Big storm in June 2016 in Sydney area
Some extensive excerpts below from an end-of-year climate report by shifty Peter Hannam, environmental reporter for the Leftist Sydney Mourning Harold. In a possible example of a Trump effect, Peter for once mentions "climate change" not once! Is he losing the faith?
Out of all the weather in the whole vast continent of Austraila, the only extreme weather event Peter could find to mourn in the whole year was a big mid-year storm in Sydney that caused a lot of beach erosion. But storms that cause beach erosion are old hat in Eastern Australia, including places just North of Sydney like Byron Bay. Note the following quote:
"Since settlement, the Byron Shire coastline has endured a long history of large coastal storms and coastal erosion and as a result suffered major losses to its dunal system. The properties that lie along Belongil Beach have lost significant portions of their land as the relentless effects of the ocean have eroded away its foredune."
So beach erosion proves nothing. It's routine.
Peter then goes on to temperature, heading his subsection: "Record breaking heat". And Peter goes on to give a careful selection of statistics about temperature. And its all laughs from then on.
The one thing he does not give is the actual maximum temperature for Sydney 2016. He just says vaguely: "40-degree readings". But those readings were all in Western Sydney, far from the sea, where it is always hotter. From what I can gather, coastal Sydney stayed BELOW 40.
He then goes on to say: "Sydney will notch its highest readings since reliable data gathering began in 1858 for each of the main measures: for minimum, mean and maximum temperatures"
Note that date, 1858. Convenient. You can prove almost anything by choosing your starting point. Watkin Tench in 1790 was at least as good a scientist as many modern meteorologists -- he didn't "interpolate" [guess], for instance -- and he recorded a maximum temperature in coastal Sydney of 108F (42C). Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
See here and also here for a confirmation of Tench's observations
But the funniest bit of all is Peter's link to a study by dear little Acacia Pepler. I have for many decades had the habit of going back to the origial text of anything quoted. And it has been my impression previously that Acacia has got more honesty in her than most BoM personnel -- maybe because she is still a student. And she did not disappoint this time. She was just using rubbishy models -- as they all do -- but reported a run that others -- I suspect -- would have quietly hidden away.
I give the Abstract at the foot of Peter's eructation. She actually predicts a DECREASE in big storms! Pesky! And big East Coast storms are actually Acacia's area of expertise. So Peter certainly gave me a few laughs today.
The storm was generated by a monster east coast low, arguably the state's most significant weather event in 2016, if not Australia's.
In its special climate statement on the event, the Bureau of Meteorology list the tempest's remarkable features. For NSW, it dumped an average of 73.11 millimetres of rain along the state's coastline, the most ever for a single day for any month, beating the previous high set on January 19, 1950, of 68.89mm.
The scale of this mid-latitude cyclone also stretched further, from Queensland to Tasmania, where it broke the Apple Island's drought with record rains.
Also, to underscore the tropical features of the event, all previous storms approaching the amount of rain dumped on eastern NSW had occurred during summer rather than the start of winter, and were linked to tropical cyclones or former ones.
As with other big natural events, social, economic and environmental impacts have lingered long after the storm. Insured losses alone were about $250 million. It has also laid bare vulnerabilities, particularly for coastal communities, of the more intense storms expected as the climate warms. The challenges facing governments include trying to boost resilience and adaptability for residents in a manner that's fair and foresighted.
While major east coast lows have hammered the coastline previously, such as in 1974 and 1978, impacts are likely to worsen with climate change, researchers including Acacia Pepler, a bureau climatologist and UNSW scientist, have found.
For one thing, a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture – 7 per cent more per degree of warming – and therefore dump more rain. The impact of storms on coasts will also likely be made worse by rising sea levels, with storm surges riding on a higher base.
Record-breaking heat
For Sydney, 2016 had other noteworthy weather, perhaps none more so than the outstanding warmth even if heatwave peaks weren't as frequent as the summer of 2013-14.
As parts of Sydney closed out 2016 with their first 40-degree readings of the summer, the year's last burst of heat was a fitting end to the city's hottest year on record, Weatherzone says.
Sydney will notch its highest readings since reliable data gathering began in 1858 for each of the main measures: for minimum, mean and maximum temperatures.
