Another false alarm goes up in smoke

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 →

Visits: 1

No escape from climate reality or alarm

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 →

Visits: 125

Renwick’s alarmist climate claims

UPDATE BELOW 18 June 20201

A Stuff article on Saturday by Amber-Leigh Woolf, Climate change accelerating but people can help change a world crisis, scientist says, quotes Prof James Renwick, who mentions a couple of hitherto unknown and surprising aspects of global warming.

The Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences professor said people were right to worry about the world’s future because the rate of climate change was accelerating. Climate change was affecting an ecosystem which had been in place for tens of thousands of decades, and could be destroyed within 40 years.

Continue Reading →

Visits: 342

Coalition comments

Insights from the
NZ Climate Science Coalition

European heat wave June 2019

What climate emergency?

Articles in Business Insider since late June make outlandish claims about the European heat wave. Outlandish because they imply this was man-made global warming destroying the environment. It was nothing of the kind, just local weather systems producing temporary extreme temperatures. Continue Reading →

Visits: 102

Reality quells fears of catastrophic ice shelf melt

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 →

Visits: 230

‘Armageddon Summer’ is just the beginning—but Dyer’s the living end

This post is based on an article I wrote in the Otago Daily Times that answers a bunch of balderdash by Gwynne Dyer about global warming: ‘Armageddon Summer’ is just the beginning (pdf, 134 KB). SNAPPY MOTTO: Defeat drivel, bury baloney. – RT

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 →

Visits: 204

Simon says listen

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 →

Visits: 353

Comedian does climate for the Herald – results laughable

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 →

Visits: 76

Warmists more frantic

The more one studies James Renwick’s desperate letter to the Herald the more frantic appear his attempts to malign by any means, fair or foul, the increasingly confident climate sceptics who question his global warming thesis. For example, he says of Chris de Freitas:

He claims that hysteria is being stirred up against those raising “serious questions” about climate change. What are these serious questions? Can he give an example of the hysteria?

Continue Reading →

Visits: 288

Sea level study distorted by journalists

Official complaint regarding inaccuracy

(Sent to the Herald today)

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 →

Visits: 252

Bulk of global warming fears gone — storms won’t increase

UPDATE NZDT 1845 Monday 7 March

My apologies. There were distractions while I was writing this post that caused a silly error: I mistook the author of the post I wanted to report on. Richard Cumming alerted me to it (thanks, RC) and the references are now corrected. Insertions shown by green highlighting.


The trickery has been going on for years. First, an alarmist paper will describe details of a hitherto unknown peril of man-made global warming. The media picks it up and circulates it for months. Then, maybe years later, once our selfish ruin of the environment is established, a rebuttal comes out, showing the peril is against the laws of physics.

But does the rebuttal get the fanfare of trumpets that greets the warmy paper? Not likely. Continue Reading →

Visits: 161

Letters to the Editor

Climate alarmists turn back the clock

quill pen

To the Editor
Climate Conversation

6th January 2015

Three centuries ago, the world ran on green power. Wood was used for heating and cooking, charcoal for smelting and smithing, wind or water-power for pumps, mills and ships, and whale oil for lamps. People and soldiers walked or rode horses, and millions of horses and oxen pulled ploughs, wagons, coaches and artillery.

But smoke from open fires choked cities, forests were stripped of trees, most of the crops went to feed draft animals, and streets were littered with horse manure. For many people, life was “nasty, brutish and short” (Thomas Hobbes).

Then the steam engine was developed and later the internal combustion engine, electricity and refrigeration. Green power was replaced by coal and oil. Carbon energy powered factories, mills, pumps, ships, trains and smelters; and cars, trucks and tractors replaced the work-horses. The result was a green revolution—forests began to regrow and vast areas of crop-land used for horse feed were released to produce food for humans. Poverty declined and population soared. Continue Reading →

Visits: 89

World emissions treaty a bag of thorns

thorns

Huzzah!

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 →

Visits: 109

DiCaprio recaptivated, oh, the dated fiction, how it palls

The facts, DiCaprio, the facts. We’ll all perish? All humanity?! Perish the thought.

Leonardo DiCaprio has once again been completely captured by the IPCC misinformation campaign on global warming. A few days ago he addressed the United Nations conference on climate change to echo in their own chamber their self-created myths. This is my message to Mr DiCaprio.

