About
I’m a retired school principal with a keen interest in a range of topics, the main one at the moment being Global Warming. I have a deep seated scepticism for anything produced by governments, political parties, religious organisations, or big business. I am very wary of any people with strongly held beliefs they hope to foist on others, such as fundamentalists, jihadis, Greenpeace, global warming fanatics, creationists or intelligent design promoters, neo-Nazis.
I strongly believe in: the future of the world, public education, the beauty of nature, the family, the power of learning, the importance of asking good questions and finding answers for yourself.
I barrack for the NQ Cowboys and Queensland (of course).
I live in a beautiful part of the world- Queensland, Australia.
kenskingdom 
February 8, 2010 at 12:22 pm |
Welcome to blogging Ken. I lived at Farleigh Sugar Mill from 1974 to 1982. I found your dissection of the temperature data around Mackay to be very interesting. Keep up the good work. As all skeptics are supposed to be funded by “Big Oil” keep an eye out for your cheque in the mail!!
June 21, 2010 at 6:42 am |
Enjoying your work thus far and looking forward to the Victorian installment. Check out this post that looks at variations in trends over Melbourne in relation to claims butterflies are emerging earlier due to increases in greenhouse gases.
http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com/2010/06/butterflies-fly-early-as-planet.html
The Biology Letters comment is here: http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/06/07/rsbl.2010.0053.short/reply#roybiolett_el_31
June 24, 2010 at 7:30 am |
Ken,
I am obtaining a copy of the metadata for Laverton, Vic. If you’d like a copy or further discussion on this site feel free to get in touch.
Marc
June 30, 2010 at 1:42 pm |
Ken:
Fabulous work. Much appreciated.
Can you please send me an e-mail as I have some topics I’d like to discuss with you?
Malcolm Roberts
Pullenvale (Brisbane)
July 2, 2010 at 4:08 pm |
Hi Ken,
I’m very interested in your work. Is there any chance of getting you on my podcast show (see link above) to give a summary of your findings so far?
I have previously interviewed both Lord Monckton and President of the Climate Sceptics, Leon Ashby.
I believe it is vitally important to support original research, especially in relation to the Australian climate record. Ultimately it is only by presenting irrefutable scientific data that we will break through the prejudice and irrationality which clouds the climate debate.
Please email me if you are interested doing an interview.
cheers & best regards
(: Hereward Fenton
m. 0415 059675
July 5, 2010 at 9:14 am |
I’d rather stay in the background I think- thanks all the same!
Ken
July 3, 2010 at 12:15 pm |
Great work Ken. Saw your research at Watts Up With That.
Keep it up!
July 28, 2010 at 12:31 pm |
Ken Id like to post your conclusions on my blog with a link back to your site. You OK with that? Doug
http://www.twawki.com
Yes Doug that is fine! Thanks for asking.
Ken
July 28, 2010 at 4:31 pm |
My pleasure, keep up the good work 🙂 If I can help in putting pressure on this government to get an investigation/audit happening let me know. Doug twawki1@gmail.com
July 28, 2010 at 4:53 pm |
Ken, one little issue you might like to chase is when the sites moved from manual to automated data collection. I’m guessing it would be around the early 1980’s. At the time they changed over there were some pretty major discrepancies between the old manual data and the newer automated data. It would be interesting to check what the effect was on the raw data at some of the more remote sites.
July 28, 2010 at 5:15 pm |
There were some big discrepancies- some were handled well, others very roughly. Check back through earlier posts where I looked at each one.
July 28, 2010 at 9:36 pm |
Hi Ken
I read your guest post on wattsupwiththat and mention that I recently extracted temperature data from Bureau of Meteorology web site for periods 1911-1940 and 1981-2010 (30 year standard periods). The purpose was to see the impact, if any, of mankind`s increased burning of fossil fuels and believed subsequent rise in levels of CO2, ie after end of World War2.
I used only those weather stations which had continuous records over the review period. Only 69 sites could be found that met this criterion – some sites kept rainfall records only while at others the site had been relocated. Average maximum and average minimum temperatures were used.
Australia-wide the average increase in temperatures was 0.43C – average maximum temperatures (day) rose by just 0.15C and average minimum temperatures (night) by 0.28C.
If you are interested in seeing the lists of the weather stations please let me know your Email address and I will send them to you.
Regards
Ross
July 29, 2010 at 6:48 am |
Yes please!
ken
August 1, 2010 at 3:29 pm |
Very interesting findings on the Australian data. Is there a plan to check out the Aussie weather stations for quality as Anthony Watts has done in the US. Please advise.
