Labour’s COVID-19 cure proves exorbitant

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Barry Brill, lawyer, former cabinet minister, captain of industry, formidable student of public policy and chairman of the NZCSC, thought back in March the impact of the Level-4 lock-down cure would be about 30 times worse than the disease itself. Real data now shows it was 190 times worse. It prevented perhaps 1000 deaths at a cost of $NZ8.5m for each year of life saved, which was a startling increase in the usually accepted value of $NZ45,000 for a Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY).

The Australian BUSINESS REVIEW reports:

New Zealand’s hard lockdown policy is thought to have prevented the deaths of 1000 people at a cost of $NZ8.5m ($7.8m) for each year of life saved, according to a new analysis casting doubt on the effectiveness of Victoria’s extended shutdown.

Continue Reading →

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Dave Frame talks rot on climate poll

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New Zealanders are more satisfied with the Government’s efforts to combat climate change than they were a year ago, but fewer than half actually rate the effort as good.

Last month’s IAG poll didn’t ask people what they might pay to fix climate change — and shame on them, for previous surveys show very low willingness. Families must be fed, so there’s little sense of climate change urgency. Thirty-one percent were more concerned about the effects of climate change on them than about any influence they might have on climate change.
 Continue Reading →

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Digging ourselves a hole

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Dr Michael Kelly likens New Zealand’s Zero Carbon project to digging a hole while someone else fills it in.

Say the government has decided it’s an important national project, so they assign a platoon of 50 strong men and play trumpet fanfares so they’ll give it their maximum effort. But we discover China has amassed several battalions, totalling over 6000 men, to fill the trench faster than we can dig it. Continue Reading →

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James Shaw tells us to “use the energy nature provides”

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Coal, oil and gas are provided by nature

Turn the coal, oil and gas right back on, Mr Shaw.

The Green Party’s Clean Energy Plan released yesterday announces they want to save the world by eliminating crude oil from our lives. They haven’t asked whether we want this, but surely James Shaw’s heart is in the right place because he says they want to “create a truly sustainable Aotearoa that runs on the energy nature provides.”

I can only agree. “Yes, Mother Nature provides fossil fuels. We should use them. James Shaw for king.” Continue Reading →

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NZ really ‘envy of the world’?

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NZ Climate Science Coalition Chairman Barry Brill produces a shocking indictment of Jacinda Ardern’s disastrous COVID-19 leadership. Academic research strongly disagrees that her lockdown saved lives. The alarming unvalidated model forecasts she heeded have been thoroughly discredited by peer reviews and actual events.

Originally published by NZCPR on 5 July 2020.
Republished with permission.

On 3 June, Prime Minister Ardern told the House: “I have proudly made Captain’s Calls all the way through and it is one of the reasons, alongside our Team of Five Million, we are the envy of the world.”

Is New Zealand’s Covid-19 track record really the envy of the world? And did Ms Ardern’s Captain’s Calls improve or worsen the outcome? Continue Reading →

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Another false alarm goes up in smoke

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Adelie penguins wondering whether it’s safe to swim.

On Dec 29, 2007, ZeeNews reported that Adélie penguins faced extinction within five to ten years due to climate change. They quickly changed that to “locally extinct”, which means not extinct, extant.

But never mind — melting ice is making it easier for the darling Adélies to find food. Hurrah! Continue Reading →

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The UN can’t prove we cause global warming

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It’s beyond dispute

They have no evidence.

The Internet is now loud with doubt about man-made global warming. You can find articles all over the place sceptical of the idea, where once there was widespread accord on the UN climate narrative that accuses humanity of dangerous interference with the climate.

Thirty years since the first Assessment Report, science has certainly advanced. As it should, we’ve spent plenty on it: the 2015 Paris Agreement alone, according to Bjorn Lomborg, will increase global spending on climate change to one or two trillion US dollars a year by 2030.

We’ve learned more about the climate system and human emissions. For all their lack of skill, the inscrutable climate models have greatly improved. They have been adjusted downwards after every Assessment Report to avoid persistently high temperatures, but over 97% of them (111 of 114 models) still run too hot. Continue Reading →

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If you know some climate science, we’d love your essay

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Jarrod Gilbert, NZ Herald, 22 January, says:

Based on all of the information available to us, there is no sound argument against the existence of anthropogenic climate change, only ignorance of the scientific consensus and an arrogance to argue against it – often by people armed only with an elementary education and an internet connection.

When you have highly educated scientists amassed on one side, it’s prudent to stick with their assessment of matters relating to science. If you want to understand how to be a complete twonk, seek notes from those peddling the other side. But for science, definitely stick with the scientists.

It’s a bit early for arguments against its existence. Continue Reading →

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National security needs eclectic view

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Your nation’s security faces a wide range of threats: tanks, planes, storms, climate change and pandemics. But cast your net even wider. Dr Kelly applies engineering discipline in his scrutiny of UK national disaster policy. With lessons for all nations.

Published by permission. First published in The Critic July/August 2020

Warming not the only threat

The vast sums spent in the UK and globally on climate change mitigation have never been subject to a rigorous cost-benefit analysis. To date they have had no measurable impact on the climate, let alone climate change and have thus been a colossal waste of money. Recent events have shown us that climate change is just one of many challenges facing our world today, so it is sensible to ask for every pound spent on climate change, how much money should be set aside to prepare us for other threats: Carrington events (solar electromagnetic storms), pandemics, global financial collapse, volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis and more? What is the appropriate level of global insurance, and where is the insurance for poorer countries? Continue Reading →

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Todd Muller must abandon Shaw’s treacherous Zero Carbon folly

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Todd Muller supports a socialist wrecker — is that wise?

Some National Party strategists think Todd Muller can hardly say he supports the Zero Carbon Act then do nothing about it. Sooner or later you must accept that National has agreed to the Zero Carbon Bill as a matter of policy and therefore has to show some acceptance of its obligations.

But the implied condition of support for any proposal is that the assumptions behind it remain true. If it emerges that the basis of a policy is wrong, it then becomes the height of reason to withdraw your support. The new honourable path is to abandon it.

Continue Reading →

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Fight for climate evidence goes on … and on

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Our good friend Bryan Leyland wrote this hard-hitting article describing correspondence he had with the newly-formed NZ Climate Change Commission. [Download the correspondence file here (pdf, 536 KB).] He’s been engaged on a dogged search for evidence that human activity dangerously heats the earth. Everyone says the evidence is “overwhelming” but when you ask them nobody actually has any, which strikes us as a confidence trick. He offers us the article in hopes of the widest possible distribution, because everyone’s asking: “What is the evidence?”

NOTE ON THE COMING ELECTION: If you think setting up this commission and hiking the ETS carbon price is bad, wait for the next three years of government by these backward-looking, anti-farming, communist wreckers.

The Climate Commission has no clothes

— by Bryan Leyland, Consulting Engineer
Member, NZ Climate Science Coalition

The Climate Commission claims, “We provide independent, evidence-based advice to Government to help Aotearoa New Zealand transition to a low-emissions and climate-resilient economy.”

Spending huge amounts of money on a low-emissions economy is only justified if proof exists that man-made greenhouse gases cause dangerous global warming. If there’s no evidence there’s no need for the transition. Continue Reading →

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To achieve Net Zero, make a plan, good and solid

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It is futile if we can’t afford it. The UK can’t afford it, so don’t try to convert these costs, just think “we can’t afford it either.” It might take your mind off the sheer futility of this Zero Carbon agony.

Waterproof engineering analysis from Professor Michael Kelly
– first published at CapX

How powerful this myth of causing climate change has become — or rather, how the powerful have made this myth to flourish.

The world of superfast computing and miraculous hand-held devices that most of us now take for granted did not appear by accident. It was the product of a very clear roadmap, agreed across the electronics industry from 1970 to 2015. An equally clear and widely agreed roadmap will be essential to achieving the target of a net-zero emission global economy in 2050.

Intel founder Gordon Moore’s empirical observation that the transistor count on chips was doubling every two years, while the chips stayed the same size, morphed into an industry-wide target that held for nearly 50 years. By the mid-1980s, a Technology Roadmap became a feature of the whole industry. Continue Reading →

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Everyone swears the IPCC have proof, but still nothing from the AR5

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The IPCC don’t have no evidence!

