This event is over.
The Public Relations Institute of NZ (PRINZ) has thrown in the towel, quitting their promised hosting of Christopher Monckton’s Auckland debate on Thursday night.
The event will still proceed, however, with the Climate Realists taking over — and lowering the entry fee to less than half! Continue Reading →
Views: 91
Everyone claims the right to free speech, but not necessarily for ‘others’. All talk of curbing free speech is for ‘other’ people, never for oneself.
What is a debate? It’s just a few people talking to each other. Who could be afraid of a little debate? Well, when vested interests are concerned, any number of people.
Andy mentions in comments that readers at Hot Topic are talking about emailing PRINZ to stop the climate debate with Christopher Monckton. They say the debate is “unethical” because it spreads confusion.
They complain about Monckton’s use of the phrase “Hitler Youth”. He used this at Copenhagen when a group of youth activists tried to shut down his debate.
Doesn’t anyone do irony any more?
Ironic indeed, but it’s a sinister trend. We live in a free country. We champion free speech everywhere. We were leading activists for freedom from apartheid in South Africa. Now look what’s happening to us. Continue Reading →
Views: 133
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (July 26, 2011) — Data from NASA’s Terra satellite show that when the climate warms, Earth’s atmosphere is apparently more efficient at releasing energy to space than models used to forecast climate change have been programmed to “believe.”
The result is climate forecasts that are warming substantially faster than the atmosphere, says Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Views: 351
A visit from the incomparable Monckton was suddenly proposed and he’s already on his way. There’s nothing like hearing your own community mentioned by the famous, so here’s hoping he finds local matters to comment on and to make our leaders respond. People like Key, Smith and the honchos at NIWA have been simply avoiding our sceptical questions, which makes it impossible to hold their feet to the fire.
I wanted to attend both the Northern Club lunch and the debate at AUT but I will only get to the evening debate.
The other day an article titled Jim Hessell: Climate change and hot air appeared in the Herald. An odd little rambling article to match its headline. Continue Reading →
Views: 333
This event is over. It was a great success, with as many turned away as were admitted.
Views: 157
Viscount Monckton of Brenchley opened his debate at the National Press Club in Australia two days ago by reminding his audience that England not only took the Ashes off Australia, but also held on to them in the next rematch. He said: “I just thought I’d rub it in.” Then he proceeded to take his cudgel to his feeble debating opponent.
Economist Richard Deniss must be no intellectual weakling, but he gave the impression of not knowing where he was, so he said the things he normally said. Which usually works, because his normal audience has heard them before and agrees with him. But here, he floundered and had no idea what he was doing. Continue Reading →
Views: 83
The Climate Realists have confirmed that Lord Monckton has agreed to come here following his Australian tour. Donations have been received to cover his expenses.
There are some engagement details on the CR web site with more to be confirmed.
Views: 66
There is no statistically significant warming trend since November of 1996 in monthly surface temperature records compiled at the University of East Anglia. Do we now understand why there’s been no change in fourteen and a half years?
Well, yes, because “blame” for this interruption in warming has been placed on sulphates emitted by China’s power stations zealously burning coal. Hasn’t it?
Has this hypothesis been tested? No. Can it be tested? Yes.
Most of the aerosols are in the northern hemisphere, and there’s little mixing of air between the hemispheres. Reason tells us that the northern hemisphere should be cooling and the southern hemisphere should be warming.
Well, go on, this is the big test, look it up. Continue Reading →
Views: 56
So says the radical Renowden, he of the non-sceptical “believe everything they say” warmist persuasion. But read what he says about Chris de Freitas’ crimes and you’ll realise he says nothing, because no crimes exist.
Gareth Renowden is himself guilty of attempting to abridge the academic freedom to study and teach inconvenient facts.
It’s all arm-waving, and Renowden cites nothing in the Geography 101 course that’s untrue. He says many unkind things about the graphs and their provenance, but he never says they’re wrong, and that’s a strange thing to forget, which means he didn’t forget it — he omitted it, because they’re not wrong. Continue Reading →
Views: 94
(h/t Bob D for most of the references)
Journalist Chris Barton has a story in yesterday’s Herald titled The climate dissenter holds his ground. After looking at Barton’s alarmist arguments I’ll stand with Chris de Freitas on the solid ground.
