To the Editor
Climate Conversation
11th March 2012
The Australian government’s plan to sell their un-saleable carbon tax has hit a snag – their pollsters have discovered that the word ”carbon” provokes anger in the electorate.
This is no surprise. Most decent people hate liars and the carbon tax campaign has been mired in lies from the start. Continue Reading →
Views: 48
Pink lamingtons
From today’s Herald:
Auckland Mayor Len Brown was the target of a lamington attack at Auckland University yesterday by an angry supporter of wharf workers.
Mr Brown was coming to the end of one of his regular Mayor in the Chair public sessions in the university quadrant when a young man with dreadlocks approached him with a pink lamington, smearing pieces of the sponge cake on the mayor’s face and shirt. The man then ran off.
He was part of a group of 10 to 15 Socialist Aotearoa members protesting against Mr Brown’s lack of support for workers in the bitter Ports of Auckland dispute where 300 striking union workers were fired by management on Wednesday.
Is this a sinister new tactic by our city’s youngest socialists, or is it simply a waste of a good lamington? Only time will tell.
Views: 32
Mojo Mathers, deaf list MP
WARNING: Rant alert. Some interesting points here are perhaps obscured now and again by a sustained rantiness. Let me know what you think.
Here’s how to get stuff you want: turn it into a “human rights” issue. Then the very Speaker of the Parliament jumps to do your bidding, though you have no electors and no electorate votes granted you a seat in the highest forum in the land. Continue Reading →
Views: 84
The subject of our court case against NIWA has surfaced again with our recent filing of papers. Ken Perrott has been quick to go on the attack but so far he hasn’t a clue what we’re actually asking for.
For the record, Ken, we’re not accusing our public climate scientists of “scientific fraud” as you claim on your blog. We’re saying (and proving) they made serious mistakes in their reconstruction of the national temperature record.
WUWT has posted a great summary of the NIWA story written by one Andi Cockroft in NZ.
This is a fresh thread for an interesting court case that’s being watched around New Zealand and the world, from all sides of the climate debate.
Someone’s finally told another “rob taylor” about his namesake insulting one of us at Hot Topic. He writes in high dudgeon, claims the same name, says he has worked for Greenpeace and disowns any interest in our discussion of the environment.
On the Internet, where nobody knows you’re a dog, it’s usually best to let sleeping dogs lie. Where might this lead?
It’s odd that this new rob taylor also disdains the use of capital letters, just like the rob taylor we know and love. Must be our modern mis-education system.
This is the latest rob taylor’s comment in full. It was received on May 20, 2012 at 2:10 am.
This is rob taylor from greenpeace, the only rob taylor from greenpeace and in no way have I been involved with this debate until this point until a friend informed me of this chat, which I have not the slightest bit of interest in. I have not worked at GP in NZ since I organized the March Against Mining on Queen St in 2010, and do not intend to engage in any environment debates in NZ in the foreseeable future let alone describing people I do not know in a public forum as “rent boys”. look somewhere else please lads and do not drag mine and Greenpeaces name into your discussion.
Views: 56
A key argument much used by the IPCC to claim that we cause dangerous global warming is nothing but an unsophisticated display of ignorance decked out as knowledge.
Reasonable men and women must see through this subterfuge and openly deplore its use by the learned warmists running (or overrunning) the IPCC.
The argument aims to prove that only our GHG emissions cause global warming and says “we haven’t seen anything else it could be.” As it plainly admits to a complete absence of observation, and its reasoning is unpersuasive (“it must be this, for we can think of nothing else”), it will never be a leading endorsement of the age of science. Yet it was written into the AR4 in 2007 by “thousands of leading scientists” using real ink instead of crayon and became permanent.
Because of this barbarous offence against logic people now call global warming “the greatest challenge we have faced,” clamour to humbly “redistribute” our wealth around the world to atone for our “climate crimes” against vaguely-defined “undeveloped nations”, gamble with humanity’s economic future and plan alarming experiments with our planet to “save” it from warming.
You’d think all the greatest advances in human civilisation hadn’t occurred during periods of warming. But they did – during cold times we don’t develop, we die. Continue Reading →
Views: 55
Climate Models has been added under Climate Science.
Comments related to the NZCSET court case against NIWA have been moved to NZCSET application for judicial review
Views: 406
These people don’t know what’s happening on their own planet. The idea of locking up most of the Antarctic’s marine environment in what’s loosely called a “park” seems destined to kill a lot of the starving Third World.
Surely the idea is strictly for those who don’t like humans?
Never mind mineral resources that might be available down there, why stop all fishing activities? They grow back. Fish are the definition of a renewable resource.
If fishing practices need modifying, modify them, but don’t ban the harvesting of food. This strange call for a “massive Antarctic reserve” (what would it achieve?) was reported in the Herald today:
An Antarctic lobby group, backed by major conservation groups and celebrities, is calling for a massive marine reserve in the Ross Sea as part of an even bigger reserve surrounding Antarctica.
It would include a substantial proportion of New Zealand’s dependency area of the Ross Sea, extend out to 60 degrees south and be comparable to the area of Australia. Continue Reading →
Views: 360
From Stephen Goddard at Real Science last May (h/t Bob Carter) came this astounding climate forecast from Dr Leona Libby in 1979, just as the global warming scare was starting out.
