With all due respect to Don Aitkin - and I do respect him - I think that we have had it up to to the fills bushfires, climate change and the very tenuous link between the two.

Gills, not fills.

Thanks, Don, for some common sense.

Do some people think that a forest, or national park, is an unchanging, pristine, perfect system, never to be modified or tinkered with ? That there isn't constant growth (faster after good rains) and the constant build-up of undergrowth and detritus ? That a national park isn't a constant work in progress, a striving for a balance between amenity and safety ?

Sure, CO2 may influence world temperature, and by one or two degrees in the past century. But one or two degrees don't make much difference to a bush-fire: it need dryness, fuel and ignition, not even necessarily a lot of heat to begin with. Nature, beautiful Mother Nature, Gaia, provides the dryness with Her periodic droughts, and the ignition through lightning strikes, but bureaucracy and policy control the amount of fuel available.

When the policy of NP authorities and councils dictates that fuel reduction programs are to be scaled back, year after year, then the chances of major bushfires surely increases ? Regardless of however much CO2 there may be in the atmosphere, or how fast global temperatures are rising ? What's one or two degrees to a raging fire of a thousand degrees ?

I realise that, to many of the New Religion of Climate Change, everything must be explained in terms of this new Satan; only witches ('Deniers') can't see that. Well, frankly, in this case, I can't see CO2 or climate change as all that relevant. We can't change the incidence or extent of droughts, we can't stop lightning strikes, but surely we can fund and staff programs to constantly reduce NP and forest fuel loads, by removal and/or cool burns ?

Joe

Don: We had a hotter year in 1909? Really? Source, please.

But what you as usual adroitly avoided was the fact this occurred if correct during a waxing phase of the sun when it would have not been too unusual.

And was this a localised regional event or global? You missed that salient point.

Moreover and as usual you also adroitly avoided mentioning that we've been in a solar waning phase since the mid-seventies (NASA) and what we should be experiencing is the cyclical cooling that a waning phase typically ushers in along with advancing ice, not the very opposite and on steroids!

In the news, this morning was the observation that's confirmed by overseas research that broad-scale irrigation has a localised cooling effect of up to 10C. Moreover, it's uncommonly rare for irrigated crops to burn!

Green advocates are against this it would seem and trott out the usual objections that it would be too costly, which is blatantly wrong! Some trails in Texas some years ago with space-age desalination (deionisation dialysis desalination) proved to be cost-effective on broad-scale irrigation! With seawater as the water source! Repeat, with inexhaustible seawater!

Not too difficult here if we can just sideline the robber barons in energy and water, both of who would have their bottom lines and presumably their big bottoms shrunk by any logical application of either as the de-privatisation of both these areas and set them up instead as competing co-ops ( cooperative capitalism) TBC.
Alan B.

Cont. Given broad-scale irrigation drops the local temperatures by a much as 10C and given the hottest parts of Australia are in the arid dry heartland. broad scale irrigation there would cool the entire joint down. Just add water and trace elements!

And given this cooling effect is created by normal plant asperation, would also act to recharge the storm clouds and drop more rain nearby, as is typical in rainforest areas.

One notes that wetlands and rainforests have in the past acted as firebreaks when traditional mosaic burning got out of hand and relatively common? As a prelude to fire assisted hunting and is only available in normal seasons for just a few weeks every year when hopefully, occasionally, weather conditions are ideal.

And the subject of much humbug by folk who just want to occupy land!?

Whereas, intensive cell grazing can occur 2/7 365 days a year or 366 during leap years.

Moreover, this primitive method of land management hardened the soil and sent rare soil nutrients skyward with every burn! To be lost forever.

Whereas, intensive year-round cell grazing reduces more fuel and turns that into soil nutrients and soil carbon all while breaking open hardened soil, that allows it to absorb more of the available rain and store it!

Intensive cell grazing is doable without fences if the stock are herded, corraled in temporary hessian corrals (2-3 nights per) overnight and their various watering points dewatered and watered to move them to a new adjacent area!

And doable via remote control from the homestead using mobile phones and drones.TBC.
Alan B.

I think i will go with what NASA has to say.

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

this is hardly a left wing conspiracy.

Hot days and bush fire go hand in hand.

Hotter days than recently, you betcha:-

1924 - Marble Bar had 160 days in a row over 38C.
There have been many days in Australia over 50C. 
1828 Charles Sturt 53C
1845 Thomas Mitchell 53C
1878 Walgett 52.3C
1889 Cloncurry 53C
1896 Geraldton 51.7C
1896 Euston 51.6C
1901 Longreach 51.7
1901 Coolgardie 51.1C
1906 Mildura 50.8C
1909 Bourke 51.7C
1960 Oodnadatta 50.7C
1960 Oodnadatta 50.3C
1998 Mardie 50.5C
Check archives. Stop the misinformation
Galen

Thank you Don. In a time when both SBS and the ABC see fit to loudly beat the "global warming", "human induced climate change" hysterically in every evenings News services, it is essential that a saner, honest and more balanced view be presented.
A point that I have been raising where possible is that none of our National Parks, Nature and Forestry Reserves are truly pristine. All have been used as grazing areas prior to gazettal. All of the natural balance forces have been either removed or subjugated by managment policies formulated far from the actual fields. All contain feral weeds and animals to greater and lesser extents. Control of a herd of 100 head of cattle is easier than a raging bushfire and cause less damage in a month than a bushfire does in a day.
A point in public perception was illustrated on the news when Anthony Albaneze visited Nimbin where a local woman confronted him and was yelling very loudly into his face "What are you doing about the bushfires?"
She was ignoring the reality that the first responsibility, as you demonstrated, lies with the land owners and residents. The various levels of Government can only protect the stupid from themselves so far and in turn do need protecting from themselves.

Starting from the last comment backward. So C Lewis first Great so Chris if scientists published a paper on the last 20 years of that showed the net energy balance of the globe was falling and that this matched the reduction in global ocean temperatures using NASA satellite data (covers the whole globe, unlike spot measurements in every growing cities), would you believe them?

Next Loudmoutt2 (can't believe someone likes the name that much they must accept 2 as a postscript, lots of others nouns in the dictionary, mate). Official certified temps before 1909 might not be available in Australia, but non BOM and others world wide do, at it has been hotter before then and this year.

Alan B, most novel contribution in your comment is a new term for deniers. Luv it, realist can now be called dinosaurs, deniers, sceptics, Satanists!... what next?

As for Don's piece, its a well written summary of what has been written before.

The alternative global warming process, the constant rise in global
temperature since the 18th century Maunder Minimum to 2000 is right
on time.
That process, contrary to the conventional AGW theory, adds into the
mix the effect of clouds on earth temperature. As so it allocates
only 0.1 deg C to human generated warming, the rest to the sun due to
low average cloud cover and loss of reflected sun energy back into space.
The current era is the fourth or fifth warm cycle known in history.
The next cool time should be in about 300 years time.
This not new it has been known for years.
If you want to explore ALL possibilities here is a good starting
point.

http://calderup.wordpress.com/category/3b-the-svensmark-hypothesis/

Allison,

i merely offer my opinion.

