NZ really ‘envy of the world’?

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NZ Climate Science Coalition Chairman Barry Brill produces a shocking indictment of Jacinda Ardern’s disastrous COVID-19 leadership. Academic research strongly disagrees that her lockdown saved lives. The alarming unvalidated model forecasts she heeded have been thoroughly discredited by peer reviews and actual events.

Originally published by NZCPR on 5 July 2020.
Republished with permission.

On 3 June, Prime Minister Ardern told the House: “I have proudly made Captain’s Calls all the way through and it is one of the reasons, alongside our Team of Five Million, we are the envy of the world.”

Is New Zealand’s Covid-19 track record really the envy of the world? And did Ms Ardern’s Captain’s Calls improve or worsen the outcome? Continue Reading →

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Minister Shaw hijacks ZC Commission before it’s created

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“A comment too newsworthy not to be elevated to its own post. For background, see Shattering analysis of Shaw’s nil carbon dreams and the Brill essays at the end. Incidentally, if you’re a National MP, please raise questions in the House about this egregious move. — RT

The mooted Climate Commission does not exist and may never be authorised by Parliament. The House has referred the Bill (which proposes the establishment of such an agency) to a Select Committee, which must recommend whether the Bill be allowed to advance to a Second Reading and, if so, whether it be amended. Continue Reading →

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Study shows NZ has been cooling for 26 years

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Franz Josef glacier — simply massive.

A lot of people know that New Zealand’s official weather data show that this country’s mean temperature has remained remarkably stable for at least 150 years.

So, a handful of government scientists (whose fame and fortune depend upon scary warming) have spent years looking for evidence that the historical data is so wrong that “adjustments” are essential. In this quest, the most fertile ground has long seemed to be the retreat of New Zealand’s numerous glaciers, particularly in the Southern Alps. Continue Reading →

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“Human influence” is unquantifiable

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Weather with sublime sunburst. Human influence still undetectable.

Three of the world’s most distinguished scientists, Professors Happer, Koonin and Lindzen, recently offered as evidence in a Californian court a “Climate science overview”. It begins:

Our overview of climate science is framed through four statements:

  1. The climate is always changing; changes like those of the past half-century are common in the geologic record, driven by powerful natural phenomena.
  2. Human influences on the climate are a small (1%) perturbation to natural energy flows.
  3. It is not possible to tell how much of the modest recent warming can be ascribed to human influences.
  4. There have been no detrimental changes observed in the most salient climate variables and today’s projections of future changes are highly uncertain.

The third statement is crucial to the Paris Agreement. Continue Reading →

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Response to NIWA comment on de Freitas reanalysis of the NZ temperature record

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• Guest post •

— by Barry Brill, Chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

This note offers brief replies to specific aspects of a Comment by NIWA scientists (called hereafter “NIWA Comment”), published in Environmental Modeling & Assessment in April, 2018, concerning A Reanalysis of Long-Term Surface Air Temperature Trends in New Zealand (by de Freitas et al., 2015) (“de Freitas”).

  1. Abstract

Since there was a systematic tendency for the seven-station sites to be relocated to colder locations as the early half of the twentieth century progressed, [de Freitas’s alleged] rejection of valid adjustments produces an artificially low rate of warming.

Reply

The NIWA Comment is mistaken. Continue Reading →

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Complaint over TVNZ inaccuracy, imbalance on oil & gas ban

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The Complaints Committee,
Television New Zealand
One News, 12 April: Oil & Gas Exploration Ban

Both news readers in this programme claimed that the purpose of the Government’s ban on new offshore exploration for oil and gas was to cut New Zealand’s greenhouse emissions and was necessary because New Zealand signed up to the Paris Climate Agreement. Continue Reading →

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Did humans cause 2017’s extreme weather events?

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— by Barry Brill, Chairman of the NZ Climate Science Coalition

2017 was a year of extreme weather, especially in the USA with Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria devastating swathes of the country, while western states suffered from a severe drought and consequent bushfires. The year ended with a record-breaking “deep freeze”.

New Zealand also had its weather travails, with NIWA reporting a “marine heatwave”, bringing rainfall records, accompanied by heavy flooding, to parts of the South Island.

Some elements of the media hold the view that such events are a product of Climate Change. They contend that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) has already become “dangerous”.

Continue Reading →

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Unpacking climate alarm

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Auckland Harbour – little change

The Prime Minister says combating climate change will be the defining characteristic of her term of office. Ms Ardern sees this question as being more urgent than all other economic, environmental and social issues – even the alleviation of child poverty, to which she is headily committed. How did this topic gain this ascendancy? Continue Reading →

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Fiji’s ‘sinking’ Vunidogoloa Village – victim of AGW or Paris climate handout?

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h/t WUWT

• Guest post •

— by Barry Brill, Chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

The popular press has dubbed this remote Fijian settlement the world’s first community to be forced to migrate by climate-caused rising seas. But is it true? Continue Reading →

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Dunedin descendants threatened with Blenheim lifestyle

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• Guest post •

— by Barry Brill, Chairman of the NZ Climate Science Coalition

The Royal Society’s Human Health Impacts report forecasts that average air temperatures in New Zealand could rise by between 2.5°C and 5.0°C by the year 2100 – a mean of 3.75°C.