I’m not sure it’s tracked the actual climate tremendously closely, but there are strong indications (from several horrendously cold northern winters and this last miserable southern summer) that cooling is the new trend.
Libby’s forecast would bear much wider study instead of being ignored for the man-centric theory du jour. Anecdotal evidence and observation suggest this forecast hasn’t been refuted by the theory of dangerous anthropogenic emissions-induced global warming.
On the contrary, the evidence this century is irrefutable that natural variation has been overwhelming the undetectable anthro influence. Continue Reading →
Views: 396
Lucy Lawless, famous actress and newly-minted Greenpeace activist, claimed yesterday:
“…make no mistake, due to the harshness and remoteness of the Arctic environment, an oil spill up there will make the Gulf of Mexico look like a children’s party.”
I agree that it’s a distinct possibility, and precautions should be taken to prevent and, at need, to clean up such a spill. No doubt about it. But then our eco-warrior says boldly:
“To see the melting of the sea ice not as a warning to humanity but as an invitation to drill for more of the stuff that caused the problem in the first place is the definition of madness. What Shell is doing is climate change-profiteering.” (Emphasis added. H/T Richard Cumming)
Lucy, turn towards your Greenpeace advisers and say after me: “What is the evidence?” Continue Reading →
Views: 417
At WUWT, Lord Christopher Monckton fulminates against the “perps” (I love his use of this vulgar Americanism to explicitly demonise the culprit behind the fraud against the Heartland Institute) and expertly delineates the legal principles involved. H/t Bob Carter.
The perps, whoever they be, should be investigated, brought for trial, prosecuted and fined or – better still – imprisoned… The dripping malevolence of the commentaries by the various news media and blogs on what the counterfeit document purported to reveal about the Heartland Institute’s supposed attitude to the teaching of science in schools would count very much against them in court. The intent to cause harm to the Heartland, and to cause collateral damage to Anthony Watts and others, is very clear.
He reminds us that just a few climate scientists have published misleading papers to shore up the fictitious case alleging humanity’s coming climatic cataclysm. Continue Reading →
Views: 361
The determination of high-level dishonesty committed by NIWA scientists is wending inevitably to a conclusion.
Chairman of the Coalition and counsel for the NZ Climate Science Education Trust (NZCSET), Barry Brill, filed the Trust’s evidence with the Court during January (copies will soon be available on the NZCSC website) and NIWA is expected to respond by 2 March. We’ll then learn (for the first time) the shape of its defence and have the opportunity to reply. On 20 March, the Court will finalise a timetable, including a fixture for the hearing – which our counsel expects could occur about June or July.
The wheels of justice sometimes turn exceeding slow, but everyone gets a turn to speak and what they say is heard—simple principles, more often honoured in blogland in the breach than the observance yet generally revered.
Decisions in this seminal case against NIWA are eagerly awaited around the world. Will its scientific knavery survive a judicial examination? Can it really say one thing, do quite another, and get away with it—honoured, as before, as a leading scientific institution?
Remember, NIWA said it would use a particular method to calculate adjustments to the raw temperature readings; it not only didn’t use that method, it broke all the rules laid down by that method. I recently posted a summary of NIWA’s scientific outrages against the NZ temperature record.
Views: 46
This appalling outrage is not going away. Much has been written already (but nothing by me) and it seems much is to come. Here is a place to contain it so you can stop adding to “I’ve been busy” — as though that’s an important theme.
I hasten to say I’m still busy, and would that I were not!
Views: 545
Business commitments have kept me from covering any climate topics for a while, but I plan to post an article or two at the weekend. There’s a paper on clouds by two Auckland researchers that has come to my attention and I may have time for further items.
So, my apologies, but I haven’t stopped either being interested in climate matters or spending time reading and writing about them. There’s a lot happening and some people have been quite excited at the extra realistic (sceptical) coverage of global warming.
I avoid getting excited because the great carbon-based wheel is now turning at a fair clip and will take a power of stopping. That’s no reason to slacken our efforts, but is a reason to raise the gaze to a slightly more distant finish line.
Views: 601
Thanks to those who advised me of this amazing email from the Climategate 2 collection, either through comments here or private email. It concerns the pre-1930 cooling of the New Zealand temperature record, and makes food for thought, especially for those supporting NIWA, Salinger and the increasingly shaky AGW story. Although it’s more of a novel, and a bad one at that, with gaping holes in the plot and evidence so carelessly thrown together it fools nobody. Now, as many of us feared was the case, comes evidence that the NZ temperature record has been applied to far more places than where it was observed. We now know it was stretched over far-flung places it was never intended to go. This is the worst result possible.
Cc: t.osborn@uea.ac.uk
date: Mon, 7 Sep 2009 00:13:56 +0100 (BST)
from: “Tim Osborn”
subject: New Zealand summer temps
to: p.jones@uea.ac.uk
Hi Phil,
just a quick Q before I go to bed!
