• Guest post •
— by Owen Jennings
Member, NZ Climate Science Coalition
from left: Winston Peters (NZ First), Jacinda Ardern (Labour), James Shaw (Green)
The ‘transformational’ government of the Labour-Green Coalition has taken some heavy, self-inflicted hits, including the inability to institute a capital gains tax, dropping the Kermadec Island sanctuary, walking back Kiwibuild housing numbers, ousting Curran and Whaitiri, and loss of business confidence, to name a few.
The most consequential back-down however has gone almost unnoticed. Maybe the MSM just didn’t want to give it any focus as they were obviously big supporters. It involves a commitment to 100% renewable electricity in New Zealand by 2035, agreed shortly after the 2017 general election between the Labour and Green parties. The policy is in their agreement on confidence and supply.
Everyone Only the Greens want expensive “renewables”
Late in 2017, Cabinet agreed to set up an interim committee to critique the policy of delivering 100% renewables and establish a permanent Climate Change Commission.
Shock, horror, the committee came back with a recommendation to drop the 100% renewables policy by 2035. The Coalition had little option but to agree. In one fell swoop a huge hole has been blown in the Coalition’s plans. Yet again, James Shaw has a mouthful of dead rats. One of the Greens’ dearest goals just went ‘poof’ in a haze of CO2.
The public explanation is simply that the policy would have increased power prices and done little to reduce emissions.
In truth, that key green dream would have seriously hurt those on low incomes by sending power prices through the roof, wrecked the viability and competitiveness of our export industries who rely heavily on our relatively low-cost hydro-electric power generation to market their goods off-shore, created endless blackouts causing havoc for homes, businesses, urban motorists, etc., filled the skyline with more obscene wind machines that kill birds and bats and produce damaging low frequency sound and, ironically, might force us to open new coal mines to maintain the power supply when it’s dark, cold and calm.
The country has dodged a bullet. But beware, there are others in the chamber, like the Emissions Bill going through the House.
It must be a free press, they tell lies freely enough
The hit on the Coalition demands more scrutiny. Of course, we are unable to have a discussion in the MSM – a draconian and sinister misuse of editorial power – and few of the public will see it for what it is – a significant back-down and damage to the extreme green policies of the red, left-leaning Greens and Labour.
The scrutiny would show that much of the environmental policy of the Coalition is wishful thinking. It’s ideology. It’s trumped-up, airy-fairy nonsense without a basis in sound science or logic and has no place in policy-making.
It’s based on manipulated graphs that turned cooling temperatures into warming using corrections that lowered older temperatures. It’s based on models programmed to predict warming when carbon dioxide increases that in the last 20 years have produced temperatures well above reality. It’s based on a ‘hockey stick’ graph that emerged from one scientist studying growth rings in just a single larch in Siberia and ignoring decades of research from multiple international sites that show a medieval warm period hotter than it is now (note: it is Greenland, not Whiteland).
The modern climate of distortion
It’s based on fictitious claims of hot days, record temperatures, hottest months, warmest years when in many countries temperatures in the 1930s were several degrees hotter than today. It’s based on a politician’s movie that contained 35 proven factual errors but won him a handsome bank balance and a share of a Nobel Peace prize. It’s based on striking terror into people’s hearts, especially the young and vulnerable, with wild stories of sea level rise swamping atolls and cities, horror tales of increasing storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, floods and rain events, when the facts show weather variability has been within normal limits in a century of records.
It’s also based on the work of pseudo-scientists who do no original research but feed off the most recent outlandish claim and try to better it. It is ponzi-science.
Instead of producing facts to back your claims you show an emaciated, scraggy polar bear perched on a melting iceberg and claim that proves the end of those sweet, cuddly animals – as a symbol of a doomed civilisation. Meanwhile, their numbers are increasing to the point where they pose a danger to humans (some have been attacked and killed) and towns and villages are discussing controlled reductions.
You cannot build a house on sand and expect it to last. You cannot build policy on corrupt ideology and falsified science and expect it to be good.
Fortunately the appointed committee told it the way it was – they really didn’t have an option. The goal of 100% renewables by 2035, according to the PM, is now ‘aspirational’.
Hopefully, it will become ‘expirational’.
Views: 215
I remember Owen Jennings when I was involved with Federated Farmers and I spent a lot of time in Wellington in the 1980s .
I would say that this article is a very good summary of the current governments attempt to change New Zealand .
Try and get a main stream news outlet to print this and you have no hope of that ever happening .
The governments policy ( what is policy and what is wishful thinking ) can only hurt New Zealand and make New Zealander’s poorer .