In addressing world leaders at the United Nations, you claimed humankind has been pretending that global warming is a fiction. What a strange belief. Continue Reading →

Visits: 230

Climate denial undeniable, so no rest yet

After extended time off to cope with a family bereavement and its aftermath, let me present insights from someone else. Perspicacious and humorous, resigned yet adamant.
Yesterday, by email to a climate forum I subscribe to, a scientist posted penetrating comments on the state of climate change understanding. The comments are too good not to circulate, so, without revealing his identity (because I haven’t asked his permission), here they are. He was responding to a radio broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) by one Tony Eggleton.

Yes, I know, we all want to listen to yet another alarmist DAGW broadcast like we want to volunteer for washing-up duties.

But this one by retired geologist Tony Eggleton, of the Australian National University, broadcast on the ABC’s premier science programme Ockham’s Razor, is worth listening to from end to end in order to understand the immensity of the task of re-education that still lies ahead of us. Continue Reading →

Visits: 42

Wild Bill McKibben: “Outlaws of physics”

Bill McKibben, climate nutcase

Bill McKibben, climate crackpot

Claims big oil a “rogue industry”

This web site’s masthead proclaims: “For the first time in history, people shouting ‘the end is nigh’ are somehow the sane ones, while those of us who say it is not are now the lunatics.”

That’s how it used to be, but climate change is changing. The true lunatics are clearly seen. They were always alarmist, long before global warming, shrieking our environmental sins, Luddites razing the factories, breaking the machines, clamouring for havoc to save us all from ruin. Continue Reading →

Visits: 273

It’s climate denial all right

I have just been referred to this savage attack on Chris de Freitas by student Lola Thompson published in Craccum last July (thanks, Andy). It’s a fact-free romp through the ad hominem glories of Real Climate and Hot Topic, commissions the scientific skills of the Herald’s Chris Baron [sic], adds some insipid remarks from Martin Manning and learns from Gareth Renowden that Lord Monckton “doesn’t have a single climate science qualification.” Of course, neither does Renowden — and de Freitas is a professor in “climate science” — but that doesn’t slow Renowden down. With breath-taking irony, Renowden has the gall to claim that de Freitas doesn’t mention the IPCC “or current climate information” in his lectures (which I know is untrue). But he doesn’t reveal that the IPCC reports omit current (inconvenient) climate studies and that the IPCC has never investigated whether DAGW might be falsified — they take it as a fact without looking. So Lola quickly and easily learns about climate “denial” and how to write (and craft it well, I must say) a poisonous polemic but finds it hard to learn the objective science of geography, poor thing. She does not know, and is maybe too young to know, that scientific scepticism is the single attribute most likely to keep a scientist at the top of his field for a very long time. However, she so much doesn’t like having to learn climate skepticism [sic] that she insists on misspelling it. Her article reveals plenty of climate denial, but not where she claims it to be. Where is her refutation of de Freitas’ course? Where, for heaven’s sake, is even her description of it? Where is the science?

Should we be paying to be taught climate denial? | Craccum Magazine.

By Lola Thompson · In Columns, Eco-Matters, Issue 01 2012
On July 3, 2012

Craccum

Chris De Freitas is an Associate Professor at the University of Auckland employed by the School of Environment as a lecturer in Climatology.

I encountered De Freitas during the first semester last year when I took Geography of the Natural Environment (101), a compulsory course for all geography majors.

After the first few lectures taught by De Freitas I became increasingly concerned about what I was being taught. Prior to attending the class I was under the impression that the debate around climate change was no longer in questioned and anthropogenic climate change is now a scientific fact.

However, De Freitas presented the changing climate as a natural cycle, to which fossil fuels were not a contributor.

I found what I was learning incredibly alarming, as it went against all the information I had ever read about climate change. I began expressing my concerns to other students, who had previously taken courses taught by De Freitas and found I was not alone in my concerns. Continue Reading →

Visits: 211

No evidence no reason for complacency

Chris de Freitas is a proper scientist with a wonderful sense of humour — just wait until you see his conclusion! His articles are easy to read and I always read them.


Regrettably, the Herald has turned comments off, but that’s why blogs exist — leave your comments here where influential people will see them!


Newspapers

This is an adopted article.

Chris de Freitas: Science proves alarmist global warming claims nothing but hot air

Several aspects of Jim Salinger’s op-ed “Climate hurtling towards a hothouse Earth” Herald 24/5/13 are quite misleading. It is true most climate scientists would agree that rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to fossil fuel use could affect global climate. The basic physics is there to support this view. But there is no evidence that the putative change would be large or damaging. Output from computer models is not evidence unless model performance has been validated. So far, it has not. Continue Reading →

Visits: 127

Cooking up warming

Among the difficult, arcane arguments entangled in the doctrine of dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW), the simplest, most immediate and most understandable is that a general warming leads to dangerous climate change. First warming, then dangerous changes. Nobody seems to argue with that — not openly, anyway.

