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Heat Waves In Australia Are Getting More Frequent, and Hotter
vikingpower writes "In a landmark report on bushfires and climate change (PDF), the Australian Climate Council concludes that heat waves in Australia, as driven by climate change, are becoming more frequent — and that they get hotter. 'It is crucial that communities, emergency services, health services and other authorities prepare for the increasing severity and frequency of extreme fire conditions,' says the Council in the report. Sarah Perkins, one of the report's co-authors,
was interviewed by The Guardian Australia. '"While we can't blame climate change for any one event, we can certainly see its fingerprint. This is another link in the chain." Perkins said her latest work had analyzed heatwave trends up to 2013. She said the trend "just gets worse – it's a bit scary really."' In 2009, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization signaled that a Southeast Australian heatwave was the hottest in 100 years."
Once again, you'll make him unleash his dogs of war as you send your weaklings into the field to to find a rig big enough to haul that fat tank of gas...
No more Men at Work... No Midnight Oil...No wonder Australia is going to hell in a hand basket.
given their natural habitat and evolutionary traits, this means its only a matter of time until those ferocious Drop Bears go extinct. the bad news of course is that we can no longer use the drop bear as an excuse for americans to choose New Zealand as their holiday destination.
Granted its also important to note that should americans agree to reduce their carbon footprint and sign the damn kyoto treaty, we wont have to resort to shipping drop bears to safer climates in the states.
Good people go to bed earlier.
"The report, which will be released in full in February, finds that climate change is having a key influence on a trend that has seen the number of hot days in Australia double and the duration and frequency of heatwaves increase in the period between 1971 and 2008."
So, yes, it's global warming.
It's possible that both the AGW deniers and AGW alarmists are wrong. Climate change could be real, but caused by natural factors that are out of our control, the same ones that have caused ice ages and warm periods in the past when carbon outputs were nowhere near as high as they are now. But that theory would cause people to stop paying their taxes and mortgages and move to the tropics, so we can't have that.
get the tinfoil hats on, here come the climate changers!!
I think you'll find the tinfoil hat wearers are those who think that the scientific community are all conspiring to earn big bucks from climate change, although quite how they earn this money is never spelled out. Odd, that. Then the climate-change deniers have no trouble believing the industry-sponsored pseudo-science of the global warming denial industry that actually does have big money behind it from the likes of Exxon of Exxon Valdez fame. Yeah, you have no trouble believing the polluters, do you?
Get a fucking grip. The scientific consensus is that anthropogenic global warming is a fact. Out of thousands of peer-reviewed papers you'd be doing well if you can find one single paper that says otherwise.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
stop living in the desert.
What if the desert comes to you?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I'll buy one, but only if I can act all smug to my friends who still drive gasoline-powered cars, especially hybrids. I'm already practicing saying "Well, I guess driving a hybrid is okayyyy....I mean if you're not ready to go all the way and REALLY help."
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
"So, yes, it's global warming."
You are giving us a prime example of exactly what GP wrote.
Sure, AUS is having a heatwave. Even while much of the United States was having a record cold temperatures, and much of Europe has been experiencing its coldest weather in more than 10 years... Arctic ice extent is expanding again and the Antarctic summer is colder than usual, with even more sea ice.
You can't cherry-pick your heatwaves. This is GLOBAL climate we're talking about.
Agreed, and we're not alone: http://boston.cbslocal.com/2014/01/14/mit-professor-urging-climate-change-activists-to-slow-down/
Look, the west is working on lowering their emissions.
However, China alone emits over 1/3 of all CO2 emissions. Worse, by 2020, they will account for over 1/2 assuming that no other nation lowers theirs (and if other nations lower theirs, then it will probably be around 2017). In addition, the rest of BRICS are busy increasing their emissions.
And with kyoto and other nations trying to tie emissions to individuals, rather than to GDP, this will continue to happen. The only way to stop this is to have ALL NATIONS lower their emissions at the same time. In addition, it needs to be tied to GDP, rather than per capitia. Finally, it needs to be based on empirical data, not SWAGs.