August 1, 2010 at 4:39 pm |
Yes! We’re putting together a team right now. Let me know if you want to help.
Ken
September 13, 2010 at 2:59 pm |
Ken,
Good that someone is doing a thorough job although Warwick Hughes has been doing some of it for years.
I note you lived in Gayndah. I have downloaded the raw data and made some average calculations because I thought it could be a typical rural weather stations.
Firstly, as your graph shows there was no increase in the 10 year moving average temperature from 1898 to 1978 (80 years or about 7 solar cycles). Something changed in the mid-1979’s -was it instrument change, were the roads paved, was there a building with air conditioners put up ?? I notice that there is a medical centre next to the post office.
In 2003 the official weather station was moved to the Gayndah airport 2 km away. However, there is a 6 year overlap before the Post Office station was closed.
From my calculations the Airport average temperature is 0.2C lower than the Post Office.
The other feature from calculations is that the jump in the mid-1970’s was mainly due to an increase in the mean minimum monthly temperature which is typical of UHI.
My guess is that there has been no significant increase in Gayndah temperatures when removing UHI effects since when records began in 1894.
The other interesting thing about Gayndah is that there have been significant earthquakes in 1883 (RS 5.9) and again in 1935 (RS 5.4) ie on the scale of the aftershocks at Christchurch. Maybe they are due for another one.
September 14, 2010 at 1:08 pm |
Gday Peter
The increase in minima is a feature right across Australia and needs investigation. You realise it is also a signature of greenhouse warming…
There is a fault line between Gayndah and Mundubbera which produces tremors from time to time.
Ken
September 14, 2010 at 8:18 pm |
Ken,
Higher increase in minimum than in the maximum temperature is a sure sign of UHI effect see for example http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/26/uhi-study-of-the-uk-armagh-observatory/
The fact that the Post Office at Gayndah from 2003 to 2009 was 0.2 C higher than at the Airport which has its own UHI but is in a rural location is another indication of UHI at the PO.
When I have some time I will try to analyse the Gayndah figure using the Chiefio (A E Smith) method of dT/dt so step changes in the data will become apparent.
It would be worth someone taking a picture of the Gayndah PO station if it still exists.
Keep well
September 22, 2010 at 8:07 pm |
Having only recently seen your site, the total content has not yet been explored. Noted is that you have assessed the BoM data, both as part of their “High Quality Site Networks” and the raw data from 1910. Apparently there is no valid explanation for the differences. If to correct for UHI effect, the trends should flatten, not increase rates of rise. Perhaps they use the same formulae as the CRU to homogenise the data? Stevenson screens were introduced in Australia from the 1870s, although the Bureau said they could not certain whether the data was from these or old equipment, but there were very few of those old recording stations. The few sets of data for 1880-1909 which I have looked at have average max & min about the same as 1970-1999. As you have acquire a wide range of useful data, it may be possible to see whether the BoM are trying to hide data which does not fit their paradigm. I understand that the early units were somewhat like the small automatic measuring units (as per WUWT findings), so if an upwards trends are seen, they may be due to instrumental differences. I first noted the 1880-1909 difference in the data for Moruya Heads NSW, some 40km north of where I live.
September 23, 2010 at 7:35 am |
To date I have only looked at post-1910 data as I was purely concentrating on comparing apples with apples: raw with HQ which is only from 1910. There is a lot of pre 1910 data which I intend to follow up. BOM says it isnt reliable but their post 1910 data isnt that great either.
Ken
September 24, 2010 at 2:17 pm |
When the ‘High Quality’ differs from the raw data without a reasonable explanation, then comparing raw pre-1910 to raw post-1910 data is again comparing apples with apples. It will be a very interesting exercise, Ken, when you have the time to investigate.
Paul80
October 18, 2010 at 11:50 am |
??? So this is a ‘poor man’s’ forum to discuss the issue of ‘global warming’???
What a lot of twaddle – you guys have no basis of fact and yet get ‘publicity’?
HELLO…glaciers are melting, the Arctic is thawing…this is FACT…
October 18, 2010 at 5:48 pm |
Actually, no…. Read what I have to say before you judge. This is where I publish what I have found by analysing real data from reputable sources eg BOM so it is based on fact. I am checking the reality versus the claims. I suggest you check some facts too. Have you looked at real data to compare claims about polar thaw with reality- yes there has been a 30 year decline, perhaps recovering in the past 3 years. Now check Antarctica- a steady 30 year increase in ice- we never hear about that do we. (Check Cryosphere Today /) . Publicity? Whats that? Check the facts mate before you talk about twaddle.
