Like alarmists everywhere ahead of Paris, Gareth “Running Man” Renowden flees honest inquiry. He’s happy to allow readers to make any wild predictions they like about global warming, but ask for details and he deletes your question. What’s he afraid of?
When a question I left recently at Hot Topic under The Age Of Resilience starts tonight did not appear, I left a second asking where it went. The replies exemplify the mischief and dissimulation so commonplace at Hot Topic.
The reader nigwil says: “Regardless of what the report says, the sea is going to rise, probably by as much as 2 to 5 metres by 2100.”
I say: “Really? Let me address the minimum sea level rise (SLR) of 2 m you say we should expect by 2100. There are 84 years left in which to achieve this, remembering that we’ve had 27 mm since 2000 (1.8 mm/yr × 15 yr). The ocean has 1973 mm to go, which at the current rate will require 1096 years. When will the acceleration begin? When will it reach the 23.5 mm/yr required to achieve 2000 mm by 2100?”
If the rate does not reach 23.5 mm/yr by 2017, the rate of acceleration thereafter must be even greater, yet it requires some extraordinary event even to achieve 24 mm by next year—it’s a whopping 1300 per cent more than last year. Still, if it’s not achieved soon, the prediction cannot come true.
So it’s a reasonable thing to ask, in my opinion. It’s also restrained, there’s no abuse and the arithmetic makes sense. It’s a genuine inquiry. When it failed to appear on the HT blog, I asked about it and received an answer:
I posted a reply but where did it go?
[It was deleted. Your misrepresentations already have enough exposure at your “CCG” without HT having to give them additional exposure. GR]
So I tried again: “But surely, Gareth, you jest?” But he was unbending:
[Nope. You want to indulge in tortuous, incomprehensible and long-winded ramblings, but you have a blog already devoted to that. Stay there, please, unless you are willing to apologise to the NIWA and other NZ climate scientists you have maligned over the years. Oh, and you could pay back some of the taxpayers money you so egregiously rorted by folding your “Education” Trust. Until then, your presence is not welcome here. GR]
So he blusters away. But he still hasn’t answered my questions and he’s using bombast and blather to justify it. Like this.
NIWA climate scientists have never wanted an apology. In fact, they responded to our public and Parliamentary criticisms by reconstructing the NZ temperature record, which by any measure is an outstanding victory for us. It directly recognises the Coalition’s work as contributing to a more robust national climate record. Not many people can say they’ve helped the country’s leading scientists achieve a better result, although Renowden is too mean-spirited to acknowledge this.
Listening to their apologists at Hot Topic, you’d think NIWA’s scientists could do no wrong, but they’ve been guilty of losing work paid for by taxpayers. They also refused to answer our questions about their work. It was this obstinacy which eventually forced us to seek help in the courts.
Renowden resurrects appalling fabrications that he himself invented to demean our civil suit against NIWA. But as regular readers know, I have many times patiently explained that forming the NZ Climate Science Education Trust was required to meet the expectations of the Court. A non-existent body cannot appoint an agent or open a bank account, much less bring a suit to court.
As to his malicious accusation of “egregious rorting”, dissolving the trust was no fraud. Nobody predicted the damages Justice Venning suddenly awarded against us, because never before had a group of New Zealand whistle-blowers, challenging the actions of a government body, been required to pay costs. It was unprecedented in a hundred and seventy-three years of New Zealand legal history, and thus we were entirely unprepared to pay nearly $90,000. All we could do was dissolve the Trust, but Justice Venning’s cold-hearted ruling creates a grim precedent that will forever threaten honest citizens seeking answers from powerful public bodies.
Although the taxpayers weren’t defrauded, they might have hoped to reap an unexpected windfall—and remember we were simply asking how they did things; how brutal might NIWA’s response have been had we asked them for money?
NIWA is not a conventional government department but a state-owned enterprise, required to earn a profit for the benefit of its one shareholder, the Crown. This invests it with the flexibility and legal protections of a private company and the bounty of the public purse.