I’ve just updated the IPCC paleo chapter Southern Hemisphere plot where we
showed, amongst other things, Ed Cook’s New Zealand TRW reconstruction,
with CRUTEM2v Jan-Mar smoothed temperatures.
For my update I’ve used CRUTEM3v, expecting them to be rather similar but
with a few more years on the end.
But the pre-1930 temperatures are now very different, being much cooler
(by > 0.5 degC for a 25-year low-pass mean) in CRUTEM3v than CRUTEM2v.
Previously they had been, on average, near or even above the 1961-1990
mean, now they’re at -0.5 degC.
Is this a result of some homogenization work on New Zealand summer temp
data? Or just some random artefact of minor changes somewhere?
Cheers
Tim
— Dr. Tim Osborn RCUK Academic Fellow Climatic Research Unit School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/
Views: 496
One day climate change skeptics will be seen in the same negative light as racists, or so says former Vice President Al Gore.
“My generation asked old people, ‘Explain to me again why it is okay to discriminate against people because their skin color is different?’ And when they couldn’t really answer that question with integrity, the change really started.”
The former vice president recalled how society succeeded in marginalizing racists and said climate change skeptics must be defeated in the same manner.
To apply this reasoning to global warming is wicked. Listen carefully, Al, for your fallacy is strong. Continue Reading →
Views: 357
The shocking breakthrough in our audit is that NIWA didn’t use the adjustment method they said they would use. Barry Brill, chairman of the Coalition, released an overview entitled New Zealand Unaffected by Global Warming (pdf, 1.3 MB). The discovery that the country hasn’t experienced global warming is another startling finding. In Chapter 8, on page 24, he identifies nine criticisms of NIWA’s newest 7SS. These multiple defects destroy the credibility of the 7SS as a source of the NZTR. Continue Reading →
Views: 121
Hot Topic have been reviling our good friend and climate warrior Bryan Leyland for his opinion piece published recently. Not to mention several other sceptical climate articles by other people which they cannot tolerate. In the process Gareth Renowden and his gang spill the beans on their evidence—they don’t have any.
Because, pressed for some evidence of catastrophic man-made warming of our planet, they don’t reveal any. Renowden, Dappledwater and the rest of the fourth-formers threaten that evidence not only exists but increases beyond doubt, yet they still refuse to disclose it.
They also make unsubstantiated allegations of impropriety or even falsehood against Bryan.
Their arguments always seemed fact-poor and this proves it. Again and again they ignore reasonable requests for supporting information or peer-reviewed papers and resort instead to attacking the questioner. Continue Reading →
Views: 447
A headline caught my eye today. It was a case of over-sensitivity caused by too many hits on the same nerve – the climate change nerve, but it illustrated the masterful social engineering that went on 20 years ago. The headline was from the Mother Nature Network:
Curious, I thought, it’s probably about shifting climate zones, and it was.
The US Department of Agriculture has updated its Plant Hardiness Zone Map. It lets you know what plants or crops will thrive in your area and what won’t. Because of the slight late-twentieth century warming, those areas have changed a bit. Continue Reading →
Views: 31
Big things influence little things. Little things hardly at all influence big things.
Please bear this in mind when the topic of climate comes up. Let me elaborate.
In the fourth form, little boys do not push big fat boys around and taunt them with “who’s a mummy’s boy, then?” The big fat boys pick on the little boys instead. It just seems more natural.
Among animals, rats don’t eat live caribou, lizards leave lions alone and hamsters don’t munch bears.
Any animal meeting a tiger fears for tomorrow, and an animal near enough to a lion to distinguish its nose hairs wishes it couldn’t, unless it’s an elephant or cape buffalo.
You see which way this goes, don’t you? Little gives way to big. Big overpowers little. It’s a rule of nature. No way can the mouse clamp its ferocious jaws around the neck of the antelope. Continue Reading →
Views: 43
The following article was just published in none other than the Wall Street Journal, signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article. The mood towards catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) is surely in some upheaval. It’s wonderful to hear the disgraceful treatment of Chris de Freitas described in sympathetic terms, and the scandalous behaviour of the warmist clique towards him condemned. No doubt those enthusiastic world-savers would love to hide their dirty deeds and save their skins, but one day Salinger (the ring-leader in attacking de Freitas as both editor and academic), Jones and Schmidt, with others who have long flouted scientific courtesy, will reap the consequences of the odious conduct they have sown. Ignorant people might be expected to deny free speech to those who disagree with them, but climatology is alone in science in its disgraceful tolerance of conspiracy to prevent scientific critics being published. It’s a further scandal that the IPCC, while paying mere lip-service to solid science, does nothing to clean it up, even after severe criticism in August last year of its processes and attitudes by the InterAcademy Council (representing national academies of science such as the Royal Society) on behalf of the UN and the IPCC itself. It is left to us to preserve memory of their shameful practices, and we’ll do that despite attempts by our local climate deniers to bully local newspapers into silencing us.
A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming.” Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.
This is an adopted article.