And the only way to make sure that ALL nations work on bringing emissions down is for nations to tax all consumed goods, local and imported, with a tax based on where the good and its parts come from. In addition, ideally, it would include something for the transportation of the item.
Until that point, emissions WILL rise faster.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Either that or it means that data are only available for 100 years.
You're not the sharpest tool in the box, son.
If the data is only available for the last hundred years, how can they claim this is anything unusual? That's about 0.000002% of the life of the planet.
to earn big bucks from climate change, although quite how they earn this money is never spelled out
Climate Change Is the Next $10 Trillion Opportunity
While I'm not debating that the climate is changing, let's also not pretend that this is not all about $$$. .
The article you have linked shows that there are business opportunities created as a result of dealing with climate change. It does not show how climate scientists benefit from the results of their studies going one way or the other, as is often alleged by climate change deniers.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Hiding behind trend vs. weather is statistically significant> .
Fixed that there.
I'm sorry, but, if you don't understand basic mechanics of science, you can't be outraged when you don't understand the conclusions of science.
Misdirection. Scientists are not the ones looking to cash in -- they are being used by those who are looking to cash in, which is big business.
Easy. Just look at where Al Gore invests his money. Hopefully I don't have to spell out how to find that information.
Things, whether they are in fact true or false, do not become true just because sufficient percentages of people believe them.
The consensus in Wisconsin might be that the Packers are the best football team, but that doesn't make it fact. It would simply mean that the majority prefer to remain delusional, rather than change their long-held beliefs.
That is not to suggest that ManBearPig is not real, but it takes more "6 out of 10 scientists believe ManBearPig is real and will kill everyone" to convince the rational mind.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
Arctic Ice extent expanding this year is no surprise--most climate scientists predicted that would happen this year. Why? Because it was SO LOW last year, it basically had no direction to go but up.
If you roll snake eyes on your first roll, don't be surprised if your next roll is better.
Great! Maybe we can get the crazy deniers to realise that the economy won't implode if we spend money on something other than oil subsidies.
$10 trillion worth of jobs? Why isn't everyone piling into that bandwagon?
Yeah, let's measure "global warming" in the Antarctic. Wait? What's that? The ships got frozen?
Well, we need to prove that the earth is warming up so let's get a rescue ship down there so that the researchers can start proving global warming. What's that? The rescue ship got stuck in the ice?
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
The consensus in Wisconsin might be that the Packers are the best football team, but that doesn't make it fact. It would simply mean that the majority prefer to remain delusional, rather than change their long-held beliefs.
Your ability to compare peer reviewed scientific papers to loyalty to sports teams is noted.
That is not to suggest that ManBearPig is not real, but it takes more "6 out of 10 scientists believe ManBearPig is real and will kill everyone" to convince the rational mind.
It's a bit more than 6 out of 10. It's more like 13,926 out of 13,950. And it's not about "belief." It's about reaching a conclusion after rigorous research.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Had broken it every winter since 1971? Because in australia last year they had to add 2 colors to the temperature charts because how hot things were then, and this year things aren't so far from that, and if 2 years is not enough you have the previous 40 contiguous years where the same trend was there. Thats the difference between long standing climate trends and the weather in a particular season of a limited area. Is the forest the one that matters, not the tree you just stumbled upon. And if you can see the forest because you are not high enough, maybe you should check what the people that can see the whole forest say. The cold fact is that the world as a whole is getting hotter.
Interior Australia seems to be suffering a terrible drought while Northern Australia is being inundated.
Australia: Percent of Normal Precipitation
Fanatically anti-fanatical
It's their fault that they're choosing to destroy their country to enrich capitalists by selling us trinkets. We don't have guns at their backs. They choose to not have the environmental enforcement that we have here. Watch out, the current nutso crop of Republicans want to do the same here. Rand Paul loves a race to the bottom.