Let’s take an actual example. Continue Reading →

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Man-made temperatures

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— by Barry Brill, Chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

Ex-climatologist Jim Salinger has penned an article for Australia’s The Conversation regarding his 30-year-old version of New Zealand average temperature trends and recent efforts to have the High Court order its removal from NIWA’s official website.

caption

Dr Jim Salinger

Salinger’s version was initially published in 1980, when he was a student at Victoria University. It relied upon seven geographically representative stations with long-term data (‘Seven-station Series’, or ‘7SS’). The article acknowledged the temperature data had been ‘homogenised’ but offered no details. The graph showed a warming trend of 1.1 °C from 1853 to 1975. Continue Reading →

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IPCC hides lies beneath science

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caption

Thomas Stocker. Handsome, cannot be trusted.

The IPCC deceives us

Originally posted on September 30, 2013, at Watts Up With That.

Barry Brill reveals a serial deception by the IPCC we need to wake up to. Why? Because the alarm peddled by this UN body relies on a simple, easily confirmed falsehood. The IPCC claims we should adhere to a 30-year observation period it has never itself respected. It implies that we should believe the IPCC that it’s been warming and disbelieve the temperature data that it hasn’t been warming. The IPCC’s parent body, the WMO, says that a far shorter period is quite all right (why won’t they correct the IPCC?). We cannot trust the IPCC, so we must take decisions regarding the expected future climate completely out of their insincere, incompetent hands.

Under pressure at a media conference following release of its Summary for Policymakers, AR5 WG1 Co-Chair Thomas Stocker is reported to have said that “climate trends should not be considered for periods less than 30 years.”

Some have seen this as the beginning of an IPCC ploy to continue ignoring the 16-year-old temperature standstill for many years into the future. But even the IPCC must know that any such red herring is dead in the water: Continue Reading →

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Simple arithmetic

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For all of its apparent complexity, the threat of dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW) formulated at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 is based on a very simple assumption:

When X = 560, Y = ECS

where

X = atmospheric concentration of CO2e in parts-per-million
Y = the increase in temperature since pre-1880, in °C
ECS (Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity) = 1°C plus the ultimate net effect of feedbacks

X is taken from the Mauna Loa observatory and Y is provided by five published temperature series, neither being deeply controversial. The sole debatable element is ECS, the assessment of which is described in Wikipedia: Continue Reading →

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The science is settled: no warming

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Published at Quadrant Online on March 26, 2013

The planet is no longer warming. The brief warming episode of the late 20th century completed its course in the mid 1990s, and is now extinct. These are now uncontroversial statements. They are based on hard data which has been available for many years on the websites of many official agencies. But somehow those agencies found ways to interpret the data differently, and to continually sidestep the elephant in the room.

Continue Reading →

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Aust. Climate Commission plumbs new depths

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Published at Quadrant Online on March 6, 2013

Just one day after the IPCC Chairman claimed that global warming had stopped happening 17 years ago, the Australian Climate Commission rushed out a press statement (February 23), “The Earth Continues to Warm.”

Clearly, there is a lack of consensus here. Are these diametrically-opposed views between leaders in the field of climate change? Not at all. On closer inspection, it all turns out to be that well-known sleight-of-hand which Americans call “bait and switch.” Continue Reading →

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A question for Venning J.

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— by Barry Brill, Chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

The Sunday Star Times (SST) has today reported that the NZ Climate Science Education Trust (“Climate Trust”) has asked Mr Justice Venning to disclose whether he held any financial interests under the Emissions Trading Scheme when he heard the trust’s recent case against NIWA.

In a discussion on Wednesday about the Climate Trust’s filing with the Court of Appeal, the SST reporter asked me about allegations of judicial bias. He claimed to have information that the appeal was based upon the judge’s forestry investments. I assured him that the appeal made no mention of bias and that this question had arisen only in the course of the current costs argument in the High Court. Continue Reading →

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Quo vadis?

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— by Barry Brill, Chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

It was a great disappointment that Justice Venning was not prepared to declare NIWA’s data adjustments to be a breach of the Crown Research Institutes Act 1992.

On the law, the Judge found that any review should be “tolerant” and “cautious” because NIWA was “a specialist body acting within its own sphere of expertise.” He declined to rule on the disputed science – while tending to favour the 92-page opinion evidence provided by NIWA’s Dr Wratt (which was not subject to cross-examination).

Where does this now leave the NZCSC’s long-term effort to show that the NIWA temperature adjustments are wrong? Continue Reading →

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Rebalance the economy first

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The Herald published this gem two days ago. Well done, them. For some years our “cultural cringe” on hearing that foreigners might hold opinions of us has been, thankfully, fading as we mature. Unfortunately the new default position for many of us is that we are naturally held in some kind of universal esteem. Barry Brill here looks beyond that, pointing out that we’ve been marketing our country to ourselves, because around the world, still, few have heard of us. He also tells the government to leave marketing to the experts.

One thing is quite clear – “clean green” is not this country’s brand. It isn’t a brand at all, says a Government Advisory Group reporting on “Greening New Zealand’s Growth”.

The national brand “New Zealand” carries a collection of attributes for foreigners. Cleanliness and greenness can be amongst its positive attributes for tourism and food products in certain markets. But we need to understand the perceptions that accompany the words.

Newspapers

This is an adopted article.

The report highlights our ranking as one of “the top three cleanest countries” in terms of official corruption. This cleanliness “has definitely become part of our brand”. Fonterra notes that our brand is preferred because “New Zealand is seen as a natural safe and pure source of secure food nutrition”.

These words are readily associated with clean and unpolluted water, along with high standards of hygiene and quality control. Cleanliness and food safety go hand-in-hand. Continue Reading →

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