(All right, all right! Leave off with the double negative put-downs already!)

common arguments • interesting rebuttals • startling absence of proof

Reader:

Looking at the recent geological (let’s say prehistoric) record then the exogenous inputs (mainly from volcanism) seem to have been low relative to historic exogenous inputs (mainly from agricultural soil organic matter breakdown and fossil fuel burning), which means that the two eras are not comparable and so conclusions drawn from one cannot be applied to the other.

Yet the IPCC does exactly that. They rip an isolated fact from its primeval context and claim it applies today. But it flies in the face of copious evidence and asserts that the global mean surface temperature (GMST) is determined by only a single factor: the trace gas carbon dioxide. For instance, on p. 50, the AR5 Technical Summary harks back 52 million years to inform us: Continue Reading →

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Solid evidence the heart of science, blind faith its foe

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Will you believe what you have not seen?

We might call it the Barcelona Effect (see below), though the Bible puts it differently. The essence of religious belief was given elegant form for all religions over 1900 years ago in the book of Hebrews (11, 1):

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (King James Bible, Hebrews 11:1).

This compassionate assurance has lent solace to countless generations in pain, soothed quaking hearts and granted peace to restless minds, yet such an evidence-free belief is repugnant to science, to which we readily turn for answers in all other matters. The scientist, whether religious or atheistic, possesses an indelible faith in tangible evidence, mathematics and logic. A deficit in any of those absolutely prohibits acceptance of a thesis. Continue Reading →

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Shocking racism, racial privilege our new normal

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Some matters demand attention, no matter what important stuff one is already working on. Such is the case with Dr Muriel Newman’s Centre for Political Research, on this occasion turning up weighty issues of democracy, sovereignty and Maori political ambition. Muriel’s incisive article on the advance of Maori privilege under the Labour patronage is deeply disturbing and if we don’t pay it some attention our efforts for climate realism will seem as nothing. And who wants that?

Reposted from NZCPR Newsletter. Emphasis added.

In a speech in November 2000, the former Labour Party Prime Minister David Lange warned that if governments attempted to accommodate the increasingly audacious demands for sovereignty by the Maori tribal elite, they would end up threatening democracy itself.

“Democratic government can accommodate Maori political aspiration in many ways. It can allocate resources in ways which reflect the particular interests of Maori people. It can delegate authority, and allow the exercise of degrees of Maori autonomy. What it cannot do is acknowledge the existence of a separate sovereignty. As soon as it does that, it isn’t a democracy. We can have a democratic form of government or we can have indigenous sovereignty. They can’t coexist and we can’t have them both.” Continue Reading →

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Following Arrhenius on global warming

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But he did change his mind …

Click to enlarge

This 1912 newspaper article (right) shows that a century ago the worthy citizens of Warkworth were followers of Svante Arrhenius’s new theory that global warming would be caused by mankind’s emissions of greenhouse gases.

Forty years earlier Tyndall had identified CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Arrhenius followed up with newly available data in 1896 and calculated that doubling CO2 would increase temperatures by 5°C or 6°C. In 1906 he reduced it to 4.0°C.

Arrhenius is frequently cited by warmsters chiding sceptics for their lack of belief, telling them, “Science has known about dangerous warming for 120 years.” But science knew nothing of dangerous warming, because Arrhenius showed none. He was free of the modern pathological aversion to carbon dioxide (the gas of life) because he saw no reason to object to it. Continue Reading →

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Carbon dioxide may soon fog the brain

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Is it too late for climate scientists?

A recent article on Stuff looks at the effects of high levels of carbon dioxide on brain function and suggests that the minuscule annual increases of one or two parts per million in CO2 levels will make it harder to reason. But it’s highly improbable because atmospheric levels are nowhere near those required to disrupt our thinking.

“High concentrations of carbon dioxide reduces [sic] oxygen to the brain and dulls our thinking – so what happens if we continue to burn fossil fuels indiscriminately?”

Continue Reading →

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Our new abortion laws have fatal flaws

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Family First’s latest newsletter. They ask us to help distribute it, which I’m happy to do because our government just removed protection for unborn babies without consulting us and acting in obscene haste under cover of the COVID-19 response.

“FATAL FLAWS”

ONE OF THE MOST EXTREME ABORTION LAWS IN THE WORLD

As the new abortion laws were being rushed through Parliament in the week before we went into Lockdown 4, and while most of the world was focused on COVID-19 and how we could save lives, one of the things that the Government did very well (aided by a predominantly pro-abortion media) was to mask the true intent and effect of the law change, and to shut down any debate (including oral submissions) and amendments which would have made it slightly less extreme.

And because Continue Reading →

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Yes, there’s a virus crisis — by our socialist government

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Our civil rights rescinded

Did you notice? Four days ago our civil rights were unceremoniously rescinded. Jacinda the Rescinder (openly communist) accomplished it without consultation, without advance notice, without apology and rammed through the House in a week.

She even told us she was doing us a favour, saving us from COVID-19, in the best tradition of power-grabbers everywhere. Continue Reading →

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The NZ ambition to replace internal-combustion engines with electric cars

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Ever wondered what’s inside the famous Tesla battery? More batteries. Thousands.

— by Dr Michael Kelly,
University of Cambridge, UK.

May, 2020.

Next time you stand for 90 seconds filling your petrol tank, you might think of the enormous energy flow. Chemical energy is entering your tank at typically 17 million joules per second, or a gigantic 17 megawatts.

That’s equivalent to the energy given off by 17,000 one-bar electric heaters (imagine 6 tennis courts covered in them) or 24 hours of average power consumption (24 kWh) for 700 New Zealand households. A full tank (about 1,500 megawatts) would run those 700 houses for three full months. Continue Reading →

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Ignore sceptical thought at your peril

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Associate Professor Janet Stephenson says a few thoughtful things on Newsroom. Here’s one.

When it comes to re-starting New Zealand’s economy, we can’t afford to have a mind-set of ‘we’ll do whatever it takes’. That would just lock us back into those train tracks that head to a future in which everyone loses.

Continue Reading →

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A letter ignored

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This letter was sent on 24 April. It asks an important question. Professor Stephenson’s intellectual steel feels like marshmallow.

Dear Professor Stephenson,

You said on Newsroom yesterday that our economy “threatens life on this planet.”

Perhaps you’ve made a careful examination and you’ve actually found reasons to justify that alarming statement. I should assume that’s the case, though about half the country appears to disagree with you, which to my mind suggests you explain exactly why we’re so dangerous. Regrettably, your article overlooked that part. Continue Reading →

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Climate change nutters expose their real aim

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By Mike Hosking, 22 April, 2020. Reposted with gratitude.

Mike — common sense for all.

About the most futile of all the futile nonsense that has gone on during this mess is the seemingly never-ending and yet ultimately wasteful attempt by the climate change obsessives to convince us this is all good.

How many stories have we had of how the air quality has improved? As if to show or tell us what? If you do nothing, if you lock everyone away and close an economy you can improve the environment? Do you suspect anyone above the age of six could not have worked that out? Is having a pollution disappear because we are all indoors really a victory? Continue Reading →

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Academic tells us to use Maori stars for planning

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Associate Professor Janet Stephenson, University of Otago, made a remarkable statement today in Newsroom.

The current nationwide pause as a result of Covid-19 is an extraordinary opportunity, and probably the only one we will get, to redesign our economy so that it no longer threatens life on this planet.

We could agree there’s a nationwide pause in the Covid-19 crisis as our leaders consider our options. Continue Reading →

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Blunt good sense from Bob Jones

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The coming economic crisis and its political consequences

by Sir Bob Jones • reblogged from Sir Bob’s blog • originally published 13 April, 2020

Have an election today and the government would bolt in, primarily because of Jacinda’s star power induced by the media’s obsession with her. But the election is six months away and then, I’m picking a change of government. Continue Reading →

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Climate rebuttals to crack the activist grip on our mind

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Reblogged from CFACT

By

Heartland launches 22 climate science “gatebreakers”

“Gatebreaker” is a word I use to describe a special kind of document that until recently has been few and far between. It is a one or two-page non-technical refutation of a specific alarmist argument. It is something a student or citizen can use to confront an alarmist gatekeeper, hence the name gatebreaker. I wrote about the need for gatebreakers several years ago.

