Dr Willie Soon — level-headed unbeliever
Dr Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon, a prominent sceptical climate scientist, was virtually mugged on 22 February last year but he’s only just given his first public account of it. I am publishing this account and a transcription of his address because it cries out for justice. Continue Reading →
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NEWS PROVIDED BY
Kelleher & Associates Environmental Mgmt LLC
Jan 10, 2017, 10:00 ET
SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — The following is the opinion of Kelleher & Associates Environmental Mgmt LLC regarding rising CO2 levels and Global Warming and their interrelationship with fast melting glaciers:
Dear President Elect Trump, NOAA, EPA and interested parties: Continue Reading →
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Nothing is certain in politics.
Rex Tillerson, Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, says that the United States should remain part of the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Tillerson was ExxonMobil CEO since 2006.
Will he approve the Keystone XL pipeline? We wait and see.
– h/t Gary Kerkin
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TVNZ trumpets a record year for temperature in New Zealand and around the world. They seem very pleased, as though it’s a creditable step, or as though the ridiculous argument that humans are causing dangerous global warming has been strengthened. Certainly, their newswriter amplifies the magnification: Continue Reading →
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Dr Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology speaks during a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing on “Data or Dogma” in 2015
Judith describes a recent interaction with a senior student who works in a field that is certainly relevant to climate science but doesn’t identify as a climate scientist: Continue Reading →
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The Times of London says this:
A botched green energy scheme that has ignited a political crisis is on course to cost taxpayers more than £1 billion. The Treasury faces the bill after a massive overspend on subsidies encouraging farmers and businesses in Northern Ireland to run eco-friendly power schemes. The Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) was supposed to cost £25 million in its first five years but the bill is likely to reach £1.15 billion over 20 years.
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In the Herald this morning Rachel Stewart, a rottweiler journalist and climate alarmist, complains about being on the receiving end of all kinds of flak drawn by her opposition to dairy farming pollution.
Now I shall tear her reasoning to shreds in an amazingly entertaining contribution to your summer holiday reading. Continue Reading →
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May the peace within fill the spaces about you. May the Christmas season ring with the voice of its founding spirit. May that delicate one within be brought to your attention. May your hope for truth refresh your courage, nourish your resolve and govern your compass. May we all hear these words.
Warm blessings on you all.
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Here’s a first for the Herald — they now have an Australian comedian writing their climate alarmist stories. We’ve been laughing at their climate stories for years, but now it’s funnier. This Aussie comic makes mischief with an account of recent anomalously high temperatures in the Arctic, complete with references that explain what’s happening. It’s not actually man-made, but he claims it is and forgets to mention the other explanations. Maybe he thinks we won’t check his references, but we did. Continue Reading →
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There’s a lot to write about at the moment, so forgive me if I occasionally ignore important topics. They’ll have another turn in due course.
This is rather a sideshow, but we have the Coal Action Network (CAN) agitating with alarmist zeal against Fonterra to bully them into limiting their carbon dioxide emissions for no practical purpose and I don’t know of anyone who is opposing their stupidity. Let me briefly show how this will make no difference to the climate and will simply impede the efficiency of one of New Zealand’s best companies. Continue Reading →
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In July 2016, Professor Tim Naish and Professor James Renwick embarked on a whistle-stop tour of 11 towns and cities giving a public slide presentation they called Ten by Ten: Climate Change (“Ten things you didn’t know about climate change”). Senior scientists with the NZ Climate Science Coalition raised concerns about the accuracy of the material being presented and on 26 August, before the tour was over, they lodged a complaint (pdf, 2 MB) with the Royal Society of New Zealand.
This blog reported the complaint on 28 August. On or about November 23, a Confidential Draft Report came in from Professors Tennant, Scott and Watts, of the Royal Society Professional Standards and Ethics Panel. Now the the Final Report of the Panel (the Report) has been released, received by the complainants on December 7. Continue Reading →
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Tamino’s post the other day, Climate Deniers’ Top 3 Tactics, articulates some of the distortions indulged in by alarmists when refuting sceptical arguments. Continue Reading →
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Following discussion about how widely accepted Rhoades, D. A. and Salinger, M. J., Adjustment of temperature and rainfall records for site changes, (1993) is, and thus informs temperature adjustments, I checked at the Wiley Online Library. They record no citations. Here’s a screen shot: Continue Reading →
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Now we must change direction, but following reason, not fear.
