THE LAST DANCE: Miners sacked for doing Harlem Shake

THIRTY seconds of fun has cost up to 15 miners their jobs. Their red-eye performance of the viral dance grabbed attention - for all the wrong reasons.

 

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/#ixzz2MWcp72Sp

 

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As the article above is the LEADING crap (sorry I will use the word crap as I wish) news in the merde-och online media, at least the Sydney Morning Herald, though not having a headline to it per say, had the decency to discuss the news of THE ANGRY SUMMER. I searched the merde-och online stable and could not find a peep...

 

A few years ago, talking about weather and climate change in the same breath was a cardinal sin for scientists.

Now it's become impossible to have a conversation about the weather without discussing wider climate trends, according to researchers who prepared the Australian Climate Commission's latest report. The report, The Angry Summer, says that behind the litany of heat and rainfall records, a clear pattern has emerged.

''Statistically, there is a one in 500 chance that we are talking about natural variation causing all these new records,'' said Will Steffen, the report's lead author and director of the Australian National University's climate change institute. ''Not too many people would want to put their life savings on a 500-to-1 horse.''

The statistic comes from tallying known weather records from around the world, and measuring the likelihood of record-breaking extremes happening without the influence of extra energy accumulating on Earth due to the build-up of greenhouse gases.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/trends-create-angry-summer-20130303-2fefl.html#ixzz2MWdhXFOd

 

 

Australian climate is on steroids: expert

• From:
• AAP March 04, 2013 11:15AM

AUSTRALIA can expect more record heat over the next decade as a result of a "climate on steroids", the climate commission warns.

Speaking at the release of a new report by the commission, climate scientist Will Steffen says Australians are likely to experience even hotter temperatures over the next 10 years.

"There is little doubt that these events will continue to become worse, the hottest temperature will become hotter, of longer duration and more frequent," said Professor Steffen, who authored the report.

"This is virtually certain because of the extra heat that is in the atmosphere ... We have a climate on steroids."

The report "Angry Summer" argues the extreme weather of 2012/13 was climate change in action and more unusual events are on the way.

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/national/summer-was-hottest-ever-report/story-e6frfku9-1226589614861

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This article, from AAP (not yet digested by the "environmental reporter at the merde'och press, Graham Lloyd — I believe it has given him a tad of indigestion) can be read as the tenth of the hard to find "breaking news" list.... My apologies for doubting that the merde'och press would send such IMPORTANT NEWS  to page 44...

It has not made the "best read list" yet... Who knows.

Now wait for the denialists to come out "en mass" to poopoo the report as biased, wrong and say with certifiable certainty that the climate was hotter in the time of Jesus, as Abbott Detritus annouced once, without lying.

Meanwhile I have seen picture of Abbott-Detritus-Rimmer collecting DETRITUS as part of his good deed for the Clean Up Australia day. He forgot to place himself in a shaff bag... Remember Abbott-Rimmer is the crappy commander of "Red Dwarf", the garbage ship lost in space for 3 million years...

 

 

Top five wettest years in the UK
1. 2000 – 1337.3mm
2. 2012 – 1330.7mm
3. 1954 – 1309.1 mm
4. 2008 – 1295.0mm
5. 2002 – 1283.7mm

Dozen warmest years on "global" record:
1. 2005 
2. 2010 
3. 1998 
4. 2003 
5. 2002 
6. 2006 
7. 2009 
8. 2007 
9. 2004 
10. 2001
11. 2011
12. 2008

 

Note: 2012 displaced one of these.

 

 

Here we are again in the sewer that Andrew Bolt thinks is news...

Flannery denies what he actually said

Andrew Bolt
MARCH 05 2013  (10:16am)

I didn’t see Tim Flannery being questioned by Karl Sefanovic on the Today show this morning, but many readers say he denied saying our dams would never again fill.

Reader Carolyn:

Just listened to Flannery on the Today Show. He says he was misquoted and did not say the “dams will never fill”. He now states he said “MAY never fill”. Karl Stefanovic questioned him on it at the end of the segment and he “confirmed” he was misquoted! Such gall.

This morning on the channel 9 Today Show Flannery claimed he did not say that dams would not fill, despite his exact word being quoted to him.

Let’s check whether Flannery was indeed misquoted and whether he said the dams “may” not fill again.