The story begins with the implication (not that the journalist says it this plainly) that, even with the planet battling weather extremes, that is not enough to convince an Auckland climate scientist (Associate Professor Chris de Freitas, at the University of Auckland) of the truth of human-induced global warming. We’re supposed to feel exasperation: “What will it take to get that man to see sense?”
But Barton is dead wrong. For why should “extreme” weather be an indication of man-made global warming? How could we get more extreme weather out of global warming? Continue Reading →
Views: 132
“Biofuels” are combustible liquids made from plants. They can replace petrol and diesel in our engines and are extracted from many different types of plants.
These biologically-based fuels have long been supported by green activists because when you burn them they only emit as much CO2 as the plants absorbed while growing. Their CO2 is taken out of the atmosphere and then returned, while fossil fuels add new CO2, removing nothing. Using biofuels adds no new CO2.
But it was difficult to ignore the fact that world food prices soared in 2008 as a result of US legislation requiring the conversion of US corn into fuel for motor vehicles. That price explosion led to farmers everywhere seeking to expand their cropping areas, often chopping down forests in the process. Here was another of the unforeseen consequences which seem endemic in climate policies.
This led to the new concept known as indirect land-use change (ILUC) being brought into the calculations. If you take a field of grain and sell the crop for biofuel, then somebody, somewhere, will go hungry unless those missing tonnes of grain are grown elsewhere. If the shortfall is grown on farmland created by cutting down forests or draining peat land, it can create enough new climate-warming emissions to cancel out any benefits from using the biofuels in the first place.
That’s an indirect land use change (ILUC). Continue Reading →
Views: 83
[UPDATE Sun 17 July 2011 16:05 NZT] An announcement is expected soon from the organisers and I’ve been given no reason for pessimism. Let’s hope this is the news we’ve been waiting for.
[UPDATE Sat 16 July 2011 21:05 NZT] There has been good progress and everyone’s optimistic that we will see Lord M in the country. However, it’s not quite a done deal yet, so keep your fingers crossed.
[UPDATE Sat 16 July 2011 12:40 NZT] This post was removed for a while at the request of the organisers while they confirmed funding. It’s still unclear to me whether funding is secure, although the probability seems high that it is. The Dominion Post has published a piece on it and got feedback from James Renwick, who was at first keen on a debate. There’s a lot of interest in getting Monckton over here.
Plans are afoot to bring Christopher Monckton to New Zealand on 4th–7th August, though details are sketchy and sponsors unconfirmed.
Groups known to support his visit include the Climate Realists Network, Investigate Magazine, the NZ Climate Science Coalition and of course us here at the Climate Conversation. Continue Reading →
Views: 91
A study from the University of Exeter on species decline declares “climate change warnings not exaggerated.”
However the press release leaves one singularly unimpressed with the raw activism of the lead researcher, who says: “It is time to stop using the uncertainties as an excuse for not acting. We need to act now to prevent threatened species from becoming extinct. This means cutting carbon emissions.” Continue Reading →
Views: 116
Yesterday I saw the headline: Climate change reducing ocean’s carbon dioxide uptake. If they mean the temperature’s been rising, I thought, these guys need a lesson in 1) recent, 15-year-long atmospheric temperature non-rise and 2) the gas laws, or specifically, Henry’s Law.
Henry’s Law states that the solubility of a gas in a liquid at a particular temperature is proportional to the pressure of that gas above the liquid. If the temperature of the liquid rises, it can’t hold so much gas, so some will leave (“outgas”). It hardly requires a paper based on 28 years of observations to confirm this. Continue Reading →
Views: 165
To the Editor
Climate Conversation
10th July 2011
Carbon Tax Mark 4 is flimsy but dangerous.
Because of public opposition to a new tax on everything, the tax has been gutted. The PM hopes to buy public support by giving exemptions to almost everyone and offering widespread bribes to voters. It is now feeble and ineffective.
But the Green-Gillard coalition is desperate and such people cannot be trusted. They will say or promise anything in order to get this new tax introduced.