About thirty years ago we first heard reports that the world was warming. The scientific papers noted that levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide were the highest recorded in the last 8 million years (or some large number, depending on the study). The language made it seem that CO2 caused the warming, but it seldom said so directly. At first.
We trusted the scientists and as more and more of these papers appeared we slowly came to accept that the planet was warming because of our CO2 emissions. Continue Reading →
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The denial is consistent with all that warmist shrieking at the El Nino’s peak. The GWPF Observatory reports: Despite Denial, Global Temperatures Are Dropping Fast. All global temperature data sets (you can see a few of the graphs at that GWPF Observatory link) confirm that global temperature has fallen rapidly in the last few months as the recent El Nino ended. Dr David Whitehouse comments: Continue Reading →
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I am pessimistic that Trump will make good on all his promises to change the climate change policies of the US. He won’t be allowed to. He’s already making noises like “I’m examining [the Paris treaty] closely.” He’s surrounded by people who know how things work and they’re now teaching him the facts of life. Shame, but there you go. We’ll have to effect change the hard, old-fashioned way of struggle and slog, work and toil.
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We’re a bunch of shaky isles, that’s for sure. The great gods that support us just shrugged again and things were broken. Continue Reading →
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The conversation has hijacked perfectly innocent global warming threads, so here’s a non-innocent thread that has already pleaded guilty to having sophisticated knowledge of scandal. So it cannot be harmed.
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I’ve just installed a slick new editor for writing comments that gives easy access to formatting, blockquotes, links and some other things. Should make life a bit easier without interfering with the delayed editing—or anything else. Let me know of any questions or problems. Hope you like it.
Cheers,
Richard T.
I’ve deactivated the new editor for a while. I’ve now seen what RC is talking about and I haven’t found a solution yet. I’ll keep looking. Thanks for all the feedback! – RT
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This comprehensive essay by our good friend Viv Forbes in Australia doesn’t apply to us, since we have no grass-covered continent and our Green movement has developed in different directions. But it may have a lesson to teach us, as there’s evidence of gung-ho Green radicalism in New Zealand that should caution us against complacency. Perhaps not grasslands, but how would you like our native forests, fisheries, mountains, rivers, lakes and coastlines, piece by piece, being taken out of bounds, not only for productive development but for access?
In truth, the process is under way, with the Green Party agitating against exploitation within our enormous National Parks and Greenpeace interfering with lawful access to the seabed for mining. In addition we now have Maoris claiming the right to control river and lake waters, which under centuries-old British law belong to the Crown. Let’s hope these ancient rights will not on any pretext be tampered with or given to any portion of our population, or it’ll be a dark day for the whole world. Viv paints a superb picture of how things were and how things are today—and how life is distorted by environmental activists out of touch with the environment’s needs. His account warns us to keep our situation awareness alive. I strongly recommend you click through to the entire article in pdf and relish the whole of it. – Richard Treadgold
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UNESCO: “The Great Barrier Reef is not in danger.” (2015)
In a welcome change, the Guardian takes a non-alarmist stance on a climate change topic. It was persuaded by marine scientists to disagree with an obituary for the Great Barrier Reef published earlier this month. I’ve never before known the Guardian to spare our feelings or understate the growing perils of climate change. Continue Reading →
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The orthodox climate view demeans sceptics as deniers. They refuse to acknowledge that sceptical questions are valid. If they took a moment to examine them, they would find numerous points of doubt about the argument that human activities are about to ruin the planet. One such point is the claim that “it must be our greenhouse gas emissions because nothing else explains it.” Continue Reading →
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A reader posted a comment so stupid it demands a response to counter the mindless hyperbole that touts the Paris treaty to the world as a good thing. Continue Reading →
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We’re getting a valuable insight into the wind generation business and taking the conversation over here will remove it from an unrelated post. Continue Reading →
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A conference is under way in Auckland. The Climate Change and Business Conference has brought together the great and the good from New Zealand and overseas. Yesterday and today, these fine people are lending their personal dignity to the completely senseless notion that we control the weather.
Propaganda doesn’t come in any more blatant form than this, when an idea of no value is propagated by eminent speakers. But is anyone listening? Continue Reading →
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It’s six years since NIWA published their Report on the Review of NIWA’s ‘Seven-Station’ Temperature Series (pdf, 8.5 MB), the latest version of the national temperature record. It’s six years, too, since NIWA promised the people of New Zealand (in Parliament) they would publish the methodology in that report in a peer-reviewed journal. But they haven’t done so—maybe they aren’t too pleased with it.