In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: “I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.’ In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?” Continue Reading →
Views: 61
Barry Brill points out the warmists don’t seem pleased at the recent good news about climate sensitivity (a new paper says it’s not going to warm catastrophically). Could it be because the warmists cry only crocodile tears about the forecast disaster and they’re actually looking forward to it? (It lets them control us.) – Richard Treadgold
Whether the future level of Anthropogenic Global Warming is dangerous or catastrophic or merely interesting turns entirely on how “sensitive” the climate is to carbon dioxide emissions.
The key sensitivity measure is the increase in temperature resulting from a doubling of the CO2 atmospheric concentration of 280ppm that is said to have existed in pre-industrial times.
Laboratory experiments have shown that sensitivity should be about 1°C before feedbacks – but the net impact of positive and negative feedbacks is the subject of incessant debate. Sceptics generally say negatives (especially clouds) are dominant so that the final outcome falls back to about 0.4°C. The majority view is that positives (especially water vapour) drive the outcome up to 3-4°C, while some catastrophists see runaway warming up to 6°C or above.
The science is not settled. The debate is not over. Continue Reading →
Views: 50
No investigation was ordered, no scientific survey was done, no public debate was held, there was no waiting around for the results of a Royal Commission of Inquiry and there were certainly no tiresome disputes over the interpretations of any actual experiments.
The Framework Convention on Climate Change written by these geniuses bypassed all that inconvenient and unnecessary process. They weren’t going to ask for proof for something so important as determining the welfare of mankind, because it was obvious what had to be done. They cut to the chase. So the Convention begins:
“… human activities have been substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, … these increases enhance the natural greenhouse effect, and … this will result on average in an additional warming of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere and may adversely affect natural ecosystems and humankind”
Otherwise, we could say: in the beginning was a scientific inquiry. Continue Reading →
Views: 74
In July last year the NZ Climate Science Coalition published an independent analysis of NIWA’s reconstruction of our national temperature record (NZTR) entitled New Zealand – Unaffected by Global Warming.
It’s the only independent analysis carried out on the reconstruction (nobody else has bothered). As far as I know, nobody much has even read the report. So we need to tease out some of the details and start talking about them. They’re a bit startling, considering the diet of alarm we’ve been getting from the news media for the last twenty years.
What would Kiwis do if they knew the facts of the country’s temperature record? Would they demand the government ditch the ETS because there’s no reason for it? Would they march on Parliament?
Because one of the insights from our expert analysis is that there’s been neither unprecedented warming nor strong recent warming in New Zealand, despite claims of both from the alarmists. Continue Reading →
Views: 68
The four Marines seen in a video that purports to show them urinating on dead bodies in Afghanistan have been identified and will face charges soon, a senior military official told Fox News.
… the Marine Corps has appointed a three-star general to decide what disciplinary action to take against the four Marine snipers.
These soldiers are trained to kill people whom their officers inform them are their “enemies”. Now, I’m really only guessing, but I would say it takes more hatred than love to kill your enemies. So at some point during either their training, their deployment or a specific mission, the men must spontaneously generate, or their officers must carefully invoke in them a considerable strength of hatred towards those they are about to harm. Without it, the killing probably could not take place.
It presents a confused picture. Continue Reading →
Views: 42
From the GWPF come these remarks by Lord Turnbull to the House of Lords on January 12th, two days ago.
House of Lords: That this House takes note of the Government’s green agenda: My Lords, in a short debate, I will concentrate my remarks on one issue only, the governance of the science, as this is vital for the credibility of the thinking upon which the Government’s policies are based.
In a debate in December 2009 on a report by the Committee on Climate Change, I said:
“Below the surface there are serious questions about the foundations on which it has been constructed”.—[Official Report, 8/12/09; col. 1051.]
Over the subsequent two years my concerns have increased rather than been assuaged.
This is an adopted article.
The governing narrative for our climate change framework can be summarised as follows. Continue Reading →
Views: 125
From American Thinker via C3.
This came up a few days before Christmas. I didn’t get to it then but it needs airing. The surface temperature series of GISS and HadCrut are scarcely worth the disk drives they’re stored on. No wonder the records show warming.
It’s a joke. The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way down and later readings artificially lifted to give a false impression of warming. That seems familiar — now where have I read that before…
NOAA changes old temperature records every month. This is a new climate sport in which we imagined Kiwis led the world. But the Yanks have more stamina. They don’t just do it once, they keep on doing it. The data-altering champions in NOAA and NASA put the climate scientists in NIWA to shame. Continue Reading →
Views: 868
Hot Air carries good comment on the Maldives’ latest efforts to extort money from wealthy westerners, prompted by President Mohammed Nasheed’s urging of Australia to get ready to receive them. Fat chance.
Straight after he made his appeal, Nasheed went to a ceremony to mark the building of a new airport. Which was strange if he believes it will soon be drowned under flooding seas. Continue Reading →
Views: 137
Hand-in-hand with the IPCC theory that we’re dangerously changing the climate go many inaccuracies, distortions and outright lies supporting its stupendously false diagnosis, ruinously expensive remedies and tyrannical administration.
The distortions have wormed their way into thousands of places, both public and private, open and secret, taking our taxes and governing us in ways we’re already forgetting, even if we knew when they began. Will we ever be rid of them?
For to destroy each of the distortions, you need time and patience to find references to, references against and develop a refutation. Then you wait for people to hear about it and agree with you. It’s slow work.
