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Science Forum Index » Geology - Meteorology Forum » CSIRO Keeps Secret The Source Of Its Latest...
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| ZB00N... |
 Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 7:50 pm |
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July 16, 2008
QUOTE: . I am more confident in my original assessment that the results
show no significant increase in drought due to greenhouse warming in
almost all regions of Australia
Remember these apocalyptic reports last week?
Federal Agriculture Minister Tony Burke has likened a scientific study
into links between climate change and drought to the final chapters of a
disaster novel. Mr Burke today released a joint assessment by the Bureau
of Meteorology and the CSIRO, which found that what are now considered
to be one in 25 year climate events could become as frequent as once
every one to two years.
And:
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has told ABC1's Insiders the report paints a
very disturbing picture about the future of droughts in Australia.
"Exceptional circumstances drought conditions ... will occur twice as
often and with twice the area of droughted parts of Australia included.
Now this is a serious revision of the impact of climate change on
drought."
The CSIRO itself said of its government-commissioned report:
A new report is predicting a dramatic loss of soil moisture, increased
evaporation and reduced ground water levels across much of Australia's
farming regions, as temperatures begin to rise exponentially.
Panic, panic, panic. Oh, and vote Kevin Rudd or die.
But then Dr David Stockwell, a leading expert on ecological niche
modeling, decided to check the CSIRO's figures and assumptions, and
concluded, good heavens:
.....it is highly likely the confidence intervals were grossly
underestimated and so it is also likely that only one or two regions
(SWWA) show statistically significant increase in predicted droughts,
not 3 or 4 as claimed by the authors. I am more confident in my original
assessment that the results show no significant increase in drought due
to greenhouse warming in almost all regions of Australia
Now Stockwell's conclusion is hampered by the fact that he does not have
all the data and calculations the CSIRO used to fashion the latest of
its alarmist reports. That's not his fault. He politely asked the CSIRO
to hand over the data for this peer-reviewing, but got this answer:
I'm not able to hand over the data from the 13 models, due to
restrictions on Intellectual Property, but I can describe the methods
used to determine statistical significance.
This means that the CSIRO refuses to expose its analysis to experts for
checking, even though Stockwell, for example, believes it is seriously
flawed. And even though the CSIRO's report now forms the basis for a
renewed Government fear campaign that could lead to the spending of
billions of dollars on a problem that may not exist.
Incidentally, it also seems from a reply from the CSIRO to Stockwell
that the media ran too wild with the findings of a document that was -
note - specifically crafted to be used in a political debate:
Secondly, some of the media reports have misinterpreted the findings of
the report. We have little control over this.
Thirdly, the Terms of Reference (Appendix 1) state that "it will be
presented in a form that will enable it to be used in future drought
policy discussions, including stakeholder consultation". Our first draft
of the report was considered too technical by the client (DAFF), since
the target audience is for lay-people, so we had to spend considerable
time simplifying the language, diagrams and tables.
Steve McIntyre has an excellent summary of the issue at stake, and is
scathing.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/csiro_keeps_secret_the_source_of_its_latest_scare/
--
Warmest Regards
Bonzo
Get The TRUE Facts At
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/index.html
Excellent Links At
http://www.warwickhughes.com/
"...and I think future generations are not going to blame us for
anything except for being silly, for letting a few tenths of a degree
panic us"
Dr. Richard Lindzen, Professor of Meteorology MIT and Member of the
National Academy of Sciences
"What most commentators-and many scientists-seem to miss is that the
only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes"
Dr. Richard Lindzen
[most of the current alarm over climate change is based on] "inherently
untrustworthy climate models, similar to those that cannot accurately
forecast the weather a week from now." Dr. Richard Lindzen |
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