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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Mike Kelly cool, agile under BBC 4 climate grilling

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Once a year the BBC invites guest editors onto Radio 4 to assemble the Today programme. The latest batch includes Greta Thunberg, the child climate activist, and Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher biographer and former Telegraph editor.

Prof Mike Kelly

Professor Michael Kelly

Moore gave a spot on the programme to our friend Michael Kelly, Cambridge Professor of Engineering, Fellow of the Royal Society, Prince Philip Professor of Technology, former chief scientific advisor to the Department for Communities and Local Government, and member of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Introducing Kelly’s segment [at 32:22], Charles Moore observes wryly:

One of the subjects that’s very difficult to air on the BBC if you don’t share the prevailing view is climate change.

Continue Reading →

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Fighting fires with fire

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Media Release — Holiday reading

The Power of the Torch
There can be few if any races who for so long were able to practice the delights of incendiarism.
          Geoffrey Blainey “Triumph of the Nomads – A History of Ancient Australia.”  (Macmillan 1975)

The fire-lighter was the most powerful tool that early humans brought to Australia.

Fires lit by aboriginal men and women created the landscape of Australia. They used fire to create and fertilise fresh new grass for the grazing animals that they hunted, to trap and roast grass-dwelling reptiles and rodents, to fight enemies, to send smoke signals, to fell dead trees for camp fires, to ward off frosts and biting insects, and for religious and cultural ceremonies. Their fires created and maintained grasslands and open forests and extinguished all flora and fauna unable to cope with frequent burn-offs. Continue Reading →

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Shaw appoints Climate Lords & Ladies

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James Shaw, Minister for Climate Change, appoints new Climate Lords to the NZ Climate Change Commission. The NZ Climate Science Coalition says it contravenes the legislation that spawned the Commission. This is the NZCSC press release.

From the desk of Chairman, Barry Brill, OBE

Email: barry.brill@gmail.com

Climate Change Commission ”Fatally Undermined” by Appointment of Careerists and Campaigners

The potential credibility and standing of the Climate Change Commission announced by Minister James Shaw has been fatally undermined by the inclusion of four full-time climate change careerists and campaigners, according to the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition.
 Continue Reading →

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Discrepancy grows between climate models and observations

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Important update from Spencer & Christy

A few days ago Drs Roy Spencer and John Christy published updated graphs they first presented to a Heartland conference in July. Roy says:

I keep getting asked about our charts comparing the CMIP5 models to observations, old versions of which are still circulating, so it could be I have not been proactive enough at providing updates to those. Since I presented some charts at the Heartland conference in D.C. in July summarizing the latest results we had as of that time, I thought I would reproduce those here. Continue Reading →

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No escape from climate reality or alarm

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There’s no escaping the relentless barrage of climate alarm. Two weeks ago Mike Hosking accused us all of dishonesty over climate change, for we lament the potential of fossil fuels to destroy us while our emissions reach record levels and we use ever more coal, oil and gas but politicians around the world do nothing about it. Continue Reading →

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Climate zealots infiltrate our public service

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THIS must be stopped

Around the world, climate sceptics increasingly challenge governments over policies to change the weather. From furious French Yellow Vest protests against climate policy, soaring petrol taxes, education reform and a raft of other issues to Canadian provinces’ increasingly tough resistance to Justin Trudeau’s aggressive carbon pricing, Australian political opposition, frank climate rebellion among EU members and with numerous nations renouncing climate commitments, sceptics around the globe have grown truculent as never before. Continue Reading →

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This Claytons global warming

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The global warming you have when you have no global warming

“The drink you have when you’re not having a drink”

Like the sham whisky peddled in the 1970s and 80s, today’s fashionable narrative of global warming satisfies no one.

Climate realists and sceptics, knowing the facts, are frustrated by witless political surrender to counterfeit science, while climate agitators declare a crisis just to make something happen, since there’s no public belief, no political commitment and—fundamentally disturbing—no warming.

Yes, we have not been warming (well, nothing you could call a crisis …).

Continue Reading →

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Yes, it IS hard to believe there’s no evidence — so ask the IPCC yourself

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Email addresses below

“The influence of mankind on climate is trivially true and numerically insignificant. – Dr Richard Lindzen

It’s true. They have no proof.

So you say the science is settled, you trust 97% of climate scientists and you call me a denier. It’s hardly surprising and I sympathise with that view—we’ve been badgered over it for years.

But all we sceptics do is ask you, “What’s the evidence?” There’s no denial in that, so what’s your answer? If the science really is settled, what evidence is it based on? There’s been a tide of global warming propaganda for the last few decades, so if there was any proof we are causing dangerous warming, do you think they’d let us forget it? The fact that we don’t know what it is shows they don’t have any proof. Continue Reading →

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Coalition conversations

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Government shuts out sceptics

Without saying a thing — no conspiracy necessary.
The Minister for Climate Change, the Hon James Shaw, set up the Interim Climate Change Committee (ICCC) in April 2018. Some of us were discussing it earlier today.

[Anon1:] A major problem is that Harry Clark, who is the only scientist on the ICCC, has a conflict of interest. If we submitted Jock & Tom’s paper (Greenhouse gases – a more realistic view (2018)), for instance, then Harry Clark would pour cold water on it. If he accepted the conclusions then his job and research funding for the greenhouse gas research outfit would cease. If he were replaced with Reisinger or Frame the same thing would happen. Continue Reading →

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Grammar goblins

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Unmasking the imps that toy with our culture
in the guerilla war on our language

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.

Continue Reading →

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The Zero Carbon Bill analysis – 6

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Essay 6: Big emissions reduction bang for every buck

Reducing emissions is expensive. Every dollar spent on climate change mitigation is a dollar unavailable for health or housing or poverty; waste is unacceptable. New Zealand’s new Commission must recognise that where emissions occur is irrelevant and stick with the “global peaking” aim.

Continue Reading →

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The Zero Carbon Bill analysis – 5

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Essay 5: Cuckoo Shaw lays 1.5°C egg in cosy Paris nest

The Paris treaty ratified by New Zealand says: “We’ll keep the temperature increase to 2°C, never mind about trying for 1.5°C.” But Shaw says: “Yeah, nah. Never mind about 2°C, we’ll shoot for 1.5°C, the lower the better, right? Lead the world. How hard can it be?”

Continue Reading →

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Climate Coalition conversations

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Heating the ocean with a hair dryer

Not a conversation this time, just a snippet — an important one to me, because it’s further confirmation of my layman opinion that man-made emissions cannot significantly heat the ocean, and important for all climate sceptics, since it adds to arguments refuting the climate scare. Note that this scientist’s view applies to greenhouse gases in general, whereas the DAGW scare relies only on mankind’s emissions, which are a tiny fraction of atmospheric carbon dioxide — less than 10% of all CO2, or about 0.004% of the atmosphere. Continue Reading →

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Shaw’s Green dreams, real-world needs

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Donna Laframboise

Roger Pielke Jr. delivers the harsh, mathematical truth. Even if every person in the world thought abandoning fossil fuels made sense, even if every last government was committed to such a plan, the sheer size of the task would remain. He says the scale is mind-boggling.

Continue Reading →

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Talk and a little action at UN climate summit

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Politicians and business leaders announced new steps to fight climate change. But much remains to be done.
Source: The Economist

THOSE CONCERNED about global warming change had a clear message for the leaders attending the United Nations Climate Action Summit on September 23rd. Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old activist, led protests in New York imploring politicians to act now to limit rising temperatures, and warned leaders at the summit: “The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you.” Continue Reading →

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Global warming facts to calm your sobbing children

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A list of facts to remove children’s terror of global warming from Andrew Bolt, of the Herald Sun, Melbourne. He says it won’t kill you and we must fight the hysteria that follows Greta Thunberg’s breakdown at the United Nations. Easy to print out — distribute wildly widely.
UPDATED 16 Nov — added a link to Andrew Bolt’s article and corrected the link to Australian rainfall since 1900, adding a mini preview too.

Continue Reading →

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New global network of sceptical climate scientists

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A significant new collaboration will present rational views of climate change theory and observation on a global stage.

European Climate Declaration

From: Professor Guus Berkhout
guus.berkhout@clintel.org

23 September 2019

 

Sr. António Guterres,
Secretary-General,
United Nations,
United Nations Headquarters,
New York, NY 10017,
United States of America.

Ms. Patricia Espinosa Cantellano,
Executive Secretary,
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,
UNFCCC Secretariat,
UN Campus,
Platz der Vereinten Nationen 1,
53113 Bonn, Germany.

 

Your Excellencies,

There is no climate emergency

A global network of more than 500 knowledgeable and experienced scientists and professionals in climate and related fields have the honor to address to Your Excellencies the attached European Climate Declaration, for which the signatories to this letter are the national ambassadors.
 Continue Reading →

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