Here’s one of the lies: mankind is ruining a perfectly good climate which never changed before we came along. Continue Reading →
Views: 79
There has been no significant global surface warming this century, yet experts say that temperatures rose during the first decade, becoming seriously hot. Hotter than ever before, in fact. For example:
Past Decade Warmest on Record, NASA Data Shows
The decade ending in 2009 was the warmest on record, new surface temperature figures released Thursday by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration show.
The agency also found that 2009 was the second warmest year since 1880, when modern temperature measurement began. The warmest year was 2005. The other hottest recorded years have all occurred since 1998, NASA said.
James E. Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said that global temperatures varied because of changes in ocean heating and cooling cycles. “When we average temperature over 5 or 10 years to minimize that variability,” said Dr. Hansen, one of the world’s leading climatologists, “we find global warming is continuing unabated.”
But the only thing continuing “unabated” is the linear trend line — it’s still going up, and its slope hasn’t changed. “It’s all right. Only the data show a decline.” Continue Reading →
Views: 1100
It has taken me a while to follow up on this letter I sent to Gavin Schmidt on 5 March, 2010. It will come as no surprise to anyone that he hasn’t deigned to answer my email. However, as it expresses succinctly some of the main defences against the “denier” appellation I’ll put it up for comment.
Dear Dr Schmidt,
I’m disappointed to hear you quoted (below) apparently referring to climate “sceptics” as “nutters”.
For it is not mental instability that requires me to want evidence of AGW. It is not insanity to want someone to describe in simple words, without taking too long, without referring me to the hundreds of unfriendly pages of the AR4, the evidence for AGW.
Not, note, evidence for the greenhouse effect, which is indisputable. Continue Reading →
Views: 84
David Archer, contributor at Real Climate, gives much reassurance today about the dangers of methane clathrates. Interesting article, with lots of things I hadn’t heard of. Nice of him, too, to put our minds at rest.
I wonder why he didn’t explain all this long before now, about ten years ago or more? Why he let all the wild, alarming speculation continue in the world’s press and in the blogs for quite so long. Why he let us worry for so long. Why, especially, he now calls us “friend” (see the end).
He says the ocean hydrates are “mostly so deep in the sediment column that it would take thousands of years for anthropogenic warming to reach them.” Well, that’s a good piece of sense, David; thanks for bringing it up. I’m sure some of us have said so already, but good of you to confirm it. Continue Reading →
Views: 39
I’ve been sent some emails from people connected with the IPCC review process. The First Order Draft of the WGI contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis is available for Expert Review from 16 December 2011 to 10 February 2012.
The WGI Bureau invites all experts with expertise and/or publications in the specific areas covered by the WGI Report to assist in the IPCC assessment process by registering to review here.
I have to say that it’s strange that the web site for this professional organisation, which is meant to be secured by encryption certificates, isn’t set up correctly and makes Firefox think the site is being spoofed. It appears quite amateurish. Continue Reading →
Views: 39
To the Editor
Climate Conversation
22nd December 2011
Some at the big end of town are worried that Mr Abbott may keep his promise to repeal the carbon tax. No doubt they and their smart lawyers fear losing the clever green schemes that rely on ripping off tax payers, consumers and other businesses.
Australia’s wealth and jobs have always rested on three legs – mining and farming, making and processing things, and rich foreigners; in short, resources, manufacturing and money from tourists and investors.
The Gillard carbon tax will white-ant all three legs. Continue Reading →
Views: 34
The Editor
NZ Listener
Dear Sir,
I was not going to bother to respond to your editorial (Listener Dec 17) forewarning us of the impending catastrophe of man-induced dangerous global warming; in any case there was no time — I have been like everyone else caught up in that state of human-induced seasonal silliness.
Today is different. All the shopping is done, all the last-minute reports completed. I am at home now in relative peace on Christmas Eve. I reach for my weekly palliative dose of intellectual fare — my Listener (dated Dec 31) has arrived. It contains two long letters beating the the same dangerous human-induced global warming drum. We are all doomed! We are destroying planet earth!!!! Spare me, I thought, it’s Christmas.
So, in the spirit of the festive season, I offer your readers the following facts:
1) There has been no global warming for 13 years despite increasing emissions of carbon dioxide.
2) The earth was warmer during the medieval warm period than it is today, long before man discovered oil!
3) The earth’s climate has always changed, both up and down, relative to the present and long before man appeared on the scene — maybe something else apart from carbon dioxide drives the earth’s temperature?
3) The only evidence now for the theory of dangerous carbon dioxide-induced global warming is the IPCC models, which assume, incorrectly it now appears, that clouds exacerbate the warming due to carbon dioxide.
4) NIWA tells us that NZ has warmed by about 0.9 °C in the last 100-odd years but they have been unable to put forward the crucial supporting evidence.
So my New Year wish to all is: relax, enjoy life, be glad and proud of what mankind has achieved. Mother nature will continue to do what she has always done, both good and bad. All we need to do is what all life on earth has done for eons: to continue to adapt and evolve. Go well.