For day-time temperatures, the city's average day in 2016 will come in at about 23.8 degrees, and nights about 15.5 degrees, Weatherzone estimates. The bureau will release its assessments next week.
For perspective, it's as if Sydney's average year-round conditions matched those of a typical November.
Compared with long-run average, days were about 2 degrees warmer than normal and nights 1.5 degrees. Should similar anomalies by overlaid on 2016 in future years – an increase within the bounds of projected climate change – year-round temperatures would start to feel like a typical December.
'Persistent warmth'
Looking back over the year, Sydneysiders might be forgiven for thinking 2016 was not a remarkably hot year – the last few days notwithstanding.
The city did set a few high marks, including the hottest April day on record with 34.2 degrees set on the 6th. December 14 was another standout with its warm minimum of 27.1 degrees, the hottest overnight temperature for the month but the second for any month.
But generally few months set new high marks and autumn was the only season to do so for mean, minimum and maximum temperatures. The average of day and night temperatures easily eclipsed the previous high set in 2014 by 0.4 degrees, the bureau says.
SOURCE
Projected changes in east Australian midlatitude cyclones during the 21st century
Acacia S. Pepler et al.
Abstract
The east coast of Australia is regularly influenced by midlatitude cyclones known as East Coast Lows. These form in a range of synoptic situations and are both a cause of severe weather and an important contributor to water security. This paper presents the first projections of future cyclone activity in this region using a regional climate model ensemble, with the use of a range of cyclone identification methods increasing the robustness of results. While there is considerable uncertainty in projections of cyclone frequency during the warm months, there is a robust agreement on a decreased frequency of cyclones during the winter months, when they are most common in the current climate. However, there is a potential increase in the frequency of cyclones with heavy rainfall and those closest to the coast and accordingly those with potential for severe flooding.
SOURCE
Ban 'mansplain' from the feminist vocabulary
I suspect that Denby Weller below has been hit -- as have so many -- by the 53% of white women who voted for The Donald. That 53% sure wounded the "sisterhood" myth. It is an utter myth, anyway. If you want to tear down some woman, get another woman onto the job. The word "bitchy" reflects that
I had a giggle like everyone the first time I heard it. Mansplain. The perfect epithet for the boardroom bullies, the down-talking politicians, the Twits and shock jocks who embody the 16 per cent gender pay-gap, the underrepresentation of women in just about everything important. The unfairness that we're still beating our heads against the glass ceiling so many decades after The Female Eunuch.
Like thousands of women, I threw it around like the glorious little explosion of wit that it is. And most of my male friends laughed along, if a little uncomfortably.
Why 'mansplaining' should be banned
It's one of 2016's hottest buzzwords. But is calling someone a "mansplainer" fair game?
But then I started getting this sinking feeling, the kind you got when your nine-year-old self (the one with short hair and a Sarah Connor figurine) won an argument with your brother about who got to sit in the front seat of the car, but you did it by kicking him in the shins and yelling "shotgun!" while he howled in pain. Somehow, the rosy glow of that hallowed front seat was tarnished by the knowledge that you went real low to get there.
When I called someone a mansplainer, I'd hit below the belt.
Feminists, this is our hour. These are the dark days. The world needs us, and it needs us to be smart, effective and bold.
What it doesn't need is for us to be allured by our cleverness into abandoning the rules of good argument. And this is why I'm calling for a moratorium on the word "mansplain" and its cousins, "manterrupt" and "bropropriate".
It's not just because we're tarring half the population with the same brush when we slap the word "man" in front of any verb and say it with a derisive tone. Nor is it because we risk offence. It's because this adversarial form of communication ain't working, and we need to try a different tactic. And I don't mean to sound hysterical, but the future of the world kinda depends on it.
This year hasn't been a good one for progressive, liberally minded types like us and, while the reasons are too complex to tackle in a single article, there is one I can home in on without trying very hard at all.
We're not winning enough friends or influencing enough people. It's not because our arguments don't hold water, or our position is doomed to fail, it's because people can't get past the note of intellectually superior nastiness that's oozing from our pores when we utter words like "mansplain".
