David Seymour released the Māori vaccine priority code on social media along with a message encouraging anyone to use it. Yesterday’s Herald carried an opinion piece from Heather Du Plessis-Allan, who said:
Many won’t care what it takes, as long as we get those jab rates up. In the spirit of pragmatism, many may look past their usual objections to racial favouritism just to get the thing done. (emphasis added)
Views: 144
Bryan Leyland, engineer and fellow member of the NZ Climate Science Coalition, just sent this punishing critique of Simon Wilson’s piece in the NZ Herald to Simon and kindly allows me to publish it here. Tell me what you think.
Simon Wilson’s Herald article on 25 June contained many false or misleading statements and was seriously one-sided. His misleading statements include (in italics):
Continue Reading →
Views: 668
A brain-dead editorial, a fresh view of CO2, an amazing letter, the kitten and the blue whale.
An editorial in Tuesday’s Herald ($) begins:
Amazing that he somehow knows what is discussed not only in “most households” but in “other social gatherings,” though it sounds to me like projection. The editorial goes on to conflate our discoloured sky, the scale of the bush fire outbreaks and the heat at the Melbourne cricket as reasons we ought not doubt we’re causing dangerous warming. It says we not only saw but felt the heat of the bush fires in New Zealand (which, 1200 km away, pushes the barrow a mite far). Preposterously, it ends: “The sun was so sizzling it became a wonder anything combustible was not catching fire.” But maybe Auntie Herald was trying to crack a funny. Continue Reading →
Views: 32
Click to read the letters.
The Herald printed these letters on Saturday. Here is the letter (now slightly altered) I sent them that day, still unpublished as far as I know. The word count had to be under 200 words.
One cannot say much in just 200 words, but newspapers make it harder by not allowing multiple replies to multiple letters. Hence my achievement in replying to four letters, with extreme brevity, in the presence of the enemy and under fire from letter-writers on the one hand and journalists on the other, surely all but deserves the VC. Though some will demur. Continue Reading →
Views: 27
We see mistakes in the Herald every day, but this morning there’s an inglorious language blunder from a sports reporter:
“If the browbeaten All Blacks were expecting an easier time of it in the World Cup bronze match against Wales on Friday, they have another thing coming.
Views: 60
Herald headline, 4 August – Climate scientist: It’s cold now, but NZ region just saw its warmest July.
Prof Jim Salinger
Professor Jim Salinger, who helped create the benchmark seven-station national temperature series, the 7SS (or SSS, if you prefer), now runs a competing series using 22 hand-picked land weather stations (let’s call it the 22-station Salinger series, or 22SS). He claims July is an all-time record 1.79 °C above average, while the previous record of 1.74 °C above average in July, 1998, is demoted to second. Continue Reading →
Views: 357
Here’s a piece, including graph, regarding Jim Salinger’s opinions on global warming that I thought the NZ Herald might like for an op-ed three weeks ago. They didn’t. It’s now slightly improved and I’ve added the earliest NZ temperature records. I like the fact that the error margins swallow these Lilliputian record margins. — Richard Treadgold
A week ago, Dr Jim Salinger, jumping the gun a little, predicted 2018 would prove to be NZ’s hottest year. The Herald indulged his forecast (inadvertently awarding him the title professor) with the heading 2018 NZ’s hottest year on record. Unfortunately, when they published NIWA’s official data a few days later, Jim’s claim turned out to be wrong, with 2018 declared the second-hottest year, following 2016. Continue Reading →
Views: 755
Jamie Morton’s recent Herald article How NZ could cut agriculture emissions by to [sic] 10 per cent states:
Nearly half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture – the main source being methane burped from cattle and sheep.It’s indeed surprising to again hear this non-factual assertion that methane in ruminant eructation constitutes cumulative emissions, when it’s well established that the methane arises from the digestion of recently-eaten grass as part of a cycle.
One has to wonder where the government gets its scientific advice.
There is no evidence to claim that ruminant methane is one-way traffic, for it moves in a cycle, and has done for millions of years. After a short time in the atmosphere the methane breaks down, the carbon dioxide is released to contribute to more grass growth, the grass is consumed and digested and around it goes again. Nothing is added to beyond wool, milk, meat and the rest of the beast (at slaughter nothing is wasted).
To continue claiming that farmers are in this way adding to global warming signals deep ignorance.
Views: 1564
The letter Our impact on climate very clear, of 8 Oct 2018 (right), by Prof Dave Frame and seven other local climate scientists, gives misleading information about greenhouse gases.