On behalf of Canada, the answer's simple: our government has been hijacked by Bush-era conservatives. (And I do mean "hijacked": see this and this.) A lot of people here are vehemently upset about new petroleum fuel extraction developments.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Now, do people suddenly get more interested in global warming when it's hot outside? Sure! Why? Because people are essentially irrational, and don't live very long relative to the planet. That includes me and people I agree with, too. But it doesn't change the facts of a 35+ year trend.
Also, 1100 new highs.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/records/
Guess what climate change predicts? More variability.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
That's an article about Richard Lindzen, who's practically made a career of out of always being wrong. For instance, he also doesn't think there's a strong link between cigarettes and lung cancer.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Which says nothing about the *global* climate.
Here's a clue: the air mass that's breaking all the cold weather records? That air mass is actually unusually *warm* for this time of year. How can that be? Because it's not where it usually is, way up in Canada. At the same time many northern areas are getting record warm temperatures, and California is missing the rain it should be getting this time of year. The overall picture is of a *warm* winter, averaged over the northern hemisphere, but with temperature anomalies all over the place. Which is not in itself *climate*, but the kind of weather event climate models have been predicting for a decade or more now (citation: Easterling, David R., et al. "Climate extremes: observations, modeling, and impacts." Science 289.5487 (2000): 2068-2074.).
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'm pointing out that people were writing about the heat in Australia many, many years ago.
Does data get refuted by a poem? No, of course not.
If you read the report, on p. 37 they comment that the dataset covers 35 years (1973-2009). The conclusion is based on that dataset. However, a poem written over 100 years ago suggests that conditions in Australia were well known even then. So... is there really a trend? There may be in the data, but the data doesn't span the time period of the poem.
exactly! a few billion years ago the planet was a super-hot ball of molten rock. therefore it's been way hotter in the past.
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
much of Europe has been experiencing its coldest weather in more than 10 years
What? In huge areas of central Europe (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Poland and large parts of Germany), there was no winter to spek of, so far. Trees are blooming, birds did not migrate south, the average temperatures are about 6 degrees C above normal.
The ship got stuck in sea ice that broke off the continent because it's melting due to the warming.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
First, it is supposed to be based on historical data from 1906-2005. It is not based on previous data or on CURRENT data.
IT'S a chart that no one wants to top, but global warming's worst offenders, in absolute terms, are the US, China, Russia, Brazil, India, Germany and the UK. New calculations suggest that these nations are responsible for more than 60 per cent of the global warming between 1906 and 2005.
Basically, they cherry picked a small period of time. The fact that they stopped at 2005 is even more telling. Since 2005, US's emissions have dropped, while ALL of BRICS have gone way up.
Heck, here is a better map that shows more CURRENT data. It came from CO2. In this case, it shows 2008's. What is truely wicked is that China has been going up 10-15% EACH YEAR for the last 10 years.
Secondly, Europe out did America in coal emissions for centuries. In fact, they emitted more CO2 UNTIL 1998 when suddenly, they started downwards. In fact, even the UK says that they are the global historical cause of climate change.
Third, check out the following 2 reports:
Here and Here.
What do you see?
That the west, esp. USA, is dropping their emissions, but china alone, emits more each year that destroys those savings. IOW, China is increasing faster than what the entire west can cut. This does NOT include other nations.
So, if you really were the least bit honest, you will get off the high horse and realize that we are in this together. Either all nations work together on this, or we all sink. And if USA takes the same approach that EU took, it will actually RAISE emissions, not lower them. It is EU's racism against China that keeps them from moving more work to there. And sadly, American businesses have taken a non-responsibility approach to issues, so they go on over to China, while ignoring the fact that China is cheating on everything.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And spaceflight requires you to subscribe to the theory that the Earth is not flat. Point...?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I agree. In fact, for the last 6 years, America has dropped our emissions to early 1990 levels. OTOH, China has DOUBLED theirs (which is why they are at 33% of all CO2 emissions).