The Heartland Institute has just published a whopping 22 gatebreakers, with more promised. This is a true wealth of important skeptical material, unlike anything we have seen before. My dream is coming true. Continue Reading →

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Assisting supermarket social distancing

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We make the effort

The Supermarket Social Distancing aid — a two-metre hula hoop.

so you don’t have to

In our supermarket visits, fellow shoppers constantly infringe on our two social metres of separation, so I’ve devised a simple, inexpensive and easily-procured solution.

Sitting comfortably on the head and waist bands, the Keep-Off Social Distancer leaves your hands free to select the items you need.

Continue Reading →

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Zero emissions trial

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quill pen

Letter to the Editor
17 March 2020

Planes parked up, cruise ships anchored, airports deserted, tourists not touring, supermarket shelves bare, Disneyland shut, borders closing, motor races cancelled, no fans in the stands, smelters and factories closing, travel banned, oil and coal prices crashing, stock markets plunging, businesses closing, bankruptcies rising, hotels and motels unoccupied, politicians panicking, barbies cold — looks like zero emissions is almost here.

Viv Forbes
Washpool Qld Australia

Continue Reading →

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We should change our lives to fight pandemics

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Matt Ridley gives practical advice so we in New Zealand might appreciate a detached analysis in what has quickly but unjustifiably become a maelstrom. – RT

Published on: Sunday, 01 March, 2020
Culture and practice can change without putting Big Brother in charge

My article for The Telegraph:

In the 19th century Ignaz Semmelweis was vilified and ostracised when he tried to make doctors wash their hands after doing autopsies on women who had died from childbirth fever before going straight upstairs to deliver more babies. We have come a long way since then in public health, but we can go much further still. Continue Reading →

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Shaw’s parade of climate fiction draws official review

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State Services Commissioner to review MfE performance

The Labour-Green Coalition Government published the discussion document Our Climate Your Say (“the Consultation Document”) in 2018 to pave the way for the Zero Carbon Bill that received Royal assent on 13 November, 2019. Robin Grieve, of Whangarei, studied the document and was disturbed to discover scientific errors, political bias and propaganda. He raised his complaints with Vicky Robertson, Secretary for the Environment. She replied but didn’t take her department’s ethical breaches seriously.

When it comes to accuracy, political neutrality and inspiring the nation to save the planet, just how badly must a public servant behave to earn a manager’s rebuke? By normal standards, addressing the parade of fiction in the Zero Carbon campaign should never have waited on a complaint from outside the organisation. It should have been dealt with firmly in-house.

Robin escalated the matter to the State Services Commissioner, Peter Hughes, who has instigated an investigation of the Consultation Document with reference to state services integrity, ethics and standards. Continue Reading →

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Greenpeace study on penguin decline far-fetched or fraudulent?

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Where’s the paper?

Does Greenpeace expect us to accept their numbers without demur? To accept the cause they suggest? When can we question the researchers? A few inquiries raise serious questions about the study’s credibility. This is how the story begins on the Greenpeace website, with the headline shown in the screen grab:

February 10, 2020 – Scientists surveying chinstrap penguin colonies in the Antarctic have found drastic reductions in many colonies, with some declining by as much as 77 percent since they were last surveyed almost 50 years ago.

The independent researchers, on a Greenpeace expedition to the region, found that every single colony surveyed on Elephant Island, an important habitat northeast of the Antarctic Peninsula, had declined. The number of chinstrap penguins on Elephant Island has dropped almost 60 percent since the last survey in 1971, with a total count of only 52,786 breeding pairs of chinstrap penguins, plummeting from previous survey estimates of around 122,550 pairs. Continue Reading →

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Anthropologist becomes arrogant climate activist

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Here is a letter I sent this evening to Dame Anne Salmond, anthropologist and historian, Professor in Maori Studies and Anthropology at the University of Auckland, and 2013 New Zealander of the Year. An opinion piece she wrote on climate change in Stuff today considers climate sceptics beneath an honest anthropologist’s contempt.

Dear Dame Anne,

You expressed pride in a letter you signed ten years ago describing climate sceptics as “climate deniers”, even though ‘sceptical’ has long been a deeply admired virtue of all good scientists. Continue Reading →

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Herald disbelieve unbelievers

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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 →

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Herald silencing climate sceptics

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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 →

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