CSIRO offers climate change data online
- 20 June, 2011 12:06
- Comments 9
The CSIRO has launched a new website aimed at providing public access to 35 years’ worth of climate change data collected by the agency and the Bureau of Meteorology.
The site features the output of some three billion measurements from the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station in Tasmania on gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide.
According to CSIRO’s Science into Society Group leader, Peta Ashworth, the site’s launch was predicated on demand from the public for more information of climate change.
“This website is one way, for those who are interested, to provide an opportunity to access information on what is happening to atmospheric levels,” she said. “One of the things our work shows is that people in the community have different preferences for how they’d like to access [climate change] information, so by using the internet and actually putting this up in the way that it has it will be very well received...and help people understand what is happening on a monthly basis.”
CSIRO Changing Atmosphere research group leader, Dr Paul Fraser, said the timing of the site’s launch was not related to recent criticism of climate change science and scientists in mainstream media.
Fraser said the site’s data was “world class” and relied upon by a number of international organisations for use in their own climate science and research.
“We have in CSIRO’s records one of the world’s best records [of climate data] and we have been anxious for some time to share those data with as wide a community as possible,” he said.
“We have done it in the past, somewhat indirectly through our international obligations on reporting Greenhouse gas concentrations, but we really want to make this data available as soon as possible so the public can access it without necessarily getting an interpretation from a third party. If they have got any questions about the data we are happy to deal with them and interact with them.
“In my mind it has nothing to do with countering criticisms of climate change. What we are trying to do is put up the factual data on which the conclusions are arrived at which climate change is seen as driven largely by the accumulation of Greenhouse gases.”
Ashworth said a recent survey of the public carried out by the CSIRO had indicated that around seven percent of 1600 respondents were sceptical of climate change, and that publishing the agency’s climate data would provide further data for their consideration.
“This website in itself provides another opportunity for evidence that people can go to clarify [doubts about climate change],” she said.
The site's launch follows protest action by climate scientists in which more than 200 scientists due to converge on Canberra calling on politicians to help stop what they say is the misinformation being disseminated in the climate debate.
Fraser said the CSIRO was yet to enable the download of the research data by the public; however that would become available in the near future.
“The public can look at the data and display it in various ways, but they will be able to download the data and do their own analyses and come to whatever conclusion they come to,” he said. “If they then want to discuss those conclusions with the scientists then they can.”
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Comments
Hillbilly
What has happened to Anthropogenic Global Warming? I can only find 'climate change' mentioned here. Let's start by having honesty!
Where did the CSIRO take their survey? It wasn't in sceptic circles because I don't know anyone there who is sceptical of climate change, because climate has changed naturally, sometimes cyclically and often chaotically since time began, driven by unknown and little understood combinations of multiple local, universal and cosmic factors and forces.
This is why the most stupid question frequently asked is :- "do you believe in climate change"?. It is also the most stupid statement frequently made by our Prime Minister and her minions - 'I believe in climate change'!
It is a fact of life and requires no belief.. On the other hand, belief and blind faith is what is needed to accept the computer-modelled UNIPCC hypothesis of runaway Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming allegedly caused by a few extra human-induced parts per million of the essential life-sustaining trace gas, CO2.
Whilst it is a small step in the right direction, CSIRO and their Science into Society Group leader, Peta Ashworth and the oddly titled Changing Atmosphere research group leader Dr.Paul Fraser are going to have to come up with something better than a few alarming-looking parts per million and parts per billion graphs which at best may show some correlation, but no proof of any causation in relation to climate and/or temperature trends.
The gullible will swallow anything, but the government along with government-grant sponsored bodies and individuals, the vested interest promotors of CAGW in the MSM and various other organisations have vastly underestimated the intelligence and the feelings of the majority of the general public on this subject!
Henry
@Hillbilly,
Actually, the two basic facts behind human-induced climate change are beyond doubt:
1) That carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. No scientist of any persuasion doubts that. It is a very simple experiment to demonstrate.
2) That the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is now 40% higher than it was before industrialisation. The simple tests behind this fact are beyond doubt.
The questions that are harder to answer, and should be up for sane intelligent debate are, what will be the amount of the temperature increase, and what should our response be? Your wacky conspiracy theory stuff is a distraction (albeit a mildly amusing one).
llew jones
It seems that the data you refer to is fairly commonly known and has been for some time. That the present atmospheric concentration of CO2 is about 390ppm is also well known by the man in the street with no scientific training. Further it is fairly common knowledge that the average linear increase in the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere over the last decade has been about 2ppm. All that can be gained from the MSM or from a little googling.
