Comments 1 to 4:

1. bill4344 at 12:02 PM on 14 January, 2013
   Peter Sinclair is one of out greatest assets. This series gets stronger and stronger.
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2. Doug Hutcheson at 13:11 PM on 14 January, 2013
   Great to see the sceptical view that we are in a cooling phase. Sen. Inhofe must be so amazingly sciency that he does not need to examine the temperature records, in order to come to his conclusion. Another cup of Tea for you, sir, or has it gone cold?
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3. philipm at 23:07 PM on 14 January, 2013
   Sadly it seems more like the year climate denial doesn’t care if it’s unreal, continuing on to 2013. Australia has recently suffered an unprecedented heat wave, with the Bureau of Meterology having to add two new colours to the map, and Tasmania, usually relatively cool, having runaway bush fires and 40°C temperatures. Then there's this page of letters at The Australian. The rather basic fact that a linear increase in temperatures can be masked temporarily by natural variability should not be contested, and any “serious” newspaper that continues to obfuscate that fact deserves to be put behind a paywall so only the stupidly rich will read it. Oh, wait.
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4. Tom Curtis at 08:11 AM on 15 January, 2013
   philipm @3, Australia's mean maximum temperature for the first eight days of 2013 exceeded the prior record (set in 1972) just once January 7th, when it exceeded the prior record by 0.13 degrees C. On January 8th, the mean national maximum temperature reached 40.1 C, 0.07 C less than the prior record. All other days in the heat wave period have been approx 0.5-1 degree C less than the prior record, although all are in the top twenty mean national maximum temperature records. Although a number of records have fallen to this heat wave, no the National maximum temperature record (50.7 C, Oodnadatta, South Australia (1960) did not fall, and neither has any state records. The forecast above 50 degree heat that required adding extra colours to the the forecast temperature scale was made for six and seven day forecasts, ie, at the limit of skill. They did not eventuate. I do not know of the temperature exceeding 50 degree C anywhere in Australia in 2013, and certainly if it did so it did not exceed the record temperature at the location where it did (as none of the many new records set exceed 50 degrees C). So, while it certainly has been exceptionally hot in Australia, and global warming has probably contributed appreciably to that heat, the heat is not outside the range that prior natural variability would lead us to expect. The take home form the Australian heatwave of January 2013 is not that it proves global warming (it does not), or even that it provides substantial evidence for global warming (it provides evidence, but very minor evidence relative to other evidence available), but that it is a foretaste of the type of heatwave that will be common by mid-century, and typical, possibly even cool conditions by the end of the century, with continued global warming. It is a wake up call that global warming has consequences.
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