Our money just blowing in the wind turbines

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• Guest post •

Wind energy produces costly, intermittent, unpredictable electricity. But Government subsidies and mandates have encouraged a massive gamble on wind investments in Australia — over $7 billion has already been spent and another $30 billion is proposed. This expenditure is justified by the claim that by using wind energy there will be less carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere which will help to prevent dangerous global warming.

Incredibly, this claim is not supported by any credible cost-benefit analysis Continue Reading →

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Greens have a plan

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Details are scarce, but we’ll pay $1 billion

Greens voting logo

The Greens sent an email yesterday offering some kind of a national development plan so we vote for them in the election. Russel Norman says:

Yesterday I announced the first of the Green Party’s economic policies to build a smarter greener economy that benefits every New Zealander.

At the centre of our plan is an additional $1 billion of government investment in research and development, including tax breaks for business.

Continue Reading →

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Modern journalism meets a lion of a man

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hyena handler of Nigeria

Hyena handler of Nigeria—a real-life lion of a man. Click to expand.

While sceptics learn to laugh at themselves

A Harley biker is visiting Taronga Park Zoo, Sydney, when he sees a little girl leaning into the lions’ cage.

Suddenly, a lion grabs her by the jacket and tries to pull her inside, in full view of her terrified, screaming parents. Continue Reading →

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Letter to the Editor

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The sky fell last month, but almost nobody noticed

atomic model

An atomic model. Symbolises atoms in the atomsphere… sorry, atmosphere.

To the Editor
Climate Conversation

9th July 2014

The sky fell on Hawaii last month, all because carbon dioxide levels peeped above the much-hyped 400 ppm ‘hurdle.’ Chicken Littles all over the world squawked into their friendly media megaphones about numerous imminent global warming disasters. One warned: “the fate of the world hangs in the balance.” (Similar alarms were rung when the 350 ppm level was passed).

But nobody else noticed anything scary. Continue Reading →

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IPCC clouds the issue

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clouds

In researching the post about the list of sceptical scientists I was set on a new course and discovered a couple of interesting facts in the TAR. The narrative describing the list referred to three statements from the 2001 Third Assessment Report (TAR) of the IPCC. The first is:

The global average surface temperature has risen 0.6 ± 0.2 °C since the late 19th century, and 0.17 °C per decade in the last 30 years.

The rise of 0.6 °C was unexceptional, but I wondered at the 0.17 °C because it represents a rate of recent warming nearly three times higher than earlier. Continue Reading →

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Slip on a list, a humorous list

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We were circulated a list published in Wikipedia of scientists sceptical of the IPCC version of dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW). The list has been published and updated since 2005 and it appears still to be provoking discussion.

On seeing the list yesterday, a sceptical scientist offered some wry observations:

Unintentionally by the writers, this is actually quite an amusing list, despite it managing to omit more than a few known sceptics of standing. Continue Reading →

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Salinger incites Grimes

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So June was warm—what of it?

Gareth Renowden, known here as Grimes the shambling truffle grubber, makes the breathless claim that “winter warmth during June” has broken a 140-year-old NZ record. However, he fails to mention his real thinking—that the world is igniting because of our filthy CO2. No doubt he hopes we’ll draw that conclusion anyway, after all the brainwashing we’ve had about it. And of course we do.

Has Grimes found evidence of global warming in New Zealand? And would that be in the same way as Lemon and Paeroa is considered world-famous in New Zealand?  In other words, it’s not global warming in any scientific sense? Continue Reading →

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