Here is Tim Flannery on Landline in 2007: 

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: We’re already seeing the initial impacts and they include a decline in the winter rainfall zone across southern Australia, which is clearly an impact of climate change, but also a decrease in run-off. Although we’re getting say a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas of Australia, that’s translating to a 60 per cent decrease in the run-off into the dams and rivers. That’s because the soil is warmer because of global warming and the plants are under more stress and therefore using more moisture. So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems, and that’s a real worry for the people in the bush. If that trend continues then I think we’re going to have serious problems, particularly for irrigation.

 

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/

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Well, one has to say that Flannery may not have expressed himself with the greatest of precision... Actually he was too precise... But the spirit of what he said still stands, stronger than ever...

 

One can argue that the Warragamba Dam  or the Wivenhoe Dam are filled to the brim and flooding beyond, but one has to ask of the poor bastards say in Yass or other places, west of the Great Divide where a lot of the farming is done, have seen dryness like a full blown drought with record temperatures to boot... I know. I speak with landowners, daily, there.

 

Anyway... Now that the records speak for the afirmative of global warming, all that is left to do to Andrew Bolt is to shoot the messenger... Well Andrew, wake up. It won't make a hoot of difference... The earth will still be warming whether Tim is right or relatively right as to where the dams won't be filling up...

 

UK must adapt for weather extremes, says Environment Agency
Some river levels fluctuated between their highest and lowest levels within the space of four month.
Britain must become more resilient to both drought and flooding, Environment Agency chairman Chris Smith has said.

New figures from the agency show that one in every five days saw flooding in 2012, but one in four days saw drought.

Rivers such as the Tyne, Ouse and Tone fell to their lowest and rose to their highest flows since records began, within a four-month period of the year.

Lord Smith said urgent action was vital to help "prepare and adapt" many aspects of Britain for such extremes.

Meteorologists fear that extremes of weather may increase as global temperatures slowly rise.

Met Office analysis has suggested that the UK could experience a severe short-term drought, similar to the drought experienced in 1976, once a decade

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21651067

 

 

From Ross Gittins
...
Terrible, eh? There's just one small problem. This stuff is so misleading as to be quite dishonest.

For a start, this is just politically inspired figuring, which doesn't deserve the aura of authority the government has sought to give it by having it released by the Treasurer with a reference to ''new analysis of Bureau of Statistics data'' and allowing the media to refer to it as ''modelling''.

It's true you'd have to look up the bureau's census figures to get the details of the median family in a particular suburb, but after that the ''modelling'' could be done on the back of an envelope.

There's a key omission from Labor's description of its wonderfully generous household assistance package: why it was necessary. Its purpose was to compensate low and middle-income families for the cost of the carbon tax. Since the Coalition promises to abolish the carbon tax, Abbott has said that all the compensation for the tax will also go. (Strictly speaking, the schoolkids' bonus is linked to the mining tax, but the Coalition is also promising to abolish this tax, and Abbott has said the bonus, too, will go.)

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/lies-damned-lies-and-labor-claims-20130305-2fivr.html#ixzz2MifCpOVw
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Yes yes Ross... But you have forgotten one MAJOR ingredient in the equation. TONY DISMANTLING OF THE CARBON TAX  and its replacement with NOTHING or something that is uncosted, would favour polluters and would be as effective as blowing smoke into the wind...

This would be irresponsible. Tony is Irresponsible...

Please oh please see all my work on global warming including what is global warming for a refresher. What is often left untold is that Insurance is going through the roof in part due to global warming.
The damage done by global warming will be increasing and someone will have to pay the bills: usually "families" through traumatic events, such as flooding and bushfires and more bills like insurance premiums...Eventually we would be paying far more under s stupid Abbott-Hockey budget "saving"...

And global warming is not going to improve in the future... This election is poised into the rubbish from Abbott-Hockey versus the average improvement in a reasonable economy with Labor, despite some people not liking Julia, as the general media as done everything to drag her through the mud...

 

 

Most of south-eastern Australia is in the midst of unusually warm weather, prompting meteorologists to wonder what's happened to autumn.

While Sydney has missed out on the heat scorching South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria, the city is mid-way through what forecasters expect will be 14 consecutive days of 25 degrees or warmer weather - the third-longest on record for March.
“Sydney’s been experiencing a long spell without a significant cool change just like everywhere else,” Brett Dutschke, senior meteorologist at Weatherzone, said.
The Harbour City’s maximum temperatures will range between 26 and 30 until Saturday before easing to 24 on Sunday and Monday, according to the weather bureau. Inland towns such as Bourke and Gundagai, though, can expect temperatures to climb well above 30 in coming days.