But there’s this propaganda benefit, too, which Renowden plugs at every opportunity. When the Crown enterprise was waiting for the money granted by the Court, we were no longer dealing with an ordinary company: we suddenly discovered that we were actually “defrauding” the taxpayer (where did he suddenly come from?). Yet NIWA engaged top-of-the-line Queen’s Counsel to defend a civil suit against their commercial activities by using public funds.
By what perverted legal logic can NIWA at once hide their actions behind a veil of commercial confidentiality, enjoy the status of a respected government authority and protect all this by spending public funds? They have it both ways, so how can anyone call it to account? And how can it be seen as open or transparent when it refuses to answer its critics?
The legal barriers around a Crown enterprise are sensational—a formidable public-private partnership in law and custom that bulwarks it against honest inquiry yet grants it the full defensive power of public resources. Justice should run the other way, for it should defend the private citizen against powerful government authorities that stray from fairness. Here the court not only failed to defend us, but by its inequitable ruling on costs colluded with NIWA’s efforts to crush us and it succeeded.
It’s disappointing to see Renowden running from my straightforward inquiry about predicted sea levels, since his own claims of urgency that we must save the earth gave rise to it. If he cannot justify urgency, there is no need to act quickly. But if he doesn’t know when the sea will begin its dangerous rise, it is scarcely urgent, and if the beginning is a long way off, the dangerous rise he predicts (two metres by 2100) cannot occur.
We do not believe him. Even the IPCC predicts only about 450 mm by 2100, and their worst-case scenario, RCP8.5, will produce, by their guesswork, only 1000 mm. To double that requires good evidence, which we are entitled to know; to quintuple it to 5000 mm is witless.
Sceptical people don’t go along with everything the IPCC expects us to swallow. When reasonable questions go not merely unanswered but brazenly ignored, reasonable people will treat these baseless “predictions” with scorn.
By the way, for the sea level to rise by five metres at the current rate of 1.8 mm/yr would require over 2700 years. But of course those brainiacs at Hot Topic have calculated that already, right?
Views: 204
Ah, yes, include those other issues and you’re right; free speech is being removed. First by popular opinion and eventually by statute, and eventually here. But the climate change conversation must be cleansed of the “denier” and “sceptic” tags or we’ll never take advantage of nature’s course in temperature. That is, we’ll be shackled by the urgent climate exigencies even if it’s cooling and whether we like it or not.
What a lot of offensive drivel. When the nakedness of your position is fully revealed, the required apologies will not be forthcoming, I have no doubt. I know some individuals associated with the preposterous case you brought against NIWA, and they have my deepest sympathy. Renowden is too much for you to cope with, and it’s time you admitted it.
It is not offensive!
I’m pleased to hear you admit that after years of effort you have not demolished our arguments. If they’re wrong, then why don’t you refute them? I cope with Renowden quite well, thank you, it’s he who’s afraid to give me speaking rights in his echo chamber of climate denial.
Thanks for visiting, RW.
RW
>”the preposterous case you brought against NIWA,”
Since vindicated in the peer-reviewed literature i.e. the law is an ass.
What a lot of offensive drivel.
Oh dear poor little RW is offended and is triggered by our micro-aggressions and needs a safe space with some puppies, kittens and crayons to console himself.
I know some individuals associated with the preposterous case you brought against NIWA, and they have my deepest sympathy
but are too afraid to name them.
I don’t give a stuff who you know in the beltway science groupthink bubble, and most of NZ doesn’t care either
RW (via Richard C),
Yes, the NZ Climate Science Coalition has published in a peer-reviewed journal the one and only paper establishing the NZ temperature record and the proper way to derive it from observations.
The scientists of NIWA, for all their criticism of the Coalition, have published nothing. We have performed a tangible public service. Unpaid.
More on the free speech topic, this time about Bill Nye
https://drhurd.com/2016/04/16/58848/
Quoting Nye
and then the article continues
“If you disagree with them, you’re guilty of racism or hatred. You’re guilty of hate speech. Hate is not rational; so why shouldn’t it be against the law? That’s where we’re going.”
