We tried.
“I need to hear an explanation of why carbon emissions have been going up over the last decade and temperatures haven’t been going up,” said Senator Steve Fielding.
Crikey heeded the call. We asked climate science researcher Ian McHugh to spell it out. He explained:
Over any time scale you choose, there are multiple influences on climate, and these influences in turn vary on different time scales. For example, the sunspot cycle (which affects the sun’s solar output) varies across about 11 years. The southern oscillation (ie. El Nino/La Nina cycles) - the dynamics of which are not particularly well understood or predicted - has a quasi-decadal cycle (three to seven years).
And this is just one of a number of such regional oscillations internal to the climate system that have global consequences for climate. Other events such as volcanic eruptions also have transient effects.
Given that the climate state over a given period is the result of the combination of these effects, you are bound to see a fair bit of noise in the time series. Steve Fielding’s HadCRU data shows this noise, and it should be clear that over shorter periods – say, of much less than a decade - it would be dangerous to draw conclusions about trends in climate.
Read the rest here.
But Fielding is not buying man made global warming.
As The Age reports,
Senator Fielding yesterday released a response to chief scientist Professor Penny Sackett and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, saying they had failed to explain why air temperatures had not risen at the same rate as carbon emissions, and had in fact cooled since 1998.
“Global temperature isn’t rising,” said his response, which was written by four scientists noted for being climate sceptics, including researcher at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, Professor Bob Carter.
Said Fielding:
“Over the last 15 years, global temperatures haven’t been going up and, therefore, there hasn’t been in the last 15 years a period of global warming.
“I think that global warming is real, and climate change is real, but on average global temperatures have stayed steady while carbon emissions have increased over the last 15 years. Man-made carbon emissions don’t appear to be causing it.”
Meanwhile, as Senator Fielding did his bit to “blow apart the great global warming scare” , Kevin Rudd and Barack Obama discussed the issue of global warming with US President Barack Obama during a phone call yesterday.
12 Comments
Good on him.
A pollie who stands up for his own considered opinion – a rarity, perhaps?
Sorry, why the heck should anyone believe you?
Here’s a reason why…
“Claims that the largest ever kangaroo was hunted to extinction in Australia 45,000 years ago are “unsubstantiated”, says one archaeologist.
But the conclusions have been defended in the latest round of argument over megafauna extinction, triggered by a new paper in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on the giant Pleistocene kangaroo, Procoptodon goliah.”
So, scientists argue over that but AGW is like concrete?
Based as it is on crap computer modelling?
My one wish is that I live long enough to show the lack of AGW up your hysterical biased, consensus-based, religious noses.
But why did you (the royal ‘we’ at Crikey) try?
Why didn’t you ‘try’ to give both sides of the debate equal time is the question you need to ask yourself. Reporting it as a done deal that all scientists agree is not journalism and not true.
How is it that you can be so certain when a lot of highly qualified people ARE NOT.
The science of WHY does not appear to me to be settled at all.
The debate is not over … it never happened.
What a muppet. Perhaps I should spell that out of the esteemed Senator…
W H A T A M U P P E T !
Is US President Barack Obama the superhero alter ego of just regular Barack Obama?
It’s scary isn’t it? Usually I’m not worried about stupid having ill informed opinions; they usually don’t have the power to screw it up for everyone else. But Fielding is an altogether more dangerous idiot. Bring on the Double Dissolution I say.
“Kevin Rudd and Barack Obama discussed the issue of global warming with US President Barack Obama during a phone call yesterday.”
Wow, I’m so impressed. Is that like when Rudd went on Rove?
PS either approve or reject my comments you communists.
It might pay you to consider that I pay Crikey $140 a year for what can only be described as shit…
Andrewmfern – “the debate never happened”?!!! Where have you been the last decade or two?
Perhaps you are young. But when Bob Brown was elected to the Federal Senate about 12 years ago, his maiden speech spoke about the need to fight climate change. He was laughed at by both sides of the house. Everyone thought “climate change” was just another weird greenie extremism that was a lot of nonesense! And that is just a dozen years back.
So in the last decade, the tide has swung around. Now The Labor Party accepts the science, so do the Nationals and even the Farmers Federation (why wouldn’t they: they see it more immediately than us city dwellers); and even the Liberal Party reluctantly came on board. The CSIRO accepts climate change is happening. Nearly every specialist scientist in the world who has an area to do with climate or oceans or ice caps etc, does too. …. and then there are the skeptics. About 1 for every 250 actual qualified scientists out there. Why are people skeptics? Why psychological things are going on in them to make them want to be seen to go against the tide? There must be all kinds of reasons that could explain it (the love of controversy; the limelight it suddenly gives them; the chance to publish; perhaps they are “real believers” in the minority position; etc).