February 17, 2011 at 3:32 pm |
Just found your site via Jo Nova/Malcolm Roberts. Love to meet you some time. Know Sarina/Mackay/Nebo well.
Regards
Viv Forbes
February 21, 2011 at 7:24 am |
Nice to meet you too! Are you coming up this way at all?
KS
May 2, 2011 at 12:47 pm |
Ken, Somewhere I saw an article that BOM was confiscating/collecting/retrieving the old paper weather records from rural stations in Australia. I failed to bookmark it at the time and now Warwick Hughes has asked me to try to find it. If it rings any bells could you please contact me at pjb@flix.com.au Regards, Peter Bobroff
May 2, 2011 at 5:46 pm |
Sorry, i don’t know about that. Normally they would have them any way as they would have been mailed in.
July 9, 2011 at 4:23 pm |
Hi Ken
I am currently studying Australian temperature trends and am having difficulty obtaining any long term data sets given the lack of reliability on those easily available like BOM or GISS. Do you have any idea where and how i might be able to gain access to any other datasets in order to validate my study? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated! me email is dale_rubinstein@hotmail.com
July 10, 2011 at 3:57 pm |
Gday Dale
The only one that I use with any confidence is the UAH tropospheric data since December 1978. It’s available at http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
Best wishes
Ken
January 23, 2013 at 1:29 pm |
Ken
I too am a retired principal (NSW) and became interested in the ‘global warming’ meme during the nineties. I used to be in partial agreement until Mann’s Hockey Stick made its appearance in 1999/2000 and he tried to ‘disappear’ the MWP. With all the alarmist predictions beginning, it reminded me of the ‘global cooling’ warnings during the 60s and 70s and so my BS antennae were activated.
With the improvement in internet delivery, I was able to check some of their statements and found manipulation of temperature, poor predictions using models and downright deception (ie Mann not telling anyone that he had used the thermometer proxy from 1960 in his HS graph).
Now I, like you, do not accept on face value what these experts say. Your recent work with the ACORN stations re the hottest day in Australia raises many doubts about this record.
I have never heard or seen this record ever mentioned before (and there were some very hot temperatures in the 2009 heatwave which may have prompted some indication).
Anyway, keep up the good work.
January 23, 2013 at 4:20 pm |
Gday Ian, nice to hear from a fellow ex-principal!
Whereabouts in NSW are you?
Re the temperature “record”, watch for a post at Jo Nova in the coming days as some colleagues have put together an interesting assessment.
Ken
January 24, 2013 at 7:16 am |
North Coast (Casino).
Thanks for the tip.
January 24, 2013 at 8:48 am |
You’re close to a colleague.
By the way, check my predictions from 20 September, 27 November, and last Monday, where I predicted January rain for – 22+/- 2 days; revised to 25 +/- 5 days, and recently 23-27. Bang on- heavy rain overnight in CQ and moving south.
Ken
January 24, 2013 at 12:12 pm |
Might know the colleague.
Right on with the predictions, Ken.
January 29, 2013 at 10:50 am |
Hi Ken. Just a quick message to say keep up the awesome work!! I’ve been a fellow skeptic of Dr Jones and his hidden agenda for some time now, and was pleasantly surprised to find I’m not the only one banging on about it!
Here’s a little food for thought… How come there were alarmist predictions of the ‘unprecedented’ heatwave being whipped up into a media frenzy, with colours being added to maps and numbers being fudged to get the point across, yet the impending dilemma of torrential downpours causing massive flooding of towns and deaths up and down the eastern seaboard wasn’t given the same amount of “the sky is falling” prediction and response days out from the event? They can’t predict one disaster and ignore the other, even more destructive ones, surely? 😉 If the same time and effort were injected into predicting and planning for ACTUAL weather events, then maybe, just maybe, people might not have died…
Love your work, keep it coming!!
All the best – NatureBoy
January 29, 2013 at 10:59 am |
Thanks mate
You make an excellent point and I’m going to publish it as a standalone post as I agree entirely.
Ken
January 29, 2013 at 5:05 pm |
Ken, I have been following your site for several years and enjoy your analyses. However I have an issue with your recent prediction methods (as opposed to your first attempts). The problem I have is that your latest dates for possible January events cover every single day in the month, using your +/- 3 days for each specific date. Based upon this you cannot be wrong as any weather event on any day falls within your criteria. I respectfully suggest that your predictions would carry more weight if the dates were tightened up and you allowed yourself to be occasionally wrong. Otherwise, keep up the good work in keeping the BOM honest.
