The United Nations was formed in 1945. The speeches must have been less than rivetting, and the candid body language on display makes a fascinating study. Click to enlarge and pass a little time exploring.
Our favourite Canadian commentator Donna Laframboise credits New Zealand with compounding the UN’s year-end climate and migration gloom.
If you’re a UN bureaucrat, recent weeks have been full of disappointment.
Raised from a comment to a post, this mathematical exposé of our ruling coalition’s wilful blindness to New Zealand’s puny emissions could tickle your fancy, or you may think it cheeky; let me know. – RT
— by Don Graham
“As an avid “man-driven CO2 is going to cook us all” denier, I have explored as a matter of interest New Zealand’s effect on the atmospheric level of CO2 and wrote this article several years back. I emailed it to someone in NIWA and surprisingly did not receive a reply—well, unsurprisingly!
– DG
New Zealand’s Exclusive Economic Zone (within the red lines) is the world’s fourth-largest.
New Zealand maintains the right to explore and exploit the seabed and water column within its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and I cannot see why we should not be allowed to exploit its carbon-sequestering ability, especially since New Zealand is practically unique in having a large EEC and a small population. This is a natural CO2 sink, and we should take economic advantage of it as a CO2 mitigating component. Continue Reading →
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.
For they serve us all [click pics to enlarge]
Liberty, equality, fraternity.
What accounts for the fury of the “yellow jackets” as they rage against Macron’s new climate taxes? Why has this protest continued for over three weeks and, according to polls, gained the support of 73% of the French population? Continue Reading →
Barry Brill and I condemn the wilful political blindness that contemplates destroying our energy security and risking dry-year blackouts by shutting down the last thermal power plant merely to win polite applause from other nations. Meanwhile, those same nations are brazenly operating a gigantic fleet of 3700 coal-fired power plants and building another 1900.
The Huntly gas and coal-fired power station is NZ’s largest thermal generator. With its coal generation halved to 500 MW and total capacity including gas now 953 MW, or about 5000 GWh/year, Huntly can still provide about 12% of our annual consumption. Genesis intends to remove the remaining coal units by 2022, and there’s an uncertain future for the gas units since the Prime Minister, without consulting interested parties such as the industry or the electorate, banned gas exploration.
Are New Zealand politicians naive? Babes in the wood? Country yokels who don’t understand realpolitik? Continue Reading →
Fresh off the press is a paper that takes an innovative look at the national contributions pledged under the Paris Agreement. Continue Reading →
“the anti-meat message risks destroying the very environment it claims to be protecting”
— by Barry Brill, Chairman of the NZ Climate Science Coalition
Meat — farming animals for food is undeniably good for the environment (click to enlarge; DROOL).
For most of this century, we have been bombarded by news articles preaching that vegetarians now have a corner on ‘food morality’ and that meat-eating is to be banished in a more environmentally-conscious future. The notion is that God never intended the human race to be omnivores and that our ancestors just took a wrong turning back there on the savannah. Continue Reading →
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 →
Economists have proposed really effective solutions to the high levels of anxiety felt by politicians and government officials about the risks of transport sector emissions.The New Zealand Government’s plan to legislate for “Zero Carbon by 2050” has been accompanied by economic modelling that shows the NPV of the economic costs will be huge. See Putting a price on the hair shirt.
Tailrisk Economics, a private firm, has now delivered a devastating critique of both the quality and veracity of the Government’s modelling and consultation documents. The price of feeling good is a must-read for anybody interested in this issue. Continue Reading →
Beneath the Ross Ice Shelf – click to enlarge
I’ve been informed of significant new research that discovered Antarctic ice shelf melting—constantly referred to as “catastrophic” in warmster commentaries—is considerably less dramatic than we were led to expect—quelle surprise. It even involved a New Zealand scientist but so far this is the only media coverage. Continue Reading →
The NZX announces a listing guaranteed to moisten the eyes of greenies around the world. But they won’t be the only ones weeping.
The fund, which received more than $1 million in applications from a range of investors, intends to buy carbon credits in emissions trading schemes in New Zealand and offshore. It is designed to give individuals and organisations a chance to invest in or offset carbon.
