Continued

The state of the Arctic sea ice is important as it moderates temperature. The state of Antarctica is also of concern.

An area twice the size of Tasmania in North West Canada has permafrost thawing ... a sign of high constant temperature:

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27022017/global-warming-permafrost-study-melt-canada-siberia

Those who do not believe in man impacting on climate may like to discover the changes in the stratosphere and troposphere.

A number of new studies have shown how Oceans have been picking up warmth; these studies make a nonsense of the so called "hiatus". Very important as Oceans make up around 70% of Earths surface, and take a long time to either warm or cool.

Australian and/or global average temperatures, expressed as a precise number, are a political not a scientific number. Given that there is an inherent margin of error in all these calculations claiming that this year is hotter or cooler is fraught when the difference between the two is within the MOE.

Now, it also matters that the MOE is itself unknown. The BOM doesn't mention it at all in its data.Nonetheless, it is generally taken as being +/-0.2c. If that's even close then saying its was Sydney's hottest year is statistically incorrect. It may have been the hottest year but it also may have been the 6th hottest. This was highlighted when GISS agreed that they were only 38% sure 2014 was the then hottest year due to the vagaries of the data.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Don's mentioning that Hansen was the first to combine "northern hemisphere data with what southern hemisphere data there were" bought to mind the story of Phil Jones. CRU issued data for 2001 which, surprisingly showed both hemispheres cooling in that year, but the globe warming. The late great Tasmanian John Daly recognised the error and bought it to the world's notice whereupon CRU took down their website overnight, rejigged the data and then re-issued it while complaining they had been exposed. That was the background to Jones' dispicable musing that Daly's death was "cheerful news" as reviewed in the ClimateGate emails.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Don's stalker, Alan B noted "there is just as much summer ice of the coast of alaska as there ever was". Although he was being sarcastic, he was actually more right than he knows. New research (Stein et al., 2017 - http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/03/03/new-paper-indicates-more-arctic-sea-ice-now-than-for-nearly-all-of-last-10000-years/) indicates that ice levels in the Arctic are at or near the highest levels in the Holocene.

Alan B. right about something - who'd a thunk it.

given that far more people die from cold than heat you would think that energy supply would be a priority. Not for those dumbed down by greens ideology.

Well who'd have thunk it? A few folk have realized that the best EROI in energy provision is inherent in thorium. And we just might have as much as 40% of the world's known reserves.

energy giants are telling us that few if any are willing to invest in coal fired generation, others that we may well not have enough gas to supply our's and the more profitable international market?

Now, for the purpose of the exercise, set aside all the claims and counterclaims on global warming or that thorium, the most energy dense material in the world or that it is carbon free energy! And just focus exclusively on the economic argument and its merits!

Thorium is all around us in our dirt. Stepping outside almost anywhere and filling a one cubic metre box with dirt, then using simple gravity separation recover on average around 8 grams of thorium, I'll have recovered enough thorium to power my house car and abundant lifestyle for around the next 100 years! The cost of recovering that 8 grams of virtually ready to use as is, without any enrichment, is around $100.00 that's just a dollar a year!

Compare that with either coal or gas and anyone with half a brain runner, will understand why both the fossil fuel industry and big nuclear want this stuff left in the ground, as do those who have a vested interest in coal, oil or gas!

Christians actually give a rats about their neighbor! Coal gas or oil advocates don't care if energy prices have created massive rust belts, tent cities and soup kitchen once only common garden scenes, during the Great Depression!

One would think rationalists would have understood that the way to keep the jobs and reduce operational costs, would have been via a different energy paradigm!

When gran can once again afford to heat or cool her home! Most of these problems will disappear. Hopefully before we replicate those circumstances that very nearly wiped out life on earth, around 90 million years ago!
Alan B.

yeah I am sure you despise the comforts that coal has brought you Alan B.

Just a few folk posting here would know that life was only possible here given our orbit is in the goldilocks zone around the sun, so also apparently, Mars and Venus?

Mars has no Van Allen belt? That protect us from the solar wind. And that it seems allowed the Co2 in Mars's atmosphere to mostly freeze out and now located largely at both poles?

More Co2 still in the atmosphere, would warm Mars a tad to make just a little more habitable?

Venus, the hottest planet in the solar system? Has huge Co2 levels in its atmosphere trapping far too much heat for life to exist?

The heat melting all the sulphides and adding them to a super hostile poisonous atmosphere!

Hard to imagine it was once possible that we could have prospered on that planet, when it was still cool enough to have liquid water, now just vapour and part of an acidic atmosphere?

At some point not too far ahead in time, we will have crossed the rubicon and set course for turning this blue green planet into another Venus? Only the hottest planet in the solar system due to the concentration of heat retaining Co2 In its atmosphere?

Yes one day our planet will become uninhabitable due to solar expansion!

Must we hurtle headlong at terminal velocity toward that date with destiny, for no other reason than maintaining the ever upward profit curve of fatuous folk who seriously believe, they won't inherit the mess of their making!

Imagine if reincarnation were a fact? And perfect justice if those who create our future come back as its most humble inhabitants?

Absolute justice, wouldn't you say? And gives new meaning to the expression, the sons inheriting the sins of the father?
Alan B.