I believe the literature which shows a link between human activty and global warming.

i have held this belief since the late 1970s when i first thought there had to be consequences from humanity putting all this fuel into the atmosphere.

My next OLO piece i will submit is on why we are so different from the UK on the issue.

i will ty and discuss whether Australia has any legitimate excuses for its big increase in greenhouse gas emissions since 1990.

i suspect rthere are some plausible reasons.

But go Boris.

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/01/16/business/bc-eu-britain-carney.html

A technique used by the Turku University group was Fourier Analysis.
My guess is they put the whole temperature record as available in to
the program. Fourier Analysis is used frequently in radio systems to
dig signals out of very noisy inputs. Your Wifi uses it.
It would be interesting to see a graph of its output.

It could tell us if the temperature has risen as a sinewave or a pulse
squarish waveform. That would clearly define whether it is natural or
man made by burning fossil fuels.

I have only just thought of this, so it is surprising no one has
already tried it. Perhaps the lack of reliable readings going back
far enough is a problem.

Forget climate change in relation to bushfires; the climate change theory is just a cop out for people who refuse to take responsibility: state premiers and ministers who have done nothing about land management, and the state public servants who feed them lies. Local government is also a major villain, chockablock as it is with bored housewives, bored Green housewives, Green male councillors practising for a run at real politics, and mayors enamoured with the robes and totally unjustified monetary allowances.

And, behind all the stupidity and uselessness of the above, is the disgusting, criminality of Green ideology.

And although the Prime Minister has been scurrilously lambasted for things that he has no responsibility for, the federal government is rewarding the incompetence and failure of the states by doling out $10 million on a DC 10, which is having dubious effects on firefighting, plus millions more handed out for spending on fire affected communities.

The money would have been better spent on paying the states to see that the communities were not so badly affected in the first place.

The papers by the Turku & Kobe Uni have been widely attacked quite
viciously by some commentators. Its maths is way above my level but
perhaps Don may find it easy.

J. Kauppenin & P. Maimi
Kauppenin was an expert reviewer with IPCC report AR5.

Abstract.In this paper we will prove that GCM-models used in IPCC reportAR5 fail to calculate the influences of the low cloud cover changes on the globaltemperature. That is why those models give a very small natural temperaturechange leaving a very large change for the contribution of the green housegases in the observed temperature. This is the reason why IPCC has to use avery large sensitivity to compensate a too small natural component. Furtherthey have to leave out the strong negative feedback due to the clouds in orderto magnify the sensitivity. In addition, this paper proves that the changes inthe low cloud cover fraction practically control the global temperature.

The paper is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1907.00165v1

A Victorian enquiry has found the following about water bombing:

"There are practical constraints on using a very large air tanker in Victoria. Because of the weight and size of the DC-10, Avalon Airport (near Geelong) and Melbourne Airport (the main airport in Melbourne) are the only suitable air bases from which the aircraft can operate. The DC-10 requires a smaller lead plane to fly ahead and provide assessments before aerial firefighting. The DC-10 might also have limitations during poor weather. Once airborne, the aircraft must discharge its load of up to $45,000 worth of aerial suppressant to enable a safe landing. This has economic and environmental costs if the suppressant is not used on the fire and needs to be jettisoned.

The Commission notes that a number of witnesses were ambivalent about the very large air tanker."

and this is a headline in SMH today

Climate policy
'Drought-breaking rain likely to cause greenhouse emissions to rise'

boo hoo hoo. Can anyone be more ungrateful and blind.

Correction; I cannot find the reference to Fourier Analysis again.
Perhaps someone else mentioned it.
Still a powerful technique if you have the data.

I got this a few days ago & I've added to it.

Added:

Ok. Global Warming/Climate Change has just about run its course. Nothing has really happened. We haven't drowned & it's been 20 years.

What will be the next big scare?

I predict it will be a "World Wide Pandemic." They tried this one before, in the 70's, but it failed to get off the ground. I see the beginnings of it in the papers & on the TV every now & again.

Does anyone remember the TV Movie Episodes of "Pandemic." from the 70's. It started off with a bloke & a Brief Case getting on a plane & flying around the world.

It will be the "Super Bugs Pandemic." Coming to you soon.

As with the:

Original:

(60’s, No more Oil.
70’s, The Ice Age cometh.
80’s, Melting in Acid Rain.
90’s, Frying in no Ozone Layer.
00’s, Climate Change.)

Added:

10’s, Global Warming.
20’s, World Wide Super Bug Pandemic.

Coming soon. Watch this space.

I'd understand some of the errant garbage provided by a noisy minority of vociferous climate change deniers if anything I've ever proposed would in any way hurt or harm our economy, but rather the very opposite!

The most powerful weapon on the planet is not a nuclear bomb but finance and without it, your goose is well and truly cooked.

And this weapon has been fired when the biggest investment house on the planet told us they were getting out of coal!

I agree with ttbn inasmuch as do-nothing state governments should have been in the forefront and out there doing what needed doing to ameliorate against wildfires!

These useless appendages spend around 70 billion-plus P.A. On just their existence and money we could spend on essential infrastructure if we weren't carrying them, their entitlements and expectations. Infrastructure like nuclear waste burning MSR and pipelines carrying the cost-effective desal to where there's no water now.

There are several missing ingredients that have contributed to the current fire season and its severity.

1st, National parks no longer grazed thank to timid pollies and errant green activism!

2nd, A mindless prohibition on nuclear power at the behest of the same errant asinine activists!

3rd Lack of action on doable dams and many of them on private land in the headwaters of most rivers to force billions of litres of rainfall into the upland landscape and then build levies and weirs along those waterways on the adjacent floodplains for the same purpose.

Enough with the endless excuse-making and the buck-passing! And Don, one house burnt to the ground in any patently preventable forest fire is one house too many and just one life lost fighting preventable fire is just one life too many!

In the final analysis, and with respect to all of the aforementioned state admins and Don, it's the economy stupid!
Alan B.

Chris, we are (thankfully) entitled to our beliefs, and all I ask is that alternate views are not lambasted with personal insults, abuse and death threats.

But do respond to my query directed at your belief in science and what if they said something again]isn't CC as I suggested.

Both PCA and FA are complex statistical solutions to deal with noisy data to identify subtle underlying signals in the data. As such they ar the last resort. In the case of global temp date, this is not the case.