Someone sent an article from The Australian that’s worth distributing. It appeared two days ago under the headline Corrupted UN must never be allowed to lecture us. I agree that fundamental principles of the United Nations pose dangers to human society, prosperity and happiness and sully the good and proper work of portions of that expensive organisation. Destroying the UN wouldn’t mean losing the good, in fact good work is done more efficiently by free nations acting in concert—ironically, just what it was set up for—but Mr Newman gives a few solid reasons to get rid of the UN. – RT
US President Donald Trump addresses the United Nations General Assembly last month. Red oval – the UN’s wisest decision: putting New Zealand on top of the world. [click to enlarge]
If the leaders of some nation states were citizens living in a civilised society, they would be in jail for perpetrating or being accessories to murder, torture, theft and corruption.
Yet they and their representatives shamelessly take their places in the hallowed chamber of the UN General Assembly as arbiters of how the rest of the world should behave. Continue Reading →
Electricity wholesale prices on the spot market have averaged 25 cents/kWh (four times the normal 7 cents) for the last three weeks because the New Zealand power system is in an appalling state, with severe shortages of water, gas, coal and generating plant. Continue Reading →
A member of the NZ Climate Science Coalition discusses major problems with the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C (known as SR15, 1190 pp) published on 8 October. It’s officially just a draft that you can download here (only one chapter at a time and, unhelpfully, every page includes the words “Do Not Cite, Quote or Distribute”—which I ignore), but they have actually published the Executive Summary here.
So many flaws. We must wash our hands of increasingly expensive, disruptive policies demanded by the United Nations in meeting the two-degree temperature target—which was blatantly fabricated by UN scientists in defiance of science.
Any confidence we might have had in SR15 is poisoned by its use of unreliable “pre-industrial” temperature data and seriously flawed climate models, together with the over-arching belief that saturates the IPCC that, never mind the science, human activity IS responsible for global warming.
The sensational claims of this report are nonsense. Tell your MP. — RT
Gareth Hughes, Green Party spokesman for our most industrious sectors
Sent on 9/10/2018 at 6:47 PM to Gareth Hughes, list member for the Greens since 2010, spokesman for Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Energy and Resources, Primary Industries, Technology, Research and Development and Science. They are the country’s most industrious sectors—the ones we must take care of, or we all suffer. I fervently hope that Mr Hughes is himself industrious and well informed.
Dear Gareth,
We proudly produce many things we want. From butter to lamb, beef, pork, timber, wine, gold, coal and fish and more, we have laboured for many decades to keep our communities prosperous.
Continue Reading →
Weather with sublime sunburst. Human influence still undetectable.
Three of the world’s most distinguished scientists, Professors Happer, Koonin and Lindzen, recently offered as evidence in a Californian court a “Climate science overview”. It begins:
Our overview of climate science is framed through four statements:
- The climate is always changing; changes like those of the past half-century are common in the geologic record, driven by powerful natural phenomena.
- Human influences on the climate are a small (1%) perturbation to natural energy flows.
- It is not possible to tell how much of the modest recent warming can be ascribed to human influences.
- There have been no detrimental changes observed in the most salient climate variables and today’s projections of future changes are highly uncertain.
The third statement is crucial to the Paris Agreement. Continue Reading →
The highest prices for carbon credits in a decade have also lifted natural gas, discouraging power stations from making the switch away from coal. As a result, demand remains strong for the dirtiest fossil fuel in the continent that’s doing the most to clean up its economy. Coal prices as a result reached their highest in five years on Tuesday.
You might think the ETS impost on coal’s CO2 emissions, about twice those from natural gas, would give gas an edge, but you’d be wrong—rising prices for carbon credits have pushed up the gas prices too. The graph at right shows an eye-watering surge in the carbon price of about 400% over the last 11 months (although I guess 400% of nothing is still pretty small; so it could get worse). This financial punishment for the poor is a clear consequence of market interference by the climate justice do-gooders—nobody else has done this. The sooner they lose office the better, in the EU and everywhere. Continue Reading →
Award-winning architecture of the Royal Society of New Zealand headquarters in Wellington
The Royal Society of New Zealand refuse to give evidence that global warming is man-made.
They say the evidence is overwhelming but will not say what it is. In doing this, they fail to show that future warming will be dangerous and thus void all efforts to prevent it.
