content is warming and more evaporation and precipitation. Australians, as much as anyone, can see some of these consequences in exceptional extremes of precipitation, drying and temperature. It's ultimately simple physics, but with serious consequences.

[simmo]

Hello all,

You only had to see the pictures from Beijing this morning to see why it's all going pearshape. Behind the reporter you could only just (and I mean just) see the skyscraper behind him which was probably only a block away.

They reported that the instruments that record the pollution levels can no longer keep recording as the levels have gone past the highest level of health hazard scaling. :shrug:

[Varangian]

That's interesting and it sounds like you've been listening to Plimer because the US Geological Survey (USGS) states: "Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes."

You may want to read this for a more balanced opinion.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/apr/21/iceland-volcano-climate-sceptics

Plimers assertions are just piss and wind to assist a section of government (who funds his research by the way) and are keen to progress the economy before the environment. His data is flawed.

Climate change is myriad of things, but it is not just colder or hotter or more rain or less rain, it's cooler and drier for longer, it's wetter and warmer for longer (extreme el nino/la nina), it's extreme weather conditions caused by internal and external forcing conditions. The issue with your 'the planet has always witnessed these climatic shifts' is that they were part of the evolution of the earth, these might be, but if not these changes are irreversible. They won't change back. I don't think the data as it stands is conclusive. Most of the ice cores and pollen record point to cooling and then coming back to an average temp. There have been extended droughts, but they have always broken, this one won't.

I'm a fence sitter until I see some conclusive data, but I'm pretty sure the burning of fossil fuels must be having an impact on our atmosphere.

[Larryp]

When I was in Beijing 4 years ago, I couldn't see the next block! The pollution was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Its nothing new. Sure, something needs to be done, but sensationalising doesn't help
I agree with John (Varangian) that burning fossil fuels must be affecting the enviroment, but we do not as yet have viable alternatives apart from nuclear.

[astroron]

The people who make up the deniers part of the debate seem to forget the 6.5 Billion people and counting on this Earth .:question:
When the world had climate changes in the past it made very little to the inhabitants as there was not too many of them to worry about.
Climate change effects how we produce crops, sea level rises which effect low level countries like Holland ect,.
It is not something we can do to just sit back and do nothing in the hope that it will all turn out good in the end.
Cheers

[2stroke]

Well i'll turn the A/C on high and open the doors and do my part to help the rest of the planet :) http://www.globalwarminghysteria.com/ten-myths-of-global-warming/

I think the name of the site says it all, stop reading the news papers and start reading the papers.

[Larryp]

Quite right, Ron. The world is vastly over-populated, and we need to reduce population levels. It seems the chinese are the only ones doing anything in this vein. Question is, who do we kill off?

[2stroke]

The Americans as there broke anyway and own the rest of the world 57+ trillion. :thumbsup:

[Larryp]

:lol::lol: My ex is american, so go right ahead!

[Varangian]

Changed my mind about posting what I posted.

[2stroke]

Rofl, now the next useless country to target.

[entity62]

If the world is over populated, then who wants to put up there hand too leave.

[simmo]

Hello,

I think if you took all of the people in the world and put them in one place you'll find that we aren't really overpopulating. It's more of a fact that our 'footprint' is what is overpopulating the world.

If we gave up all this professionallism and technology that we play 'games' with it would have a drastic effect. Problem is that we are habitual creatures and the world we live in has a lot of comforts that people love.

The fear of the unknown is what stops many people from moving forward. What will tommorow bring if we give up what we have? Also the possibilty of having to do things the hard way turns people off. eg. who wants to walk 1000km in a month to the next city when we can just drive there in a day or fly in hours. (I did think it was ironic too that Al Gore who made such a documentary about the environment was pictured at the end spewing out carbon as he flew all around the world to show it).

And I dare you to turn off your computer and walk away forever. Sell your car tommorow and never drive again, its not going to happen.

Don't mind though I'm just as bad as you are so don't worry or double dare me. :lol:

About this time everyone gives up and just keeps going the same way as its easier and we will let fate decide our course even if it means the demise of existence.

If one steps out of the norm also are they not scolded by the norms. eg of this was in the 1790's, I think, when a guy invented a 'computer' but was laughed at by the norms and treated as a joke. I think recently somebody built it and it actually works. Nobody will laugh at him today and probably all would agree that he was a genius.

So maybe instead of deriding the challengers and inventors of our time we should embrace them and see what they can do for the benifit of those who follow.

If we can't turn back because of the very nature of ourselves then can we not then just redirect the flow of humanity in the right direction.

We can't forget either that you can't please everyone because everyone will end up hating you. So just like my middle child some of us (maybe me too) might need to be pulled along kicking and screaming only to find out they were really going somewhere cool. :)

Cheers
Simmo ;)

[Larryp]

Simmo, we are definitely over-populating. Its not just the number of humans, but the number of food stock animals and birds required to feed the humans, plus the amount of natural forest being destroyed to grow crops, etc.
In previous times we had major wars like World Wars 1&2, which wiped out significant amounts of the population, particularly young men who would normally be fathering more children.This put a brake on population growth.
We really need some restriction on human breeding, otherwise we will continue to destroy the enviroment.