I suggest the likes of Mann used PCA to find subtle signals, while and the main signal, namely that in the raw data maunder minimum that Phil Jones and he got caught out in the climate gate scandal of 2009

Don talks of the key point. That people be free to modify the vegetation balance on their own land.
Under the current madness landowners aren't. As Don mentioned he had to seek council approval to remove a tree. And that's presumably only a lifestyle block. It's worse for owners needing to manage their rural and agricultural land.
The EPBC act is probably the greatest problem.
If the public, the mob, want public land mismanaged and left to overgrow so be it, not convinced they do, but private property should be exempt.
Unde the EPBC act a lot of the declarations of vulnerable or threatened vegetation communities and habitat are fairly suspect.
Things like the Wollemi pines that got a mention recently are an example of species worth listing to create a legal avenue for preservation funding. However vast areas of forest types listed as threatened aren't rare or in any way threatened at all.
If anything declarations under the EPBC act are creating vulnerabilities. It can't be denied.

Dear Don,

What a tired old article by a virtual snake oil salesman who no one but the ideologically tainted are buying any more.

'I have the cure' you proudly announce to a minor cadre but the rest of us know it for what it is, rearguard poppycock denying the bleeding obvious. At what point does it become embarrassing even for you?

Oh and by the way, neither you nor Marohasy quoite this for some reason.

It is from the Royal Commission into the 1939 fires in Victoria and is second on the list of causes;

"The Condition of the Forests.—When the early settlers came to what is now this State, they found for the greater part a clean forest. Apparently, for many years before their arrival, the forest had not been scourged by fire. They were in their natural state. Their canopies had prevented the growth of scrub and bracken to any wide extent. They were open and traversible by men, beasts and wagons. Compared with their present condition, they were safe. B ut the white men introduced fire to the forests. They burned the floor to promote the growth of grass and to clear it of scrub which had grown where, for whatever reason, the balance of nature had broken down. The fire stimulated grass growth ; but it encouraged scrub growth far more. Thus was begun the cycle of destruction which can not be arrested in our day. The scrub grew and flourished, fire was used to clear it, the scrub grew faster and thicker, bush fires, caused by the careless or designing hand of man, ravaged the forests; the canopy was impaired, more scrub grew and prospered, and again the cleansing agent, fire, was used. And so to-day in places where our forefathers rode, driving their herds and flocks before them, the wombat and the wallaby are hard put to it to find passage through the bush."

Don't worry folks, our new born-again climate change warrior Soot 'Beam up me Scotty' Morrison will save the day.

He knows what has to done: getting the big greenhouse gas emitters China, US, EU, Russia, India and Japan to reduce their emissions in order to stop Australia from becoming the constant victim of anthropogenic global warming.

Good on ya Soot. We're relying on ya mate!

Remember Soot, this is what will either make or break you come the next election. So get out there Soot and start protesting. (PS You might be able to get a few pointers on what to do by watching little Greta Thunberg.)

" it would be nice if he said what the obvious evidence is [ that higher temps cause bushfire]".

Its obvious because it seems obvious. But when looked at statistically it becomes less obvious. Because other factors come to play.

"However, important exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these perceived overall trends. Instead, global area burned appears to have overall declined over past decades, and there is increasing evidence that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago."

http://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2015.0345#d1152638e1

Its not obvious that higher temperatures cause higher bushfire risk. Indeed the global evidence is the opposite.

Climate change is the all-purpose scapegoat used to hide or deny all manner of political and ideological errors. Insufficient water? Blame AGW. Farmers failing to thrive? Blame AGW.
What's obvious is that our bush management processes have changed over the decades and we are paying the price for that. But admitting that is admitting that the past (and present) green shibboleths were/are astray. Much better to 'Blame AGW'.

I also want to endorse Don's point about forcing those who decide to live 'with nature' to self-fund their insurance. When the government decides to play sugar-daddy to those who build inappropriately and insure insufficiently or not at all you end up with two results. First, you encourage others to build inappropriately in inappropriate areas in the knowledge the government will make it all better if the inevitable happens. Second, you discourage people from insuring their property given that doing so leaves them no better-off than those who assume and receive government hush money following natural disasters.

Over the past year Australia has experienced low rainfall generating conditions in the surrounding oceans as well as unfavourable MJO conditions. All of these factors resulted in hot dry weather. What are the odds of that happening? Add to that the Green inspired "Action against climate change", namely a geoengineering exercise of increasing the amount of vegetation to absorb atmospheric CO2. The terrible bush fires were a consequence.

I propose another geoengineering experiment. Obviously not an ocean fertilisation experiment to warm the ocean surface in critical areas and potentially increase rainfall. That would have the Greens jumping up and down screaming blue murder. Instead, the Greens could organise volunteer exercises to clear undergrowth, then put the waste into pyrolytic reactors. The biochar generated could then be returned and dug into the soil. I don't think the idea practical, but it would reduce the fire risk and it would be nice to see Greenies doing some work.

Causes of bushfires, Australian Institute of Criminology:

Accidental. 35%

Deliberate. 13%

Suspicious. 37%

Natural. 6%

Re-ignition. 5%

Other. 4%

Typical Steele. Abuses the writer of the article and then throws a red-herring into the mix. This is how the mad left tries to bully us all into compliance.

Perhaps the reason that Marohasy and Aitkin did not quote that passage from the Royal Commission is because it is wrong. There's certainly no onus on them to quote passages just because it helps Steele's argument.

It is well settled that the Aborigines did burn this land and that is why the landscape was as it was when the first settlers arrived. To think that they didn't touch the land, and were more or less just like fauna is an old Australian racist trope.

If anyone wants to know about the extent of Aboriginal fire-stick farming this book by Bill Gammage is excellent https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-biggest-estate-on-earth-bill-gammage/book/9781743311325.html

Fester: Great idea mate but I wouldn't trust with greenies or a small cohort of cultural firebugs trying to force the stone age land management on us when instead of a few weeks of fuel reduction we could do it 24/7 and 365 days a years using a combination of herd animals and dung beetles to obtain the same outcome and a profit for the outlay!

It's the economy stupid is good and rational advice and all my contributions have had that as their central condition/requirement!

If we need solutions to ameliorate against wildfires and let them also provide profit and potential export incomes.

Alison I'll thank you not to verbal me or claim I've used a term like Satanist in reference to climate change deniers That just blatant bull manure.

Broad-scale irrigation rarely if ever burns and where done lowers the average temp by as much as 10C! And could be done with cost-effective, space-age desalination!

These crops also absorb CO2! And the stubble can be used as mulch to reduce evaporation and control weed infestation And when the ground is resown added in part to the soil as natural carbon! None of these practises create massive CO2 or add it to the atmosphere and some seaweed supplementation can also reduce the methane created by grazing ruminants.

Therefore, one could argue that broad-scale irrigation is part of the climate change solution and part of the way we adapt and reduce our highest per capita carbon footprint!

And if done in arid regions the world over would do a number of things the first would be to actually effectively ameliorate against climate change, allow millions of drought displaced refugees to relocate and feed themselves and families!

Turn vast arid regions into carbon sinks as we also turn them into virtual gardens of Eden!

All that prevents this is the robber baron standing like impassible roadblocks in the way! And the sleepwalking wokes (AJ+ co) who tolerate/admire their BS!
Alan B.