Owen I bet the New Zealand Herald or Stuff will never publish this article and that reinforces what you have written.
Graham
Read the peer-reviewed research Owen. I don’t know where you get your ‘information’ from but it is a crock of BS.
Global temperature means are higher today than in the 1930’s and the medieval warm period.
Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ has been validated at least a dozen times using many other proxies.
Global temperature increases have been consistent with the CMIP5, CMIP3 ensemble means and every other GCM since Hansen’s original 1980’s model.
The NZ Herald does print erroneous material on climate change. When given the chance to correct it, with appropriate evidence and references, it often refuses or fails to do so. In other words, the Herald prints lies to appease loonies and crank-up sales, using the excuse “opinion” or “balance”.
The balance of informed opinion has not changed for a hundred years and more: it is the atmospheric levels of non-condensible greenhouse gases that force temperature rises. If that were not so Earth would be a snowball.
Simon back again .
Global temperatures higher today than the thirties ? Only if they tamper with the thirties temperature .
The Vikings farmed in Greenland in the Medieval Warm Period and left when the little Ice age took hold .
It has not warmed up enough yet to farm in Greenland at this time, and we don’t need proxies to tell us that
Mike Mans hockey stick has never been validated .Where did you get that information from Simon ?
The hockey stick was a crock and it has never been validated because it is rubbish.
Only one climate model is any where near what is happening in the real world ,and that is the Russian one
You are in denial Simon bring some facts here ,scientific proof ,not some half baked trash .
The world has been warming since the coldest period in the Little Ice Age and the most of the warming is natural variation and there is no proof that any of the has been caused by CO2.
Graham
Excellent article, Owen.
How is your loony, -18deg C, frozen Earth “greenhouse” nonsense going, Simon. ?
The Mediaeval Warm Period was confined to Northern Europe and parts of China. Global means were less than the 21st Century. If you are not prepared to read the actual research, at least try to consult Wikipedia or the IPCC summaries. There is no excuse in this day and age to be misinformed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_past_1000_years?wprov=sfla1
Simon that is a lie .The Medieval Warm Period was global .James Salinger actually did a study in the Waitomo Caves and it was published that helped to prove that it was world wideand many other studies have been undertaken .
As for IPCC summaries they are political documents and many scientists who worked on the first and second IPCC reports gave up on the later reports as they were ignored .They peer reviewed papers and found many errors but the IPCC accepted them with the errors never the less.
You have not answered the question I asked about Greenland and saying that the MWP was not global does not stack up as as Greenland is very much in the Northern Hemisphere .
Graham
The IPCC reports are not political documents. It’s true the science is “watered down” so a consensus of all states, including oil producers, can be reached. If anything, the situation is likely worse than reported. Twelve years to mend our ways… What could be clearer? Do you lot need a trephine to let it sink in?
The Medieval Warm Period was not synchronous. The global mean surface temperature is higher now. Jim Salinger knows that as well as anyone.
Whatever forced temperatures in the past, at any chosen time, it is man’s greenhouse gases now. That is beyond dispute.
There are numerous studies that show the MWP was experienced in the Southern Hemisphere.
I can’t be bothered locating all the Australian/New Guinean ones…
but here are some of the WELL-KNOWN NZ studies:
Wilson et al 1979: https://www.nature.com/articles/279315a0
(NW Nelson cave)
Cook et al 2002: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2001GL014580
(Oroko Swamp)
Williams et al 2004: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1191/0959683604hl676rp
(Waitomo cave)
Lorrey et al 2008: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618207003084
(Fiordland & Hawkes Bay caves)
Of interest is this new study ..”The Medieval Climate Anomaly in Antarctica”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018219303190
Here’s another recent paper on the MWP from South American sites:
“The Medieval Climate Anomaly in South America”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618218308322#!
MCA warming in South America and the NH appears to have occurred largely synchronous, probably reaching comparable intensities.
A reply to Latent sniff .
I don’t know where you are getting your information from but it is all malformation .You fell in because we all know that Jim Salinger pushes the warmist line but he was involved with that study in the Waitomo caves that showed that the MWP was global.
I read in the NZ Herald over 20 years ago an article by James Renwick ( NZs warmist guru ) and he was bemoaning that the MWP was an inconvenient fact to the theory that the warming since the end of the Little Ice Age has been caused by CO2 .
There has been a concerted effort by warmists to down play the MWP and change history .
When you or any so called climate scientist can explain what caused the Ice ages and how the world warmed up after them and then what caused the little Ice Age I would lie to hear.
The world experienced three climate optimums over the last 5000 years and their is good evidence that all were warmer than present .
Not one of you has explained how the Vikings farmed in Greenland during the MWP .You all dive back under your rock .