If feminism is, as the T-shirt says, the "radical notion that women are people", then maybe it's time we adopted the radical notion that people are people too. Even man people. Who knows, if we use our linguistic power to sever the bullies and braggarts from the general male population, we might find the rest of mankind more receptive to our plight. Or maybe not. But at least then we'd be able to dance around the moral high ground in our pantsuits and whatever the hell undies we choose to wear, or not to wear.
We love reading about how everyone hates Hillary because she's a woman, and chortle when Tanya Plibersek calls Turnbull a mansplainer, but consider that at least some of Hillary's haters were made the day she called them a basket of deplorables. And that referring to a rare conservative politician who's happy to call himself a feminist as a mansplainer is a good way to wither the last tiny vestiges of goodwill between our kind and the people with whom we most need to engage.
By all means, challenge the men who talk down to you. Go get 'em, sister. But make your primary weapon logic, not scorn. Put that superior intellect to work on the vocab that precisely describes what's wrong with their behaviour, not the generalist sexism of a gendered slur. In case you forgot, gendered slurs are the kinds of things we feminists are supposed to hate.
Do your challenging without humiliating the other blokes in the room, who might even agree with you, if you could only couch your complaint in terms that don't demean them, too.
The thing about feminism is, it ain't over yet. We don't get to walk the low road just because we're not making progress as fast as we'd like. If you want people to change, you have to speak a language they can bear to listen to before you have any hope at all of them hearing a single word you say.
Let's banish mansplaining and start talking about the real battle for feminists.
SOURCE
Africans bring some multicultural vibrancy to Bondi beach
Police arrested nine people at Sydney's Bondi Beach early on New Year's Day after the group allegedly threatened beachgoers with broken bottles.
One victim was allegedly punched in the face, and had his passport and backpack stolen in the incident, which happened around 5.30am at the southern end of the beach, according to police and media reports.
Five suspects were in custody and four others were released pending further inquiry, police said.
A number of items that were reported stolen, including mobile phones and portable speakers, were located at the beach, an NSW police spokesperson said.
Police took statements from 'a number of people' who alleged they were assaulted and robbed, the spokesperson said.
The suspects allegedly wielded a broken bottle in the robbery, according to The Daily Telegraph.
SOURCE
NSW prisons slow to react with programs to deradicalise prisoners at risk of extremism
PRISONS have been allowed to become terrorist breeding grounds because the state government has dragged its feet on deradicalisation programs.
The Daily Telegraph can reveal prison bosses ignored urgent demands to fast-track deradicalisation programs back in 2010.
Corrective Services Commissioner Peter Severin was at a loss when asked by The Saturday Telegraph why it had taken six years to introduce a program to target terrorists in prisons.
“I can’t even answer that because for me it was very important that before we simply do a program we need to know what is it that actually makes a difference,” he said. “We can call anything a program but ... it’s not like a sex offender treatment program or a program for drug and alcohol abuse.
“This is about an attitude, this is about a belief, a philosophy and you need to deal with that in a much different way to how you would deal with somebody’s criminogenic behaviours.”
The department estimates there are about 100 prisoners who are radicalised, including Australia’s most dangerous inmate, Bassam Hamzy.
The department’s complacency has meant there has been nothing to stop prisoners turning into cold-blooded terrorists while in prison. But Assistant Commissioner, Security and Intelligence Mark Wilson denied that the department had totally dragged its feet.
"Certainly since I’ve started and particularly since this became a phenomenon, we have taken this very seriously.
“I think in terms of taking so long to get a program going, the whole deradicalisation thing is an evolving space globally so we are certainly not asleep at the wheel on this at all,” he said. “I think we’ve managed it fairly well.”
Mr Severin admitted that the first program — known as PRISM (Proactive Integrated Support Model) — had only been introduced this year.
Former Labor prisons minister Phillip Costa had directed the department to fast track development of deradicalisation programs in 2010, when Ron Woodham was corrective services commissioner.
“Certainly since I’ve started and particularly since this became a phenomenon, we have taken this very seriously,” Mr Severin said.
The 2016 PRISM program is directed at inmates at risk of being radicalised but there is no deradicalisation program targeting the worst terrorist sympathisers, who are kept in isolation or “incapacitation”.
The department estimates there are about 100 prisoners who are radicalised, including Australia’s most dangerous inmate, Bassam Hamzy.
SOURCE
Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here