AE can help, but it can NOT replace it all. We need nukes, esp. thorium. It is insane to not have it.
But, I will say that greenpeace and others on the far left are fucking up, by choosing to ignore BRIC and other nations, thinking that they will simply stop their emissions, or that these are cleaner. Nothing could be further from the truth. These nations will continue to increase, and these new plants will exists for more than 60 years. Even if the west stops 100% of our emissions, BRIC nation will continue to grow and this will continue.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The parent post is correct, but Greenpeace does not dictate government policy in Australia.
Australia has 31% of the world's uranium reservers (the world's largest) and has in recent years declined production slightly (probably due to Germany's and Japan's 'efforts' that increase greenhouse gas emissions across Europe and Japan). Australia does not use nuclear power for energy generation or for military use or for icebreakers or any use other than ANSTO (small research lab that produces radioisotopes for medical use).
Australia could have gone nuclear ages ago, but didn't. Similarly to how it cut space research and plans to build rocket launch platforms, it is a country of little physics achievements that haven't been done by overseas people. The problem is that is also a county full of coal, and with other countries running out of coal, it might well be the place for coal globally over the next 50 years if policy doesn't change domestically.
Already the highest greehouse gas emitting OECD country in the world in the future if the coal extractions can be seen large from space (like tar pits in Canada) then it might become the biggest contributing country to global warming on a global scale indirectly (due to use of its coal and nonuse of uranium, not to mention thorium).
As a slightly different slant on this troll rousing topic, it is worth noting a few things.
1) Per capita, Australia is the worlds highest emitter of greenhouse gases as we use mostly coal to generate electricity. Furthermore, we are one of the worlds largest coal miners/exporters and so contribute significantly to global CO2 production elsewhere.
2) In September, Australia elected a new government that is predominantly in the hands of climate change deniers. The Prime Minister (Tony Abbott) is on the public record saying that climate change is "crap" (http://blogs.abc.net.au/victoria/2009/12/climate-change-is-crap-tony-abbot-said-to-the-pyrenees-advocate.html). Amongst the new government's first acts was to defund the Climate Commission (along with several other "green" initiatives of previous governments). They are also committed to repealing the existing Carbon Tax legislation, but cannot (yet) force this through the upper house (Senate) which they do not control.
3) In response to its defunding, the Climate Commission reformed itself as the Climate Council, raising around $1 million in under two weeks. Whilst not big bikkies in US terms, this is extremely significant in a small population country like Australia that demonstrates that many Australians feel very strongly about climate change - strongly enough to not only make a one off donation but to commit to regular, monthly donations to support the ongoing public information work of the Climate Council.
From their "about" page http://www.climatecouncil.org.au/about-us/
"The Climate Council is an independent non-profit organisation funded by donations by the public. Our mission is to provide authoritative, expert advice to the Australian public on climate change."
You are using page 1 of the global warming denier's handbook -- cherry-pick local minima to deny the trends. Yes, there is more arctic ice this year than last year, but last year was an extremely low point. The US has had one week of record cold, but not sustained record cold.
Next up you'll be saying that there hasn't been any increase in average temperatures since 1998 - ignoring the fact that 1998 was a massive outlier and that if you were to start witih 1997 or 1999 the trend of increasing temps is still, unfortunately, intact.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The USA has broken 1000 record low temps in the last couple of months ...
Those are all daily record low temperatures, IOW the record for a specific day. No monthly or all time record low temperatures were broken in the cold snap in early January.
Houses were not insulated, most didn't even have plaster and lathing on the interior of the wall studs, the only heating was radiant heat from the fireplace, and if you underestimated the amount of wood you needed in September you were burning your furniture to keep alive by April. Clothing was limited to wool and cotton, with no way to really dry them when you got wet. The gods help you if your boots fell apart in the middle of winter and you didn't live close enough to town to get them fixed, very few people had the tools to do that. Some winters it was a miracle ANY of them survived.