I really don’t know why I bother with trolls like you but some of you hang around long enough to realize that what you believe has large gaping holes in what the warmists are telling you.
Graham
The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) also known as the Medieval Climate Optimum, or Medieval Climatic Anomaly was a time of warm climate in the North Atlantic region that may have been related to other warming events in other regions during that time, including China[1] and other areas,[2][3] lasting from c. 950 to c. 1250.[4] Other regions were colder, such as the tropical Pacific. Averaged global mean temperatures have been calculated to be similar to early-mid 20th century warming. Possible causes of the Medieval Warm Period include increased solar activity, decreased volcanic activity, and changes to ocean circulation.
[1] Li, H.; Ku, T. (2002). “Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Periods in Eastern China as Read from the Speleothem Records”. AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts. 71: 71C–09. Bibcode:2002AGUFMPP71C..09L.
[2] Grove, Jean M.; Switsur, Roy (1994). “Glacial geological evidence for the medieval warm period” (PDF). Climatic Change. 26 (2–3): 143. Bibcode:1994ClCh…26..143G. doi:10.1007/BF01092411.
[3] Diaz, Henry F.; Hughes, M. (1994). The Medieval warm period. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. p. 134. ISBN 978-0-7923-2842-1. 6.2 Evidence for a Medieval Warm Epoch
[4] Mann, M. E.; Zhang, Z.; Rutherford, S.; et al. (2009). “Global Signatures and Dynamical Origins of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Anomaly” (PDF). Science. 326 (5957): 1256–60. Bibcode:2009Sci…326.1256M. doi:10.1126/science.1177303. PMID 19965474.
It’s the trephine, then, I’m afraid.
Sister!
Trepanning is too good for Simon.
I have studied our superb volcanically dated lacustrine Papers for instance,covering the mwp etc. My University, Massey, has them.
They show up the ignorance and dishonesty of all trolls. Brett
I think “Latent Sniff” is this infantile tosser’s name for Leighton Smith.
https://realclimatescience.com/
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/114490533/earth-now-warming-faster-than-it-has-in-1900-years-new-data-shows
In the Nature paper, Neukom and his colleagues use the PAGES data to poke holes in the widely accepted theory that periods of cooling and warming over the past 2000 years affected the globe uniformly.
Perhaps the most well known of these epochs is what scientists call the Little Ice Age – a cool period that persisted from the 16th century to the 19th century. Similarly, the Medieval Climate Anomaly is known as a warm, dry period that lasted from AD 950 to 1250.
“The traditional understanding was that climate over these periods were globally coherent” said Nathan Steiger, a paleoclimatologist at Columbia University in New York who worked on the paper. “But when we looked at the PAGES data, we found they are not as coherent as we thought.”
After analysing the data using multiple statistical methods, the authors found that what were previously assumed to be global trends in temperature were actually regional trends for all known climate epochs except the one we find ourselves in today.
For example, while the Little Ice Age did represent a global cooling, some parts of the planet were coldest during the mid-19th century, while others had their coldest weather several centuries earlier. At the height of the Medieval Climate Anomaly, only 40 per cent of the Earth experienced peak temperatures at the same time.
But when the authors ran the same analysis for our current climatic epoch, known as the Contemporary Warm Period, they found that peak temperatures have been seen across all regions of the globe except Antarctica within the past 51 years.
So Simon, Neukom et al claim that the modern warming is consistent all over the planet at the same time, as opposed to the past where we might call the distribution of the warmth or chill as ‘lumpy.’ Neukom obviously hasn’t read the paper by NZ scientists that describe how the NZ region experienced a cool period from the mid 1980’s until the end of the first decade of this century that enabled both Franz Josef & Fox Glaciers to make major advances. They have since retreated back to where they were in the 1960’s & 70’s BTW. My point is, if NZ can be an anomaly at a time when Neukom claims the warm temperatures are consistent around the globe, then perhaps his findings are selective, and therefore erroneous? How many other regions aren’t really experiencing the ‘heat’ that Neukom claims?
In the theory of warmth caused by rising CO2 levels around the globe, how can we experience cooling for nearly 25 years? Either CO2 is the cause and there can be no variations, or isolated anomalies, or it, CO2, isn’t the driver. Given such anomalies as our own example, I would go for the latter.
Simon
I have no idea why you bother to promulgate nonsense here, except , I suspect, you are a modern equivalent of the Flagellants, a religious sect who whipped themselves physically until they bled to ‘cleanse their souls’.
Give up, mate, all you are doing is making a fool of yourself while demonstrating that you are operating from a belief you hold, which has nothing to do with science, however sincerely held.