Once on the law books, the exemptions will be whittled away, the tax rate will increase and the tax bribes will disappear. It is a stealthy cancer in the gut of the Australian economy.
The cost of electricity, food, fuel and travel will increase, but few people will recognise the root cause. Politicians will blame “Woolworths, power suppliers and Big Oil” for the pain.
This new stealth tax is the thin edge of the wedge.
It will have no effect on the climate, but is a fiscal weapon too dangerous to be left in the hands of green extremists.
Letting Bob Brown loose with the vast powers of a carbon tax is like leaving the grandkids alone in the hayshed with a box of matches.
“Abolish the Stealth Tax” will be the next election slogan.
Viv Forbes
Views: 79
First published in www.firstthings.com
Sunday, June 26, 2011
by Wesley J. Smith
Ouch. A notable political scientist (and believer in global warming, at least in the general sense) has mounted a powerful critique of the disastrous political leadership on the issue by Al Gore. From “The Failure of Gore, Part 1″ by Walter Russell Mead in his blog at The American Interest:
Gore has the Midas touch in reverse; objects of great value (Nobel prizes, Oscars) turn dull and leaden at his touch. Few celebrity cause leaders have had more or better publicity than Gore has had for his climate advocacy. Hailed by the world press, lionized by the entertainment community and the Global Assemblage of the Great and the Good as incarnated in the Nobel Peace Prize committee, he has nevertheless seen the movement he led flounder from one inglorious defeat to the next. The most recent, failed global climate meeting passed almost unnoticed last week in Bonn; the world has turned its eyes away from the expiring anguish of the Copenhagen agenda.
This is an adopted article.
The state of the global green movement is shambolic. Continue Reading →
Views: 43
Climate changes and we didn’t see it coming.
h/t Keith Hancox.
Views: 324
Several people drew my attention to James Delingpole’s attack on the UN economic and social survey. Examine the report for yourself — scratch its toxic socialist surface — and you’ll easily discover that its policy prescriptions, rather than being proposals for voluntary action suggested in all humility for our best welfare, are destined to become mankind’s inescapable future if the UN is permitted to continue its relentless pursuit of world domination, and our opinion will be neither considered significant nor requested.
This is a report from the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations (DESA) dedicated to something they call “The Great Green Technological Transformation.”
The authors a) cannot conceal their sense of self-importance in their chosen role of directing the rest of us and b) reveal their intention to specify policy while maintaining the public fiction that they don’t. Continue Reading →
Views: 59
On the United Nations’ web site a brief description of the General Assembly includes the statement:
The General Assembly is not a world government — its resolutions are not legally binding upon Member States.
That’s reassuring, because everyone appreciates their own country’s ability to make decisions about matters that affect them. Nobody likes strangers telling them what to do, what to have, what to avoid or what to endure.
But there’s next a “but” which bears the thin end of a very important wedge. Continue Reading →
Views: 34
A post today at Hot Topic gets really stuck in to Don Brash. Don gave a speech today to the Federated Farmers annual conference. He mentioned the ETS, which exists because of a belief in the dangerous global warming created by the actions of humanity, which Don and many others disbelieve.
Therefore Gareth Renowden, the dynamic self-starter who runs the Hot Topic blog (named after the book he wrote — guess what that’s about?), which exists to sell more copies of his book, so he’s never going to admit he’s wrong about the climate (yes, he has a strong vested interest in this “discussion”), couldn’t let it go without having his say. Thing is, he vilifies more than he informs.
Don wondered aloud (in his speech to the farmers) why we have an ETS. He had to admit (answering himself) that he knows of no good reason at all. I agree we’ve been given no good reason. Continue Reading →
Views: 477
Associated Press
The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulafft, at Bergen, Norway.
Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone.
Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 metres showed the Gulf Stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared.
Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.
Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.
Views: 82
Hah! Gareth’s upset about the Alexa rankings I’ve started publishing in the sidebar.
He gets going in a scholarly way and lengthily, but listen:
Treadgold’s Climate Conversation blog ranks at around 500,000. By way of comparison, David Farrar’s Kiwiblog.co.nz is ranked #68,226 in the world (#88 in NZ). Climate Conversation is so far down in Alexa’s long tail that the Alexa rank Treadgold is keen to trumpet is effectively meaningless.