My grandfather had a photo of himself, his brother and some neighbors, young men all, standing in front of a snow drift with shovels. On the other side of the drift you can see about a foot of the smoke stack of a locomotive. When my dad was young someone he knew drove his car from Michigan to Wisconsin across Lake Michigan, and people moved HOUSES across the ice on Lake Superior. When I was little I remember snow banks were frequently taller than my dad. My mom saw her first Christmas without snow on the ground in 1984, in the last ten years they've had snow on the ground on Christmas day twice and Grand Traverse Bay on Lake Michigan (not the big lake, just the Bay) has frozen thick enough to go ice fishing once.
Australia isn't the only place that has seen a century of warming.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
And with kyoto and other nations trying to tie emissions to individuals, rather than to GDP, this will continue to happen. The only way to stop this is to have ALL NATIONS lower their emissions at the same time. In addition, it needs to be tied to GDP, rather than per capitia.
Great, I love it. My country only has about 5 million people so by GDP we should be about to pollute about 60 times as much as the US per capita with its 300 million. I really look forward to the US in total producing about 1/200th (approximate number of states recognized by the UN) of the world's CO2 emissions. Give me gas guzzlers, screw any restrictions on industry and taxes, levies and fees because we're home free baby. Oh wait, did you only want to apply that against bigger countries as China and India? My bad.
I've never understood the moral basis of why it should be measured by GDP and not by capita, what right does an American have to pollute more than me, or anyone else for that matter? And for that matter, I know my carbon footprint is way above the world average but I don't claim to have any moral right to it. I simply have the money to spend on a lifestyle that's more polluting than the people trying to life off a dollar or two a day, the world's not fair and I'm not claiming that it is.
If seven billion people had my lifestyle, the Earth would collapse. I know that, you seem to be in denial about that. That is not to say I try to be an environmental swine, but I like my car. I like going on long distance vacations. I like my large heated (replace with AC if you're down south) apartment, I like my appliances and gizmos and gadgets that all draw power. Trying to cement a situation where the people who polluted first and most get to keep polluting most is probably not very productive. At least I'd say fuck you, first you're the worst of the lot and then you get to reap benefits from it? No wonder China is giving you the finger.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
What's with all the China-bashing? A nation with 1.35 billion people to feed and clothe has to get it's energy from somewhere. Not to mention all the products they are manufacturing for you in the West.
% of electricity generated from renewable sources
China 17.88% USA 10 .05%
The Chinese government is promoting huge projects for investment in solar, wind and hydro.
I'm not saying they are innocent, but at least they seem to be trying to do something.
No left turn unstoned.
While I don't even consider myself among the "deniers" ... I think you have to be going around with a big, thick blindfold on, if you really believe the "pro climate change" researchers aren't getting some money out of it.
And how much money is flowing to the climate change deniers? Follow that money.
You'll find it dwarfs climate research grants significantly. If you think it's all a giant conspiracy to get money into the hands of researchers, you really need to up your medication because that's bordering on the paranoid delusional.
Besides this, money going to scientists doing real science is to produce accurate results. Only the money going to climate change deniers is being used to blatantly make stuff up.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
To be fair to China they are working on dealing with the problem too. They lead the world in some forms of renewable energy and are building new nuclear plants. Their country is growing rapidly and they see how the west polluted as it did so, and so are unwilling to give up the same opportunity.
It's not as simple as China not caring or not making any effort, it's just that they are only now getting the skills and technology needed to be cleaner. Pollution is a big deal in China and they are making efforts to sort it out, but obviously it is going to take time and economic growth is running at 10% a year.
What we need to do is encourage them as much as possible, and develop new technologies with them in order to help. None of this treating China like the enemy that automatically steals all our tech. Aside from anything else we need to have clean tech become extremely cheap and widely available before Africa really starts to boom.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC