"And, Arapiles may be glad to hear Victoria just had it's wettest June in 9 years. Hope the folks farm got a good dowsing."

Wettest for 9 years still means not much at all. So, thanks for the thoughts, but no dousing.

And it's not an issue of water use - there just hasn't been anywhere as much rain as what should be falling, or what used to fall.

I blame it on Obama.

i just think it's classic to have Tallblank telling the Australians on the forum that there hasn't been a drought in Australia.

maybe those darn Australians just don't recognize water? i mean, it's the cool, wet stuff in the rivers and behind the dams and in the rivers! c'mon Australians! you know, those drops of wet stuff falling on your heads all the time and running in torrents through the streets? like when you let your pet wallaby out in the yard and it comes back soaking wet? you mean you've been trucking in water and letting your lawns die and taking twice weekly showers for the last eight years or whatever?! and all this time you apparently WERE NOT in a drought.

silly Australians!

Edited by DaveT on 06/30/2010 10:07:52 MDT.

I'm not trying to tell them thay haven't had a drought Dave Thicko. I'm telling them their drought has naff all to do with 'global warming'. Warming produces more precipitation on the long term average not less, as the Bureau of Meteorology data shows.

Not that this has prevented the BOM from lying about their own data.

Arapiles, I'm sorry to hear the increased rainfall hasn't increased enough for your folks farm.

What strikes me about the data is that for southern AUS, although there has been an increase in rainfall over the C20th, which has been a warming century, the rainiest periods have been the cooler ones, the '70's and the 1910's. Things are going to get a lot cooler soon, maybe this will bring more of the much needed rain you remember from your youth.

Climate is complicated, and the demonisation of a single trace gas isn't going to make it easier to understand.

Edited by tallbloke on 06/30/2010 15:20:27 MDT.

It's not misdirection (I think), I simply confuse my silliness with your smugly-self-satisfied insults.

Dave, think of it as a vuvuzela: one note, droning on and on and on and....

Remember, it's not getting warmer it's getting colder. And Al Gore is fat and climatologists are charlatans getting rich on government grants and CO2 is like Brawndo, with the electrolytes that plants crave and anyway, warm is good too... even if it's getting colder.

Continue burning coal as rapidly as possible and by all means, ignore this: http://mxl.fi/bpfeeds/





--Rick

"Not that this has prevented the BOM from lying about their own data."

Geez, Roger, in the course of numerous posts to this, the longest running thread in BPL history, you've cast aspersions on the veracity of just about any and every scientific source that points to human induced global warming, climate change, or whatever you wish to call it, as a factor in the increasingly disruptive global weather patterns we are experiencing.

Two questions for you from someone who frankly admits that they don't have the answers: 1) What do you know that all these scientists who study the subject professionally, some 90% of them if you can believe news reports, don't know? 2) What motive would they all have for "lying" to us?

Nice one Dave T.

You're quite correct to blame us Aussies. We wouldn't know rain if it hit us in the face.

You want some facts? Well I give you the facts.

The other day out on on the Speewa (it's away out in the Outback), they had a few spits of rain.

My brother, who farms out there, told me that the dog, who is 10 years old, had never seen rain in his whole life.

The poor bloody mutt went berserk! What was this strange stuff falling from the sky? In the end, they had to throw a bucket of dust over him just to calm the poor bugger down.

My brother also said that it wasn't just the climate that was getting drier. The little water that was left in the tank was itself getting drier. They now have to use twice as much water just to get the same amount of wetness. When they have a shower the water's so dry that it no longer fogs up the bathroom mirror.

Now they're the facts.
And don't waste your time checking it out with those lying, cheating mongrels at the Bureau of Meteorology. As Rog keeps pointing out to us dumb Aussies, the BoM has a vested interest in keeping it dry. I guess it makes their life easier not to have to colour in all those rainfall maps, and writing zeros in the rainfall columns sure makes adding up easier.

Well, Al being fat is the one assertion in this topic that everyone can agree on. He apparently has other alleged "issues" as well, which I'm pretty sure we'll learn more about in the coming months.

I have to point out that to "continue burning coal as rapidly as possible" is a classic straw man argument. I don't think there are too many people that hold that position. We could all have a serious "adult" discussion about what needs to or can happen to reduce the use of fossil fuels.

I'll bet the house, however, that a massive tax and redistribution scheme run by the gummit is NOT the answer.

andrew, what's this about a dog?

i am confused.

i thought you had pet Wallabies in Australia.

as in "this is Boots, my pet Crescent Nail-Tail Wallaby."

or "oh that's just Mr. Tickles, my pet Unadorned Rock-Wallaby."

or "please don't leave your slippers there... Bertie, my pet Herbert's Rock-Wallaby might chew on them."

Note to self: watch more Australian television.

Edited by DaveT on 06/30/2010 17:57:24 MDT.