What he fails to mention is that we’re not so far down Alexa’s long tail as he is. Where is Hot Topic ranked by Alexa? Anywhere meaningful? Continue Reading →
Views: 91
The Czech Republic, led by courageous President Vaclav Klaus, resists the latest European efforts to deepen the climate crisis. For the crisis is man-made, just as it is in New Zealand, consisting entirely of increasing the financial pressure on families and depriving them of modern conveniences in order to “save” the world’s climate, using expensive mechanisms that can’t affect the climate. Even though the climate continues to regulate itself within ancient, well-known thresholds entirely suitable for life. Continue Reading →
Views: 63
h/t Gary Kerkin.
Views: 66
Just a quick note to draw your attention to a new feature on the sidebar: scroll down one page and you should see it. There’s a little table showing the recent Alexa rankings for the Climate Conversation, SciBlogs and Hot Topic. At the moment we’re leading them by big margins.
It’s not automated, just a table I’ll fill in when I remember.
My wife and son just accused me of boasting, and I suppose to some degree I am boasting. However, it’s humbling to see that this modest little blog is more popular and thousands more people visit it than other, brasher sites around the country that even get into the newspapers.
I’m content to boast a little if it means that more ordinary Kiwis hear about us and get the opportunity to participate in a calm, polite and informative conversation about “the biggest challenge facing humanity today.”
This is a bit of bragging I won’t apologise for and the mainstream media can go hang. Notice we’ve just gone under 1000, which means we’re one of the thousand most popular sites in the country. Course, it could change tomorrow!
Views: 55
From News.Scotsman.com comes worrying information of rapid sea level rise.
Global warming is causing sea levels to rise at a faster rate today than at any time in the past 2,100 years, according to new research.
Scientists used the fossils left by tiny marine animals to record two millennia of sea levels along the US Atlantic coast.
In the most detailed look yet at sea level change, scientists on Monday reported that waters along the East Coast have risen far faster over the past century than at any time in the previous 2000 years. [Philadelphia Inquirer]
20th-Century sea-level rise on the U.S. Atlantic coast is faster than at any time in the past two millennia. [Real Climate]
The research confirms what has often been assumed, that there’s a very strong link between sea levels and temperatures. More worryingly, it also seems to confirm just how uniquely pronounced the current climate change really is. [io9]
Views: 35
Last September, the Royal Society published a report entitled “SEA LEVEL RISE Emerging Issues”, available as a pdf (645 KB). In the accompanying press release they had this to say:
Professor Keith Hunter, the Society’s Vice President of Physical Sciences, who contributed to the paper, says researchers are starting to be able to estimate the amount of rise that we should expect to see over this century and beyond. But he says these projections of future sea level rise depend upon the future melting of ice sheets, which is poorly known.
“The uncertain knowledge about ice sheet behaviour is the key reason why IPCC projections in 2007 did not state upper bounds for sea level rise. Similarly, Ministry for the Environment guidance in 2008 wisely left open the question of any upper limit on sea level rise.”
The paper states that some early scientific work into the effect of a warming climate on ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica suggested that many metres of sea level rise could occur within a century. However, it says few scientists now consider that such rates are possible.
We learn that we can’t guess future sea level rise, since we can’t guess future ice sheet melting; our mates at the UN and the MfE won’t touch it, and our first guess was several metres but now only the cranks go that far.
The press release expresses complete ignorance on future sea level rise. Great. So we also learn that scientists can make complete ignorance appear very interesting. Continue Reading →
Views: 125
Scientific American, under the title Doctors Prepare to Explain and Treat Climate-Related Symptoms, discusses the role of medical practitioners in supporting public health measures. Measures which may, it says, legitimately involve them in activism, if they truly care about public health. Fair enough.
Note the reference in the title to preparing for the future. But in the sub-heading Climate change is beginning to impact public health, the view shifts. Suddenly we’re talking about the present. However, our not-so-Scientific American has overlooked the evidence.
For there’s been no global warming for about 15 years.