Last year, three scientists associated with the NZ Climate Science Coalition published a peer-reviewed paper concluding the New Zealand temperature rise over the last hundred years was only 0.28°C, much lower than the last NIWA effort, which claimed it was 0.91°C. Though I notice just now when checking the NIWA website they’re claiming 0.92°C.
Kenneth Richard has just posted an article on the de Freitas et al. paper at NoTricksZone – h/t Maggy Wassilieff. Continue Reading →
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Auckland mayoral candidate Vic Crone
During an interview a few days ago, Auckland mayoral candidate Vic Crone would not say if she believed the earth was warming due to man-made pollution, saying only: “Gosh, that’s a very contentious debate.”
Dr James Renwick, a professor of physical geography at Victoria University of Wellington, has slammed Crone’s statement. “The climate is changing and it is due to human activity and that is very clear from all sorts of lines of evidence,” he said. “To say that it’s very contentious suggests a real lack of understanding of the area.” The evidence showed that human influence was the dominant cause of global warming, Renwick said. “To try and say that we’re not sure is very backward thinking.” [emphasis added]
But that’s just not the case. Continue Reading →
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Global warming is making the oceans sicker than ever before, spreading disease among animals and humans and threatening food security across the planet, a major scientific report said on Monday.
The report lists several consequences of warming they claim are “absolutely massive.” The scientists say we are “making the oceans sick,” “drastically altering the rhythm of life” and “changing the seasons in the ocean.” Continue Reading →
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Symbol of arduous labour
Eternal useless labour was the lot of King Sysephus, whom the gods made to roll a boulder each day to the top of a mountain and watch as it rolled down again. This was a punishment, not a reward. It’s a Greek tale among many at the heart of Western civilisation, instructive and memorable to countless generations of people raised to be thoughtful, and a heritage to value. But the climate hoax contains eternal labour for us all and we just don’t see it. Continue Reading →
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The Royal Society of New Zealand has confirmed the commencement in accordance with its rules of a process to consider a complaint by several of its members that two Victoria University academics, Professors James Renwick and Tim Naish, have breached the society’s Code of Ethics in their public programme of lectures throughout the country entitled “Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Climate Change”. Continue Reading →
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The oil industry copied the tactics [of] the tobacco industry. Engender mistrust in the science and scientists by lying.
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A group of pragmatic kiwis have threatened to test the Christchurch City Council’s belief in the IPCC dogma in court. In effect, they are daring the council to let a judge examine the consensus position that the sea level is about to soar dramatically higher and faster than it has for thousands of years. Continue Reading →
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The NZ Climate Science Coalition just issued a press release.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New Zealand’s rush to sign the Paris Climate Change Accord ignores science and will damage the economy, according to the chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, Hon Barry Brill, himself a former Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister of Energy in a National Government. Continue Reading →
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Paula Bennett says the Government intends to concrete the Paris agreement into place by the end of the year.
She will “within weeks” announce terms of reference and the members of an expert group that will help implement our transition to lower carbon emissions. They hope our trading friends will be mightily pleased by our righteous eagerness to save the planet. Or so they imply. Continue Reading →
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Trying hard not to lose a call
When I started this blog over ten years ago I decided to host it temporarily on a subdomain of wordshine, just to see how it worked out. Well, it seems to be working fine so I’ve bought a permanent home for it. There could be glitches before we’re settled in, so pray patience, friends, while we make the move. When I say ‘we’ I refer to the nice boffin who hosts my domains in Hamilton.
The new domain is named simply climateconversation.org.nz, and I’ve owned it for several years (mustn’t hurry these things). Don’t change your links just yet, though; I’ll let you know if and when you have to. I want you to know we’re doing all we can to avoid losing any of you even for a moment.
Thanks for your patience.
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Not the word problem—the word ‘problem’. It’s an issue. Continue Reading →
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The more one studies James Renwick’s desperate letter to the Herald the more frantic appear his attempts to malign by any means, fair or foul, the increasingly confident climate sceptics who question his global warming thesis. For example, he says of Chris de Freitas:
He claims that hysteria is being stirred up against those raising “serious questions” about climate change. What are these serious questions? Can he give an example of the hysteria?