Hate, like any other emotion, can be rational or irrational. I hate murder, violence, etc. I hate what the law proscribes, but not always. I don’t hate accurate descriptions of our enemies, or discriminating against ill behaviour or judging someone for their behaviour or appearance. It’s what we do. I do hate calls for new legislation when a tragic accident occurs, such as for swimming pool fences when every stream in the city is unfenced and people should expect to look after themselves and their children around natural hazards.
Hate is as natural as love and neither can be legislated against.
PS: I should say this is a good find, Andy, and it certainly bodes ill for the future of science and reason.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. The assault on free speech, common sense and reason is getting out of control, especially in Universities.
Thomas seems to think that the “conspiracy to confuse the public about climate change is one of the biggest crimes against humanity, ever” (paraphrasing)
i.e having a different opinion about a difficult and complex subject than the so-called consensus is a greater crime that the Holocaust, the forced starvation of 7 million Ukrainians under Stalin, the Killing fields of Pol Pot, the ethnic cleansing of Christians and Yazidis in the Middle East by ISIS, etc.
ohh kaaaayyy….
Thomas is German. It’s probably easier for him to create a monster to rail against than to address the holocaust, where the real denial syndrome resides.
Warmies have the luxury of being able to pick and choose their most alarming GMST series depending on the headline required. For March it’s JMA in the Guardian:
Except then the article pulls in GISTEMP for February but the respective series have different anomaly baselines and differing margins, so the narrative becomes rather garbled:
They’re quoting station data, not LOTI, GISTEMP LOTI monthly is now on the way back down after the peak (as is the station series above) but the anomaly is not as alarming so it is dissed (natch):
GISTEMP: Global Monthly Mean Surface Temperature Change [Station vs LOTI]
Year+Month Station Land+Ocean
2015.71 0.82 0.82
2015.79 1.19 1.06
2015.88 1.23 1.02
2015.96 1.43 1.10
2016.04 1.39 1.13
2016.13 1.71 1.34
2016.21 1.65 1.28
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.C.txt
The spike is ONLY in the NH data i.e. it is NOT “global”. And now NH temperatures are on the way back to ENSO-neutral although still in El Nino conditions
The NH-only “global” warming spike claimed for AGW/MMCC by Schmidt, Rahmstorf, et al (“shocker” and “a kind of climate emergency”) is dissipating to space in accordance with the Kelvin-Planck statement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
I issued a challenge at Hot Topic on this, no-one has dared respond:
Hot Topic runs and hides from this.
At least UKMO’s Scaife gets it mostly right at the bottom of the Guardian article:
Some sanity, except the UKMO’s 5 yr “decadal” forecast is wrong every year but Scaife is still clinging to the notion that “Global temperatures are expected to continue to rise in future decades due to climate change” nevertheless.
But what if ENSO-neutral GMST is back on the 21st century flat trajectory (i.e. back to hiatus) by end of 2016 – early 2017 …….??????
How long will it take for the likes of Scaife to abandon their expectation in the face of reality?
Thomas is German. It’s probably easier for him to create a monster to rail against than to address the holocaust, where the real denial syndrome resides.
Thomas was the guy that was “puking” at the thought of a bunch of “whingers” from ChCh having their property rights taken away, undemocratically, by the council.
I met a another German at the weekend who has spent $20,000 on building consents in Southshore, just to get a transportable home made from shipping container installed.
This is the downstream effect of stupid and unnecessary regulations based on a one metre sea level projection. I have given up any hope that people in ChCh will get any empathy from the self-centred narcissists who inhabit the Green universe. Their only purpose in life is to pose around and virtue signal about their solar panels, EVs and generally pristine green lifestyle that they achieved by piggybacking off the industrial revolution that gave them all this great technology and which they now despise
>”pose around and virtue signal”
Strap your MTB to your SUV Andy – that makes it immune to the environment.
I’m having a fruitless discussion about glaciers at the moment. There is a NIWA page from 2008 that claims that glacier mass balance is in equilibrium (at least up to 2008)
it doesn’t seem to line up with other statements from NIWA, at the time, that claim a large ice loss.
Any ideas?