Dr Dutschke said warmer-than-normal ocean temperatures and a southerly shift in the jetstream meant there has been little sign of autumn for much of southern Australia.

“Where is it?,” Dr Dutschke said. “It's probably a few weeks away yet.”

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/forecasters-wonder-who-stole-autumn-20130312-2fxgw.html#ixzz2NJ8r8dLu

NOTE: Local warming is part of global warming...

 

Birds and animals have their own ways of coping with heatwaves. But as Australia's climate heats up, their coping mechanisms are expected to become less effective.

IN EARLY JANUARY 2010 golfers in Hopetoun, WA ventured out from the cool of the clubhouse to tee off. The day was oppressively hot: 47 deg C; was predicted. Only the keenest golfers were having a hit. But rather than golf-balls on the fairway, the golfers found dead and dying birds scattered.

The Department of Environment recorded the death of several hundred birds, including the devastating loss of 208 endangered Carnaby's black cockatoos (Calyptorhynchus latirostris). At one site, this amounted to 50 per cent of the breeding population.

Birds, like humans, need to keep their body temperatures below lethal limits, and do so by dumping their excess body heat through evaporative cooling. While humans sweat, most species of birds do this by panting, which increases the rates of evaporation across their respiratory system. We've all seen birds standing in the shade on a hot day, their beaks gaping in an attempt to cool down.

http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2013/03/12/3711481.htm

 

The New Zealand Government has announced that the entire North Island is now officially in a state of drought.

Drought has been declared in ever more regions of the North Island over the past four weeks.

The Primary Industries Minister, Nathan Guy, has announced on Friday that the whole of the island is officially drought-stricken, with farmers facing their worst conditions in 30 years.

Parts of the usually rain-soaked South Island are now on drought-watch.

Federated Farmers spokesman Tony Wilding, who runs a farm in the dairy heartland of Waikato on the North Island, says the impact on farmers has been devastating.

"It's as dry as it ever has been since 1942," he said.

"We've got 30 years of records and none of them come close to this."

Mr Wilding says his farm has had only 23 millimetres of rain this year - an eighth of the average rainfall

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-15/an-nz-declares-drought-on-north-island/4575584?section=australianetworknews

more than 30 years (since record keeping started) of course.... time since 1942 tiil now is about 71 years...

 

From the SMH:
SYDNEY MARCH WEATHER RECORDS
Highest Max: 41.2°C in 1983
Lowest Max: 17.3°C in 1945
Average Max: 25.2°C
 Highest Min: 23.4°C in 1956
Lowest Min: 7.4°C in 1967
Average Min: 17.5°C 
Highest Rainfall: 393.0mm in 1975
Highest 24hr Rainfall: 202.0mm in 1975
Average Rainfall: 116.3mm
-------------------------------------------------------------
From Catalyst:

NARRATION
And now I'd like to demonstrate a little game of chance.

Dr Jonica Newby
So the chance of one month being above-average temperature, is one in two. The chance of the next month also being above-average temperature, is one in four. The chance of the next month also being above-average temperature, is one in eight.

NARRATION
So what do you think are the chances of having 330 months in a row of above-average temperatures? Because, since February 1985, we have had... 330 months in a row of above-average temperatures.

Dr Mark Howden
It's really extraordinary. If it was just by random chance alone, then there's only a 1 in 100,000 chance that that would have happened in the absence of human influence.

 

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3633447.htm

 

From Gus: Since this episode of Catalyst, from December to March, new records have tumbled... and now we're in the 335th month in a row ABOVE MONTHLY average temperatures for Australia... The broad temperature shoulders of the day:

 

ON AVERAGE the temperature minimums have been higher 

 

ON AVERAGE the temperature maximums have been higher as well.

 

The time has been corrected for non daylight saving time... The average shift (observed by Gus) of the warmer part of the day towards the afternoon could be attributed to wind coming from the inland and/or sea breezes coming from the north warmed by the eastern southerly current the surface of which has been running at 3 degrees C above average. 

 

 

 

 

A lengthy weather report again affirms global warming

By Editorial Board, Saturday, March 16, 10:58 AM

SCIENTISTS HAVE a good sense of what the Earth’s climate has been like over the past handful of centuries. But what about many thousands of years back?

In a recent article in the journal Science, researchers at Oregon State University and Harvard explained how they used marine fossils to piece togethera rough temperature record going back 11,300 years to the most recent ice age. That record indicates that the Earth warmed as it emerged from the ice age, followed by a long-term cooling trend. The cooling continued until the industrial revolution, when humans began burning fossil fuels in earnest — and pumping heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Then the temperature spiked. With the amount of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere, models suggest, the Earth’s average temperature in 2100 will surpass that detectable in any of the millennia studied.

