I estimate the Bureau have about 200,000 parallel temperature records. These are handwritten records of temperatures measured at the same place and the same time from a traditional mercury thermometer and the newer resistance probes. I have been very critical of the Bureau for not making this data public, so we can see the extent to which the measurements match. The A8 reports (with both measurements) were the focus of a Freedom of Information request by John Abbot, in which the Bureau initially claimed the reports did not exist, to eventually releasing 1,094 with Brisbane Airport data, representing just three years of the 15 years of data that the Bureau holds for this site. And that was only after Abbot took the Bureau to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

Noble cause corruption is a term invented by the police to justify fitting up people they believe to be guilty, but for whom they can’t muster forensic evidence that would satisfy a jury. It is a crime, but it is very difficult to get a conviction when the person on trial is a police officer.

It is like this with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. They have several methods that falsely suggest catastrophic global warming, but no one seems to want to undertake any sort of investigation.

It is not as though this is without consequence, given the high level of public interest in record temperatures as well as the significant financial stakes involved.

Contrast this with the fisherman who was recently convicted of stuffing fish with lead weights to win thousands of dollars in a fishing tournament. He was arrested by the police, convicted, lost his license and his boat worth US$100,000. He may go to jail.

A week ago, The Guardian reported on the fake experiment by Greg Ayers and Jane Warne published in Journal of Southern Hemisphere Earth Systems Science – except Readfearn didn’t call it fake.

Graham Readfearn writing in The Guardian claimed it as a direct comparison between the Bureau’s method for recording daily maximum temperatures and the method recommended by the World Meteorological Organisation. But the values listed in Table 1 as the maximum temperature for Darwin are not the same values the Bureau has recorded for Darwin.

I call the experiment fake because it is an imitation. It confounds datasets – if not deliberately then, why? I have previously written to Jane Warne about this, but she does not reply.

Instead of listing the highest of the one-second readings taken each day, in Table 1, Ayer and Warner have fudged, and listed the highest of the last one-second spot readings for each minute for that day. The difference is significant, in the case of 6th April 2018 at Darwin – their first listed measurement – is out by a whole one degree Celsius!

In fact, it rather makes my point, that the Bureau’s custom-designed resistant probes are all over the shop.

This is one way of describing the three years of recordings from the probes compared to the mercury for Brisbane Airport. My analysis of the limited data that Abbot was able to secure for Brisbane Airport shows the probe read higher than the mercury 41% of the time, and sometimes by up to 0.7 degrees Celsius. The difference is statistically significant and not randomly distributed. It will produce more record hot days for the same weather.

That the Ayers and Warne paper claims to represent the Bureau’s method but does not is a point of fact easily checked.

Compare the very first value listed as the maximum temperature for Darwin, for the 6th April 2018 in the Bureau’s ADAM data base (click here), with the value listed in Ayer and Warner (click here).

This difference illustrates the point that I have been making for some years: by taking the highest spot reading, and not averaging, the Bureau is over estimating maximum temperatures and by some significant amount. In this case one whole degree Celsius.

This, combined with setting a cold limit, something that I have also written about (click here), means that university researchers relying on Bureau data have been able to falsely claim that ‘record hot days are now 12 times more likely in Australia than days of record-breaking cold’. So wrote Peter Hannam from the Sydney Morning Herald quoting Sophie Lewis and Andrew King from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science. This fits the human-caused global warming narrative that is a reliable source of funding for academics, catastrophe stories for mainstream media, and government subsidies that prop-up renewable energy industries.

It is an absolute travesty.

Instead of journalists Graham Readfearn from the Guardian accusing me of harassment and more recently Kate Tran from the AFP undertaking a very fake ‘fact check’, someone should actually check my facts. My facts are the only ones that will withstand scrutiny.

In particular, Ayers and Warner can not compare the last second in each minute with the readings from the mercury thermometer and claim their analysis to be a test of the Bureau’s method, because the Bureau log the highest one-second reading in each minute as the daily maximum. The much cited Ayers and Warner peer-reviewed study is classic ‘bait and switch’.

To understand more about how science and public policy have been corrupted by the noble cause of environmentalism, consider reading an important book by Ansley Kellow published in 2007 by Edward Elgar, click here.

I will continue this story as part of a series I’m calling ‘Jokers, Off-Topic Reviews and Drinking from the Alcohol Thermometer’. I have it as Part 5. To read some of what went before:

The Guardian, Temperatures, Misinformation (Part 1) – sets up the query and anticipation.