Countries don’t go to war without reason. Local bodies don’t close roads for nothing. Juries don’t convict without evidence. Continue Reading →
Australian heavy industry
Back in the chaotic dying days of the Whitlam-Cairns-Connor government, Canberra was buzzing with Rex Connor’s grand plans for a national energy grid and gas pipelines linking the NW Shelf to the capital cities, all to be funded by massive foreign loans arranged by a mysterious Pakistani named Khemlani. Malcolm Fraser staged a parliamentary revolt. The economy slumped. Continue Reading →
Penn State University stadium
Someone thought I needed to work this climate stuff out and helpfully cited a PennState climate course. The course was written by one Michael Mann, no less, with an assistant. It took me two seconds to learn that the course is ineradicably rooted in global warming activism, not science. Continue Reading →
MULTIPLE LINES of evidence show that Gwynne Dyer is dead wrong (in ‘Armageddon Summer’ is just the beginning, 3/8/18) about the cataclysms he claims will be caused by our continued use of hydrocarbon fuels. Continue Reading →
Here is a curious thing.
Since 2007 our population has risen by what seems a healthy 14.8%, our emissions of carbon dioxide are out of step in rising only by 2.8% and our per capita emissions have fallen by 10%.
Our energy efficiency has improved. Continue Reading →
Dr Anna Berka
There’s nothing to be done about global warming beyond feeling anxious, if you choose. We’re not causing any harmful warming and the sporadic warming we’ve seen is of no concern.
But once again we’re being hectored, this time by an academic skilled in redistributive environmental policy, inclusive energy governance and conceptualizing community renewables deployment as a form of associative democracy—oh, yes, Anna Berka knows us so well. Continue Reading →
Wikipedia: Simon is a common name, from Hebrew שִׁמְעוֹן Šimʻôn, meaning “listen”.
Listen, Simon.
Two weeks back Simon said the following and I was just too busy to respond. He makes what may seem obvious and sensible points but simply regurgitates the great global warming myths which by now have been so utterly proven false that they are pathetic. However, not all our bystanders know this, so I shall do it again. Simon makes nine separate points: Continue Reading →
The following is my submission in your name on this bill that threatens to mutilate our economy. Much more could have been said; much less might have been preferable. But let rip, kind readers. Continue Reading →
The Green Party celebrated Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s banning of “the environmentally dangerous and planet-threatening search for new oil and gas in our pristine waters” as an historical victory, rather than the Luddite, anti-progress, backward ideology it plainly advertised.
It’s unthinkable they might already be reconsidering that ideology, but we will prod them in that very direction with questions that their seat on the coalition obliges them to answer. For the Hon James Shaw: Continue Reading →
Dr Mike Kelly alerted me to Roger Pielke Jr’s thoughtful piece at WUWT titled Opening Up the Climate Policy Envelope. I heartily suggest you read it; below is a sample. As well as improving our thinking about climate policy, Dr Pielke makes it sound perfectly reasonable for convinced climate alarmists and unyielding climate sceptics not only to talk with each other but also to reach common ground. A miracle indeed. But wait, there’s more: the questions he poses are those we’ve been waiting for from our political leaders—questions, if quietly contemplated, that would fit them for the decisions we need from them and only they can give—if only they knew. –RT Continue Reading →
I attended the public meeting on the Zero Carbon Bill in Tauranga last Monday. A team from the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) presented details as part of public consultation on the bill. About 80 people (mostly old ones) turned up, but the Environment Minister, the Hon James Shaw, though expected, did not turn up. Continue Reading →
Known as the Ministry for the Environment (MfE), but given a new name to highlight the lack of science, fear of dissent and unfaltering righteousness that characterises totalitarian regimes. But whence arises my discordant denunciation? Continue Reading →
RT
I’ll be there — if you see me, please come and say hi; I’d love to meet you. Come along with all those questions you’ve never had a chance to ask. This is the MfE—they know the truth, right? Take advantage! Join me as I gang up on them!
Details below. Continue Reading →
Not next Friday—there’d be pitchforks in parliament.
Not next month—the riots would have spread to every town.
Not next year—not with markets collapsed, trade destroyed, the country in chaos, permanent departures through the roof and condemnation universal. Continue Reading →
2 July, 2018
Dear Prime Minister,
I wish to register my disagreement with your decision to make us reduce our so-called “carbon” emissions to zero by 2050. You commit the nation to this significant goal without knowing, as your joint statement makes quite plain, what it means, how to achieve it or, extending by simple logic, what it might cause. That is unreasonable.
Continue Reading →
One of the few valid applications of the well-known propaganda term “carbon emissions” (heard of chemistry?). Listen: it’s called carbon dioxide. In a similar way, we don’t try to call water (dihydrogen monoxide) hydrogen.
Basically, we don’t know what carbon-free means, we don’t know how to achieve it and we don’t know what it might cause. But oh, yes, we’re going for it! (Big silly grin.) Welcome to the rabbit hole.
The new Government has set a goal of New Zealand achieving net zero emissions by 2050. Farming leaders with the support of the Government are stating their support for this goal and the agri-food sector playing its part in achieving it.
This is a very ambitious and challenging target for the agri-food sector. We have agreed that there is more work required to understand exactly what this means and how we can achieve it. – emphasis added
This is utter nonsense. By this blunder alone — and there have been many others — the Peters-appointed coalition government secures its release from power at our earliest convenience. Continue Reading →
Here’s a harsh dose of reality for the NZ Productivity Commission in attempting to convert us to a “low-emissions” economy. The map shows China’s plans to expand their links with the world in a colossal project that will triple China’s emissions. Their gas discharges already eclipse ours by 250 times so our reductions will be absurdly futile in stemming man-made global warming. The climate won’t notice, but our poor will suffer, while China’s poor rise into the middle class. What do we think we’re doing, cutting back — even banning oil exploration — when we ought to be boosting the economy at full speed?
My friend Dr Mike Kelly kindly sent me a copy of his latest analysis of New Zealand climate policy that he’s just submitted to the New Zealand Productivity Commission in response to its draft report on moving to a Low-emissions economy, which many would describe instead as disabling our productive capacity. Dr Kelly’s unflinching engineer’s eye assesses our Government’s putative policy responses to the climate perils forecast by skittish warmsters and it makes for thoughtful reading.
His central message is a revelation: whatever emissions we record over the next 20 years, China’s will be a thousand times larger. In fact, the emissions expected just from their One Belt, One Road, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) are destined to overwhelm all other human emissions for twenty and more years. Continue Reading →
Forging the base ring for a giant wind turbine in a Spanish foundry. That’s a giant ingot of tool steel. Memo to Greens: The manufacturing required to produce your wind turbines cannot be done with wind turbines. It needs mining, drilling, smelting and milling, all of which depend on coal, oil and gas, but if we stop looking for that stuff it will run out.
Energy transitions are intrinsically slow and the incoming energy system is necessarily and unavoidably created by the previous one.
Think of the history. The transition from the organically fuelled economy of the late Medieval period to the mineral based economy of the twentieth century took something like five hundred years in Europe and North America, and even today has not yet reached the whole world. Continue Reading →
Now, I’m a sceptic about man-made climate change and though I frequently reproach those, such as the Royal Society of New Zealand, who give some inaccurate account of climate science, I have no particular position to defend but that of dispassion. To tell you the truth, I don’t know what position to adopt.
Because, quite simply, I have questions, which of course are unanswered, which explains my uncertainty. If my questions were answered, they wouldn’t survive, because answers destroy questions — it’s either that, or you go back to sleep. Credible answers will certainly decide the matter, then perhaps I too, like King Canute before me, will turn and contest the climate. Or not. Continue Reading →
Matt Ridley
Arguments from authority are the refuge of priests. For the scientist, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.
Dr Vincent Gray
I regret to announce the death of Dr Vincent Gray at 7:45 yesterday morning, after an illness.
Vincent was a co-founder of the NZ Climate Science Coalition and was generous in sharing his knowledge. He consistently offered me help and encouragement after being invited by Bob Carter to join the Coalition about twelve years ago.
His support of colleagues was matched by an implacable defiance towards opponents, an unmatched skill in identifying errors of reasoning and an enviable fluency in refuting arguments with unfailing courtesy.
The world has lost a ferocious illumination.
