15-Year-Old Outsmarts U.N. Climate Panel, Predicts End of Australia's Drought

Wow. Restores my faith in the next generation. This kid has substance.

We'll give her the "Gal from Snowy River Award".

A fair dinkum prediction.

AGW takes a holiday.

Any 15 year old can figure out the globe is warmed by... the sun.

It takes years, and years of expensive university drinking binges to see thing "our way" :)

Too bad- I still like to believe that there are TOO MANY PEOPLE, (and of course- the Gliberals and jesuswierdos should be the first to be..........eliminated?)

Yeah, she*s a gem.

Major city mayors are doing things concrete to make a clear air difference in places like Mexico city and New york .. ..

** I had the good fortune earlier this month to share the podium in Mexico City with Mayor Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon when he committed his city (the third most populated one on the planet) to a major initiative of battery EV use by the municipal government. The program will shortly expand to taxi cabs and the hybridization of transit buses.

The following week in New York, Mayor Ebrard joined peers from the 40 largest cities in the world to discuss their efforts to reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg used that occasion to announce his city's plans to convert the entire 13,000 vehicle fleet of yellow cabs to hybrid vehicles over the next five years.
Brian Wynne
President
ElectricDrive.org
================EDTA

Looks like progress to me. = TG

you've become absolutely pathetic.

Wow, who would have thought that someone without even high school science could debunk AGW. "Look the emperor has no clothes!"

Who would like to discuss her science?

Regards

*****Who would like to discuss her science?****

It's probably several levels above Gorebullwarming's

"Kristen Minimum- 1880-1910 A.D. This was the last cooling period of the Little Ice Age, or the first cooling period period of the modern max. There really is not a name for this cooling period but I needed a reference (and hope it catches on)."

Hey - works for me. Hey Jeff, you've been pwned by a 15 year old girl. :)

Discuss her science?

Good question. I would say that actually she hasn't done science here. She has taken publically available information about what was and is and pointed out what the expectations are for that data. Austrailia experienced drought during El Nino, as expected, and should now experience normal rain during a period of La Nina.

What she did was research readily available information that should have been accessed by the media and brought to us by them. Nice to know there are students who can't be brainwashed by Gore.

Good work on her part for putting together such a work. She has clearly done quite a bit of research and pieced together a rather lengthy paper for a 15 year old, but unfortunately she took on much too large a spectrum of information and ignored many important facts making her paper heavily flawed. What this young lady has accomplished is a rather large compilation of incorrect facts in her attempt to make a case.

Though I myself may have phrased it a bit differently, I do like what she said here-

"Regardless of the outcome of this debate, there is common ground that both sides can find that will lead to solutions. I would be the first person that would point to overpopulation as a root cause and yell, “STOP HAVING BABIES!!!” "

Stopping completely, no, fewer babies definitely yes.

Troll alert! Troll alert!

Albatros39a is among us.

Wonderful - must be home schooled.

I have said for some time now that in ten years when the sun finally settles down, you will be hard pressed to find anyone who will own up to being a proponent of GW.

Given a few more people like this young lady, I would like to revise that to 5 years.

There is hope. And it is certainly not being provided by the likes of Suzuki or Gore.

Rather it is in the logic and reason of a well developed and uncorrupted mind like Kristen's.

We still have to deal with the obvious like smog and pollution (which, in reality equates to little more than littering), but with all of the recent processes and restrictions we have come a long way.

You go Girl!

CRB

A kids who has most likly never saw AL GOREs junk science fradulent documentry and dont go to these public schools run by the NEA we need this kid in goverment

Good for the young lady - the paper is well-done and she has put a lot of work into it. I'd give her an A, but mostly for effort. Her oservations are completely skewed by the selection of sources and the absence of those that should be first on the list, like the National Academy of Sciences. That said, she sounds like someone who could actually read through the volumes and volumes of research done on these issues by those scientists that are recognized by their peers as being the leaders in their respective fields (that's how the Academies work in each country) and almost certainly have a ocmpletely different conclusion.