I may have mentioned it before that the great Captain Cook actually mentioned in his log that there was not a day when they did not see smoke on the shore.

On some occasions it actually made the shore hard to see.

Yes that's right, & it is why he named Smoky Cape as he did.

Those damn aboriginals must have been hooning around in their 1770 SUVs generating so much CO2 it set the bush on fire.

A.J. What do you think is the most powerful weapon in the world? A nuclear bomb? And if that's what you think you and millions of idealogues and robber barons around the world would be dead wrong!

The most powerful weapon in the world is the finance bomb and it has been fired. And as the most powerful finance house in the world with literal trillions in investment funds decided they were out of coal!

Only those investment houses that want to commit financial Hari Kari will not follow suit!

And only recalcitrant pollies who don't share a brain between them would still advocate for coal as dispatchable reliable power given the walkaway safer, clearer cheaper nuclear alternative.

And need to understand that that is the only reliable after dark option that we can actually afford!

To date, we've forced manufacturing offshore by making gold plated price gouged foreign controled energy often more expensive than wages!

Tax breaks are the numbskulls short term sugar hit solution. And haven't worked!

Whereas energy whose cost cascades up the supply line would actually reinvigorate the economy in a way no tax breaks ever will if it's rolled out and supplied for less than 3 cents PKWH! MSR thorium and or MSR nuclear waste burners.

And the nuclear option also has the advantage of being carbon-free and therefore our future manufacture will not attract the carbon levy/tariff that's bound to be part of a carbon-constrained future!
Alan B

Dear GrahamY,

Well it looks like I should defend the claim that the author is a virtual snake oil salesperson.

This is a quote from the article;

“Carbon dioxide molecules, if you think that CO2 or greenhouse gases are central to 'climate change', do not wander around causing fires. They can't do it. Do they make things hotter? Maybe a bit. The jury is still out on that one, after forty years.”

So according to him the jury is still out on whether CO2 causes any warming? What recalcitrant rubbish. Anyone who accepts the science accepts the warming impact of CO2. To intimate this is still in question is by any other than the ideologically tainted is patently absurd.

“Snake oil is a euphemism for deceptive marketing.”

Yup.

“When rubbed on the skin at the painful site, snake oil was claimed to bring relief. This claim was ridiculed by 19th-century rival medicine salespeople, who competed with snake oil entrepreneurs in peddling other medicines for pain, often offering more hazardous alternatives such as alcohol or opium.”
Wikpedia

The author is going to extraordinary lengths to deny the bleeding obvious through vigorous misdirection. Apparently we just have to introduce sheep and goats into our national parks and all will be well. Or do extensive clearing to create grassed buffers.

Cont..

Cont..

You said;

“Perhaps the reason that Marohasy and Aitkin did not quote that passage from the Royal Commission is because it is wrong. There's certainly no onus on them to quote passages just because it helps Steele's argument. It is well settled that the Aborigines did burn this land and that is why the landscape was as it was when the first settlers arrived. To think that they didn't touch the land, and were more or less just like fauna is an old Australian racist trope.”

It isn’t wrong at all.

Nowhere did I say Aboriginals didn’t burn the land, it is just that there is little need nor a lot to burn in mature forests with intact overstory. I can take you to my local bit of bushland and show you where a fuel reduction burn killed a bunch of mature yellow gums about a decade ago resulting in a huge fuel load being created. You can’t see 5 meters into the bush. Where the fire hadn’t gone through or had done so without getting too hot you can see over a hundred meters into it.

The 1939 commission acknowledged that water authorities rely “upon the growth of forest canopy to suppress inflammable scrub.” because they are looking to preserve water quality and prevent erosion.

Don Aitken is not a climate science denier, he is even worse-a climate science apologist. A once great mind reminiscing, and wishing that we would all just tidy up the scrub around our houses. I particularly like the suggestion that 1909 was even hotter than 1910, but sadly he has no proof. Riveting stuff.

askbucko,

You mentioned that you had a History and Politics background. I mentioned I also had an Arts background and invited you to touch base with me for a bit of a chinwag but you never got back to me. I hope you're not another Loudmouth.

askbucko, when did you draw the short straw & be told you were to try to defend the indefensible global warming scam by your local greeny mob?

I'd almost feel sorry for you, if you weren't a lefty.

There are a number of options on the table with reference to the annual bushfires which are bound to get worse as the climate heats up around the world. If it were the sun alone we would be now experiencing cooler conditions and advancing ice! And typical of the normal cyclical waning phase of the sun!

All those who fatuously claim this is just part of normal cycles cannot explain away why we are setting new record temperature highs during a normal cyclical waning phase of the sun but like AJ resort to verballing or worse straight out abuse?

So typical of those whose brain would still rattle in a thimble. And it's these folk who through the ballot box decide who leads and what decisions are made. And that is why the economy is saddled with record domestic and exponentially expanding record foreign debt.

All while our leaders on both sides have become totally immersed in petty partisan politicing and blame-shifting and during this emergency have done their best, I believe, to emulate Nero fiddling as Rome burned.

I mean the best they can do is dribble out a few handfuls of charity dollars and no long term strategy for either a hugely compromised environment of a debt-laden economy barely keeping its head above water as it treads water as the financial rip takes it out further. Elbow is trying to sound like a decisive statesman as he apportions blame etc and still jumping to the unions string-pulling and "labor's" prohibition on carbon-free nuclear energy!?

Their very best solutions have always been to pawn or sell some more of the national heritage, or the birthrights of our children!
Without question, it is the economy stupid and with that, as the compelling paramount imperative, there are abundant solutions that we could apply if only we had leadership!
Alan B.

As any parent would know, adolescents have a maddening way of arguing - they may seize on just one aspect of a discussion, trivialise it, and pretend that it's the only plank of someone else's argument. Paul is pretty good at this, which for an old person, is quite shameful. Leave that pissy tactic to the kids, Paul.

Like Arsebucko, whose gloss of Don's prescriptions, that " .... wishing that we would all just tidy up the scrub around our houses .... " is all Don and others has proposed, is a egregious example of this infantile approach. Clearly Don has proposed far more than " ... . wishing that we would all just tidy up the scrub around our houses .... "

But Arsebucko has no answer to the rest of what Don has been proposing, clearing, grazing, removal of old timber, cool-burning, fire-breaks, etc., etc.. and therefore has to resort to idiot remarks dressed up as non-arguments. Almost as village-idiotic as the inane comments of Misopinionated.

Joe

Don, the "Obvious evidence" is that the Garnaut report warned all you anti-science Dunning-Kruger retards that by 2020 we would see longer, hotter, drier fire seasons than we had ever witnessed before.

Your answer?