But we find lots of talk about “climate change” that has nothing to do with warming, as though we can have one without the other, which in turn means that humanity can be criticised for “damage” they have no hand in. In these ways warmists work to alarm the naive. We must keep our heads on our shoulders. Continue Reading →

Visits: 610

Our children’s world – don’t touch

Abandoned houses

We voice some counter-arguments to the mythical and ideological “pristine state” nonsense advanced by extreme environmentalists to prevent exploitation of natural resources. Then we show how much we agree with the environmental Taleban.

Nuts!

They compare every change to imagined past conditions of “perfection” and their policy proposals are aimed at returning to that pristine state.

It’s nuts, really. Just a moment’s reflection shows how idiotic it is, for the welfare of our children, to avoid changing the world, and instead attempt to pass on to them a world unchanged, still pristine — a fragile wilderness in all its untouched splendour. How wonderful. How sentimental. How useless.

For that is precisely what the Inuit, the Bushmen, the Maori and the Korowai, of New Guinea, along with all other primitive peoples, actively practised for thousands of years until more advanced races happened along. Continue Reading →

Visits: 553

A lie repeated gains no truth

Looking for information on China’s coal use I came across this fact-free summary of the “fight” against CO2 (emphasis added).

Coal already contributes 40 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions—the IEA projects this figure to grow to 50 percent over the next 25 years. Greenhouse gas emissions—which again reached record levels this year—are driving global climate change, the impacts of which we’re already seeing through more extreme weather events, droughts, and rising sea levels.

Say it ten times every day for 20 years and it becomes part of the air we breathe — people accept it.

But it’s hideous, because it’s still a pack of lies.

Visits: 325

Hot Topic not even warm

Some days it’s all too easy to find material for blogging. Here it is, 11:15 pm, I’ve spent all weekend installing software on my new PC (thanks for the early birthday present, Christopher), the All Blacks face Scotland at 6 o’clock in the morning and Andy sends me over to Hot Topic, where I find this among a series of election briefs: Continue Reading →

Visits: 406

Motivated rejection of stupidity – Part 2

Ah, the insight of these cretins, to integrate outrageously diverse concepts into the essence of hogwash.

Reading through this paper identifies extra drivel but it’s an unsatisfactory reward for labour because I just don’t want to find drivel in a scientific paper. Such a paper lets everyone down. Take a look through this mindless vacuity presented (with the unforgiveable connivance of the publishers of Psychological Science) as scholastic acumen.

How to maintain the appearance of consensus

To maintain the appearance of a consensus, Lewandowsky tries to claim that some “core principles” are not in question among mainstream climate scientists. But he picks core principles which are far from it. Continue Reading →

Visits: 380

Hear the alarm

Here’s good sceptical climate information all wrapped up in a lovely example of how to deliver it.

My good friend Bryan Leyland, engineer, sent this exchange. He gives us an admirable example of the best practicality and erudition, conjoined as only Kiwis do it, leavened with a charming humanity.

Some while ago Bryan gave an address to IPENZ (Institute of Professional Engineers NZ) members in Whangarei and one of his audience has been thinking carefully about what he said. Bryan just received a letter from this colleague, who describes himself as an environmental engineer, and Bryan replied. Below, the letter writer, with his name and details withheld to preserve his privacy, is quoted in the green text.

In his responses, Bryan listens to the anxiety and the honest intent of a person who looks like an opponent, keeps a level head and gives informed answers that address the substance of the opposing view. It’s an object lesson for us all, on both sides of the great climate divide. Continue Reading →

Visits: 62

… is sauce for the gander

The Heartland billboard in Chicago

What an amazing experiment.

But the alarmists don’t like this. No, they don’t like this at all. Well, many sceptics don’t like it either — it’s the raw, bleeding, white-knuckled edge of hostility. It simply points out what is true: that some loathsome people believe in dangerous man-made global warming. But it sets an objectionable context and tars its opponents with a distastefully black brush.

Of course, it just turns the warmists’ own arguments back on them. They started it, and they’ve been at it for years. The sceptics have been immensely patient. The warmists are the ones with the shredded moral fibre.

For a sample of their complaints about this detestable sceptical tactic, a reader referred me to Stephan Lewandowsky’s article Are Heartland billboards the beginning of the end for climate denial? at The Conversation, Continue Reading →

Visits: 214

Yet again: climate scepticism is founded on facts, not faith

Scepticism is not a psychological disorder, you morons

Though climate alarmists have claimed for several years that evidence for dangerous man-made global warming is “overwhelming”, it’s actually becoming harder and harder to find.

