Flooding island lies

Anti-science, pro-cash

Once again a national leader makes the false claim that his low-lying island nation is about to be flooded because of “climate change”. It’s not hard to show that he’s telling great big porky pies.

An article was posted on the Responding to Climate Change (RTCC) web site recently (h/t – Richard Cumming). I found the Marshall Islands government press release it was based on and in which the Marshall Islands Foreign Minister, Philip Muller, said the king tides were the latest in a series of increasingly serious and regular climate impacts. Continue Reading →

Visits: 85

NIWA withholds evidence, loses face

About ten to four this afternoon Outlook went ‘bing-bong’ and a mail from NIWA arrived on my desktop. It was John Morgan, refusing my second request for publicly-owned information. The time elapsed since we first asked for it has reached 21 weeks.

Readers might remember I asked again on 20 February:

So would you please provide a copy of the scientific literature that approves of the measurement technique used by NIWA in the Review. This request is reiterated under the Official Information Act.

Here’s what Mr Morgan decided to say about it:

Dear Mr Treadgold

I write in response to your email dated 20 February 2014 indicating that you believe that my reply of 21 November 2013 did not answer the question raised in your email of 22 October 2013. Continue Reading →

Visits: 94

APS turns to face the tiger

Magoo alerts us to this wonderful post by Tony Thomas at Quadrant Online. I elevate his comment to increase its visibility immediately and I hope to have time for further comment soon.

As Magoo says: “Finally, some serious questions being asked by some serious climate scientists at the American Physical Society in an open and public forum.” Continue Reading →

Visits: 106

Problems with Christchurch

open thread

From the earthquakes which devastated its previously stable landscape and brought down its vibrant CBD to horrific repeated flooding, seemingly interminable planning for a new cathedral and a firm civic belief in future catastrophic man-made sea-level rise, Christchurch certainly has problems.

They present the devil’s own difficulties if you’re living through them, but whether you’re trying to deal with them, leave them behind, or you’re simply looking on curiously from afar, you can learn about them here.


Visits: 106

Plug pulled on extraordinary site activity

I may never know what caused the outage, but much of the activity originated in China.

Checking on the blog late last night, my heart sank when I saw a notice in garish colours (that was bad, but it wasn’t the worst part) saying “This account has been suspended.”

Both my sites were down, along with the email. I imagined people around the world contemplating undeserved doubts about my ability to pay the bill.

Today, after webmail discussions with my hosting provider (they don’t accept telephone calls, but they are wonderfully inexpensive) and puzzling over my email settings, everything was running again.

The server software automatically suspended my sites (wordshine and fastproof) after the activity spiked to over 13 GB in just a few hours. The sites were moved to another server. What were they up to in China?

I’ll probably never find out, but I’m sorry for the disruption and it’s all back to normal. Thanks for your patience.


Well, my additional apologies!

After posting this piece explaining the outage, I went to read it online, as I usually do, just to make sure it worked properly. What further horror to discover that it and all the other posts gave a 404 Not found error!

The gremlin lay in the way WordPress codes its title links and fortunately was the work of moments to rectify, but I apologise to those who might have been frustrated all afternoon.

Well, back to the writing again!

Visits: 44