For those of you who won't read the dozens of studies, perhaps start with the presentation to Congress by the President of the NAS in 2005
http://www7.nationalacademies.org/ocga/testimony/Global_Climate_Change_Policy_and_Budget_Review.asp and then perhaps a few of the sources cited.

Or, for Blogging Tories, watch geniuses like Glenn Beck or Erich von Daniken-like tv drivel like the BBC GGW Swindle and remain blissfully and stubbornly ill-informed.

Ah, alby's partial degree is outflanked by a kid with a highschool education. Where did she go wrong, alby? I'm not talking about nuance, interpretation or opinion. Let's see some facts.

(I'm still waiting to see your facts proving that Canadian soliders are brainwashed.)

John Cross: "Who would like to discuss her science?"

What exactly do you want to debate John? ... the folly of real life observation in modern "climate science"?

Would her science be better if she was wrong (like canadian_2 suggests)?

Yukon
"I'm still waiting to see your facts proving that Canadian soliders are brainwashed"

I already explained that to you in length.

"Where did she go wrong, alby?"

Ok I'll give you one example that even you should be able to understand Yukon.
In her paper she points to the cooling period from 1945 to 1975 and makes the claim that this cooling period should never have happened with the solar and greenhouse theories. She seems to be trying to blame the Southern Oscillation, but the graphs she is using to attempt to clarify her points are somewhat of poor quality and this leaves her explanations somewhat vague. However what she is missing is the fact that global temperature drives Southern Oscillation not the other way around. She almost stumbled on the answer to this cooling period when she started talking about atmospheric nuclear test, but these test were only one piece in the puzzle. This particular cooling period did not begin in 1945 as she states, but rather in 1940 which happens to approximately coincide with another global event, the Second World War. So what does that have to do with global cooling, right? The massive industrial complexes of the war powered by coal and the firestorms of cities such as Dresden pumped massive amounts of particulate matter into the atmosphere. Of course the war was followed by the post war industrial boom, also powered by coal, and which gave every family a car in every garage. Inefficient cars without pollution controls. In short with decades of man pumping crap into the air beginning around 1940, the air was simply polluted and was blocking a certain amount of sunlight. Something like the effect that we saw from Mount Pinatubo in 1991. This continued until industry started to convert to natural gas and putting scrubbers on most of the remaining coal powered smoke stacks. It’s a effect that has been termed “Global Dimming”. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_prog_summary.shtml
The irony about Global Dimming is that the pollution we had been putting in the air was been delaying Global Warming, we are trading one evil for another.

"The irony about Global Dimming is that the pollution we had been putting in the air was been delaying Global Warming, we are trading one evil for another."

Alby, as a "scientist", do you not realize how stupid this statement is? And capitalized to boot.

"So what does that have to do with global cooling, right? The massive industrial complexes of the war powered by coal and the firestorms of cities such as Dresden pumped massive amounts of particulate matter into the atmosphere. Of course the war was followed by the post war industrial boom, also powered by coal, and which gave every family a car in every garage. Inefficient cars without pollution controls. In short with decades of man pumping crap into the air beginning around 1940, the air was simply polluted and was blocking a certain amount of sunlight. Something like the effect that we saw from Mount Pinatubo in 1991. This continued until industry started to convert to natural gas and putting scrubbers on most of the remaining coal powered smoke stacks. It’s a effect that has been termed “Global Dimming”."

This, of course is nothing but speculative drivel. There is no substantive science to back this up. As a scientist actively engaged in environmental studies in the period you are referencing there was never any supportable consensus in the scientific community that such effects were in fact happening. Be careful with any environmental science produced during the '60s and '70s - it is fraught with hyperbole and often weakly supported. The green revolution of that era was as loaded with political nonsense as the global warming hysteria is today. The only substantive issue in atmospheric science that came out of that time was acid rain.

More importantly the items Alby mentioned pumped large amounts of CO2 in the air....just like Pinatubo did.....shouldnt there have been big warming trends started?

