Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Penny Wong & the Department of Climate Change caught lying?

Certainly appears that way.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong this week released a suspiciously-timed report claiming 250,000 Australian homes could be drowned by rising seas by 2100, thanks to global warming.

The report claimed that warming could cause the seas to rise not by the 59cms that the most gloomy IPCC model put as the upper limit, but by 1.1 metres - or even 1.90 metres. More than three times as much.

In a post below, with the help of reader Lazlo, I show how Wong’s report, produced by her own department, actually told untruths about the IPCC predictions and relied on a discredited paper to justify its much more alarmist figure.

Now Kris Sayce, editor of Money Morning, picks yet more trickery in the report - trickery that should have been spotted by any competent, unbiased scientist in Wong’s department. Here’s just one extract from his email mail-out:
But first I’ll give you the (Wong’s) Department’s interpretation of the (Bureau of Meterology’s) research (on sea level rises):
“Global mean sea level has risen about 20 centimetres since pre-industrial times (Figure 2.6), at an average rate of 1.7 millimetres per year during the 20th century. Since 1993, high-quality satellite observations of sea levels have enabled more accurate modelling of global and regional sea-level change. From 1993 to 2003, global sea level rose by about 3.1 millimetres per year, compared to 1.8 millimetres per year from 1961 to 2003. These rates of increase are an order of magnitude greater than the average rate of sea-level rise over the previous several thousand years.”
Is that enough to scare you? An average of 3.1 millimetres per year between 1993 to 2003… But hold on, let’s see what the Bureau of Meteorology actually had to say...:
“A useful datum to distinguish abnormally high sea levels is the Highest Astronomical Tide (HAT), the highest level that can be predicted to occur under any combination of astronomical conditions. Likewise the Lowest Astronomical Tide (LAT) is the lowest level that can be predicted under any combination of astronomical conditions. To properly determine HAT and LAT tidal predictions must span at least 18.6 years, which is the period of a full rotation of the moon’s orbital plane about the ecliptic.”
In other words, using a ten year time frame is not scientifically valid as it doesn’t take into account the full 18.6 year orbit of the moon. And every fifth grader knows that the moon influences the tides…

But look at the quote above from the Department again. It states, that since pre-industrial times the global mean sea level has risen at “an average rate of 1.7 millimetres per year during the 20th century.” It then says that between 1961 to 2003 the rate was “1.8 millimetres per year.”

But shock horror, between 1993 to 2003 (too short a period to measure remember) it was “3.1 millimetres per year.”

That surely proves the man-made effect and that it has increased rapidly during the last sixteen years, right? Only, there’s one small sentence the Department didn’t include in their summary of the BoM’s report. It’s this, and it relates to the increase between 1993 and 2003:
“Studies have shown that comparably large rates of average sea level rise have been observed in previous decades.”
In other words, far from this being a unique phenomena, BoM has “observed” similar large increases in previous decades. Why would the Department not include this in its report?

And it doesn’t quite fit in with the Department’s artistic licence when they claim, “These rates of increase are an order of magnitude greater than the average rate of sea-level rise over the previous several thousand years.” That’s just not true as BoM says they’ve seen these increases observed in previous decades…

The whole ‘science’ or the interpretation of the science behind climate change is getting ropier and smellier the more we look.
Wong should now withdraw her report and apologise for such shoddy advocacy-by-scare, masquerading as science. Shame on her.

Posted via email from Garth's posterous

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