[entity62]

ww1 removed approx 1.75% of worlds population.
ww2 removed approx 3-4% of worlds population.

[Larryp]

True, but a lot of those people were of breeding age.
The other factor is medical science-people no longer die from diseases which previously wiped out millions

[astroron]

The worlds population has gone up by well over a billion since WW2, so any loss of population in world war 2 has well and truly been made up by now.
Cheers:thumbsup:

[Larryp]

Quite true, Ron. But without the wars slowing things somewhat, I wonder what population levels would be now. A lot happens in 67 years!-thats another 2-3 generations.

[Astro_Bot]

Actually, world population was only around 2.5 billion in 1950 (and probably a couple of hundred million less in 1945). It's now 7 billion!'

As Sir David Attenborough puts it, a tripling of population in his lifetime - that's a problem.

[astroron]

By about 2050 the postulated population is supposed to reach around 9 billion at the present rate.
Wars don't really do a lot to curb the population in the scheme of things,because the second and third world countries make up for the loss quite quickly.
Just look at the fammins and other disasters in these countries and yet their populations still increase.
India and China are still increasing their populations,between them they have about One Third of the Worlds population.
Cheers

[Larryp]

Sure is a problem! But how do you stop people from reproducing? Unless the human race finds a way to limit its numbers,all the climate change measures we think about introducing will be to no avail.

[simmo]

edit

[clive milne]

This statement is not a good way to describe the episode of climate change that we are currently experiencing.

Firstly, as you can be seen from the image below, the energy received by Earth from solar radiation has actually declined over the last 1/2 century and the temperature has risen in spite of this.

131577

Source:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic=tsi/composite/SolarConstant
http://www.mps.mpg.de/projects/sun-climate/data/tsi_1611.txt

The root cause of global warming is that the Earth is radiating heat in to space less effectively than it used to. By our activities, we have placed a wavelength specific insulator between ourselves and our heat source/heat sink . The insulator (CO2) is transparent to short wavelength, high energy solar radiation, but is opaque to long wavelength, room temperature black body radiation.



Indulge me while I deconstruct the argument that you have no doubt been sold via the main stream media.

Firstly, just because our politicians are not fools does not mean that their actions are in any way moral, ethical or above being corrupted by special interest groups waving the honey pot of cash &/or political tenure.

Secondly, the assertion that their inaction is a reasonable response to a lack of reasonable data is categorically incorrect.

NASA has spent a great deal of money trying to pin down our predicament using the scientific method ie) in terms that are above petty politics. Their measurements indicate that the Earth is in a state of energy imbalance due to CO2 pollution to the tune of +0.58±0.15 W/m2

Source:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_16/

Thirdly, the twin assertions that the cost of climate change and the financial resources required to combat it haven't been estimated is again not correct.

I'll draw your attention to the Stern review commissioned by the U.K. government and also locally to the analysis of the findings of the Stern review (adapted to Australia's situation) by the CSIRO where they find that the best economic model is achieved by strong immediate action on climate change, and that the business as usual model adopted by the current crop of world leaders is actually the 'worst case scenario' in every respect.

Source:

http://www.csiro.au/files/files/pkec.pdf




So... what should we base or policy on?
The idea that global anthropogenic global warming isn't real?
That is patently absurd.
Don't you think we should defer to climate scientists instead of mining magnates, political whores and the press-titutes.





Seeing as we already have reliable predictions of temperature rise over time (Hansen - NASA et al) and a viable alternative to our collective species suicide that would actually be cheaper than what we are currently doing, I don't get your point...?

Source:
http://beyondzeroemissions.org/zero-carbon-australia-2020

The real doom-sayers as far as I can see are those predicting economic collapse if we disconnect from the nipple of the carbon economy.

The converse is actually true... the only viable economic option we have available to us long term is one NOT dependent on the burning of hydrocarbons as a fuel source.

In the mean time... enjoy the conflagration.

[Hans Tucker]

I believe that either humans control their population growth or nature will do it for us...in a dramatic way possibly biological.

[Larryp]

Quite possibly. With the increasing development of anti-biotic resistant bacteria, and the ready mutation of viruses, we may one day be faced with the modern equivalent of plague.

[Hans Tucker]

The Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 reportedly killed 20-40 million. The next epidemic is way overdue, just look at the more aggressive strains of the flu that appear each year and with the population being cramped in tighter in the cities.

Maybe we need to introduce the Logan's Run approach

[Astro_Bot]

It's not specifically the number of humans but rather the ecological footprint that's more of a problem - it's currently estimated that we need 5 x earths to support the current population, so either we get 5 times more efficient and cap population where it is, or reduce world population to around 2 billion with some modest efficiency gains (that seem achievable with current and imminent technology).