Special pleading to a lack of evidence about 1909? Really? That's just pathetic! Grow up, put your man pants on, and GO VISIT AN ACTUAL PHYSICS LAB and ask them to show you what CO2 does. Or you could just watch this 10 minute youtube that demonstrates the accuracy of climate models, or just the 1 minute section that SHOWS how CO2 traps heat. Watch the candle, it starts at 90 seconds in. Watch the candle at 90 seconds in! (1 minute) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6Un69RMNSw

The sad part? I like some of your practical suggestions about Aussie bushfire planning and preparedness. I came here to discuss another few options I've got banging around in my head. YES to insurance and common-sense town planning and goat-filled grassy paddocks around properties in the bush. YES to maybe even asking some especially risk prone communities to admit defeat and leave, maybe with some taxpayer funded property purchases where the government buys some small town to return it to some kind of crown land or army base or something.

But NO to retarded anti-science climate denial when every National Academy of Science on the planet has verified it! It makes you sound utterly mad, like some tinfoil hat wearing flat-earther!

Max,

So you support many of the proposals of Don and some of the rest of us denier-retards ?

As or your suggestion that some towns should be abandoned and turned back into Crown Land, do you have the wits to understand that the same problems would still apply - how to reduce fuel, clear road-ways, allow grazing, etc., etc. ? That, regardless of whether areas are lived in or revert back to Crown Land, all of the issues would still be relevant ?

Humans are here. There will never be some sort of steady-state equilibrium in our bushlands and parks which will NOT need constant maintenance, regardless of how it is (or is not) used ?

Or do you have some childish religious notion that Mother Nature, our Earth Mother, Gaia, will work it all out, when clearly, a policy of 'leave it alone' has been largely responsible already for these disasters, prompted by well-meaning but Utopian and wrong-headed environmentalist policies ?

Joe

The rebuilding Australia after the Floods & Fires & now the floods again will take some time. The Process could be speeded up by having a Five year Moratorium on Over Seas Aid. Except for emergency situations in the South Pacific only.

$8.5 Billion would "per year over" Five years would put Australia back to where we were in the 50's, in comparison with the After WW11 development.

Just think. The Towns that are to be rebuilt could be Fire & Flood proofed. Dams that have been forced to be built in areas with no Catchment by the Greenies can be torn down, & another built where the Catchments really are.

The Bradford Scheme could be built as it should have been in the first place. The Wonky Holes on the Reef could be tapped to provide fresh water to Towns. This would have the Add On effect of stopping fresh water going onto the Reef. One for the Greenies. Ay.

Imagine having one Rail Standard for "All" of Australia. National Roads that aren't falling to pieces. An upgraded NBN to International Standards, instead of one that is 15 years out of date. A Hospital System that works. A School Syllabus that actually teaches what Businesses need, not some Airy fairy feel good programmes to please the Socialist agenda.

But, I can only dream.

One thing that puzzles me is that if the temp has risen 1.5 deg
everywhere why has the bush all suddenly all over Australia burst
into flame ?
You would expect it to happen in Queensland this year, in NSW in a few
years and Victoria a few years later as the temperature rises.
But all at once in one few months ?
It has to be spontaneous combustion.
After all the temperature difference between the states is significant.
There HAS to be some other factor in it.

Loudmouth, stop chanting the same crap, even Alan Jones has given it up! We've been here before dude.

1. WHO IS IN CHARGE?
Don't join with Barnaby Joyce and blame "The Greens" — it's just not a political party or authority that authorises fuel reduction burns in the first place!

"He said the suggestion that The Greens had a “controlling voice or are an influence in any way” was not true. “It’s sort of wishful thinking because the reality is the Greens don’t have much power over fire management,” he said."
http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/the-debate-over-hazard-reduction-burns-after-catastrophic-fires/news-story/c06b3e6f9bc7429128d03bdf18a40486

Fuel management burns are the responsibility of State public servants in Parks & Wildlife or Fire Agencies themselves.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/12/is-there-really-a-green-conspiracy-to-stop-bushfire-hazard-reduction
http://www.ladbible.com/news/news-fire-brigade-dispels-the-rumour-that-greens-are-to-blame-for-bushfires-20200105
http://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/conservation-programs/hazard-reduction-program
http://parks.des.qld.gov.au/managing/pdf/fire-mgmt-brochure.pdf

2. THE SCIENCE SAYS SOMETIMES BURNING DOESN'T WORK!
Uninformed broad-scale hazard reduction burns can change ecosystems, threaten species, and make future fires hotter!
http://theconversation.com/our-land-is-burning-and-western-science-does-not-have-all-the-answers-100331
http://theconversation.com/a-surprising-answer-to-a-hot-question-controlled-burns-often-fail-to-slow-a-bushfire-127022
Paragraph B of 1939 Royal Commission, here.
http://www.voltscommissar.net/docs/Leonard_Stretton-1939_Bush_Fires_Royal_Commission_Report.pdf

3. LIBERAL GOVERNMENT RECALCITRANCE!

The retired Fire Chief's with many lifetimes experience between them tried to meet with Scott Morrison back in April and May 2019, and warn him that these fires would be unlike anything Australia had EVER seen in scale, and were asking for more services and aircraft. They were rejected.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-14/former-fire-chief-calls-out-pm-over-refusal-of-meeting/11705330

A strong negative Southern Annular Mode was detected in Sept 2019, taking our rain and giving it to Madagascar.
http://theconversation.com/a-hot-and-dry-australian-summer-means-heatwaves-and-fire-risk-ahead-127990

EVEN IN DECEMBER SCOTT MORRISON ACTED LIKE EVERYTHING WAS NORMAL!

10th December 2019: "The prime minister has rejected calls for more help for firefighters as the New South Wales bushfire crisis is expected to worsen.... Asked about concerns over how long the tens of thousands of volunteer firefighters – many who have been away from work for weeks now – were expected to continue without pay, Morrison said they “want to be there”.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/10/scott-morrison-rejects-calls-for-more-help-saying-volunteer-firefighters-want-to-be-there

If anything, I blame our Prime Minister and his Liberal party for neglecting these catastrophic fires for so many months.

Max,

I'm not a great fan of burning, since it produces CO2, which is so bad for the climate. But clearing in other ways:

* . allowing animals to graze, especially along road-ways;

* . clearing out dead trees, especially those near road-ways;

* . spraying (with organic sprays) of weeds and their removal and mulching;

* . fire-breaks, cutting up parks into a mosaic of parks;

* restricting cool-burns to the most inaccessible areas where the above techniques may not work.

Clearly, since NP are mainly state responsibilities, this will need far more funding for states - and perhaps a slashing of their bureaucracies. Maybe Individual's notion of National Service could be modified to include engagement of the unemployed in all of the aspects of park maintenance. Of course, this all may require changes in environmental policies away from do-nothing.

Perhaps you could consider some of those as well as just burning.

Joe

A note on waterbombers. We should definitely maintain our ownpermanent firefighting fleet http://www.nafc.org.au/?page_id=168

But what if we face more climate catastrophe mega-fires like this year more regularly into the future? Is there a cheaper way to quickly top-up our firefighting fleet, rather than hire a DC10 from overseas for $5 million, and rather be subject to the whims of competing international fire seasons or delayed by overseas natural disasters like the current mess! We'd be ready.