Seeing a letter over those scholarly signatures sparks interest in the pending illumination. But, sadly, Frame et al. (or Frame ‘n Pals) recite the tiresome propaganda of the IPCC without demur and tip-toe around the scientific points made so well by our friend Dr Geoff Duffy.
They present sentences arranged to resemble a logical argument that are in fact unconnected. Each one tells part of the truth, so it’s not wrong, but it neither contributes to an argument nor supports the next sentence.
Any connection between them rests only on our gullibility. Continue Reading →
Views: 955
In a shameless piece of execrable disinformation today, the NZ Herald tries to tell us that carbon dioxide is a poisonous gas. Poisonous? Continue Reading →
Views: 1121
An editorial in the NZ Herald this morning made alarmist statements about climate change which the writer knew were wrong. If he did not know, he should have known.
Views: 179
click to enlarge
We congratulate our friend Terry Dunleavy for his breakthrough in persuading the NZ Herald to publish his letter. Continue Reading →
Views: 725
Methane – CH4
Dr Andy Reisinger wrote an opinion piece in today’s Herald. Here are some answers.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that global methane emissions are responsible for more than 40 per cent of the total warming effect so far of all human activities. … Our livestock sector is making the concentration of methane in the atmosphere higher than it would be otherwise, and this results in the world becoming warmer than it would be otherwise.
Views: 181
Drought Gisborne 2017
Crikey! Rachel Stewart admits she lost her rag, but her wrathful polemic is completely out of touch with the real world. Her froth-flecked fulmination is a fine example of a bible-bashing religious rant aimed at sinners. Get the faithful moving: climate change is a mission; all hands on deck. Continue Reading →
Views: 110
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 →
Views: 137
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 →
Views: 76
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 →
Views: 200
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 →
Views: 232
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 →
Views: 127
The Herald yesterday carried an article on sea level rise in the Solomon Islands. Villages have been abandoned and whole islands lost beneath the waves. Climate change is forcing people from their homes. Catastrophic sea level rise is already on us and we’re causing it. Continue Reading →
Views: 252
Dear Sir,
Yesterday the Herald’s Jason Patinkin or an editor said: “The mountains of East Africa that inspired Hemingway are being dissolved by climate change.” There are two things wrong with that statement. Continue Reading →
Views: 165
The indomitable, indefatigable, never-say-die UK Met Office (under the spell of the IPCC) predicts that warming is set to “continue”, even though there’s been no global warming to speak of for about 25 years. Wonderful. In fact, the entire UAH satellite dataset from December 1978 to November 2015 (37 years) shows global warming at a yawn-inducing rate of just 1.14°C per century, well within natural variability. Stupendous. Continue Reading →
Views: 193
This headline says mere scepticism means denying that climate changes—not that you have legitimate, unanswered questions over the models, the mechanisms or the means. Morons.
Still, New Zealand has one of the highest rates of climate change scepticism in the developed world. A wonderful finding. Continue Reading →
Views: 84
The Herald says today “climate science says extremes of all weather events are a consequence of global warming.”
But climate science does not say that. The notion is ludicrous; it represents reality as much as a boiled plastic egg represents breakfast. Continue Reading →
Views: 62
But not in the way the Herald means it.
Phillip Mills and Barry Coates, like good zealots everywhere, loyally maintain the view pushed down our throats by the IPCC that we need to reduce our emissions “to meet the aim of limiting global temperature rise to 2°C.”
They say they can’t stay silent, as the stakes are too high. I actually agree, but they’re thinking nobly of the whole world. I see the stakes a little differently. We’re just a small country and I want to know how much it could cost. Continue Reading →
Views: 68
NZ Herald, 10th February, 2015.
The letter at right appeared in the NZ Herald on 10th February and that day I emailed the following letter in response. To the best of my knowledge my letter was not published, so here it is.
Dear Sir,
Your correspondent Philip Jones claims Bryan Leyland’s assertion of ‘no warming’ is incorrect, saying the temperature data do not support it.