I found out how many babies have been born during the last 15 years. It’s staggering — over 1.2 billion. That’s a lot of nocturnal screaming. Continue Reading →
Views: 134
Perhaps it was simply poor management. Although it would still be grounds to disband the whole dysfunctional team.
Mark Lynas, of all people (for he’s a confirmed believer in man-made warming), writes an excellent article on the ramifications of one Sven Teske, an IPCC lead author and also, by-the-by, a lead author for Greenpeace, using his elevated position on the UN body to get world exposure for his Greenpeace activism.
In applauding Steve McIntyre’s discovery of the latest embarrassment from the IPCC, Mark comments: “McIntyre and I have formed an unlikely double-act.” He’s got that right.
Steve concludes:
The public and policy-makers are starving for independent and authoritative analysis of precisely how much weight can be placed on renewables in the energy future. It expects more from IPCC WG3 than a karaoke version of [a] Greenpeace scenario.
I concur.
Views: 53
Saturday 14:50: Done. Whew!
After spending two days studying the database material I last looked at about six years ago, altering files, moving files and creating and deleting databases, I’ve finally managed to migrate the WordPress installation without breaking it.
Hurrah! This calls for a celebration!
I’m sorry for the interruption to normal service, and I’ve missed you all! But the advantages of moving to the new hosting company include accommodating all the conversations you could ever want to have, even inviting the rest of the world! And if more disk space is needed, it’s fantastically cheap to add it.
Please tell me of glitches
I should ask you (please) to let me know if you come across errors or anomalies on the blog, because I can’t be everywhere.
Thursday 21:56: Still waiting.
I love it that computer equipment is getting cheaper by the month and competition makes the leading entrepreneurs more creative in attracting customers. Because after being hit with an extraordinary invoice for over $2000 for next year’s hosting, I knew I must change web hosts.
That’s when I discovered how inexpensive web hosting has become!
Annual hosting of the Climate Conversation Group (plus WordShine itself) will cost less than half what it did last year. At the same time, we get unlimited bandwidth! Instead of biting my fingernails as the bandwidth rose inexorably and the end of the month approached, I can forget paying for extra bandwidth and concentrate on research and writing. Continue Reading →
Views: 57
At WUWT Anthony Watts announces: The American Astronomical Society meeting in Los Cruces, New Mexico, has just made a major announcement on the state of the sun. Sunspots may be on the way out and an extended solar minimum may be on the horizon.
“This is highly unusual and unexpected,” Dr. Frank Hill, associate director of the NSO’s Solar Synoptic Network, said of the results. “But the fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation.”
Spot numbers and other solar activity rise and fall about every 11 years, which is half of the Sun’s 22-year magnetic interval since the Sun’s magnetic poles reverse with each cycle. An immediate question is whether this slowdown presages a second Maunder Minimum, a 70-year period with virtually no sunspots during 1645-1715.
“We expected to see the start of the zonal flow for Cycle 25 by now,” Hill explained, “but we see no sign of it. This indicates that the start of Cycle 25 may be delayed to 2021 or 2022, or may not happen at all.”
All three of these lines of research to point to the familiar sunspot cycle shutting down for a while.
“If we are right,” Hill concluded, “this could be the last solar maximum we’ll see for a few decades. That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth’s climate.”
h/t Andy Scrase.
Views: 394
The Government’s highly damaging decarbonisation policy, enshrined in the absurd Climate Change Act, does not have a leg to stand on. It is intended, at massive cost, to be symbolic: To make good David Cameron’s ambition to make his administration “the greenest government ever”.
So says Lord Lawson, respected former Chancellor under Margaret Thatcher, in a scathing attack in the Daily Mail against Prime Minister David Cameron’s energy policy. Continue Reading →
Views: 68
Complaints are purpling the British air after the government announced drastic cuts in formerly cosy subsidies for solar panels.
The Government’s decision to cut subsidies for solar energy to all but the smallest projects will threaten investment and job creation in the alternative energy sector, environmental and industry groups warned yesterday.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said the change to feed-in tariffs would maintain funding for households to put up panels by diverting them from larger projects.