Dr D. C. Edmeades
Managing Director
AgKnowledge Ltd
www.agknowledge.co.nz
Finalist Agribusiness Person of the Year 2011
“The only antidote to pseudo-science is science itself”
Carl Sagan
Views: 88
As the premier Christian celebration, rivalled only by Easter, when He died/rose from the dad – I mean, the dead (though the dad is not so far from the story!) – it lies near the centre of our religion, our culture, art, music, literature and folklore. Christmas is now understood and observed around the world. Two thousand years ago, who would have imagined it?
Christmas is an event marked not so much by stern faces, authority or rigid ritual, but by merriment. Of all things! Merry Christmas? This is how we greet one another? How wonderful!
That’s something we can join in with without having to bow down before a god or any conception of a god. Without requiring the acceptance of a creed, or supernatural event or spiritual condition or even the existence of any spiritual region, we can greet one another with merriness!! We can be merry! I shall be merry!
In this odd and unexpected rebound from the strictures of the Victorian age, when everything started out so laissez-faire, when we tossed out so many rules, we turned our backs on conventions near and far, and began, as though we were the first to discover sex, to disavow all reasons for resisting its allure, then started drugs with a similar lack of restraint, then turned with our new axe to all the rules wherever they are found, and even called ourselves post-modern, this rebound which has turned so grim, so very grim, so politically correct, so dour, so freedom-less, while the word freedom itself drips oh so regular from everyone’s lips, as we tut-tut the racial words and correct our Maori pronunciation while our English language languishes for lack of learning and we lay complaints of sexism and females are personally offended and males are routinely feared and suspected and ignored and disrespected and why don’t the men take proper care of their women first and then their own children and racial taunts are elevated now above the sexual sins of yesteryear, and never mind the affronted spouse, we don’t refer to anybody’s colour except the white, white skin of the ever-powerful, ever-present, all-knowing, ever-selfish white man, Christmas gives a little pressure release valve so we can be merry. I love you all.
The silliest commemoration in the year is the United Nations “International Day of the World’s Indigenous People” (a day of observance but not a holiday).
Anybody thinking? Who is not indigenous to somewhere? So who would this commemoration be for? Anybody thinking? Anyone born off-planet? Anyone?
It’s the International Day of Everyone and Nobody knows it.
Views: 59
I am sent this snippet of correspondence that refers intriguingly to continuing research into the effect of clouds on the climate. No, I won’t say who’s speaking.
Your reference to clouds led me to the work of Prof Roger Davies, who holds the Buckley-Glavish chair in Climate Physics at Auckland U.
He is part of a global group triangulating cloud data from a dedicated satellite, and seems to be developing a view that clouds provide a natural thermostat function (which Richard Lindzen has previously speculated about).
This comes from a 2008 article “Watching the Clouds” in the science faculty magazine:
Over the past eight years of data, there has been little change in the clouds over much of the Earth. However two regions stand out as exceptions. Near the equator, where the high clouds that determine the greenhouse effect are especially numerous, the cloud cover has dropped in height, suggesting a lowering of their greenhouse effect, potentially to offset global warming.
In addition, the reflectivity of the Arctic has changed. In northern summer 2006, the reflectivity of the Arctic decreased significantly, due to less cloud cover and less ice in the area, both of which reflect sunlight. However, from the ground, only a moderate decrease in ice was seen compared to its normal summer melt. The following year, there was a significantly higher ice melt than predicted, despite the fact that satellite pictures were brighter than average, and much brighter than the previous summer, due to increased cloud.
But was the 2007 melt due to the darkness of 2006? Were the clouds of 2007 compensating for the low ice reflectivity to keep a balance? Right now, we don’t know enough to say.
Interesting, but Google shows up nothing recent. He generally seems to keep his head down.
/end snippet
Views: 347
Here in New Zealand, the NZ Climate Science Coalition has battled for several years to understand the national temperature record and get the data released that lies behind it. Now we battle to correct it.
Because NIWA, in “reconstructing” the record, manages miraculously to lower past temperatures and increase recent ones to create a spurious warming that overstates the actual national warming over the last hundred years by 168%!
We’ve told NIWA about it and we’ve sent them our report that proves it, but they refuse to acknowledge our finding, much less explain themselves. It is a national disgrace which our newspapers, magazines, radio stations and television channels strangely refuse to investigate.
The warming is truly man-made, for it hasn’t happened in the real world, it has been created only by the adjustments.
Now, from C3 Headlines, we learn that an even more invidious process has been going on in the United States. Continue Reading →
Views: 55
At Durban’s COP 17 climate conference, the EU secured a road map aiming at an international agreement by 2015, to be ratified by all parties by 2020.
Although there was much arm-waving celebration of this “extension” of the Kyoto Protocol, nobody actually believes any legally-binding replacement can be sewn up during the next decade. Some of the most important players think 2020 is too ambitious. The “delayers” include USA, Canada, Japan and Russia. Continue Reading →
Views: 49
Attention: News Editors, Political, Science and Environment Reporters
MEDIA RELEASE
No “Climate Debt” is owed to developing countries
Ottawa, Canada, December 11, 2011: “Developed nations are not guilty of causing the climate change that developing nations claim they are suffering,” said Tom Harris, executive director of ICSC which is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. “Climate changes all the time—both warming and cooling—due to natural causes and there is nothing that we can do to stop it. However, to the degree possible, and considering our economic circumstances, developed nations still have a moral obligation to devote a proportion of their foreign aid to helping the world’s most vulnerable people adapt to natural climate events.” Continue Reading →
Views: 189
A fresh breath of air just blew through the climate. New Zealand (with its buddies Australia) refuse to do more for the climate if nobody else does.