January 29, 2013 at 8:29 pm |
Hi Simon
Thanks for your comment, it is a point I have been trying to deal with for months. You’ll notice from my post on 21 January I have switched to giving a time window and have dispensed with uncertainty altogether i.e. no more +/- 3 days. I am trying to nominate time periods in which a weather change will occur without any overlap, which is sometimes difficult. The next weather event will be about Thursday 31 January, give or take a couple of days, so I said 28 January to Feb 3. There will be another one in the days after that, Feb 4 to feb 8, but the two periods don’t overlap. If there is no event between yesterday and next Sunday, I’m wrong. If I get one on Sunday and one on Tuesday, I’m right… but I doubt they’ll be that close. Another difficulty is I am looking at a very large area, and weather events can take several days to travel across eg. the rain started here in Rocky on Wednesday night 23rd, and the bulk of the rain fell on Thursday and Thursday night, but didn’t clear the south until Monday evening. The weather events are discrete and identifiable, but I do appreciate the need to be transparent. I am still learning how it works, but I will refine my predictions for March and April and May to be more exact. All along the point I have been making is that it is possible to predict weather events several months ahead. Back in September I predicted widespread rain for January 22 +/- 2 days, and for 28 January onwards. Stay tuned.
April 24, 2014 at 1:29 pm |
Ken
I have been revisiting the data for the ‘hottest day’ back on 7th Jan 2013 and, like you, found that the ACORN data for that day only averaged around 35/36C. I reread your post (Jan 29, ’13) – did you find out how the BoM calculated that 40.3C average (i.e. weighted av based on ACORN or the 700+ w/s average).
I will most likely run the figures for the 21st Dec, 1972 (the previous hottest day) if the BoM used ACORN.
Also, doesn’t the BoM exclude capital cities when doing averages – thought I read that somewhere?
Thanking you
April 24, 2014 at 7:54 pm |
Hi Ian. Ian Hill has been working on reverse engineering the BOM weighted averaging algorithm, based on Acorn, and had pretty much cracked it when I last heard, but he has had to put things on hold for a while. I understand it is based on Acorn ( should be anyway!) but I don’t know for sure. BOM excludes Townsville, Rockhampton, Sydney, Richmond RAAF, Melbourne, Laverton RAAF, Adelaide, and Hobart- the others are in.
I look forward to seeing your results for 21/12/72.
April 24, 2014 at 8:09 pm |
Thanks for that. Just for fun I ran the raw data for Jan 1896 against 2014 ACORN stations and found 1896 2.0C higher on average. However, there were only 39 stations that could be compared and many had moved location – plus 30% were NSW.
See how Ian H gets on.
September 11, 2014 at 3:09 pm |
Hi Ken
I am a mining engineer with some knowledge of resource estimation techniques. Critical to the these techniques is the method for calculating distance weighting. The ACORN documentation shows the distance weighting thus:
ws= 1/exp((d/100)2)
I have never seen a weighting formula like this. In the past inverse distance squared weights were popular in the mining industry. However there is no theoretical basis for the inverse distance squared, some people use inverse distance cubed for example. The technique that is now standard in the mining industry is kriging. Kriging is BLUE -best linear unbiased estimator. I can recommend Issacs and Shrivastava as a good readable introduction to kriging.
Are you aware of any theoretical basis for the BOM weighting calculation?
September 11, 2014 at 6:40 pm |
No, not at all. I’ve never seen anything like it either. They don’t mention it in detecting inhomogeneities which is all I’m interested in at the moment. I think their percentile matching and area averaging methods are very dubious.
January 23, 2015 at 9:40 am |
Ken,
I have been closely following the global warming debate and had heard of your good work in keeping the alarmists honest (or trying to). However it wasn’t until this morning that I realised that you were (?probably) the teacher that taught my children in Charters Towers a long time ago. I presume you will get access to my email below. If you have time contact me.
October 18, 2015 at 10:48 am |
Since the start of the satellite records (1980) the trends are 0.142 ±0.067 °C/decade (2σ) (UAH) and 0.122 ±0.066 °C/decade (2σ) (RSS)”——Mike Hansen in the conversation says my quote of your Globe figures are not correct—could you reply on the conversation for me—–trevor.
October 18, 2015 at 4:48 pm |
Since December 1978 I calculate the trend for the globe is +0.11C +/-0.1 per decade, which is exactly what Roy Spencer calculates. The trend since May 1997 is zero (+/- 0.1). I do not go near the conversation, sorry.
April 2, 2016 at 1:21 pm |
There is a new posting at http://www.ecofascism.com containing a list of 356 climate sceptical and/or enviro-critical websites; plus additional info on the enviro-critic community and its funders
June 8, 2016 at 6:09 pm |
we have a new email—- tmprowse@iinet.net.au
February 19, 2019 at 9:32 am |
Ken I have been looking at your analysis of the BOM’s ACORN 2.