So-called feed-in tariffs provide an operator with a guaranteed price for surplus power sold (or “fed in”) to the national grid. The subsidy is all that makes the expensive solar panel technology profitable. Continue Reading →
Views: 443
Several readers, among them the evergreen Mike Jowsey (thanks, Mike!) have drawn my attention to Clive Best’s simple yet remarkable post from yesterday. It brings together in a most accessible way the early IPCC forecasts (or “scenarios”, actually — they were never predictions) and the latest observations of global temperature.
So, after 20 years, how well have the consensus scientists done in forecasting the climate? It could be said the results are patchy. Continue Reading →
Views: 214
In July last year, and after more than a year’s absence, NIWA got around to publishing another issue of their “flagship” publication, Water & Atmosphere. It’s an attractive magazine, but it contains some curious information which deserves comment.
First, we notice a helpful comment by NIWA Chief Executive, John Morgan:
NIWA has a responsibility as a Crown Research Institute to share the results of publicly-funded science.
Hmm. Morgan should compare that statement with the conclusion of the methane article in the same issue:
if any real solution [to agricultural emissions] is on the horizon it’s likely to be a closely kept secret.
The article has some gems:
methane levels have grown by 150 per cent since organised animal farming began in the early 1700s.
Was farming disorganised until the 18th century? That’s not what the history books say. Continue Reading →
Views: 233
But there’s been no warming — and NIWA’s graphs prove it. Not only that, but NIWA’s chief climate scientist says firmly that there’s little warming on the way.
So why is there now a giant bureaucracy in Wellington dedicated to “fighting” the warming? Why, in the 2008-09 financial year alone, have government contracts to research climate change been let worth over $2,700,000?
Claims of harm to New Zealand from future global warming have been made for a long time. Here are just a few to remind ourselves what we’ve been listening to for about 20 years. Continue Reading →
Views: 98
We often wonder about the prevailing mood in the population towards our favourite subject. What do people really think about global warming?
Opinion polls are the only credible way of determining this, of course, so we tend to examine them for signs. Sometimes, we make do with small samples and apocryphal stories impossible to verify. Here’s one of those.
A member of the NZ Climate Science Coalition gave this concise description of a silly television story a while back:
And this morning’s TV One Breakfast Session showed a photo of a polar bear cub on its mother’s back because there is now so little polar ice that they have to ride on mummy’s back since they cannot swim – all because of global warming – and the item came from the WWF, who are a trusted outfit with authority on the subject……… Yeah , Right !! This was dwelt on a couple of times as a heart-wrenching thingy showing how serious global warming is. TV1 has a large audience. Unfortunately, political decisions are based on what the great unwashed voting public want, not on unpopular facts or logic. The latter does not win elections. As we are all painfully aware, the “silly” side is what sells newspapers and TV time – and attracts funding.
A member of the NZ Climate Science Coalition, addressing another member on a silly polar bear item aired on TV1, said this earlier: Continue Reading →
Views: 30
I have a question.
The aftermath of United Nations climate change summits is becoming depressingly familiar.
With these words last December 14, the New Zealand Herald editorial writer signalled his slant. It’s a bias towards the official line on global warming. The Herald joins the chorus of activists baying for Western compensation for the third world to answer the allegations of “injury by climate”.
According to this view, every other good and time-honoured cause for foreign aid is eclipsed by this one: that the effects of global warming will be — even are already — too onerous for emerging nations to bear, therefore we must stop doing what has created our wealth and, on top of that, pay heavy fines for many years to come, perhaps forever — they haven’t told us when to stop.
There must be a reason for this.
What is it?
Views: 19
The best in New Zealand is no. 1. All others fall into line astern according to their number. So far, we at the Climate Conversation are proud of our standing. However, should this ranking fall, we will still be proud of our standing.
(The closer the number is to 1, the more popular the site.)
Climate Conversation – 928 SciBlogs – 1879 Hot Topic – 3478 Open Parachute – 3602
This is a dose of reality. Has the warmist bluster lost its lustre?
Views: 68
What an unedifying spectacle: thousands of moronic Australians shouting for more taxes. There’s hardly anything I can add. Let’s lend the sensible Australians our voices against the utterly useless expense of it.
SYDNEY — Thousands of Australians across the country rallied on Sunday to support a tax on the carbon emissions blamed for global warming, as a new report outlined the risks of rising sea levels from climate change.