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The story so far: the scientifically and climatically inept Dr Jarrod Gilbert pontificated hysterically that it should be a crime merely to discuss ambiguities in the theory of dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW), taking the view that only “those who deny climate change” cause doubt. He says reasonable doubt doesn’t exist, which of course is flagrant nonsense—just as no sceptics deny that climate change exists. Continue Reading →
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Dr James Renwick criticises Dr Chris de Freitas for keeping a cool head and saying there’s no need to worry about normal climate change. James says:
I am puzzled that de Freitas can review the evidence, the melting ice sheets, rising seas, warming oceans and atmosphere, and see nothing to worry about.
He claims four points of evidence. Let’s have a look at them. Continue Reading →
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Another white man has his job threatened merely by expressing an opinion on gender issues that differs from some orthodoxy, the explanation some ambiguous double-speak about diversity and inclusion. You couldn’t make this up. Oh, wait: it’s all made up. Continue Reading →
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I have to admit to a bad week. It started Monday. It was cold and I thought: “Huh, where’s global warming?” Continue Reading →
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Dr Jarrod Gilbert, a sociologist at the University of Canterbury, advises us to trample on the right to free speech by making it a crime to “deny climate change”, wants climate sceptics to stop “ignoring best evidence” and “turning against experts” and gives us all the juvenile middle finger by saying amusingly “the term climate sceptic is now interchangeable with the term mindless fool.”
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Gavin Schmidt asks at RealClimate: “How should one make graphics that appropriately compare models and observations?” and goes on to reconstruct John Christy’s updated comparison between climate models and satellite temperature measurements. The reconstruction was cited here by Simon in response to Gary Kerkin’s reference to Christy’s graph ( – h/t Richard Cumming, Gary Kerkin and Simon for references). Continue Reading →
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Professors James Renwick and Tim Naish are sounding global warming warnings around the country. We have received a copy of their presentation, called Ten by Ten: Climate Change – Ten things you didn’t know about climate change.
This academic presentation is filled with errors, though it’s funded by the Victoria University of Wellington and the Royal Society—which means your taxes, at least in part. Continue Reading →
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I ought to rejoice at the latest Hot Topic post, The Lost Art of Conversation … or a challenge foregone, because, one, it’s all about me and, two, Gareth finally relents on the ban he slapped on me years ago (no longer permitted to comment at his blog—native trolls too sensitive). He allows me to comment on this post as long as I don’t “deliberately misrepresent matters of fact.” Continue Reading →
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Early indications are the UK will leave the EU. But at 3:35 pm NZST it’s very close at 10,539,289 to leave and 10,066,155 to stay (difference 473,134). It could go either way.
Leave now 14,899,282 votes; Stay 13,905,623; difference: 993,659.
Leave now 16,285,959 votes; stay 15,154,925; difference: 1,131,034.
Hurrah!
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Gareth Renowden, of Hot Topic, has produced a shabby critique of an NBR article by Willem de Lange and Bryan Leyland. I use the word “critique” out of politeness, for it’s merely an ill-mannered hatchet job. Continue Reading →
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After I made comments at Coal Action Network, Gareth Renowden piled in and there was a brief discussion before he gave up in disgust. Here’s the end of it. Continue Reading →
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Donald Trump has reached the number of delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination for US president. There are now global concerns that his campaign could succeed. President Barack Obama said foreign leaders were unsure how seriously to take his pronouncements. He said Trump displays either ignorance of world affairs or a cavalier attitude or an interest in getting tweets and headlines. He suggested more useful proposals would thoughtfully address what’s required to keep the US safe and prosperous and “to keep the world on an even keel.” Continue Reading →
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Burning the rest of the world’s untapped fossil fuel resources – an equivalent five trillion tonnes of carbon emissions – would push up the average global temperature by between 6.4C and 9.5C.
Those are the big figures behind a major new study published today in the journal Nature Climate Change—and they’re much more serious than had previously been anticipated.
The study, led by the University of Victoria in Canada, further estimated that this level of extra emissions would elevate Arctic temperatures between 14.7C and 19.5C.
In the absence of efforts to mitigate climate change, cumulative carbon emissions would likely exceed two trillion tonnes of carbon before the end of this century.
Etc., alarming, blah, blah, scary, blah. Continue Reading →
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