The Guardian, Temperatures, Misinformation (Part 1)

The Coronation & The Guardian, Temperatures, Misinformation (Part 2) – more information in an expanded context that is global.

The Coronation & The Guardian, Temperatures, Misinformation (Part 2)

Jokers, and Temperature as Radio Chatter, Part 3 – airports in focus.

Jokers, and Temperature as Radio Chatter

Joker, Killing Dissent While Calling it Debate, Part 4 – politics in focus.

Jokers, Killing Dissent – While calling it Debate

And before I got to this fake comparison, my good friend Ken Stewart posted something very relevant here: Who’s Laughing Now – malfeasance by omission.
Who’s Laughing Now?

From Polar Bear Science

Susan Crockford

A short account of polar explorer Roald Amundsen’s failed attempt to tame a polar bear cub he had bought in May 1920 from a trader in the Russian Far East appears today in the Barents Observer. The cub was likely captured after its mother was killed, which was a common practice at a time when polar bears were being slaughtered wholesale throughout the Arctic (Crockford 2019; Honderich 1991; Stirling 2011).

It only took a month for Amundsen to give up his experiment. Below are some excerpts; read the full account here. More photos are here.

One day, during Roald Amundsen’s voyage through the Northeast Passage, Georg Kibisow from the Russian Trading Company came aboard Amundsen’s ship, the Maud. He brought along a polar bear cub that he had caught near Kolyma. He offered the cub to Amundsen, who bought it.

Roald Amundsen named the polar bear cub Marie. He gave her a lot of attention in the hope of taming her so she could pull a sledge. Marie features a lot in Amundsen’s expedition diary and he followed her development closely. Here is a sample of what Amundsen wrote:

It’s not easy to make friends with Marie, but it might work. I carry her now, whenever I want, but I have to make sure I hold onto her head so she can’t bite me. She is constantly fighting with the dogs. This little critter has no fear.[and later]

I chloroformed Marie to death this morning. I had to abandon any hopes of training her. After grooming and feeding her for a month, this morning, when I brought her milk, she came at me in a ferocious rage. In the hands of an experienced trainer she might have become a bit friendlier, but I had to give up.

Context

Below is a map of the Kolyma district in the Russian Far East, which is essentially the drainage of the Kolyma River. The Kolyma River ends in a broad delta that empties into the East Siberian Sea, near the boundary with the Chukchi Sea. Winters in this region are extremely cold and is where most Arctic sea ice forms (Crockford 2022).

A fuller account of his Northeast Passage voyage is here, with more photos, including this one of Marie the polar bear cub in May 1920, and with one of the dog teams in October 1919:

References

Crockford, S.J. 2019. The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened. Global Warming Policy Foundation, London.

Crockford, S.J. 2022. Polar bear fossil and archaeological records from the Pleistocene and Holocene in relation to sea ice extent and open water polynyas. Open Quaternary 8(7):1–26.  https://doi.org.10.5334/oq.107

Honderich, J.E. 1991. Wildlife as a hazardous resource: an analysis of the historical interaction of humans and polar bears in the Canadian arctic. MA thesis, University of Waterloo, Ontario.

Stirling, I. 2011. Polar Bears: The Natural History of a Threatened Species. Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Markham, Ontario.

By Jo Nova

In terms of civilization, Niall Ferguson is speaking simple maths. The arithmetic of resources.

Niall Ferguson:

“For an enormous island that is thinly populated, with enormous resources — for such an island to be ill-defended seems like the most spectacular folly…

Empires, at some level, are about acquiring commodities at below market prices, or at least not trusting to the market to supply you — not to be at the mercy of the market, or the mercy of a navy, the US Navy, which China currently is. 

To have security China cannot be dependent on imported commodities and market prices, when you think about what that implies for Australia, its really quite scary…

Australia is a prize…

“If you want Peace, prepare for War.

If you want War, act like it will never come. Allow your defense capability to atrophy.”

The lucky country needs to prepare

The rulers of China would be irrational not to want more land to feed people, and control of more resources. Australia has  the largest known uranium reserves in the world, the 2nd largest cobalt, lithium, tungsten, vanadium resources. It is in the top five for world economic resources of black coal, brown coal, copper, ilmenite, magnesite, manganese ore, silver, tin.

Australia has 0.3% of global population but is currently producing 27% of global bauxite, 36% of the world’s iron ore, and 53% of it’s total lithium. It is often the largest exporter of coal and sometimes the largest exporter of LNG.

–source: Geoscience Australia

 Australians assume that the US will be there, but it has its own battles.

h/t David E