The alternative? The ADF already owns 12 Hercules C-130's out at the Richmond airbase in NSW. These all purpose workhorses can use short dirt (unsurfaced) airstrips in the bush, can carry ADF personnel or cargo around Australia to weird out of the way locations using these tiny airfields, and can run all sorts of humanitarian aid as well.

The Hercules can have a Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System or MAFFS installed for about $100,000, turning each Hercules into a water-bomber with about a quarter of a DC10's capacity. Once the MAFFS is installed, the Hercules goes back to regular duties moving people and cargo around. But the moment we have a bad fire season, the water tank is installed in an hour.

The bottom line? If the ADF can spare 4 of their 12 Hercules for the fire season, that's $400k to BUY and OWN 4 MAFFS for 4 Hercs that would equal a full DC10. It would save Australia MILLIONS every year, money we could save to buy MORE HERCULES in the future.

A new Hercules will set you back $20 to $40 million, depending on what model is MAFFS compatible. (I'm not sure on the finer details.) A new DC10 is $110 million and it can't do other duties the rest of the year the way the Hercules can.

What do we want to do, lease expensive DC10's every bad fire season or buy and own MAFFS that can gradually save us enough money to buy and own more Hercules all-purpose, flood and fire-fighting assets?

Dear Max Green,

I'm not sure if you are a science fiction fan but Asimov was one of my favourites.

Here he is in a video discussing climate change in 1988;

http://lybio.net/isaac-asimov-climate-change-and-humanity-1989/people/

This is a transcript of the first part;

I had written an article on the greenhouse effect. It was a year-end article. They wanted me to pick out the most important scientific event of 1988. And I really thought that the most important scientific event of 1988 would only be recognized sometime in the future when you get a little perspective. But I thought that the most interesting scientific event of 1988, was the way everyone started speaking about the greenhouse effect just because there was a hot summer and a drought.

So I explained, what was meant by the greenhouse effect, and I also explained that not only were we constantly pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, because we’re burning fossil fuels, coal and oil and gas. So that the content of the atmosphere as far as carbon dioxide is concerned has been going up steadily, not very rapidly but steadily ever since 1900.

And it’s continuing to do so. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now is 50% higher than it was in 1900, it’s still only a little over 300 – 0.035% which is not enough to bother us as far as breathing is concerned. But it’s enough to trap the infrared waves that Earth reflects into space and to raise the temperature of the Earth slightly.

The temperature will keep on going up. And not only are we piling in more and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but we are chopping down the forests of the earth at a great rate.

End.

Thirty years on and here we are still debating the issue with closed minded fools. Who would have thought.

Man, Asimov takes me back to my Sci-Fi binge reading days as a teenager. I Robot and the Robot detective stories, Foundation, Second Foundation, and then the other authors contributing prequels. Such good days binge reading!

Yes, I don't understand it when scientists & authors & personalities like Asimov could see what was going on but the alt-right-tards can't get it through their thick skulls that CO2 traps heat, that every National Academy of Science on the planet has agreed climate change is a thing, and that we can see the effects before our very eyes. The summers are longer and hotter, the ice is withdrawing, the ecosystems are changing, bugs and insects are hatching earlier, Canadian winters are so warm they don't kill off the pine beetle, leaving the pines exposed to decimation by pests, all of it indicating an out-of-kilter climate tipsy topsy hurly burly out-of-whack.

Yet these 'armchair warriors' just want to get naked and rub themselves in peanut butter in preparation for their next echo-chamber session in here. It's positively CREEPY! I had to take a week off just to wash some denier nastiness out of my system! They have The Dumb, and I could feel it spreading.... I didn't want to waste all my time arguing with The Dumb.

Yes Asimov was good with science FICTION, & clever plots for his stories, but really!

Are the warmists so bereft of any scientific argument they have to go to the fiction shelves for their story.

Hasbeen,

I think you have lost the plot. I think you need to stay off the Bundies & Coke for awhile.

Was that really you I saw in the movie 'Real Action Hero' last night? My God you look a lot like Arnold Schwarzenegger! Idea! Why don't you two get together and make a movie called 'Twins'.

Gosh, tempers have risen, and much argumentum ad hominem as well.

To reply: I am not selling anything, and certainly not snake oil. I write to communicate with an audience. Steele Redux and Alan B. are entitled to their opinions. I don't normally respond to them, because they are fixed in their views and offer me nothing new.

I have seen a few bushfires in my nearly 83 years. I would not live close to a eucalyptus forest, let alone inside one. Just madness in the long run.

Dear Max Green,

I hear you however this is nothing new and Asimov was motivated to give up his fiction for a period to concentrate on non-fiction in order to try and raise the level of scientific literacy in his country.

"Asimov recalled in 1969 that "the United States went into a kind of tizzy, and so did I. I was overcome by the ardent desire to write popular science for an America that might be in great danger through its neglect of science, and a number of publishers got an equally ardent desire to publish popular science for the same reason"."

All you are doing is reacting to the scientific ignorance that would allow someone to completely discount the impact of CO2 on global temperatures.

Perfectly understandable.

Max, I'm not sure if you were actually paying attention to some of the points that you have raised.
Your reading of the laboratory experiment with the cylinder, the match and the CO2 proved nothing of value beyond a primary school playing with fire. You would've noticed that with a nominal CO2 concentration of 0.04%, there was no claim of anything. When the concentration of CO2 was raised to an unknown level (very probably tens of times greater than ambient), absorption of visible light was demonstrated. That is not an experiment that proves anything.
You came into this discussion and added little but vitriol and abuse.
Many of those commenting on here have demonstrated quite deep knowledge and understanding of science and how it works in meteorology and the climate.
The enthusiasm for aerial fire bombing is very strong, but the actual effectiveness is not living up to the promise. The stated practice of the large machines is not to put the fires out, but to "suppress and contain". In which case that don't have any objective measure of success or failure. To lumbar any level of Government with an example of very heavy metal would not be very cost effective. Also, there is no such thing as a "new" DC10. The last one was pushed out of the shed over 30 years ago.
The moment you link to articles (stories) in "The Conversation" and "The Guardian", it is obvious that you are not interested in objective assessments and discussions on the effects that human activities may be having on global climate. At least not from ethical and honest scientists.
The Conversation refuses to accept any comments that may question any of the "warmists" beliefs on AGW/CC. You may not cast doubt on the claims of "Records" of any kind.
To do so in the Guardian brings down an extremely vitriolic rain of abuse from their resident fanatics.
The initiating conversation piece by Mr Don Aitkin makes no claims or statements that are untrue, he raises points that bear objective consideration.

