Mann's Hockey Stick: on life support in Australia
UPDATE 2: Thanks to Baldrick in the comments for this. Joelle Gergis is, guess what, a climate activist. Her blog is here, and although it hasn’t been updated for some time, a five minute glance found the following, which praises the election of Rudd in 2007, gleefully celebrates the end of Howard, and looks forward to “action on climate change”:
“After 12 long years, we have a progressive prime minister who will ratify the Kyoto protocol, prioritise a rehaul of the education system and have the humility to say sorry to the indigenous people of our country.
This hilarious article by The Age columnist Catherine Deveny sums up how many of us felt about the end of the Howard era. Tracee Hutchison’s piece celebrating the rise of women in politics is also great.
As a climate scientist, I am hopeful that we will finally see real action on climate change.”
Are these the words of an impartial scientist? Which comes first, being a climate activist or a climate scientist? How can we rely on papers written by climate activists?
UPDATE: The paper claims that the MWP was 0.09°C below 1961-1990 levels. That’s 9 HUNDREDTHS of a degree , with a margin of error of over twice that (±0.19°C). The abstract goes on to cite the usual, “we dunno, so it must be us” reason for the recent late 20th century warming:
“The unusual 20th century warming cannot be explained by natural variability alone, suggesting a strong influence of anthropogenic forcing in the Australasian region.”
Full abstract here (paper behind paywall).
More warmism leading up to IPCC AR5:
For the first time scientists have provided the most complete climate record of the last millennium and they found that the last 50 years in Australia have been the warmest.
The researchers from Melbourne University used 27 different natural indicators like tree rings and ice cores to come to their conclusion, which will be a part of the next United Nations intergovernmental panel on climate change report.
The findings show that no other period in the last 1,000 years matches the temperature rises Australia and the region has experienced in the last 50 years.
Report co-author Joelle Gergis says the findings are significant.
“It does show that the post-1950 warming is unusual in the Australasian region,” she said.
27 different proxies? Sounds worryingly like a re-run of the Hockey Stick to me.
But at least we have finally got rid of the Medieval Warm Period! Would you expect anything less from our own David Karoly, committed believer, and one of the authors?
All lovingly reported by the ABC (Alarmist Broadcasting Corporation).
Expect much, much more of the same.
Australian Climate Madness 
I see from the photo on the linked page how those high temperatures are creating a problem for people. 😉
It’s fantastic how scientists splice inherently low-pass filtered proxy data onto direct temperature records, suspiciously starting from 1910, evidently because we didn’t have thermometers in Australia before 1910.
Transcript: http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2012/s3504586.htm
Have to comment that I detest the term billion as in both time and finance, as it tends to seriously discredit its actual quantitative amount .
Seems scientists coming up with a sample period of 50 years in a total of 1,000 years of evidence believe that the ‘roll off the tongue” 4.54 billion years age of the earth is no where near 4,540,000,000 years.
BTW … Could some one please tell me where we can extract ice cores in Australia?
Yes when I have my tea leaves read I try to get a least 27 readings I find that way the the result is so much more accurate. 🙂
I can think of about four proxies they may use so what are the other 23.?
By the look of the chart, it appears they are comparing proxy data (coloured lines) to surface temperature data, i.e., apples and oranges. Remove the surface temperature data and the chart looks unremarkable.
[REPLY – My bad – chart is Mann’s stick – have now clarified – don’t have any figures from the new paper yet]
Richard, I dared not ask where the ice cores have been extracted. The abstract starts:
“This study presents the first multi-proxy warm season (September-February) temperature reconstruction for the combined land and oceanic region of Australasia (0°S-50°S, 110°E-180°E)”
So there couldn’t have been ice cores. The transcript from the ABC reveals that the ABC host (Eastley) said “ice cores” and the reporter (Carney) said “coral cores”. Let’s ignore Eastley’s “mis-speak”.
The abstract concludes: “The unusual 20th century warming cannot be explained by natural variability alone, suggesting a strong influence of anthropogenic forcing in the Australasian region”
Which no doubt fulfills the purpose of the study; the guarantee of further funding.
Why in the world would an abstract concluding with anthropomorphic forcing guarantee further funding?
Joelle Gergis said here in June 2007 …
“As CO2 concentrations, global temperatures and sea level rise are all near or above the high end of the “worst case scenarios” projected by the United Nations IPCC, timing is crucial for both for the planet and business opportunities.
There is no time to waste.”
The only significance in the new report is that Gergis is not only consistently wrong, but consistently alarmist!
You see in Orwell’s 1984 there was no concept of the Internet. You could just send the offending piece of paper down the memory hole… Try as they may they just can’t seem to cover their tracks…
Saw this on the ABC news today.Of course the warmist programmed news reader did not ask Joelle how accurate the proxy data is. My bet is……not very. I mean how can any proxy eg piece of coral ,tree ring,or dinosaur turd really tell us what the exact temperature was thousanads of years ago.It will no doubt be up to statisticians and mathematicians not signed up to the cause to debunk this rubbish same as they dismantled tricky Michael Manns hockey stick.
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