Bubonic plague was the worst pandemic in recorded history, and with no medical knowledge to help them, it killed 20-30% of the world population (estimates vary significantly), not 60-80% that would be required alone.

The next worst, the 1918 'flu, "only" killed 1-3% of the world population (again, estimates vary).

A new pathogen may be a large killer, but (IMVHO) I think famine, drought and resultant human conflict will account for more of us if we continue unchanged.

Nature will undoubtedly force change upon us if we don't do it ourselves, but the cost nature imposes will be a high one.

[clive milne]

^ fixed.

[Astro_Bot]

There was a movie made in the '70s: ZPG ..... ah, here it is:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069530/?ref_=fn_al_tt_3

It's a topic that comes up from time to time, but "we" really need to address it and soon (IMVHO).

The Japanese are taking a step in the right direction - emphasising development of technology to support the elderly while natural/economic forces slow the birth rate - but more is needed. One child per family would be a good start (IMVHO).

[strongmanmike]

Yes, such web sites create confusion, uncertainty and complacency in the masses.

Thankfully our government and many others around the World take their advice and information from that which agrees with the advice from such organisations (among others) as:

CSIRO (http://www.csiro.au/en/Outcomes/Climate/Understanding.aspx)

Royal Society (http://royalsociety.org/policy/climate-change/)

Australian Academy of Science (http://www.science.org.au/policy/climatechange.html)

NASA (http://climate.nasa.gov/)

American Physical Society (http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/07_1.cfm)

[clive milne]

Jay, you've been 'had'.
The site you have linked sources its information from a group that calls itself the 'friends of science' (they are anything but)
If you dig a little deeper, you will find that none of the expert scientist that they reference have expertise in the field of climate science. One in particular deserves comment.. Christopher Monkton. Even amongst climate skeptics, he is universally regarded as a charlatan.
Also, when you look a little deeper at the organisations that are funding the contrarian view (that you linked) the funding traces back to vested interests in the petroleum institute.



On this point we agree....However, if you have some sense of emotional attachment to your current world view, you might find the exercise disappointing. Rather than giving you a list of peer reviewed scientific papers on climate science, I would encourage you to have a look at them yourself. How many can you find that actually support climate change denial? There are only two that I am aware of, one of them has already been withdrawn due to issues relating plagiarism and poor data, the other has credibility issues and is a poster child for the practice of abusing the peer review process (for commercial advantage). But by all means give it a go.

As for the 10 points listed on the page that you linked, they have already been thoroughly debunked by the scientific community. If you would like confirmation on this point, feel free to pick the one that in your opinion most ably demonstrates your argument, and in return I will point you in the direction of scientific papers that will (hopefully) put the issue in a more objective context.

[simmo]

Saw on ABC this morning that a city in India (not sure which one) also has pollution way beyond normal. How do they live like that? You think that something would click right?

I feel a little ashamed that we provide the coal that allows this too.

[Larryp]

If they didn't get the coal from us, they'd get it somewhere else

[astroron]

Indian Capital Delhi.
Cheers:thumbsup:

[simmo]

Does it make it right though.

simmo

[simmo]

Does anyone else remember the poster of the indian with the caption below that finished with when the last fish has been caught and the last tree has been cut when the last river runs dry then we'll understand that we cannot eat money? :screwy:

I think the Nepalese have a good idea and base there progress not on financial terms but the happiness of there society. Yeah maybe we're happier with our gizmos for the short term but at what cost to long term happiness?

Simmo ;)

[Larryp]

Not necessarily, but they are going to get it somewhere-they do not have an alternative at the moment. Australia needs the income, we don't have much else!

[Larryp]

The poster you refer to simply illustrates the effect of over-population, even though it has a financial reference. Its a pity India doesn't introduce a one child policy like China.
And as for the Nepalese, they have always lived this way. Try giving them all the gizmos for a while and then try taking them away again and see what reaction you would get! To put it in a nutshell, we can't go backwards.

[AstralTraveller]

Yesterday I went to the farewell for the lab manager in Chemistry who is retiring. The Head of Chemistry is an atmospheric chemist and he started by stating that John (the retiree) started work in 326. Cries of 'AD or BC'. No, 326ppm of CO2 in the atm. That was 1968. He is retiring at 396ppm CO2.

Makes ya think.

[simmo]

That's right Larry, we can't go back, but we can change the future for the better. It will just need some courage and determination to do what's right. I won't be a hypocrite as it needs to be me too.

Simmo ;)

[TrevorW]

Funny I often feel that we lack something in the modern society, as a race I believe we shine when confronted by adversity and are out our best when we work together to acheive something fundamental.

A lot of people seem to have lost the knack of enjoying life the beauty of it's diversity we've become to complacent in our own little worlds surrounded by endless gadgets oblivious to what is going on around us.

The world is being stripped to provide wealth to a minority while half the worlds population starves, wealth that they will never live to enjoy.

Something needs to happen to wake up and get us of that merry go round before the world no longer can support it's present population.

I think firstly we need to slow are breeding and needless consumerism.