ANyway, particulate causing cooling....I think that makes some sense at a conceptual level the CO2 really doesnt have a lot of support. The amount of energy from the sun is the point that matters.

As for what drives ENSO....I believe the theories run from temperature (of course what drives that) to other effects like solar wind, which is related to sun spot cycles which of course may drive temperature.

This 15 year old did a good literature review and more work in this area than likely anyone on this board. She probably can disuss more theories in more detail than even Dr Suzuki.

What's 'bugging' jeff?
The truth hurts?

"15-Year-Old Outsmarts U.N. Climate Panel, Predicts End of Australia's Drought"

I guess that means the Pommy buggers selling Oz wine at Euro prices under the excuse of grape crop drought will have to find a new way to gouge wine drinkers.

I still haven't seen any good explanation on the climate models being accepted as gospel, when everyone knows (or **should** know) they aren't worth the paper they're written on. (apologies to Yogi Berra)

The things I'm talking about are:
a) truncation errors in the calculations due to finite-difference approximations to partial derivatives, and
b) errors due to parameterizations of things that cannot be resolved in climate models to begin with (you know, the "subgrid-scale" stuff that actually makes a difference once its tiny impact is amplified in the real atmosphere and climate)

Until these things are properly addressed, I cannot, in good conscience, agree with anyone saying "the science is settled" or, like the oh-so-classy buggy jeff, "absolutely pathetic".

Every source I can locate says there are several reasons for the Southern Oscillation, and several theories on each. Alby is being deceitful calling global temps as the sole reason for ENSO. Yet again.

Ural: You said What exactly do you want to debate John?

Well, how about the following for a start.

In it she references “A 2003 study by Soon and Baliunas” but of course she makes no mention that this study was so flawed that the journal that published it had to issue a retraction. If you wish we could get into more details on it.

She also reference the “Friis-Christensen and Lassen, 1991).” Study. But she neglects to mention that the data has since been corrected by the authors and it now does not show the trend she claims.

She calims that the “average of water vapor content in the atmosphere is usually about 3%.” This is of course ludicrous and she means that this is at the surface. She also claims that There are also thousands of water molecules for every CO2 molecule. Lets put this one to the test shall we. Current CO2 concentration is 380 ppm, 1000 times this is 380,000 ppm. Anyone care to defend that number?

She shows a poor understanding of saturation in GHG.

She claims “What bothers me is that the IPCC completely ignores the scientific understanding, studies and experiments related to the effect of galactic cosmic rays on cloud cover” where in fact, in the IPCC AR4 in chapter 2 alone, cosmic ray was mentioned 33 times.

Here is an example: When solar activity is high, the more complex magnetic configuration of the heliosphere reduces the flux of galactic
cosmic rays in the Earth’s atmosphere. Various scenarios have been proposed whereby solar-induced galactic cosmic ray fluctuations might influence climate (as surveyed by Gray et
al., 2005). Now, who thinks that the IPCC totally ignore the scientific understanding, studies and experiments on galactic cosmic rays.

Anyway, that gives you an idea. However I must add a note. While my comments are true I too must congratulate her on a very good piece of research for a high school student. While she does not understand saturation, I would not expect anyone with less that a couple of years of physics or chemistry to really understand it so she makes a good attempt. I sincerely hope she received an excellent mark. If I was grading it I would only fault her conclusions since what she presented did not appear to backup her conclusion.

Anyway, let those who thought this a definitive piece of work present some defense.

Regards,
John

"Every source I can locate says there are several reasons for the Southern Oscillation, and several theories on each. Alby is being deceitful calling global temps as the sole reason for ENSO."

Yukon it's Met 101, heat energy is the driving force of all weather.

John Cross, thank you again. I doubt anyone considers this piece a definitive scientific work, in this whither, does it matter, manmade warming reality. Let's get off carbon fuels, OK, we can all agree on that; that's a much better "go from here" approach than, say, Kyoto.

