For decades green extremists have been spreading doomsday forecasts of global warming.
But where do we find the greatest abundance of life on land? Follow the equator around the globe—the Amazon, the Congo, Kenya, Indonesia and New Guinea—all places where it is warm and wet. Continue Reading →
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Today a paper on the New Zealand temperature record (NZTR) was accepted by the journal Environmental Modeling & Assessment. Submitted in 2013, we can only imagine the colossal peer-review hurdles that had to be overcome in gaining acceptance for a paper that refutes the national temperature record in a developed country. The mere fact of acceptance attests to a fundamental shift in scientific attitudes to climate change, but expect strident opposition to this paper. Continue Reading →
Views: 377
Governments are running huge deficits, but still spend billions on climate research, especially trying to model the effect of the atmosphere and its trace of carbon dioxide on surface temperature. Benefits are hard to find. It may have improved weather forecasts by a day or so, but official long-term predictions have not improved in the last fifty years. This is because carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not the driver of weather or climate. Continue Reading →
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The facts, DiCaprio, the facts. We’ll all perish? All humanity?! Perish the thought.
Leonardo DiCaprio has once again been completely captured by the IPCC misinformation campaign on global warming. A few days ago he addressed the United Nations conference on climate change to echo in their own chamber their self-created myths. This is my message to Mr DiCaprio.
In addressing world leaders at the United Nations, you claimed humankind has been pretending that global warming is a fiction. What a strange belief. Continue Reading →
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The Greens’ co-leaders are demanding senior cabinet posts from Labour after the election. Judging by Dr Norman’s statements on changes in the global energy picture, they don’t deserve cabinet posts. In an interview on August 5 he mentioned geothermal energy, saying:
It happens to be the fastest growing electricity generation sector in the world according to the International Energy Agency and it’s set to overtake gas as the second-biggest source of electricity in the world. This is the green economy. It is happening right in front of us.
Views: 185
Moving truck. Amazing what you can get away with on the roads in some countries. Oh, wait; there’s no road.
Regular visitors to the Climate Conversation will know that of recent times the site has been practically moribund.
moribund: adjective • (of a thing) in terminal decline; lacking vitality or vigour. Continue Reading →
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Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is blamed for every weather emergency, but as a weather maker, water is far more important. Continue Reading →
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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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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.
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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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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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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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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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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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The High Court at Auckland. Scene of some famous trials.
Gareth Renowden (or, as I picture him, Grimes the shambling truffle grubber) puts poison to his pen once again. His target, again, is the NZ Climate Science Coalition (the coalition), this time in the person of our chairman, the Hon Barry Brill, and the NZ Climate Science Education Trust (CSET).
In an abandonment of proper sceptical debate Grimes is destitute of reason, good sense and evidence. Continue Reading →
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This from Jo Nova (note her lack of arrogance):
Behind the scenes, for 18 months, Dr David Evans (my other half) has been quietly working full time on climate research. The Fourier expert with six degrees who studied at Stanford has discovered something extraordinary using silicon-chip maths on the climate system. (Electrical engineers are really going to like this new approach.) This is real science laid bare. Continue Reading →
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Part of the atmosphere from above. Thin, isn’t it? All the weather we’ll ever see happens right there.
I’d never heard of Bill Moyers until Bob Carter circulated the link to what Bob calls this piece of malignant venality (have to love that wordsmithing!).
Mr Moyers, an ancient US journalist, runs billmoyers.com, on which Joshua Holland, a few days (oops) three weeks ago, published “pseudo-scientific climate claims debunked by real scientists“, which he sought from climate scientists and offered “as a public service.” Joshua gets sceptical thinking all wrong and regurgitates errors, while the arguments his scientists rely on have been widely discredited. Still, he does us a service, conveniently listing eight arguments for us to refute. Mr Holland finally reveals, at the very end of his post, that they come from the famous alarmist web site, home of John Cook, Stephan Lewandowski and their disreputable, widely discredited and fraudulent “97% consensus” paper: the Skeptical Science web site.
Joshua introduces the sceptics:
Most people who deny that human activity is warming the planet just dismiss a massive body of scientific evidence as a big hoax.
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Antarctic sea ice can be breathtaking.
A paper has arrived from NIWA that says, in effect, warming is not necessary to explain the disappearance of much sea ice. That it removes a warming element from the polar pieces of the global warming puzzle gives me great pleasure. Well done, them!