What is of more interest to others on speaking terms with the science is an explanation of some of the science. For example the increase in temperature due to increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 is governed by a logarithmic relationship. That means that there is a "law of diminishing returns" in play. To those with an elementary knowledge of what that curve looks like it appears to guarantee the impossibility of some sort of runaway global warming effect as the tangent to that curve (the rate of change) asymptotes to zero.
Those who have read the IPCC reports know that that temperature change is expressed as the product of climate sensitivity and radiative forcing. There seems to be no agreement at present on the value of climate sensitivity.
The determinant of CS seems to be the nature of the feedbacks from water vapour caused by CO2 induced increases in temperature. The IPCC position is that these feedbacks are positive and thus amplify the minimal heating potential of CO2. However it seems that the evidence (Spencer et al) is possibly indicating that these feedbacks including the effect of clouds is neutral to negative. If so it seems we can forget about any notion of runaway global warming.
So it seems we don't so much need more unrelated data to accept the alarmist view on AGW but some empirical science that shows there is in fact a positive feedback via CO2 to water vapour. There are other difficulties with the science undergirding the IPCC position but it seems if the feedbacks are not positive that is fundamental and there is little reason to be concerned about ACC.
RAYY
Once would have taken CSIRO seriously...Was a great Australian science and plant development body.....However they have been hijacked by the labor /green government of Australia ( wont mention the dogs dinner that the independents offer) .Now ,the only people represented in this outfit are confirmed yes men/women to labor agenda on climate>>>>>>>>>>>>>>We believe they no longer deserve the respect they hunger for.....
llew jones
Henry if the approx 0.7C or so warming over the last century was primarily due to coming out of the little ice age as some scientists familiar with that phenomena claim then we could attribute some of the extra CO2 in the atmosphere to warming oceans?
It is interesting to note that the present increase in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 is about 2ppm per year whereas human fossil fuel emissions of CO2 per year are anywhere from 4ppm to 6ppm. The question is how much is "ours" and how much is natural churning via the ocean - atmosphere?
Incidentally Freeman Dyson the highly regarded theoretical physicist and mathematician, who is a bit of a skeptic because he thinks the models do not cover the complexity of Earth's climate , calculates we could remove all the CO2 from the atmosphere by planting one trillion trees. Of course if we remove it all, all vegetation dies but maybe somewhere down that path is the way to go and thus still be able to power the world's economies with cheap and plentiful fossil fuels like coal and natural gas.
Wolfe
When we can control the eruption of volcanoes we then have a chance of making a meaningful change to the perceived threat of greenhouse gas emissions.
HUH
@6 bit like saying if we cant stop Perth from littering Australia should do nothing and let the s*it pile up.
Your suffering from a degree of blindness due to scale, the volcano excuse was debunked awhile back.
hillbilly
Henry @ 2
Your CO2 facts are correct but the point of my post was that their correlation with the very slight not unprecedented rise in temperature in a world still recovering from the Little Ice Age, in no way proves an alleged human-induced climate change
Have you any scientific basis for inferring increasing levels of CO2 precede warming, and not as most scientific research indicates, follow warming after a significant lag time?
Have you looked at the hundreds of major and minor factors that influence our climate and even pondered on the multiple combinations of those factors?
Do you really believe the UNIPCC or anyone else has a GCM incorporating all those factors and/or that a few extra ppm of human-induced CO2 will cause runaway CAGW?
Sceptics of the hypothesis of AGW would welcome "sane intelligent debate" but how is that possible when against two of the most basic principles of science, AGW scientists won't debate, saying the "science is settled" and "there is an overwhelming consensus".
I wasn't aware I had put forward a "wacky conspiracy theory" but
do you find it amusing that UN and Government involvement has corrupted the whole process from the beginning?
Read the Framework Convention on Climate Change that in Article 1 charged the United Nations Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (government appointed scientists) with finding :-
"a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere
and which is in addition to natural climate change variability observed over comparable time periods."
Do you find it amusing that financiers like Al Gore,Goldman Sachs and many others who could see huge profits to be made in taxing air (CO2) and trading paper (carbon credits), plus the enormous profit potential to be made from investing in uneconomic but heavily government-subsidised "renewable energies", promoted the AGW hypothesis? Have a look at where and how hundreds of Pension Funds round the world with combined funds worth trillions of dollars have that money invested. Google BBC Pension Fund for starters. Don't see any vested interests?
Google leading UNIPCC identity Ottmar Edenhofer for his November 2010 comments before Cancun.
"But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore."
There doesn't have to be a conspiracy. When a band-wagon starts rolling and there's money to be made and agendas or beliefs to be pushed and advanced, the carpet-baggers will come running!
The proposed carbon dioxide tax will have no significant effect on either the environment, climate or temperature.
Bfrey
Nice work hillbilly, you're spot on!
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