People are starving so let’s hide the food

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These people don’t know what’s happening on their own planet. The idea of locking up most of the Antarctic’s marine environment in what’s loosely called a “park” seems destined to kill a lot of the starving Third World.

Surely the idea is strictly for those who don’t like humans?

Never mind mineral resources that might be available down there, why stop all fishing activities? They grow back. Fish are the definition of a renewable resource.

If fishing practices need modifying, modify them, but don’t ban the harvesting of food. This strange call for a “massive Antarctic reserve” (what would it achieve?) was reported in the Herald today:

An Antarctic lobby group, backed by major conservation groups and celebrities, is calling for a massive marine reserve in the Ross Sea as part of an even bigger reserve surrounding Antarctica.

It would include a substantial proportion of New Zealand’s dependency area of the Ross Sea, extend out to 60 degrees south and be comparable to the area of Australia. Continue Reading →

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The globe is cooling (what it does when it’s not warming)

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From Stephen Goddard at Real Science last May (h/t Bob Carter) came this astounding climate forecast from Dr Leona Libby in 1979, just as the global warming scare was starting out.

I’m not sure it’s tracked the actual climate tremendously closely, but there are strong indications (from several horrendously cold northern winters and this last miserable southern summer) that cooling is the new trend.

Libby’s forecast would bear much wider study instead of being ignored for the man-centric theory du jour. Anecdotal evidence and observation suggest this forecast hasn’t been refuted by the theory of dangerous anthropogenic emissions-induced global warming.

On the contrary, the evidence this century is irrefutable that natural variation has been overwhelming the undetectable anthro influence. Continue Reading →

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Lawless misled by the clueless

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Lucy Lawless, famous actress and newly-minted Greenpeace activist, claimed yesterday:

“…make no mistake, due to the harshness and remoteness of the Arctic environment, an oil spill up there will make the Gulf of Mexico look like a children’s party.”

I agree that it’s a distinct possibility, and precautions should be taken to prevent and, at need, to clean up such a spill. No doubt about it. But then our eco-warrior says boldly:

“To see the melting of the sea ice not as a warning to humanity but as an invitation to drill for more of the stuff that caused the problem in the first place is the definition of madness. What Shell is doing is climate change-profiteering.” (Emphasis added. H/T Richard Cumming)

Lucy, turn towards your Greenpeace advisers and say after me: “What is the evidence?” Continue Reading →

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Fakegate underpinnings exposed

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At WUWT, Lord Christopher Monckton fulminates against the “perps” (I love his use of this vulgar Americanism to explicitly demonise the culprit behind the fraud against the Heartland Institute) and expertly delineates the legal principles involved. H/t Bob Carter.

The perps, whoever they be, should be investigated, brought for trial, prosecuted and fined or – better still – imprisoned… The dripping malevolence of the commentaries by the various news media and blogs on what the counterfeit document purported to reveal about the Heartland Institute’s supposed attitude to the teaching of science in schools would count very much against them in court. The intent to cause harm to the Heartland, and to cause collateral damage to Anthony Watts and others, is very clear.

He reminds us that just a few climate scientists have published misleading papers to shore up the fictitious case alleging humanity’s coming climatic cataclysm. Continue Reading →

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Judicial review of NIWA temperature mischief

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The determination of high-level dishonesty committed by NIWA scientists is wending inevitably to a conclusion.

Chairman of the Coalition and counsel for the NZ Climate Science Education Trust (NZCSET), Barry Brill, filed the Trust’s evidence with the Court during January (copies will soon be available on the NZCSC website) and NIWA is expected to respond by 2 March. We’ll then learn (for the first time) the shape of its defence and have the opportunity to reply. On 20 March, the Court will finalise a timetable, including a fixture for the hearing – which our counsel expects could occur about June or July.

The wheels of justice sometimes turn exceeding slow, but everyone gets a turn to speak and what they say is heard—simple principles, more often honoured in blogland in the breach than the observance yet generally revered.

Decisions in this seminal case against NIWA are eagerly awaited around the world. Will its scientific knavery survive a judicial examination? Can it really say one thing, do quite another, and get away with it—honoured, as before, as a leading scientific institution?

Remember, NIWA said it would use a particular method to calculate adjustments to the raw temperature readings; it not only didn’t use that method, it broke all the rules laid down by that method. I recently posted a summary of NIWA’s scientific outrages against the NZ temperature record.

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I’ve been busy

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Business commitments have kept me from covering any climate topics for a while, but I plan to post an article or two at the weekend. There’s a paper on clouds by two Auckland researchers that has come to my attention and I may have time for further items.

So, my apologies, but I haven’t stopped either being interested in climate matters or spending time reading and writing about them. There’s a lot happening and some people have been quite excited at the extra realistic (sceptical) coverage of global warming.

I avoid getting excited because the great carbon-based wheel is now turning at a fair clip and will take a power of stopping. That’s no reason to slacken our efforts, but is a reason to raise the gaze to a slightly more distant finish line.

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NZ temperature record — it’s worse than we thought

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Thanks to those who advised me of this amazing email from the Climategate 2 collection, either through comments here or private email. It concerns the pre-1930 cooling of the New Zealand temperature record, and makes food for thought, especially for those supporting NIWA, Salinger and the increasingly shaky AGW story. Although it’s more of a novel, and a bad one at that, with gaping holes in the plot and evidence so carelessly thrown together it fools nobody. Now, as many of us feared was the case, comes evidence that the NZ temperature record has been applied to far more places than where it was observed. We now know it was stretched over far-flung places it was never intended to go. This is the worst result possible.

Cc: t.osborn@uea.ac.uk
date: Mon, 7 Sep 2009 00:13:56 +0100 (BST)
from: “Tim Osborn”
subject: New Zealand summer temps
to: p.jones@uea.ac.uk

Hi Phil,

just a quick Q before I go to bed!

I’ve just updated the IPCC paleo chapter Southern Hemisphere plot where we
showed, amongst other things, Ed Cook’s New Zealand TRW reconstruction,
with CRUTEM2v Jan-Mar smoothed temperatures.

For my update I’ve used CRUTEM3v, expecting them to be rather similar but
with a few more years on the end.

But the pre-1930 temperatures are now very different, being much cooler
(by > 0.5 degC for a 25-year low-pass mean) in CRUTEM3v than CRUTEM2v.
Previously they had been, on average, near or even above the 1961-1990
mean, now they’re at -0.5 degC.

Is this a result of some homogenization work on New Zealand summer temp
data? Or just some random artefact of minor changes somewhere?

Cheers

Tim

— Dr. Tim Osborn RCUK Academic Fellow Climatic Research Unit School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/

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