I’m talking about “Storm-induced sea-ice breakup and the implications for ice extent” (Nature 509, 604–7), published online in Nature on 29 May, by A.L. Kohout, M.J. Williams, S.M. Dean and M.H. Meylan (KWDM). Its major discovery is that large waves travel much farther through pack ice than hitherto realised, thus breaking up much more ice than we realised and allowing it to be swept away by wind and wave—it hasn’t been melting from the heat of global warming. Continue Reading →
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Lovely mercury. Just don’t eat it.
The environmental debate is so corrupted by politics and propaganda that facts are often distorted and exaggeration of risk is commonplace.
The vicious war on hydrocarbon fuels is a good example where certain substances are labelled “poison” or “pollution” when associated with coal utilisation, but blithely ignored in other areas. Continue Reading →
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Robin Pittwood apologises for being “way off topic” and mentions a new paper at Nature about wave effects breaking up Antarctic ice.
“The propagation of large, storm-generated waves through sea ice has so far not been measured, limiting our understanding of how ocean waves break sea ice. Continue Reading →
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Bulaman said “Bula. Check the latest over at Chiefio’s” so we did. The Chiefio says:
It looks like the only thing with black body radiation is a real black body and that transparent things, like gasses, are not quite the same. In particular, CO2 likes to heat up instead of emit a photon. Continue Reading →
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The old theme was broken by the recent small changes to the site. I replaced it with one that works, though it’s not perfect and I’ll tweak it or find a better one.
I hope it works for everyone, but please tell me of any problems you find. Getting used to a new theme is rather like moving into a new house. It takes time and you find yourself turning towards the old kitchen for a while before the habitual movement is replaced.
Of course, just as you’re getting used to it, I’ll find the perfect theme and change it all again. I don’t know how to avoid that, sorry!
For those interested, the old theme was Freshy2 and this one is Twenty Fourteen Prana. Prana is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘breath’ or ‘life breath’. I hope it breathes new life through our conversations.
If you know something about WordPress themes, feel free to recommend one you like.
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There’s another 5 km under my belt this morning; I feel gooood!
That’s the jogging, now for more blogging. Continue Reading →
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Regrettably, the blog site is still broken, even after twice deleting all the WordPress installation files and uploading them again.
WordPress volunteers are still not replying to my request for assistance. It’s frustrating and I apologise to all my readers for the inconvenience.
Still, comments are still working, so at least you can tell me what’s going on. Continue Reading →
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Still working on fixing the site within the continued exigencies of domestic life. My continued apologies.
I’m in communication with Houston, sorry, I mean the WordPress forums, and I’m hopeful a solution is near.
Really frustrating that short posts are possible but not decently lengthy ones. Suspect it’s a scripting problem. Waiting on reply from support volunteers who I think are asleep.
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Watch this space.
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Unable to post. Some commenting glitches. My apologies—I’m working on it.
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Once again, Campbell Live runs an alarmist piece on disappearing New Zealand glaciers.
Tonight they featured a climate scientist from Victoria claiming “climate change” is affecting the Franz Josef glacier. It has retreated over the last few decades.
Apparently it’s a “problem”. Actually, listening to the reporter’s tone you’d think it was a tragedy. Loss of a national icon and all that. Continue Reading →
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Dunedin councillors have decided that oil companies are responsible for global warming.
They’ve just voted for the city to sell its investments in oil extraction companies, saying the activity is unethical.
In doing this, they equate drilling for oil with other unethical pursuits, like the munitions, tobacco, gambling or pornography industries—but not, apparently, including the prostitution… err, trade profession calling sector. Nor alcohol. Continue Reading →
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The youths in Generation Zero have heard about Denmark’s tremulous venture into 100% nuclear- and fossil-fuel-free power generation and want it for New Zealand.
So who is Generation Zero? Their web site asserts they are “a youth-led organisation, founded with the central purpose of providing solutions for New Zealand to cut carbon pollution through smarter transport, liveable cities & independence from fossil fuels. We can power our homes, our industries and our economy with clean safe energy. We can build more liveable cities with greater housing and transport choices to attract the best and brightest to New Zealand. We can move beyond fossil fuels and create a safer and healthier nation by doing so.”