I do, however, get dismayed at some of the "facts" around the issue; I wouldn't care normally, but Gore et al are using them to scare people, like 8 inch rise in sea level become 20 feet in Inconvenient Truth. Or a glossy flyer, for kids, called "Cool Planet" saying worldwide temperatures now at 11,000 year high. I mean c'mon, where did that come from?

I do suspect some of the scientific rigour has not been applied to proponents of AGW, given the clearly discredited Mann hockey stick creeping into "Cool Planet," plus the oil shill shrill that is getting really tiresome. Either way, IMHO, AGW neither proven nor disproven; and who really cares, anyway.

Luckily "cooler" heads will prevail in the end, with the great benefits of getting off carbon fuels accruing, like great enviro payoffs and yes, CO2 reduced, and less hard cash for ME kleptotyrants to export their despotism.

It is possible that the scientists who are looking in all the wrong places are standing on evidence that proves that global warming is not new, is not extreme and is in fact cyclical. The grass that grows wild in this area, Melbourne,Australia tells one all they need to know about global warming.

We recently moved to Australia from Canada and as the drought persisted and the fields, paddocks as they call them here, dried up and cracked I began to despair for the green fields of home. It got so bad they had to cancel local footy leagues – a sacred late summer and fall ritual that takes place in parts of Australia. This would be the equivalent of cancelling all amateur hockey in Canada.

Everything was dry, yellow, dead and the earth was cracked with dust blowing everywhere. None of the fields were watered they were left to perish, or so I thought. Then came the revelation. After some light showers and some heavier rain the grass sprouted and everything turned green and lush. The grass was poking up through the cracked and broken earth. The unwatered golf courses, lawns, boulevards and playing fields all came back green, lush abundant.

It turns out the grass has adapted to the climate. The roots of native grasses can go down as far as one meter to find enough moisture to stay alive through the drought cycles so they can rise again when the rain comes. The native trees do the same. Some die but most live to burst into leaf and flower. I assume nature culls out the weak and sickly this way leaving only the strong to survive.

It strikes me that this cycle has been repeated for thousands of years as the grass and trees have geared themselves for the natural cycles that occur here. I suppose one does not get research grants to look at grass, this is far to simple.

Shamrock: From what some of the previous posters said, this project received more credit than it deserved. However I confess that looking at "skeptic" sites is a hobby of mine so perhaps I went overboard.

You are correct in that we do need to get off fossil fuels. I try to support this in my actions (as I suspect you do). And I would gladly support a strong plan to get off fossil fuels over Kyoto any day. However I still think that it will be important to know all the reasons for getting off fossil fuel.

I also thank you for bringing up another (somewhat minor) point that I will comment on. While I have not seen Mr. Gore's movie I understand that he did not place a timeframe on the 20 foot prediction. I do think that a 20 foot rise is possible (maybe even probably) but not until my great great grandchildren are long dead. The IPCC prediction was for a specific timeframe (current is about 78 cm by 2100 which my grandchildren may see).

Regards,
John

"You are correct in that we do need to get off fossil fuels. I try to support this in my actions (as I suspect you do). And I would gladly support a strong plan to get off fossil fuels over Kyoto any day. However I still think that it will be important to know all the reasons for getting off fossil fuel."

Sure we get off fossil fuels but without Kyoto the developing world doesn't. How does that help the planet and in the end, us?

Geez, dumber than a .... Hey, Alby, we will not be off of carbon fuels in your lifetime, and, be powered by what?

The best way to cut down on fossil fuel use, prevent wastage, is to let the free market determine the price which is set by supply and demand. It seems to be happening now. Higher gas prices, smaller cars, less driving. And, that will be a good thing for when the increasingly affluent Chinese/Indians in the "developing world" decide to buy family cars and take plane trips in the millions. So, what was all of the Kyoto transfer of wealth about? Saving what? And for whom?

China is building nuclear plants. A good thing. It's because coal and oil are an expensive imports for them. China could give a damn about saving the planet. It is naive to think that altruism and Kyoto are motivating the developing world when the fact is they are facing higher fuel costs and want the west to offset it for them via Kyoto.