Tom K. - Not to be too cynical or place words in Rog's mouth, but I have two words for you in answer to your second question:

"Grant" and "Money"

Yeah you're right Dave. Everyone in Oz has their own pet wallaby. (aside: down Hopper, down! I'm posting wisdom on the Interwebs)

In addition to their personal wallaby, farmers also keep the odd dog to help round up the stock.

Which reminds me. Down on the Speewa a few years ago they had a massive flood. It was so huge that my brother was forced to tie sticks to the legs of the cattle just so they could keep their heads above water. Of course he also had to tie sticks to to the legs of the dog so he could use him to round the cattle up.

It worked a treat! However, there was a problem. When the floodwaters went down he couldn't reach the cattle (or the dog) to untie the sticks. They were stuck up there on their stilts. That's the Speewa for you.

Out on the Speewa, the crows fly backward just to keep the dust out of their eyes.

>> David wrote: "Grant" and "Money"

Now David the BoM employees are public servants. They get paid whether it rains or not. They have no vested interest either way.

"Which reminds me. Down on the Speewa a few years ago they had a massive flood. It was so huge that my brother was forced to tie sticks to the legs of the cattle just so they could keep their heads above water. Of course he also had to tie sticks to to the legs of the dog so he could use him to round the cattle up.

It worked a treat! However, there was a problem. When the floodwaters went down he couldn't reach the cattle (or the dog) to untie the sticks. They were stuck up there on their stilts. That's the Speewa for you.

Out on the Speewa, the crows fly backward just to keep the dust out of their eyes."


I think this would make a lovely children's story.....

I'd buy the iPad version if the illustrations were good enough....

"Not to be too cynical or place words in Rog's mouth, but I have two words for you in answer to your second question:

""Grant" and "Money"

Of course, how could I have overlooked that little detail?

Which leads to the obvious questions: Who's paying them and, more importantly, why?

Not to mention that scientists who dispute the majority conclusions always seem to be funded by outfits like The American Petroleum Institute, et al, or some downstream industrial interest group.

Follow on question: How does that explain the concurring conclusions of scientists from countries outside the US where money doesn't play quite the dominant role it plays here in just about every decision? I guess what I'm really wondering is why scientists around the world, from countries with different political systems and geopolitical and economic interests, seem to be singing from the same page.

"Tom K. - Not to be too cynical or place words in Rog's mouth, but I have two words for you in answer to your second question:

"Grant" and "Money" "

Pure nonsense. You have *no* idea how research grants work. The money goes to the institution that employs the scientist. The money is then used for things like buying computers, funding postgrad students and post-doctoral positions, funds to attend conferences, etc. Grant money *cannot* be used to increase a scientist's salary, as that is set by the institution that pays them.

Seriously, the notion that scientists get rich from research grants is one of the most bizarre notions to come from the anti-science camp.

It's an interesting bit of hypocrisy that the same people who say scientist are "in it for the money" have no problem repeating the propaganda and lies spread by the fossil fuel companies. Apparently being in it it for the money is *bad* if you are a scientist but fine if you own an oil company.

And Roger T still doesn't understand the difference between weather and climate.

Stuart - You have no idea what I do or don't have any idea about. How do you know I don't make my living from research grants?

All I know about you is what you wrote, which makes no sense to me.

Who said anything about increasing scientists salaries? Are scientist's salaries set arbitrarily in a vacuum by the institutions that employ them regardless of how much funding is available?

Who said anything about scientists getting rich? Do you consider me to be in the "anti-science" camp? Why?

Everybody's "in it for the money", everybody has to eat.

I would hate for the longest thread in the history of BPL to not have at least one comment from moi :)

"Pure nonsense. You have *no* idea how research grants work. The money goes to the institution that employs the scientist. The money is then used for things like buying computers, funding postgrad students and post-doctoral positions, funds to attend conferences, etc. Grant money *cannot* be used to increase a scientist's salary, as that is set by the institution that pays them."

THAT'S pure nonsense. Almost everyone in my institution is hanging by a thread, every grant round. An inability to procure on-going grant funding means unemployment, and boy have I seen some dodgy grants being written just so the PI and his staff could stay employed. Follow the money if your job's on the line, even if it's not something you care about or really think is worth while researching for it's own merits.

Now, I have no opinion on the merits of the carbon flame war discussion. Seems like most folks just blowing off hot air.

@David,

*You* stated that the motive for scientists to lie was grant money. Since grant money doesn't actually go to the scientist who win the grants (ie. it doesn't end up in their pockets), how is winning grants a motive for lying?

Your comments above indicate that you know nothing about how grants work. If you did, you would know that winning grants would be no motivation for lying.

If you weren't implying that scientist get rich from grant money, how exactly do you relate "grants, money" to the accusations of scientists lying? You were the one who said that money was the motivation...

So, do you accept that there is no financial motivation for scientists to lie about climate change, or not? If you don't accept that, then you have proved that you have no understanding about how "grants, money" works.

Sorry, I've run out of ways to try and say this.