The evidence is pretty clear to me.
1. The atmosphere contains traces of Carbon Dioxide: 0.03% when I was at school and 0.04% now.
2. Radiation from the Sun, sunlight, passes through the atmosphere and warms the surface of the Earth and the atmosphere above.
3. The warmed surface and the warmed atmosphere above it radiate heat.
4. The infrared radiation from the warmed surface and the atmosphere cannot escape and remains within the atmosphere.
5. This occurs because Carbon Dioxide is transparent to sunlight but it is opaque to infrared radiation.
6. The earth's atmosphere works to transfer heat from the equatorial or tropical areas and move it to the polar areas.
7. A warmer atmosphere can holds larger amount of water.
8. When water is in the atmosphere it cannot be on the ground, hence droughts in some places.
9. Water can also fall from the atmosphere as hail, snow or flooding rains.
Why are we having a discussion about climate change when the evidence is all around us?

Come on Brian, do a little math on the subject.

Water vapor is over 20 times more effective at absorbing long wave radiation than CO2, & there is over 100 times more of it in the average bit of atmosphere,.

That makes water vapor 2000 times more effective in any reflection that may occur. CO2 is a very minor bit player in the temperature budget of the planet, not even worth considering.

Are you going to post this bit or rationalising elsewhere Brian.

To copy you,
Come on Brian, do a little math on the subject.

Water vapor is over 20 times more effective at absorbing long wave radiation than CO2, & there is over 100 times more of it in the average bit of atmosphere,.

That makes water vapor 2000 times more effective in any reflection that may occur. CO2 is a very minor bit player in the temperature budget of the planet, not even worth considering.

I just don't get it, if it is co2 we put in the atmosphere that is
causing all these fires, then what is the co2 the Chinese, Indians and
US are putting in the atmosphere doing ?
Are we wasting our time ? Just let it burn, those countries don't care !
Doing something to windward comes to mind !

Hasbeen,

Water vapour is hymn number 36 in the Denialist hymn book.

Yes, water vapour IS the most powerful greenhouse gas, but the amount of it isn't changing. There's no rain coming in from space or anything. So why is the planet warming up?

Basically, there's no new water appearing on earth but we are adding a whole bunch of CO2 into the atmosphere.

"Water vapour is the most dominant greenhouse gas. Water vapour is also the dominant positive feedback in our climate system and amplifies any warming caused by changes in atmospheric CO2. This positive feedback is why climate is so sensitive to CO2 warming."
http://skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm

Max Green, in your consideration of the CO2 and H2O model, remember that water vapour is a normal production of combustion. In a simple example, in very rounded figures for every 50 tonnes of CO2 produced from burning CH3 methane, there is approximately 20 tonnes of new water produced. So, yes, there is more water vapour in the atmosphere every day.

“Sure, our emissions are 1.3% of the global total. But our population is 0.3% of the global total…” (In other words our per capita pollution is vastly higher than it should be! Then if you add in our coal exports to other countries we are at "…4% rather than 1.3%. This would make Australia the world’s sixth-largest contributor to climate change.”
http://theconversation.com/how-to-answer-the-argument-that-australias-emissions-are-too-small-to-make-a-difference-118825

Not only that, there are 20 other countries at or around our level of CO2 emissions taking the smaller countries up to a quarter of all emissions. In other words, if we don't do our bit because it's too small, why should they? Then a quarter of the world's CO2 emissions just keep on polluting.

The World Bank has said a world of 3 or 4 degrees of warming is incompatible with civilisation as we know it. Read: agricultural disruption and excessive storm damage and geopolitical tension over fresh water and immigration.

Max Green's post is just flat out wrong. As the air temperature increases the atmosphere can hold more water. The extra water doesn't come from space, it comes from the oceans, melted ice-caps, rivers and the soil.

The scary increase in temperature that the IPCC models predict is driven by this increase in atmospheric water vapour. They call it a forcing.

If you don't understand the basic mechanism, you're not equipped to denigrate other people as "deniers", or to insist people should follow "the science", because you are clearly not expert enough to have an opinion.

Mr Green might also like to take onboard the fact that the CO2 effect is logarithmic, and most of the CO2 greenhouse effect is already in the system. Additional CO2 has a minor influence on temperature. Not none, but not much either.

Ho Humm, it doesn't matter anyway !

Hi GrahamY,
if you re-read my post you'll see that I agree with you 100%.
*AS* the air temperature increases, the atmosphere holds more water vapour. That's what I read the IPCC experts to be saying!

I didn't say extra water came in from space. I said "The extra water doesn't come from space". My point was there's no extra water entering the system to warm it up in the first place. What causes the INITIAL warming that then kicks off the water vapour feedback?

WARMING => INCREASE IN WATER VAPOUR => EVEN MORE WARMING!

The logarithmic nature of CO2 is already included in the IPCC initial calculations that lead to about 1.2 degrees per doubling, which is multiplied by their Climate Sensitivity factor involving water vapour feedbacks to be about 3ish degrees for the first CO2 doubling.

It is dismaying to see former senior fire officers and climate alarmists grinding that axe in this context. There is nothing unprecedented in our current drought or heat. If the BOM published a standard statistical analysis of its own records it would be evident that present drought and temperature are well within the range to be expected in Australia.

However, there is a real way in which more CO2 does affect bushfire behaviour, namely by extra growth. As the 28-year-long study by CSIRO and NASA published in 2013 showed, more CO2 brings more plant growth – the ‘greening’ of the Earth. The massive upside is that we have ample food to nourish the ever-growing global population. A downside is that fine fuel on the forest floor accumulates faster - about 15% faster now than in 1970. This 15% greater fuel load means that the fire front travels about 15% faster, that spot-over embers carry about 15% further in front of the main fire and that the main fire burns with about 30% greater intensity.

This underlines the necessity for forest-floor fuel load reduction. Since Mankind has been in Australia this has been done by hazard-reduction burning. It is important to make best use of age-old Aboriginal methods and to ignore all Greenie whinging. But even when this has been done, experience shows that there is no realistic prospect of fire alone being able to achieve the reduction required.

The vital additional element is mechanical collection and recovery of the fine fuels – especially in areas close to homes, schools, powerlines, phone towers and such. Mechanical collection has minimal weather constraint, makes no smoke, has no risk of an escaped fire, etc. Marvellous modern forest machines make the task routine. The forest-floor fuel load which powers bush fires can equally well power a thermal electricity plant. The 3,900 MW DRAX plant in UK runs on (imported) pelletised timber and residues.

Even if hazard reduction is done ideally, established fire-fighting methods, putting the wet stuff on the red stuff, remains vital. Resources for this have been commendably increased and this should continue

Come off it Max, "Yes, water vapour IS the most powerful greenhouse gas, but the amount of it isn't changing. There's no rain coming in from space or anything. So why is the planet warming up?"


Water vapor is absolutely critical to the garbage global warming scam. Remember all those so called tipping points Max. With out them, mostly claiming increased water vapor as a major cause, CO2 can't ever, at any concentration cause more than 2.0C warming, even if you believe it causes warming. Of course you have to believe in the honesty of the UN to believe any of it.