The most dramatic implication of the study is not the magnitude of the current warming but its extremely rapid pace. The authors note that the Earth has warmed over the past century as much as it cooled over several millennia before that, with no similar spike detectable in the data. That finding would be yet more strong evidence against climate skeptics who cling to the wishful thinking that global warming is an entirely natural phenomenon.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-warming-detailed-in-new-temperature-records/2013/03/15/688d53f4-8846-11e2-999e-5f8e0410cb9d_story.html?hpid=z2

 

Present global warming is 100 per cent anthropogenic...

 

Two wind-driven wildfires erupted in northern Colorado on Friday, prompting the evacuation of about 50 residents and signaling an early start to the wildfire season in the parched Rocky Mountain west.

The larger of the two blazes that prompted the evacuations, the Soldier Canyon Fire, has charred about 800 acres near Lory State Park, Poudre Fire Authority Captain Patrick Love told Reuters.

"We've been experiencing strong, erratic winds from the north all afternoon," Love said.

Along with the winds, unseasonably high temperatures and low humidity have fanned the fire that is burning about 75 miles northwest of Denver, he said.

No structures have been lost and no injuries have been reported, Love said, but the evacuations were ordered in case winds push the flames toward residential neighborhoods.

A second, smaller fire broke out west of the town of LaPorte, six miles north of Fort Collins, the Larimer County Office of Emergency Management said in a statement. Officials had no estimate on its size.

The causes of the fires were under investigation late Friday.

The early-season wildfires could be a bad omen for drought-stricken Colorado, which had one of its worst ever wildfire seasons in 2012.

All of Colorado is experiencing moderate to exceptional drought conditions, according to the US Drought Monitor.

Snowpack levels in the Colorado mountains are below the annual average. The state's high-population urban corridor and farmers on the eastern plains rely on melting mountain snow for drinking water and irrigation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/16/wildfires-colorado-fears-drought-evacuations

 

And in the UK, there is a proposal to "not teach climate change " to children under 14...

 

"It's just hollowed out argument," said John Ashton, the government's climate change envoy until last summer, and a founder of the independent not-for-profit group E3G. "Climate change should have as much prominence as anything in teaching geography in schools."

The shift of any mention of climate change from geography to chemistry "makes me more concerned, not less", said Ashton. "What's important is not so much the chemistry as the impact on the lives of human beings, and the right place for that is geography."

The proposed changes, which are still under consultation by the Department for Education (DfE), were broadly welcomed by other groups, including the Geographical Association which represents more than 6,000 geography teachers, and the Royal Geographical Society.

"In the past, in some instances, young people were going to start on climate change without really knowing about climate," said Rita Gardner, the RGS director, who does, however, want climate change taught at GCSE and A-level. "What we have got [in the new draft] is a much better grounding in geography, and it has the building blocks for a much better understanding of climate change and sustainability."

A DfE spokesman said the idea that climate change was being excised from the national curriculum was nonsense: "All children will learn about climate change. It is specifically mentioned in the science curriculum and both climate and weather feature throughout the geography curriculum."

Supporters of the government's move pointed out that geography teachers could still teach specific issues such as "how human and physical processes interact to have an impact on and form distinctive landscapes".

Other potential lead-ins to climate change include specified teaching about ecosystems, the accumulation of toxic materials in natural life, and the difficulty for some species in adapting to changes in their environment.

A source at the Liberal Democrat-led Department for Energy and Climate Change said they were relaxed about the changes: "There's nothing from the DfE that says climate change is off the agenda or will never be taught. Sensible teachers will look at that as the broadest of signposting."

However, the UK Youth Climate Coalition (UKYCC) said climate change was too important to be left to the whim of individual teachers.

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For a person (Gus) who, before reaching 10 year of age, was well informed about climatic banding from polar to equatorial weather, highs, lows, fronts and specific weather patterns for professional pilots, I find it ludicrous that someone could suggest that kids don't know much about climate thus should not be taught about climate change... 

Teaching climate to kids is as primary a need as teaching them how to wipe one's bum... Even from around 4 years of age, kids can be very aware of seasonal changes as well as the variety in the length of days — shorter in winter, longer in summer with the traditional bonfires for the summer solstice.

Meanwhile the same kids will be fed religious crap from the day they are born...