>”I’m having a fruitless discussion about glaciers”
I don’t see that at your last comment Andy. I see:
“So you [Thomas] are claiming that glaciers increased in size, and NIWA claim that there was a massive decline. Which is it? ”
Be interesting to see if Thomas weasels out or runs and hides. Either way fruitful IMO.
BTW, re temperature, global “average” vs local, Thomas still seems to be labouring under the global average illusion.
My main point is that NIWA, as of 2008, were claiming that the Southern Alp glaciers were in a state of approx equilibrium
https://www.niwa.co.nz/publications/wa/vol16-no3-september-2008/glacier-response-to-climate-change
I found this page during a search for some info on the Fox Glacier
Fox and Franz are both in a state of rapid retreat, but until fairly recently were advancing. I suspect a lot of this is driven by the amount of snowfall that gets deposited on the neves above the glaciers
The neve is a large collection area and feeds the two steep glaciers that respond quickly to changes in snowfall.
The Tasman is retreating rapidly but this would appear to be caused mainly by the large terminal lake at the snout. This is causing the ice to melt rapidly.
There is a Massey article that explains this
http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/about-massey/news/article.cfm?mnarticle=tasman-glacier-retreat-extreme-23-04-2008
(Thomas liked to the Google search that provides this link)
The lake may extend several kms up the valley before a lake is no longer viable, because of the topography. Suggesting that this will melt the entire glacier in our lifetimes seems a bit pessimistic
The current lake may extend up to the start of the moraine, beyond which the ice steepens up. This currently provides 8-10km ski run and I suspect it will for many years to come
I should add that I am quite surprised at the 2008 NIWA report. I was under the impression that southern glaciers were receding rapidly and have been doing so for decades
Of course, my genuine interest in this – backed up by years of climbing and ski touring in glaciated regions around the world – is met with the usual derision and accusations of spreading “doubt”.
Rob taylor:
Best not to feed the nitpicking nitwit troll, Thomas.
Reply
Thomas says:
April 29, 2016 at 8:14 am
Yep, I will leave him to his puzzlement 😉
Herr Thomas is suggesting that US Republicans be sent to “camps” in Africa or the Middle East.
Germans love their “camps”. Might I suggest that the camps be located in mainland USA so the Republicans can be loaded onto trains? It would be much more environmentally friendly
>Germans love their “camps”
And invigorating walking tours of the countryside, environmentally preferable to trains surely?
Different itineraries to choose from but enjoy the scenery along the way because it may be the last you will ever see. And oh yes, please do try to keep up because we can’t have stragglers ruining the experience for everyone else:
Death marches (Holocaust)
Chełm to Hrubieszów, Sokal and Belz
Lublin to Biała Podlaska and Parczew
Belz to Hrubieszow
Auschwitz to Wodzisław Śląski
Stutthof to Lauenburg
Dachau to the Austrian border
“Those still alive when the [Danzig region] marchers reached the coast were forced into the Baltic Sea and shot.”
“Prisoners who were unable to keep up due to fatigue or illness were usually executed by gunshot.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_marches_%28Holocaust%29
The March (1945) – 80,000 Allied POWs
This series of events has been called various names: “The Great March West”, “The Long March”, “The Long Walk”, “The Long Trek”, “The Black March”, “The Bread March”, and “Death March Across Germany”, but most survivors just called it “The March”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_March_%281945%29
From the HT Twitter Feed:
James Renwick:
“This is out and out vandalism. Akin to ISIS blowing up cultural treasures in the middle east.”
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/cutting-to-the-core-csiro-to-end-longstanding-antarctic-ice-air-research-20160508-gop6tb.html
They really do have a high opinion of themselves if they compare funding cuts in CSIRO to the destruction of priceless treasures in the Middle East by ISIS
Re CSIRO, I don’t think the Antarctic will notice their abscence. And the world’s populace, except the chicken littles, probably wouldn’t be perturbed if all of climate science stopped tomorrow either. I’d miss their data through, I have to admit.
Garbage collection ‘nuther story. New York declared a state of emergency a few days in to a garbage collectors strike in 1968, see:
‘Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers’
How more people are making money without contributing anything of value
http://evonomics.com/why-garbage-men-should-earn-more-than-bankers/