John,

A lot of years ago (global cooling was the happening) I was a benchmark guy. Back then computers started a million dollars. My job was to tune code and the system to get maximum performance on the benchmarks.

I got code that written on IBM (360 maybe ... I forget this was 30+ years ago) ... it converged on x iterations ... and I tested it on an IBM, sure enough it converged on the "correct" iteration.

I then tried it on a CDC Cyber (either 72 or 172 .. can't remember) ... I worked for CDC. The IBM had a single precision of 32 bits - double of 64, the CDC had a single of 60 bits and double of 120 ... can't remember the size in bits of the exponent or mantissa between the machines.

I knew what my target was (the alleged correct iteration) ... I couldn't get it ... it never converged ... either under (single precision) or over (double) ... in either case the results diverged. This was well in advance in my job to optimize the code ... how do you optimize something that doesn't work.

When we submitted our results (pre-benchmark) to the organization they withdrew the code in the benchmark.

If you don't know, this is a matter of precision in a recursive model (read feedback). As far as I know actual observations do not suffer feedback ... correct me if I am wrong.

She will never get a call from NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC or TIME their pushers of lies junk science and fruad as well as the rest of the lie day liberal left-wing news media

albatros39a: I was assuming (maybe naively) that the “us” was mankind in general. Getting us (as in North Americans) off fossil fuels would be a good step but you are correct that it would not do it in the longterm.

Ural: You don’t seem to be responding to anything I wrote so I assume that it is just a general comment against global circulation models. In fact I tend to agree with you that computer models are somewhat unreliable. For example I have done a great deal of work in fluid mechanics and we use models there. But even the most sophisticated fluid flow model can not predict where an element of fluid will end up after going through a pipe (and this is laminar flow, let along chaotic). However if you are careful about what you use the models do provide useful results. One thing that is not highlighted enough is that the current models are now predicting things that are counter to what we think and it turns out that the models are correct. To me this in an indication of the fact that they are becoming reliable. However, the main point in their favour is the fact that we have nothing else. Computer models are the best tool we have for looking at this.

spurwing plover: I posted several significant criticisms of her work. Do you not think these are sufficient to cast doubt on it? If not, why not?

Regards,
John

I would like to thank John Cross for an excellent critique. Ponder the Maunder was published before the release of the AR4 and that part is in need of updating.

The graph from Fris-Christianson will be replaced with Solanky and the proper description added.

That there are thousands of water vapor molecules per CO2 molecule is an obvious math error and will be corrected.

As for the other comments, ie: global dimming. I do not agree. In my view that is a way to fix the anomaly to GH warming theory and since the ENSO follows this period very well, I have to take observation over unsupported hypothesis. I am looking at my printout of NOAA land and ocean temps and the cooling starts in 1944.

As for the comment about ENSO following heat, that is completely incorrect. If you download monthly temps and ENSO at NOAA as I have since done, you will find that temps changes lag ENSO by several months. This should be obvious because as the warm (or cool) surface water spreads across the equatorial pacific, different amounts of heat are taken up by the atmosphere and moved twards the poles by atmospheric circulation.

Once again, thanks for the comments and keep them coming.

Kristen

Sorry albatross, I've only downloaded global temps.

"You are thinking locally not globally."

She was talking about the result of ENSO, you are talking about cause.

Initially I thought this would garner a faiing grade, as it doesn't fall in line with the Gore-tastrophy currently being predicted. Unfortunately, she threw in the requisite talking points (racial bias, running out of fossil fuels, stop having babies) to avoid being seen as a total nonbeliever.

Well written, otherwise.

Daggney Taggart,

It is pretty insulting to claim that you know anything about me and falsley claim that anything I wrote involved the subject of racial bias.
It is also insulting that you attempt to claim a motive for my including the need to curb overpopulation or converting from fossil fuels before they run out.

Kristen,

You should not allow people like Dagney Taggart bother you. You demonstrated a good deal of class coming onto this forum and accepting constructive criticism and offering a willingness to change errors that were pointed out to you while at the same time standing by what you think is correct. That is what science is about.