A National Geographic newsletter last March featured climate change. The picture to the right, which appeared in the newsletter, is from NIWA’s website. The caption summarises the effect of carbon dioxide on the climate. It says:
Carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that’s getting us into trouble, only amounts to about 385 parts per million of the gases in the atmosphere—not a large amount. But that’s a third more CO2 than 150 years ago, enough to have caused, and continue to cause, significant changes in local and global climate. Twelve of the 13 years from 1995 to 2007 have been the warmest since 1850, while 1998 and 2005 are the warmest years since records began. Over the last 100 years, New Zealand’s temperature has increased by 0.9ºC.
1 June 2018 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Royal Society of New Zealand (RSNZ) has been accused of concealing evidence for its claims of man-made climate change. The society has also been accused of being in breach of its own Code of Ethics. The accusations are made in a statement released today by the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, which says:
“When Jacinda Ardern said we must battle climate change, it became clear that our new Prime Minister believes the temperature of the earth can be controlled by man. But the leading climate scientists of the RSNZ have refused to reveal evidence that supports her belief.
Christchurch, mountains and sea. Earthquakes have caused great loss in reality. But stupendous imaginary sea level rise is causing great loss through insanity.
— by Andy Scrase, member, Christchurch Coastal Residents United (CCRU)
We’ve written before about the serious climate problem destroying the property values of tens of thousands of Christchurch home owners. It’s an escalating tragedy. Continue Reading →
— by Barry Brill, Chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition
This note offers brief replies to specific aspects of a Comment by NIWA scientists (called hereafter “NIWA Comment”), published in Environmental Modeling & Assessment in April, 2018, concerning A Reanalysis of Long-Term Surface Air Temperature Trends in New Zealand (by de Freitas et al., 2015) (“de Freitas”).
Since there was a systematic tendency for the seven-station sites to be relocated to colder locations as the early half of the twentieth century progressed, [de Freitas’s alleged] rejection of valid adjustments produces an artificially low rate of warming.
The NIWA Comment is mistaken. Continue Reading →
Peter Ridd and Jennifer Marohasy in Sydney last November during a presentation on quality assurance in science.
Professor Peter Ridd has just been fired from James Cook University, Queensland, for speaking out about misleading science concerning the Great Barrier Reef. He needs a lot of support. He is not the only one.
If your heart beats, strengthen it with a donation to a freedom-loving brother. Fight for freedom now before it’s gone.
I was in Bendigo last week with my wife, Ann, to celebrate a daughter’s nuptials. Now we’re in Melbourne for a few days with the happy couple, back to NZ on Wednesday. Out of touch a bit, but watching the emails. Off to the Victoria Market in a few minutes. Nice place but cold, wet and windy on Friday.
In a nutshell
Free speech is under fire around the world and nowhere does it face greater threat than in the bitter dispute over man-made global warming. Continue Reading →
On April 7 (as you can read in my previous post) I wrote to Dr Julie Maxton, Executive Director of the Royal Society, London, asking a simple question:
I’ve been hunting for evidence for several years without success and now I’m thinking that the Royal Society will surely not let me down. I do hope you can provide a succinct answer. By what mechanism do our emissions cause dangerous global warming?
Shortly afterwards a reply arrived from her Executive Assistant: Continue Reading →
Ten years ago, Tom Scott captured this vision of the consequences of Left-Green tyranny. Today, they continue on that backward-looking path, abetted by a compliant Labour Party through an electoral accident that Winston Peters exploited to circumvent the democratic vote and put the Greens and Labour into the same bed. What a pity Peters wasn’t thinking of the national good.
They banned oil exploration, but why? Was it because of global warming? Well, since it hasn’t been warming, what would you say? I say it’s because oil riches threaten us with extraordinary prosperity—which means freedom for everyone. But they don’t trust us with freedom. National does.
PS: The likeness of the ploughwoman to our Helen is astounding.
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The Complaints Committee,
Television New Zealand
One News, 12 April: Oil & Gas Exploration Ban
Both news readers in this programme claimed that the purpose of the Government’s ban on new offshore exploration for oil and gas was to cut New Zealand’s greenhouse emissions and was necessary because New Zealand signed up to the Paris Climate Agreement. Continue Reading →