He says recent high temperatures prove they have been rising and he’s right. But they haven’t been rising for some time and so he’s wrong. Continue Reading →
Views: 259
Our hard-won democratic freedoms and our right to self-determination will be substantially restricted by this powerful treaty. So it is wonderful to hear that it faces severe difficulties and won’t be accomplished easily. Here are some brief observations to ensure that unscientific scandal-mongers are not the only voices on the subject and so our leaders might perhaps learn something vital about it. – RT
The Herald recently carried an article from the Independent lamenting the difficulty of getting 192 nations to agree that mankind can control the climate. Of course it comes as no real surprise, as the keenest megalomaniacs—I mean delegates—among them have been striving for such agreement for about two decades. Each year they meet in an exotic location, disagree on a climate-control treaty and then choose an exotic location to host their disagreement for the following year. All of this they do at our expense, not theirs. Continue Reading →
Views: 109
The NZ Herald has finally burned any bridges it may have retained with decently sceptical climate scientists by publishing the above advertisement today pretending the obvious falsehood that the “science on climate change” is “settled”. Continue Reading →
Views: 166
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 →
Views: 88
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 →
Views: 23
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: 290
A letter appeared yesterday in the NZ Herald following Professor Chris de Freitas’ article Human interference real threat to Pacific atolls two weeks ago. It was this letter: Continue Reading →
Views: 106
But she never asked this expert IPCC reviewer about climate change! It was either a lost opportunity or she didn’t know what to do with it.
Today I emailed Michele Hewitson to learn whether she asked Lord Monckton anything about the climate and how he may have annoyed her. I hope she replies, but she may not, especially if she spots these comments, posted before she had a chance to reply to me. But I must comment — her journalistic behaviour was crude, unprofessional, unattractive, unfair and unworthy of Christopher Monckton. To specialise in painting a “personality” in her subject can be admired. A descent into hollow chatter and rambling, malicious gossip cheapens both subject and reader.
via Michele Hewitson interview: Christopher Monckton – NZ Herald:
There was one question I really wanted to ask Viscount Christopher Monckton, the visiting climate change sceptic, and it wasn’t about climate. It was about … giving those pesky Argies the squits … during the Falklands War…
She refuses to ask intelligent questions about his vast knowledge of climate change, which brings him here, and instead employs a 30-year-old scatalogical yarn to mock him against today’s values. To assert that this spicy question was her most important raises to a virtue either mere vapidity or a taste to scandalise, neither of which empty urges sits well with the formidable tradition of the Herald. Continue Reading →
Views: 285
The NZ Herald has given Lord Monckton the floor to allow him to rebut the ridiculous criticisms of him by a bunch of so-called Kiwi scientists. Or perhaps it was a bunch of merely shallow scientists who were journalistically ambushed and their comments taken out of context. Who knows?
The culprit was the leftist idealogue employed by the APNZ as the “journalist” (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) Kurt Bayer. I notice Bayer’s byline, which accompanied the original article, has been removed from today’s story, no doubt as part of his punishment for treating a subject with complete, premeditated disdain. His only concern was clearly the advancement of a private agenda.
Under the heading “Climate change sceptic rejects criticism as ‘hate speech'” the NZ Herald has published an APNZ response to Lord Monckton’s complaint about the APNZ’s woefully innaccurate and shamefully unbalanced article in last Tuesday’s Herald.
Today’s article says:
Lord Christopher Monckton has rejected criticism of his views about climate change as his public speaking tour of New Zealand continues.
It then goes on to quote much of Christopher’s remarkably moderately-phrased written complaint verbatim.
Well done, them.
Christopher’s well-attended presentation last night in Northcote was stunning. I look forward to more of the same in central Auckland tonight.
Views: 102
VISCOUNT MONCKTON’S RESPONSE TO DENIGRATORY ARTICLE IN NZ HERALD
Posted 3 April 2013
Viscount Christopher Monckton, who has just begun a speaking tour of New Zealand, has responded to an article in the on-line edition of the New Zealand Herald, attacking his qualifications and motives.
Lord Monckton comments: “I have attached some recent material, for interest. The paper on climate economics has been accepted for publication in the Annual Proceedings of the World Federation of Scientists, now in its 45th year of publication. My expert-review comments on the forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report will, I hope, demonstrate that I have taken a constructive approach.
For the sake of correcting the factual record, I am inviting the Climate Science Coalition to post up and circulate widely a copy of my letter to the editor correcting the slew of malicious inaccuracies in the Herald’s article as soon as the Herald has published it, so as to minimize the intended damage to my reputation.” Continue Reading →
Views: 312
Peter Griffin: Tornadoes don’t indicate extreme weather is increasing – NZ Herald.
Old news alert (6 Dec) – I’m catching up.
This is good news. Nobody wants tornadoes to increase. Of course, there are other indications that extreme weather will increase – is perhaps already increasing – so please don’t stop worrying.
But it’s disappointing to see the Herald recycling posts from SciBlogs.
