This is what you read today in your paper or will perhaps read tomorrow.
Temperatures have soared well above 40 degrees Celsius across Victoria and South Australia, and the hot weather is forecast to continue for the rest of the week….
Scientists say south-east Australia will become hotter and drier under climate change predictions, and Senator Wong says that appears to be happening. [link to source]
Now people tell us when we get these regional anomalies ( for example when the west coast gets a winter like it has not had in 50 years) not to extrapolate. It’s only weather! Oddly this advice only seems to work one way. Other parts of Australia were cooler than normal.
And then you can consider this:
Scientists analysed a four-year record of cosmic-ray data detected in a disused iron-mine in the U.S. state of Minnesota. What they observed was a strikingly close relationship between the cosmic-rays and stratospheric temperature –What did surprise the scientists, however, were the intermittent and sudden increases observed in the levels of muons during the winter months. These jumps in the data occurred over just a few days. On investigation, they found these changes coincided with very sudden increases in the temperature of the stratosphere (by up to 40 deg C in places!). Looking more closely at supporting meteorological data, they realised they were observing a major weather event, known as a Sudden Stratospheric Warming. On average, these occur every other year and are notoriously unpredictable. This study has shown, for the first time, that cosmic-ray data can be used effectively to identify these events. [link to source]
Perhaps you will read that an arctic bird has been spotted in Massachusetts:
The temperatures were in the single digits, but not low enough to keep the gawkers away. A celebrity was in town, behind the East Bay Grille, a visitor not seen in these parts in decades, if not longer.
But these weren’t paparazzi, and this wasn’t a Hollywood star. Rather, they were avid birdwatchers – about 20 in all – braving the frigid air as they scanned the bay and the edges of the breakwater with binoculars and spotting scopes.
… From Sunday through Tuesday, the avian visitor was a regular in Plymouth, much to the delight of birdwatchers, who came from near and far in hopes of adding the extremely rare bird to their life list. [pics from one of these]
…”I never thought I would have the chance to see one and I can’t pass up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
If the gull is gone, Graham will consider a side trip to Nova Scotia, where two adult ivory gulls have been seen recently. “I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed,” he said.
Ivory gulls normally stay well above Newfoundland, living on Arctic ice where they follow whales and polar bears to feed on the scraps and carcasses they leave behind after making a kill. [link to source]
A friend of ours on the old sod told us a few weeks ago that snowy owls had been seen in the UK for the first time in many decades and we hear also in Tennessee . And if you believe in these avian signs the cold weather isn’t about to end soon. “In the UK, large numbers [of cedar waxwings] have traditionally been linked to a cold, hard winter.” We doubt these anomolies will be heralded as a sign of global cooling, man made or otherwise.
Much more pertinent than any of these stories is this one….Hockey stick Hansen’s supervisor has come out of the closet:
“I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man-made,” Theon wrote to the Minority Office at the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 15, 2009. “I was, in effect, Hansen’s supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results. I did not have the authority to give him his annual performance evaluation,” Theon, the former Chief of the Climate Processes Research Program at NASA Headquarters and former Chief of the Atmospheric Dynamics & Radiation Branch explained.
“Hansen was never muzzled even though he violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind’s effect on it). Hansen thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress,” Theon wrote.
Theon declared “climate models are useless.” “My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit,” Theon explained. “Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy,” he added.
“As Chief of several of NASA Headquarters’ programs (1982-94), an SES position, I was responsible for all weather and climate research in the entire agency, including the research work by James Hansen, Roy Spencer, Joanne Simpson, and several hundred other scientists at NASA field centers, in academia, and in the private sector who worked on climate research,” Theon wrote of his career. “This required a thorough understanding of the state of the science. I have kept up with climate science since retiring by reading books and journal articles,” Theon added.
Ht/ USEPW
Hard on the heels of that announcement was the reminder of another scientist who has been voicing doubts.
The IPCC WG1 Report was regarded as providing the most credible long-term forecasts of global average temperatures by 31 of the 51 scientists and others involved in forecasting climate change who responded to our survey. We found no references in the 1056-page Report to the primary sources of information on forecasting methods despite the fact these are conveniently available in books, articles, and websites. We audited the forecasting processes described in Chapter 8 of the IPCC’s WG1 Report to assess the extent to which they complied with forecasting principles. We found
enough information to make judgments on 89 out of a total of 140 forecasting principles. The forecasting procedures that were described violated 72 principles. Many of the violations were, by themselves, critical.
The forecasts in the Report were not the outcome of scientific procedures. In effect, they were the opinions of scientists transformed by mathematics and
obscured by complex writing. Research on forecasting has shown that experts’ predictions are not useful in situations involving uncertainly and complexity. We have been unable to identify any scientific forecasts of global warming. Claims that the Earth will get warmer have no more credence than saying that it will get colder. [link] via Watts
They are piling up these skeptics.
Wolfville watch 