Their motto is striking, if enigmatic: “a future that’s not shit.” Now, I know that might sound, to some, a despondent note (and perhaps sets our national goal a wee bit short), but it surely proclaims a young elite—intellectual and well-educated, not to mention professional in engaging across the generations. Continue Reading →
Views: 359
Amid all the world-wide signs of a major sea-change in climate thinking (yes, that’s a pun) comes the encouraging news that New Zealand university students prefer the truth over activist drivel. Why did we ever doubt them? Continue Reading →
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Last November the Herald said:
Plug pulled on tidal turbine projects
The tide has gone out on the New Zealand marine energy sector leaving every one of half a dozen proposed schemes high and dry. Continue Reading →
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The Herald explains that Brian Fallow is its Economics Editor, but he belly-aches and pontificates about climate change more than anyone.
I suppose he must be an economist, since he’s divertingly keen to discuss all kinds of fascinating financial and structural details of transforming New Zealand society but little concerned with evidence that might justify it.
The result is he carps noisily on a ruinous, indefensible crusade. He insists the country spend time and tax “adjusting” to a “low-carbon” economy, though he freely admits we won’t thereby affect the climate even minutely.
Worse, he won’t say why we should do it. Not really why — not scientifically, plausibly tell us the necessity for it.
Let me highlight this error of judgement by rebutting a couple of his latest points. Continue Reading →
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TV3 had another go at making us believe in scary climate change on Saturday. Oceanographer Professor Chuck Kennicutt and Otago marine scientist Professor Gary Wilson were incited, sorry, I mean interviewed by Lisa Owen (inciting was scarcely necessary with these two — for all they receive in funding they are truly grateful to dangerous man-made climate change). Continue Reading →
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Here are the facts that find the “fart tax” lax. Let’s get physical. With physics.
To northern hemispherites, climate-centred farming taxes mean little, since they affect only farmers and who cares about farmers? It’s not as though they’re important to the economy or anything.
But Kiwis knowing the abiding value of farming to their prosperous way of life say, you toucha my farmer, I breaka you face.
Here are more reasons for our politicians not to toucha my farmer. This will keepa them safe. Continue Reading →
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John Morgan, the Chief Executive Officer of NIWA, perhaps the country’s premier scientific institute, has misled the press and the people of New Zealand. He made a public claim of international recognition of NIWA’s temperature adjustment methods but refuses to provide evidence of that recognition. How can anyone believe him?
After NIWA published a review of the national temperature record (called “the Review”) in December 2010, the NZ Climate Science Coalition asked them how they adjusted the temperatures. What method did they use? It’s a reasonable question. If you knew that, you could try to replicate NIWA’s results. Replication is what science is all about. Continue Reading →
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One of our favourite Kiwi climate scientists has again made alarmist climate predictions.
The predictions come from the IPCC, but I’m sure Professor James Renwick takes responsibility for repeating them (I mean, he must have satisfied himself over their accuracy). He frequently cites the IPCC’s predictions but keeps quiet when they’re wrong. For example, when they and their computer models forecast strong warming over the last 17 years instead of the lack of warming we observe. Continue Reading →
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Bryan Leyland started the following letter, I finished it and the Herald refused to publish it.
Dear Sir,
Jill Whitmore says, “Right now, we are all standing around saying ‘I smell smoke’ and doing nothing about it.”
But it’s not true that we all smell smoke. Many scientists and informed observers want real evidence of a fire. I’ve been asking for years but so far the best “evidence” comes from uncalibrated computer models that predict fire in a hundred years.
It’s a bit early to join a bucket line. Continue Reading →
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h/t Magoo.
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Once again a national leader makes the false claim that his low-lying island nation is about to be flooded because of “climate change”. It’s not hard to show that he’s telling great big porky pies.
An article was posted on the Responding to Climate Change (RTCC) web site recently (h/t – Richard Cumming). I found the Marshall Islands government press release it was based on and in which the Marshall Islands Foreign Minister, Philip Muller, said the king tides were the latest in a series of increasingly serious and regular climate impacts. Continue Reading →
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About ten to four this afternoon Outlook went ‘bing-bong’ and a mail from NIWA arrived on my desktop. It was John Morgan, refusing my second request for publicly-owned information. The time elapsed since we first asked for it has reached 21 weeks.