Can't you people ever get inconstant in what you claim? Of course not, you need a new argument every time the current one is shot down.

"Can't you people ever get inconstant in what you claim? Of course not, you need a new argument every time the current one is shot down."

I think you meant to say something like "Can't you people ever stay CONSISTENT in your claims?"

What you actually said contradicted yourself. Oh the irony!

Read my last few posts on Water Vapour and my link. You haven't said anything that actually challenges the IPCC hypothesis I am discussing, but I don't think you know enough about the subject to actually understand what GrahamY and I are talking about. I'm no scientist, but even I can see you're struggling. Read this link twice or three times and you might catch on.
http://skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm

Your post is contradictory Max, you say there isn't more water vapour and then you say there is. The problem with the forcing idea is that water vapour will enter the atmosphere as the temperature increases, not because CO2 has increased. So if there were a runway Greenhouse effect we would have seen it in the past when the planet was a lot warmer.

Because of the logarithmic effect you need a lot more CO2 just to raise the temperature another 1 degree or so. So CO2 is not going to mimic those earlier conditions anytime soon.

We can't model the water cycle particularly well, so no one is sure what the exact effect of water vapour is, but we do know that while it reradiates IR, it also cools through transfers of latent heat. So as water evaporates it has a cooling effect, and when it condenses it has a warming effect. It also reflects light back into space, which has a cooling effect.

While we know the sign of the heating effect of CO2, we're not even sure what the sign is for water vapour. Some think it might even be a negative feedback.

Hi Max.

Exactly how many gigatons of atmospheric CO2 will cause a 0.1% rise in global temperatures?

First Atlantic Warm Period about 7750 BC
Second Atlantic Warm Period about 7000 BC
First Saharan Warm period about 5800 BC
Second Saharan Warm Period about 5000 BC
Egyptian Warm period about 3200 BC
Sumerian Warm Period about 2200 BC
Minoan Warm Period about 1200 BC
Roman Warm Period about 400 BC to 300 AD
Medieval Warm Period about 1000 AD
Modern Warm Period about 2000 AD

If the earth has warmed and cooled 10 times in the last 8000 years, what caused the previous cycle of 9 warming periods? An unknown race of prehistoric intelligent life forms that existed up until the Medieval Warming Period, who had coal fired power stations and SUV's?

GrahamY:

MORE OR LESS?
I admitted that the science says water vapour traps heat. But I was responding to the assertion by another that CO2 doesn't matter because... water vapour traps heat. I was asking what's causing the demonstrable rise in global temperatures IF there's no space rain? No extra mystery water from aliens or space or whatever, just the same water going around and around? It's not more water vapour that's making the global temperature rise to then store more water vapour and create a feedback, it's CO2. The only fraction of the atmosphere we can demonstrate is increasing — CO2 and methane and a few trace super-greenhouse gases.

"The problem with the forcing idea is that water vapour will enter the atmosphere as the temperature increases, not because CO2 has increased."

Try this from YALE:
__________________________

The primary reasons why water vapor cannot be a cause of climate change are its short atmospheric residence time and a basic physical limitation on the quantity of water vapor in the atmosphere for any given temperature (its saturation vapor pressure). The addition of a large amount of water vapor to the troposphere would have little effect on global temperatures in the short term due to the thermal inertia of the climate system. The Earth’s thermal inertia, largely due to the enormous amount of water covering two thirds the planet’s surface, is the primary reason why half the Earth does not freeze over every night and bake every day. As a result, different areas warm over the course of years (for land surface temperatures), decades (for ocean surface temperatures), and even centuries (for deep ocean temperatures and ice sheets).
http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2008/02/common-climate-misconceptions-the-water-vapor-feedback-2/

The CO2 logarithmic explanation is complex, and I'll just link here.
"Scientists agree that the greenhouse effect is approximately logarithmic — which means that as we add more CO2 to the atmosphere, the effect of extra CO2 decreases.
However, the IPCC projects that if we don't take steps to reduce our emissions, global warming won't just get worse, it will speed up:
The explanation takes more than 350 words."
http://skepticalscience.com/why-global-warming-can-accelerate.html

Dear Don,

Of course you are selling something, you are selling your brand of cure to a disease you have diagnosed the causes of.

You are specifically ignoring the high temperature of the patient which is the result of a higher concentration of a specific gas.

Now there might well be a demographic for the elixir you are spruiking but the rest of us are firmly set on paying attention to the more qualified

Dear LEGO,

Your problem can be answered in one word: Milankovitch!

Is THAT all he's talking about? Congrats on interpreting what he was going on about! I didn't have the time, dealing with Mhaze and Lego's previous copy and pastes.

He kept saying 1000 year intervals in the other thread, not 100,000 year intervals. Guy's got a bad case of "I've discovered this amazing thing!" and needs to calm down and just read the Milankovitch wiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

Or he could just watch this youtube on the "Temp leads carbon" crock which also explains Milankovitch cycles AND another one of those climate denier hymns.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWJeqgG3Tl8

I wish those morons would stop calling them Climate deniers !
Nobody denies Climate, only morons dispute it !

I think i will go with what NASA has to say.
Chris Lewis,
But, isn't it NASA that burns the most holes in the ozone layer ?

Dear GrahamY,

You wrote;

“We can't model the water cycle particularly well, so no one is sure what the exact effect of water vapour is, but we do know that while it reradiates IR, it also cools through transfers of latent heat. So as water evaporates it has a cooling effect, and when it condenses it has a warming effect. It also reflects light back into space, which has a cooling effect. While we know the sign of the heating effect of CO2, we're not even sure what the sign is for water vapour. Some think it might even be a negative feedback.”

Firstly water vapour does not reflect light back into space. It like CO2 is invisible to light. It is only when it condenses into its liquid or solid form eg clouds does it do so.

The question becomes whether the increase in water vapour due to the increase in global temperature lead to an increase in cloud cover. Well the satellite measurements you are so fond of appear to say no. The records indicate a decreasing trend. Why? Well in order to form clouds there needs to be both water vapour and the appropriate temperatures.

While Southern Ocean is relatively low in humidity it's also low in temperature and therefore one of the most constantly cloudy places on earth.

It makes sense really. If every thing else stayed the same then an increase in water vapour wshould mean an increase in cloud cover. But in the real world it appears increasing temperatures may well be inhibiting cloud formation.

http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1265388/FULLTEXT01.pdf

“It is interesting to note that all CDRs show decreasing trends in global cloudiness (0.5–1.9% per decade, all trends being significant at the 95% level according to the Mann-Kendall test...”

“This study has shown that there is in general large agreement between the investigated CDRs in their description of global cloud cover and its trend. Nevertheless, there are also some remarkable deviations. Interesting is that all CDRs show a slow but steady decrease in global cloud fraction amounting to approximately 1% per decade...”