I hope that you will do some work on South Australia as per ACORN 2.
I will be attending a public meeting in late March here in SA. The guest speaker is from the BOM. It would be good to be able to ask him what the hell the BOM is doing with SA weather station data.
Bill
September 23, 2019 at 11:57 pm |
Great job, Ken, dissecting the compliance standards of Aussie weather stations. Keep up the good work (cagw skeptic since 1989 from Canada)
October 9, 2019 at 5:16 pm |
Ken I had an interesting conversation with BOM person today, based in Adelaide. Would prefer to pass on the gist of that privately. Maybe by email ? Mine is bhankin@adam.com.au
November 29, 2019 at 4:51 pm |
Ken,
You have indicated a progress of failed station sites as percentage, would you also supply the number and percentage of complying and failed sites which you have checked out together with the total of operating sites in the BoM network? Hopefully, not an impossible task?
Paul
November 30, 2019 at 7:30 am |
Yes, after I have finished checking I will give a summary of total sites checked, numbers compliant, non-compliant, and “marginal”. I intend to have an alphabetical clickable list, also organised by state, and also a map of all sites checked. May take a while.
Lots of comments are going into moderation lately, possible cause a WordPress update. Late being moderated as we were out last night!
January 23, 2020 at 7:05 am |
Ken, I just discovered your informative and interesting blog.
Can I please suggest you add the widget for people to subscribe..
It’s a standard WP one. I have it on my site. When you post a new article it automatically send a link to your subscribers.
January 23, 2020 at 7:56 am |
Thank you. Lots of people follow my blog already – not sure how they do it. I will look into your suggestion.
January 23, 2020 at 8:07 am |
Thanks for the reply. If you can’t find it, the guys at WP are very helpful. When I set my first Blog up, I searched what I was trying to do. Invariably Youtube had the answer.
I now have a website running on a WP plarfoem
February 5, 2020 at 12:07 pm |
Ken, can you add the ACT and NT to your list of Aust weather stations. I wonder where the Canberra one is. At the airport, I guess, which is a long way from ‘Canberra’.
February 5, 2020 at 5:24 pm |
All non-compliant weather stations in Australia including ACT and NT are included. Canberra is at the airport.
September 8, 2020 at 11:05 pm |
Hello Ken,
For the Dutch audience I made a video about ‘The impossibility of Windmills’. It is translated in English and I wondered if you would be interested to give it a place on your website or place a link to it. You can view the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7PHUMd7PYA. It was intended for The Netherlands, but it addresses probably the same problems with green energy there are in your country.
Hope to hear from you.
September 9, 2020 at 8:48 am |
Done!
October 8, 2020 at 2:28 pm |
As a principal, and a supporter of “public education” did you hate having the responsibility of delivering a syllabus that taught the basics of the greenhouse effects and climate change?
October 8, 2020 at 4:13 pm |
There wasn’t much of that in the primary syllabus 12 years ago. I did suggest some alternatives a couple of times with some teachers.
July 8, 2023 at 4:10 pm |
Hi Ken, I stumbled across your “review” of Roseworthy weather station in SA. I have to say, to call it “problematic” because it is situated in grain fields and has tractors harvesting the grain for one day a year really is a reach if you honestly think the heat from one tractor could ever affect such a weather station! Do you honestly think that any brief exhaust, after being being mixed with the local wind flow for dozens or hundreds of meters could have any measurable affect on the long term measurements of the weather or climate in this location? It would not even be measurable on harvest day!
It’s disappointing that a retired principal doesn’t seem to understand the most basic concept of wind with this posting. Not even any attempt at trying to provide empirical evidence, not even a site visit, not even the most basic statistical analysis. Just wild and ignorant speculation. Anyway, back to my environmental report of the area and hopefully you stop posting such crap unless you can substantiate such claims.
(And I noticed you have closed comment on that particular post, why? So it can’t be critiqued for the rubbish it is?)
July 9, 2023 at 9:52 am |
Well Zytheran, if you had read more closely including the links at the top of the post you would realise that the problems with the site have little to do with tractor or harvester exhausts. The site is surrounded by crop land, which at at some times of the year can be bare or fallow, at other times fast growing short green crop, then taller maturing dry crop, then harvested. The site is subject to seasonal changes. The height of the crop will also affect wind flow, and the screen will be covered in dust so less reflective. By the way comments are closed by wordpress automatically after some time, not by me.