In Sydney, demonstrators carried banners reading “Say yes to cutting carbon pollution” and “Price carbon — our kids are worth it” while similar rallies attracted crowds in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Hobart and Canberra.
“This should send a clear message to the government to set an ambitious price on carbon that will kick-start investment in clean energy,” said rally organiser Simon Sheikh, national director of the activist group GetUp.
Those who describe our emissions of carbon dioxide as a habit in the same vein (sorry, pun intended) as heroin are evilly misled and wickedly mislead others. Continue Reading →
Views: 104
An excellent sceptical letter sent to the NZ Listener on 14 May and copied today to Climate Conversation.
To the Editor
NZ Listener
14th May 2011
Dear Ms. Stirling,
I am a visitor to New Zealand, and only yesterday had sight of your 14 May edition of the New Zealand Listener with its entertainingly fanciful lead story, accompanied by appropriately lurid graphics.
Since this is a topic which raises much controversy, let me try and see if I can encapsulate in a few lines what it is that you would wish your readers to believe. You propose, it would seem, that marginal increases in the concentrations of what is no more than a trace gas, amounting in total not to 10% of the earth’s atmosphere, not even to 5% — nay, not even to 1%, can bring about cataclysmic changes in global climate.
So, what exactly is the percentage concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere? Why, to be sure, it is a gasping, asphyxiating 1/27th part of a single percentage point. But even that’s not the complete picture, is it? After all, as someone (such as you) who has addressed the data for herself will know, even human-induced climate change proselytisers acknowledge that, by itself, the radiative potential of CO2 (vanishingly small anyway) fails to account for the “scenarios” promoted by them and by unquestioning and compliant organs of the media — such, indeed, as The New Zealand Listener.
So, to get over this little inconvenience, what should be done? Continue Reading →
Views: 136
An extraordinary letter to the Taranaki Daily News (copied to Climate Conversation) from a climate sceptic well-placed to hear and and well-qualified to judge competing sides in the global warming controversy. Professor Kelly’s written testimony to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, for The Reviews into the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit’s E-mails, published on 25 January 2011, set out pointed questions directed to Jones and Briffa. This letter, clear and moderate, is in stark contrast to Miss Stewart’s anguished squalling and offers those who share her beliefs an easy delivery from the gut-wrenching fears of their own alarming predictions: check the facts. We echo Prof Kelly’s appeal for moderate language because so-called climate change has a profound importance for the vast amounts of money in it, the tyranny it’s bringing over our lives and the damage being done in its name to scientific integrity. (I hope the Daily News publishes the letter.)
Dear Editor,
As a New Plymouth Boy, I would like you to do me a favour and let Rachel Stewart know that I think she is doing journalism a disservice.
I expect better from my home town.
It is perfectly possible to adopt a position, as I have, of ‘a principled climate science scepticism.’ It is based on the fact that every time an engineering-standard analysis is done of the climate data, one ends up contradicting the results of the climate change modellers. I am heavily involved in the debate in the UK.
My views on the East Anglian Science are on the web, and in the UK Parliamentary record. See pp21ff of The Reviews into the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit’s E-mails.
If she cares to take a look at the attached ppt slides, she will see that there is a systematic divergence, now 16 years old, between the modelling results and the actual data on climate temperatures. At what point do we accept the data over the IPCC models?
She might like to look at the recent analysis by Pat Franks which tightens the conclusion that the anthropogenic contribution is at most 0.3°C per century. This concludes that it is rising temperatures that are increasing the atmospheric carbon dioxide, not the other way round. Continue Reading →
Views: 965
The Taranaki Daily News two days ago published a polemic notable more for its rancour than its precision regarding climatic facts.
It’s a good example of one-eyed thinking, skewed views and perfectly furious ad hominem attacks — all teeth and talons and only the hissing missing.
Written by the doubtless-locally-renowned scribe Rachel Stewart, it strikes some of the sourest notes I’ve come across in the climate debate since finding Hot Topic. But her thunderous venom simply accents her foolhardy logic. She wears a filthy expression in the accompanying photo. Did someone steal her favourite cuddly toy? It would certainly explain the spleen.