Views: 333
NIWA, in its memorandum to Justice Venning about the costs of our court case, says some curious things. I’ve pulled out a few of the ripostes that the NZCSET’s lawyers have just delivered to the judge and which I’m delighted to share with you. (Bear in mind that the APPLICANT is the Coalition. The DEFENDANT is NIWA.) This one’s a pearler:
29. The defendant alleges in paragraph 17 that the proceeding did not concern climate change…
This is breathtaking. It will surprise their long-suffering supporters – having endured NIWA’s hogwash about the 7SS not being “official” or even a “national” temperature record (“oh, it’s only for study”), and that this organisation of top scientists has no obligation WHATSOEVER to strive for excellence, they now have to stand cringing as their favourite publicly-paid climate scientists argue that the court case had nothing to do with climate change.
Really? What rot. I’d like to shake these men up and make them see sense. Continue Reading →
Views: 882
Here’s an agreeably restrained response to Brian Rudman’s repellent, unsophisticated bluster against the Coalition. The Herald declined to publish this, but we’re delighted to present it in their stead. If Rudman has the sense I think he has, or the slightest genuine interest in climate change, he’ll pay close attention to Tom’s analysis. – Richard Treadgold
The September 12th column by Brian Rudman of the New Zealand Herald, “One small word, one giant setback for denial”, exemplifies how much of the climate debate has descended into a sort of murky underworld where logical fallacies, personal attacks and made up “facts” all too often replace rational discourse. While Herald editors are to be congratulated for allowing the publication of my letter to the editor correcting some of Rudman’s more obvious mistakes, his piece is worth analyzing as a sample of what other journalists must avoid if a civilized discussion about this vitally important topic is to be possible.
Rudman’s repeated references to “climate change deniers” is a particularly nasty and nonsensical phrase frequently employed by those who want to silence debate about the causes of climate change. Continue Reading →
Views: 449
The Herald has today editorialised its rancour against climate sceptics and repeated oft-heard unfounded criticisms (h/t – Andy). They make a couple of good points but so many blunders I’ve time for only a brief tour of them. Herald statements in green (emphasis added).
A year ago, James Hansen, one of the world’s top climate scientists, conceded that climate sceptics were winning the argument with the public over global warming. This, he said, was occurring even as climate science itself was showing ever more clearly that the Earth was in increasing danger from rising temperatures.
Just as Hansen didn’t justify his statement then, the leader writer doesn’t justify it now, Continue Reading →
Views: 415
Professor de Freitas from time to time advises the NZ Climate Science Coalition, but he does not speak for it. Nevertheless, this op-ed in today’s Herald gives such a clear view of the issues touching our court case that it deserves a hearing here.
One assumes scientific analysis is objective, so it may come as a surprise that this was challenged in a New Zealand High Court case, the results of which were released last week.
The New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust (NZCSET) contested the claim by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) that New Zealand air temperatures had climbed by 0.9°C over the past century. The trust maintains that objective analysis of the data shows a trend closer to 0.3°C per 100 years. Continue Reading →
Views: 475
The NZ Herald yesterday covered our suit against NIWA. But the heading was:
And the first paragraph said:
“A group of global warming sceptics has accused Niwa of deception over the issue…”
But this wasn’t true. Our suit says nothing about NIWA’s motivation in producing errors in the national temperature record, much less accuses them of deception.
I emailed Abby Gillies, the reporter:
Hi Abby,
Thanks for covering the Coalition’s suit against NIWA. I should complain, though, about your allegation: “A group of global warming sceptics has accused Niwa of deception over the issue…”
That is not the case. We don’t use the word deception Continue Reading →
Views: 49
Rodney Hide’s been allowed to write in the Herald on Sunday.
This week he talks about the ETS and he’s not kind about it. The carbon price has collapsed and the government’s changed the playing field so the trading will probably never recover. Shame.
He mentions the CCG blog (thanks, Rodney!) and something I said about selling unwanted CO2. Stirred up a large number of comments. Do join in.
Views: 77
This insight into the NZ temperature record is from the resourceful Bob D. I’ve promoted it because it’s priceless. Bob says:
I thought I’d share the local New Zealand temperatures over the last decade. I downloaded all NIWA’s Climate Updates from their website (the first one I could find was Oct 2001) and plotted the temperature anomalies that were published for each month.
Of course, what with Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming and all, I expected to see temperatures rising (accelerating, even) in a wild, out-of-control fashion, as the water vapour feedbacks kicked in, tripling the initial warming that came from the gigatons of poisonous carbon dioxide pollution that we’ve spewed (spewed, I tell you) into the atmosphere over the past decade.