Our climate negotiator, Tim Groser, said what we’ve been telling the Nats for years: “You will not carry public opinion if the debate is ‘you are the only idiots doing anything.’”
The Nats have finally given up the world-leading role they took on climate. Hurrah, hurrah, and break out the balloons! Continue Reading →
Views: 84
This will blow your socks off.
It is not made up; the people promoting the global climate crisis promise to control the weather — but first they need to control you (actually, don’t be fooled, controlling you is their real objective and it has been since before the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was agreed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992). These people might be highly dangerous, but they are certainly patient.
In the article below, published as an “exclusive” at Cimate Depot, Lord Christopher Monckton blows the whistle on the contents of the “failed” climate treaty being put together in Durban. You won’t hear this from our proper news media — if you want to see them carry it, start writing your letters to them now.
This is an adopted article.
UPDATE: Lord Monckton referred me to the UNFCCC site to find the draft documents. He told me the draft he read was dated 7 December, which I guess would be this “amalgamation of draft texts“. But there are others – look under “Latest Documents” on the right-hand side. They’re changing rapidly but you might find them interesting.
DURBAN, South Africa — “No high hopes for Durban.” “Binding treaty unlikely.” “No deal this year.” Thus ran the headlines. The profiteering UN bureaucrats here think otherwise. Their plans to establish a world government paid for by the West on the pretext of dealing with the non-problem of “global warming” are now well in hand. As usual, the mainstream media have simply not reported what is in the draft text which the 194 states parties to the UN framework convention on climate change are being asked to approve.
Behind the scenes, throughout the year since Cancun, the now-permanent bureaucrats who have made highly-profitable careers out of what they lovingly call “the process” have been beavering away at what is now a 138-page document. Continue Reading →
Views: 109
This is surely too good to be true for the warmists.
In the last few days of a failing international conference, here’s a paper carrying strong confirmation of global warming. It’s not attribution, of course, but nobody will notice that. Proof of warming is enough to tweak the guilt nerve.
The Washington Post says:
The global temperature series is one of the clearest pieces of evidence that the planet is heating up. Over the past century, it’s easy to see from, say, NASA’s data that surface temperatures have risen dramatically. But there’s also a fair bit of short-term natural fluctuation from year to year, which can sometimes obscure what, exactly, is going on.
Views: 83
It’s one thing to be misunderstood, quite another to be repeatedly misquoted.
A misunderstanding can be a mere message muddle – happens all the time – and mistakenly misquoting is minor misconduct.
But continuing to misquote someone after being told what they actually said is unforgivable. Crafting your assertions to your own ends rather than to the truth is detestable.
Children make no bones about it. They call it lying and they hate it. Continue Reading →
Views: 867
It’s not possible even to keep track of the alarmist stories about climate, far less to refute them all. But when one is personally cited close to home and statements are wrongfully attributed to one, one ought to address them. This Laking/Herald howler is a case in point. Laking has taken his information from the Hot Topic side of the tracks without verification, not knowing the distortions of Renowden and friends (no matter how often corrected) and must now suffer the consequences; the formerly revered Herald similarly. My good friend Barry Brill here humorously draws our attention to the doctor’s faux pas. Regular readers will know that Richard C and Andy already mentioned the Herald article in comments on our Brash post. Thanks, guys. Apologies – one is only just getting around to it – but a refuting post will follow this. – RT
The NZ Herald runs climate alarm propaganda in every shape and size, and from every imaginable point of view. But it was scraping the barrel with its recent patronising but content-free sermon from a certain George Laking – presented on its weather page under the heading of “Epsom and climate change”.
Laking is apparently an oncologist. He transparently knows nothing whatever of meteorology, and even less about economics – and therefore relies upon a quote from an IEA economist to define the state of the science. He then buttresses his scientific bombast with other strongly-held opinions from non-scientists – the World Bank, UK Ministry of Defence, the Medical Association, and the World Health Organisation.
Each one of his sources has heard a real scientist say something, somewhere, about climate science. And they are almost sure they can remember part of what was said. But, says George, global warming isn’t about science anyhow, it’s about MORALITY!
If you want to know how morality works, ask a cancer doctor. George has seen what tobacco sellers got up to and he wouldn’t be a bit surprised if climate sellers weren’t just as bad.
And it turns out George’s medical training also left him well-versed in the need to manipulate raw data to get the result you are after. He says:
“If you take the raw temperature recordings alone (like ACT or… Richard Treadgold did), you won’t see a temperature rise. But that is because the readings have to be corrected for changes in site location, exposure, and instrumentation. Treadgold overlooked this and so ACT constructed a whole court case on the most abysmal scientific howler.”