With a headline recalling Gore’s thoroughly discredited film “An inconvenient truth”, you’d think the article was about global warming. But it quickly becomes clear that Miss Stewart has it in for farming itself, not just its emissions. Don’t know how she thinks we’ll eat. Or, in this country, import buses or computers.
She repeats lies about Bob Carter and the alleged funding of his opinions, as though that’s all that produces his opinions, but I would like to point out some of the fraudulent assertions she repeats about global warming. I like Bob and I could listen to him all day, but he would himself agree that his personal reputation, though valuable, is meaningless beside the lies being told about climate science. They are my target. Continue Reading →
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Here’s an amazing story from the Economist of 26 May. Why is it amazing? Three reasons. It casually and thoughtlessly swallows the IPCC global warming myth. Then it becomes an unquestioning advocate for that fatally tarnished, scientifically indefensible, “moral” crusade. Finally, for an extra spiciness I have never seen, it conflates our invisible sins of emission with the newborn sin of (may God protect us) earth-moving, to present a hideous picture of our terrestrial depravity.
Earth-moving? Yes, that’s right. Terrible, isn’t it? Of all the wicked things we do! Continue Reading →
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When I told you I was unwell, what encouraging and inspiring things you said! Thank you, thank you.
I’m fine now, with just one small procedure left, to be done in a week or two. At least another 40 years must be possible!
Now, with a renewed sense of humility, to continue the fight…
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I’m having tests for the good of my health and regrettably cannot contribute as usual. North Shore Hospital doesn’t provide public Internet access and I don’t have the right gear to connect the laptop to the phone.
I’m obliged to type this on a teensy keyboard little larger than a postage stamp, which makes contributing wearisome.
My apologies, therefore, for a seeming absence. Be assured I am here in both body and spirit, carrying a watching brief with the doctors briefly watching.
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Warwick Hughes’ request under the Australian Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), has been declined by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) on the grounds that it might divulge information supplied “under an obligation of confidentiality” by a foreign Government to the Australian Federal Government.
The Court ruling which established this exemption to the FOIA dealt with a case involving intelligence-sharing with the Australian Security Intelligence Office (ASIO). In contrast, Mr Hughes’ case dealt with old weather records.
It seems clear that neither party even thought about confidentiality until the request was made. Continue Reading →
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I was disturbed about the comments I posted last night from a member of ‘Slick’ Hansen’s audience in Massey the previous evening. In an astonishing, unprovoked outburst, Hansen suddenly turned on the absent Dr Dick Lindzen, besmirching his character with outright lies. After trying to verify Hansen’s claim that Dr Lindzen doesn’t believe smoking causes cancer, I sent Lindzen the following email.
Dick’s reply is most thoughtfully written and I commend it for your consideration. As an outstanding example of fine thinking under personal pressure it’s a pleasure to publish it. Jim Hansen should be ashamed of himself for repeating misleading slurs and outright lies. I’m certainly ashamed of him. Continue Reading →
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All of the 159 documents in BoM’s “Schedule” are said to be communications received in confidence by the Australian Federal Government from a foreign Government.
They simply cannot reconcile that claim with these actual Bureau descriptions:
Have a look at them: Continue Reading →
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In Australia, Warwick Hughes has followed with interest our attempts to obtain from NIWA details of their adjustments to the NZ temperature record. When the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) supplied a letter apparently certifying the Bureau’s “peer review” of NIWA’s review of the temperature record, he noted our complaint that “there must be more than this.”
Hearing of my request to NIWA for records relating to that review by the Bureau, he was minded to help. So, back in February, he filed a Freedom Of Information (FOI) request with the Australian Information Commissioner.
In response to that FOI request, the Bureau submitted to the Information Commissioner a Schedule of Documents dated 6 May 2011.
Somebody at the Bureau has put in hours of work tracking these documents down, describing them, analysing their relevance to Warwick’s request and assessing whether they met the provisions for exemption. Well done, them.
The schedule describes 159 relevant documents, amounting to several thousand pages, and what do you know? The BoM claims full exemption from the FOI Act in respect of every single page! Who could have predicted that? Continue Reading →
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