/sarcI was a little surprised at what I saw. Continue Reading →
Views: 374
A week ago I offered the NZ Herald this short rebuttal of some alarmist climate nonsense from Carmen Gravatt (well, it’s really from Greenpeace but Carmen didn’t check it). The Herald has neither published nor acknowledged receipt of this so now you can see it and wonder with me why they turn down even moderate sceptical material. It goes without saying that the new, radical Greenpeace will flog this dead horse for years to come, but there’s no excuse for professional journalists to persist in ignoring well-known facts. When this climate revel is finally ended the Herald’s editors will deeply regret having adopted blinkers.
Carmen Gravatt’s gravely misleading Herald article of 15 March We don’t need extreme oil gives a gross distortion of a stupendously simple truth.
She blames oil for global warming, claiming we’ll cause “global average temperature [to soar] – uncontrollably.” But runaway warming is impossible. No credible climate scientist is making that claim — and it’s never happened before. Oil can cause real pollution and injury to humans and wildlife, but the global warming threat is imaginary, for no dangerous climatic influence from our emissions has been detected.
Jo Nova said in a report three years ago (Massive climate funding exposed) that the US government had poured $30 billion into pure climate research over 20 years. Yet the simple truth is that still nobody can point to a single piece of empirical evidence that man-made carbon dioxide has a significant effect on the global climate. Continue Reading →
Views: 67
The NZ Herald published this article recently by Carmen Gravatt, the campaigns director at Greenpeace New Zealand.
I’m not well informed on the energy scene, but I want to comment on her outrageously distorted presentation of climate change. I reserve the right to complain to the NZ Press Council about the Herald allowing her space to spread this manifest nonsense about global warming.
First she says:
… the world is about to lose the chance to stop the global average temperature from soaring – uncontrollably – beyond two degrees.
Nobody – count them: nobody – in the IPCC predicts that global temperatures will soar “uncontrollably” if they rise by 2°C. If Miss Gravatt is unaware of that fact, she is singularly unprepared for the demands of her position. Continue Reading →
Views: 107
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
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
The Herald today fumes over fumes from farming.
There’s so much in their editorial with which to take issue, but a single point glares out from the page. They say:
The whole point of the ETS is that emitters take financial responsibility.
The Herald appears to replace concern for the environment with a vindictive crusade to lay blame. And I thought they just wanted to repair the environment.
Is it the farmer or his customer? Or the customer’s customer? Surely everyone who eats butter or cheese shares a slice of the “blame” for the emissions caused in producing what he eats.
So the final customer should pay a share.
You think they do? But, in an auction, how does the farmer ensure extra on top of the auction price for his milk or meat or whatever, to compensate him for the ETS tax? That’s not going to happen.
Farming is unique in being mostly helpless to recover the ETS costs. Fonterra can adjust their wholesale prices or their payout, Air NZ can charge extra for a carbon footprint and ordinary businesses set or negotiate higher prices as costs increase.
But farmers’ selling prices are dictated by the auction system. They can neither alter the prices nor reduce their emissions. It’s like shooting trout in a barrel. Hardly fair. Unless they’re on a canning or a supermarket contract, and we know how easy it is for the farmer to dictate terms to the buyer…
The farmer bears the same responsibility for his animal’s “emissions” as Australia bears for the fumes from Chinese power stations burning Australian lignite.
Which is none, of course – China takes responsibility for those emissions; or it would, if it joined the game.
The farmer’s final customers should take responsibility for the products they select, for without their purchase, the farmer would not produce it. Still, it’s far too hard to levy every user of mutton, bacon or milk; much easier to attack the helpless farmer.
And everyone knows the ETS won’t repair the environment anyway.
It’s all symbolic. What a sham.
And we call ourselves grown-ups.
♣
Views: 75
This post could be considered tardy. However Donna Laframboise’s illuminating comments lose nothing with the passage of time. They deserve circulation and Auckland’s possibly best-known sceptical climate scientist deserves her thoughtful and eloquent support.
Four weeks ago, on July 16, the Herald published Chris Barton’s attack on Chris de Freitas’s integrity. The next day I posted a defence of a scientist who has given a lot of help to any number of keen climate amateurs like myself and has the courage to say out loud that things are not scientific if to him they appear in fact to be unscientific.
About a week later the uncompromising Laframboise posted a perceptive analysis of Barton’s attempted “critical thinking”. I encourage you to read the whole thing if you have a few minutes. Continue Reading →
Views: 84