Hmm. George obviously doesn’t read very much in pursuit of his climate hobby. He certainly doesn’t express any methodological preferences as between Salinger (1981) and RS93; or even NIWA’s 2010 review versus the audit published by the NZ Climate Science Coalition. He doesn’t even differentiate between the old 7SS and the NZT7.
Poor George seems to think Richard Treadgold is helping ACT to sue somebody in Epsom. Perhaps the teacup taper?
Does the Herald read these Op-Eds before publication, or is a burning zeal to hurl abuse at non-believers seen to be a sufficient qualification?
Views: 32
UN “scientists” are taking desperate risks with their reputations, attempting to cover up their deceptions about a climatic peril that doesn’t exist.
Some scientists at the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) have become desperate to cover up their hamfisted deceptions aimed at generating support for their hypothesis that mankind is causing the Earth to catastrophically heat up. In their desperation they’re still misleading the public, but also abandoning science and, incredibly, telling actual lies about the climate.
This makes for particularly dangerous implications for public policy. We need to be on our guard.
That this is going on is so easy to discover (but not through the mainstream media) that one cannot help but speculate whether our local journalists either have very strong reason to be sympathetic to these activist scientists or are even actually in league with them. Continue Reading →
Views: 39
Monday, 21 November, 2011 – 12:40
Campaign Speech on the Emissions Trading Scheme
Don Brash, Leader ACT New Zealand
Bureta Park Inn, Tauranga
Monday 21 November 2011
My talk today is about the economy. It’s one of three that I’ll be giving this week as New Zealanders close in on the polls. This particular one focuses on the Emissions Trading Scheme, one of the most damaging policy choices that New Zealand has made in recent years.
This is an adopted article.
New Zealand’s hyperactive adoption of the world’s only all-sectors-all-gases Emissions Trading Scheme will not save us money on international obligations, because after the Kyoto Protocol expires next year there will not be any such obligations. It will not affect the global climate because New Zealand’s emissions form an utterly trivial fraction of global emissions [0.2% – Ed.]. It will not set an example to the world: if anything it will show the world that trying to lead on climate change policy is counterproductive. It might improve “Brand New Zealand,” but only at an unacceptable cost.
First, though, let me set some context. Continue Reading →
Views: 407
This damning article from Christopher Booker is best appreciated in the whole — I redact none of it. May our leaders notice it.
Now, to be sure, there’s no sign here of the extreme obsession with global warming that marks the UK government. Thus, there is no local concern with the excesses the UK displays over reducing their carbon footprint.
However, we do exhibit a singular desire to lead the world in defeating the efficiency of our world-leading industry and agriculture.
So we object! This analysis from Mr Booker elucidates some of the excellent reasons why we object.
The scare over man-made global warming is not only the scientific scandal of our generation, but a suicidal flight from reality.
This is an adopted article.
To grasp the almost suicidal state of unreality our Government has been driven into by the obsession with global warming, it is necessary to put together the two sides to an overall picture – each vividly highlighted by events of recent days.
On one hand there is the utterly lamentable state of the science which underpins it all, illuminated yet again by “Climategate 2.0”, the latest release of emails between the leading scientists who for years have been at the heart of the warming scare (which I return to below). On the other hand, we see the damage done by the political consequences of this scare, which will directly impinge, in various ways, on all our lives.
It is hard to know where to begin, after a week which opened with The Sunday Telegraph’s exclusive on a blast of realism from Prince Philip Continue Reading →
Views: 69
The New Zealand Wind Energy Association commissioned a report from Infometrics which was released a few days ago. It claims that New Zealanders could be $390 pa better off with 20% more wind energy than at present.
However, Bryan Leyland has some harsh things to say about it, including that it is “riddled with flaws” and makes a number of “very dubious assumptions”.
The Climate Science Coalition might (probably will) produce a press release with more detail, but watch this space; if they don’t, we will.
UPDATE: The press release from Terry Dunleavy has been published on Scoop.
Our headline says “saving lies” with good reason; when an insider organisation gives out such misleading statements as this economic nonsense (I mean assuming ridiculously high prices for “carbon”) they do so not from ignorance but deliberately.
They lie.
Monday, 28 November 2011, 12:50 pm
Press Release: New Zealand Climate Science Coalition
Views: 84
For those hoping our ETS will stem our emissions by requiring a price for them, the Greens have got it badly wrong.
The financiers won’t get rich, neither will the Earth become cool, because the price is collapsing here, too.
First Europe (two or three times!) and now New Zealand. When will the government refund all the extra we’ve been paying for petrol and power?
Views: 49
I’m sick of all these claims that we should, or even can, limit the world’s warming to 2 °C.
Here’s a challenge: name a scientist prepared to make this assertion and describe the evidence for it.
It appears to be no more “settled science” than an unsubstantiated urban myth. At the very least, there’s so much uncertainty about the climate sensitivity to warming that we don’t know the effect on temperature of, say, 5 billion tonnes of CO2.
Ignoring for a moment the obvious question of what’s so wrong with two degrees, how do “scientists” reason their way from 2 degrees of warming to (as it says below) 44 billion tons of CO2 in 2020? Continue Reading →
Views: 67