Readers might remember I asked again on 20 February:
So would you please provide a copy of the scientific literature that approves of the measurement technique used by NIWA in the Review. This request is reiterated under the Official Information Act.
Here’s what Mr Morgan decided to say about it:
Dear Mr Treadgold
I write in response to your email dated 20 February 2014 indicating that you believe that my reply of 21 November 2013 did not answer the question raised in your email of 22 October 2013. Continue Reading →
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Magoo alerts us to this wonderful post by Tony Thomas at Quadrant Online. I elevate his comment to increase its visibility immediately and I hope to have time for further comment soon.
As Magoo says: “Finally, some serious questions being asked by some serious climate scientists at the American Physical Society in an open and public forum.” Continue Reading →
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From the earthquakes which devastated its previously stable landscape and brought down its vibrant CBD to horrific repeated flooding, seemingly interminable planning for a new cathedral and a firm civic belief in future catastrophic man-made sea-level rise, Christchurch certainly has problems.
They present the devil’s own difficulties if you’re living through them, but whether you’re trying to deal with them, leave them behind, or you’re simply looking on curiously from afar, you can learn about them here.
Views: 106
I may never know what caused the outage, but much of the activity originated in China.
Checking on the blog late last night, my heart sank when I saw a notice in garish colours (that was bad, but it wasn’t the worst part) saying “This account has been suspended.”
Both my sites were down, along with the email. I imagined people around the world contemplating undeserved doubts about my ability to pay the bill.
Today, after webmail discussions with my hosting provider (they don’t accept telephone calls, but they are wonderfully inexpensive) and puzzling over my email settings, everything was running again.
The server software automatically suspended my sites (wordshine and fastproof) after the activity spiked to over 13 GB in just a few hours. The sites were moved to another server. What were they up to in China?
I’ll probably never find out, but I’m sorry for the disruption and it’s all back to normal. Thanks for your patience.
Well, my additional apologies!
After posting this piece explaining the outage, I went to read it online, as I usually do, just to make sure it worked properly. What further horror to discover that it and all the other posts gave a 404 Not found error!
The gremlin lay in the way WordPress codes its title links and fortunately was the work of moments to rectify, but I apologise to those who might have been frustrated all afternoon.
Well, back to the writing again!
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Today I wrote to John Morgan, CEO of NIWA, along this wise: Continue Reading →
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I thought religion was dead — for practise only behind closed doors in the privacy of one’s home — then Gwynne Dyer thunders on the pages of the Herald with a rant about “the gods of climate.” Setting an unequivocally moralistic tone, he threatens divine punishment for our sins! Thoroughly unscientific. Amazing.
Dyer often mindlessly repeats all manner of misleading science about global warming, but this time he gives the science a staunchly moral cast. Well, how else to instil a proper sense of guilt? Continue Reading →
Views: 295
Every day some place in the world has “wild weather” and in recent times human industry gets the blame: “It’s all caused by man-made global warming” (generally shortened to “global warming”, or GW, by alarmists).
Floods or droughts – blame GW; bushfires or snowstorms – blame GW; frosts or heatwaves – blame GW; hail storms or dust storms – blame GW; cyclones or tornadoes – blame GW. Continue Reading →
Views: 212
We’ve been “settling” for a long time, of course, but now the Green Party wants to improve our settlements.
Though we call them villages, towns and cities, the Greens go back a bit and refer to them as “settlements” as though we’re still pioneers in a virgin landscape.
This is their latest message to me, from Julie Anne Genter, Green Party MP:
Kia ora Richard [this is a Maori greeting—either they assume that I’m unable to understand English, or they signal a Luddite philosophy – RT]
We have an incredible opportunity to create ecologically sustainable, fair and thriving human settlements through good policy. Continue Reading →
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I love the way Viv thinks! Once again he highlights a stunning new aspect of the man-made global warming absurdity. Everyone should hear this: but especially our government, the Greens, the Maori Party, vegetarians, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Gareth Morgan. – Richard Treadgold
There is a massive problem with photo-voltaic solar power. Modern cities and industries require power 24/7 but solar panels can only deliver significant energy from 9am to 3pm on a clear day — a maximum of 25% of the time. Even within this time, energy production peaks at midday and falls off steeply on either side.
Science has yet to develop a solar storage battery suitable for grid power. Continue Reading →
Views: 131
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.
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 →
Views: 461