But the debate has been taking place for over a decade. And it changed most people’s opinions from cynicism to acceptance.
If you accept the concensus of scientific opinion on everything else (medicine, agriculture, space travel, the distance betweent the planets, evolution, etc) but decide to toss it on this issue, then you actually need to do the explaining. Of course if you refuse medical treatment, dont believe that the solar systems are millions of light years apart, and still believe in a flat earth, and that cigarettes are good for you, and man never walked on the moon, etc etc… then enjoy denying climate change as well.
andrewmfern, science is not decided by debate. You cannot give equal time to unscientific arguments (anti-vaccination, pro-homeopathy, anti-man-made global warming, anti-gravity…) and scientific propositions.
Science is not a debating sport like politics where multiple facets of opinion exist and potentially have equal validity. Science has hypotheses supported by evidence which give rise to theories which are either supported by a consensus of qualified scientists (by which I mean scientists with the relevant knowledge to comprehend the evidence and analysis of that evidence) or are not.
Scientific outcomes cannot be decided by polling the general public. 95% of people might think perpetual motion is a good idea, but it’s never going to happen. Similarly, through clever debating you might be able to convince a majority that man-made global warming is not happening, but that doesn’t mean it’s not.
I commend Fielding.
Some of you who are doubting him try to look into what he is saying don’t just brush him off without even looking into the data, for all who have above average intellect look at the link and try to explain the data released over 29 years.
THERE IS NO TEMPERATURE RISE!!
The problems we are facing with the weather must be explained by something else!
At 0.12C increase/10 Years Is not Warming ANYTHING!
Does anyone get this? 0.12C
HERE IS THE DATA
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/134597.html
The problem is that we have been saying Global warming for years, AL GORE would not have a case except that our climate is going to crap, and majority of the scientists would have to say that they are wrong and suffer humiliation and massive cuts in their research funds.
Also the CARBON TAX, another revenue raising scheme.
History predicts that the human race wakes up to the truth when it is too late!
We do not learn from our mistakes! Proven Fact. WWI and WWII and many others!
The answer to the climate problem is straight forward and it is in our face!
G’day all,
Perhaps it is still possible to introduce some “new” insights into this debate?
For CO2 to be driving climate change would require it to develop advanced cartographic skills. It is clearly an amazing gas, as it bends not only geomagnetic field lines, but also gravity waves. So it may.
To be touch more serious, the satellite maps from the real world show that it cannot possibly be CO2 that is driving the very real warming of the last four decades. Not just human-produced CO2, which is, as far as I can see, undetectable by satellite, although NO2 is as clear as daylight, but even the far bigger natural CO2 emissions are nowhere near where the planet is warming in reality.
It is warming on and about the Antarctic Peninsula and north of Lake Baikal, where the new magnetic north pole is developing rapidly. Those two regions are precisely where the earth’s magnetic and gravity fields are changing most. Probably the driver is plate tectonics and mantle pluming, as the geomagnetic field is generated at the core-mantle boundary, some 2.800 kms down, not near the surface. That is a bit deep for smoky old Holdens and for running coal-fired power stations. unless your name is Old Nick.
There is no scientific evidence whatever that CO from whatever source, is warming the planet. It is merely Arrhenius’s theory of 1898, doing the rounds again. There was no evidence for it then and there is none now. There is merely faith. And computer models, which are the same thing in binary code.
But, who wants to know? Not the carbonists, not the public, not the valiant Steve, and not the sceptics either, as they are wedded at present to solar changes being the driver. But, …. there is no ice left on this planet, it sees, from before the last magnetic reversal, and there should be many thousands of metres of it, since we have had ice ices for about 35 million year now. When we get huge solar magnetic storms, the shift is maybe 2,000 gamma maximum, for a few days. That melts telegraph lines. When the poles flip however, we get a swing through about 130,000 gammas, and it is not just the rare full flips. The last of those big ones was about 800,000 to 900,000 years go, but the geomagnetic field changes all the time. So it packs far more punch locally than the solar magnetic shifts.
In the remote event that readers are interested in reality, as opposed to politics and computer games, go here
http://www.pool.org.au/group/climate_change
for some of the relevant maps an the odd touch of sarcasm. They are mostly from NASA and from the ESA.
There, so far, I debate with myself in splendid isolation, so one and all, of whatever views on all this, are cordially invited to join the debating group and post or not to suit. Anything. It is not censored by the ABC, as far as I can see, and I do not do so either.
I will end as I did on one of the posts there. Buy your carbon guilt trip indulgences only from a certified (!) genuine organic carbon sceptic. Send large amounts of money, in brown paper bags, to an address near you. Any address. We are not remotely interested.”
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Have fun all.
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Peter.
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