Thus it has instead become fashionable among climate alarmists to ignore what climate sceptics say and to discredit them with pseudo-psychological, ethical or moral inventions to explain why they say it. Anything but actually address what they say. Here are five examples. At the end are four facts that explain why climate scepticism arises spontaneously around the world — even without oil money. Continue Reading →

Visits: 75

Greenpeace shows no evidence

Greenpeace

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 →

Visits: 107

The fallacy is strong in that one

Gore: Global warming skeptics are this generation’s racists

One day climate change skeptics will be seen in the same negative light as racists, or so says former Vice President Al Gore.

“My generation asked old people, ‘Explain to me again why it is okay to discriminate against people because their skin color is different?’ And when they couldn’t really answer that question with integrity, the change really started.”

The former vice president recalled how society succeeded in marginalizing racists and said climate change skeptics must be defeated in the same manner.

To apply this reasoning to global warming is wicked. Listen carefully, Al, for your fallacy is strong. Continue Reading →

Visits: 357

Sceptics query our truth – we shall besmirch and slander them

Denier, denier, pants on fire

Deniers claim debate is ‘over’ because they can’t win it

Constant practise of scepticism is the root of good science

Hot Topic have been reviling our good friend and climate warrior Bryan Leyland for his opinion piece published recently. Not to mention several other sceptical climate articles by other people which they cannot tolerate. In the process Gareth Renowden and his gang spill the beans on their evidence—they don’t have any.

Because, pressed for some evidence of catastrophic man-made warming of our planet, they don’t reveal any. Renowden, Dappledwater and the rest of the fourth-formers threaten that evidence not only exists but increases beyond doubt, yet they still refuse to disclose it.

They also make unsubstantiated allegations of impropriety or even falsehood against Bryan.

Their arguments always seemed fact-poor and this proves it. Again and again they ignore reasonable requests for supporting information or peer-reviewed papers and resort instead to attacking the questioner. Continue Reading →

Visits: 447

UN desperate, dangerous

UN “scientists” are taking desperate risks with their reputations, attempting to cover up their deceptions about a climatic peril that doesn’t exist.

Some scientists at the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) have become desperate to cover up their hamfisted deceptions aimed at generating support for their hypothesis that mankind is causing the Earth to catastrophically heat up. In their desperation they’re still misleading the public, but also abandoning science and, incredibly, telling actual lies about the climate.

This makes for particularly dangerous implications for public policy. We need to be on our guard.

That this is going on is so easy to discover (but not through the mainstream media) that one cannot help but speculate whether our local journalists either have very strong reason to be sympathetic to these activist scientists or are even actually in league with them. Continue Reading →

Visits: 39

Klein denies deniers’ denials

When Naomi Klein uses the word “denier” and its derivatives no fewer than 28 times* in a single article, she telegraphs her belief that those so labelled cannot be motivated by facts. Jo Nova, once again prepared to fearlessly battle climate bigotry, confronts Klein’s vacuous arguments with her usual cutting perspicacity, real science and humorous mockery of her opponent’s weaknesses.

Though there’s little chance of any direct reply from Klein, the sceptical climate scene is sadly lacking in such talented writers and thinkers as our beloved Jo. Here, she’s done it again, treating another breathless Earth-saver with robust scorn.

Naomi Klein’s lengthy ramble is notable for not commenting on the science or refuting sceptical claims. Instead, she rabbits on about opinion polls, political loyalties, age and ethnic groups and, of course, it’s all about America — the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Continue Reading →

Visits: 43

Errors remain

Earth’s temperature has never been taken, actually

A story, Analysis confirms global warming data, accounts for urban heat islands, appeared in the Science Media Centre (SMC) on 21 October. I missed it then, but it’s been brought to my attention in correspondence within the Climate Science Coalition.

A member saw the SMC story and commented:

Wratt and Renwick are quick to assert that this non-peer-reviewed temp study reinforces their suspicion that UHI is an insignificant factor. They both refer to numerous other authorities. I thought the leading paper supporting this view was Phil Jones’ China study of about 1991, which he has recently admitted to be based on a mistake. Are there any others which debunk UHI?

This raises several interesting elements which I’d like to follow at some time, but it also prompted this succinct analysis from the evergreen Dr Vincent Gray, who responded: Continue Reading →

Visits: 43

‘Monster’ increase in emissions

The Associated Press, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, keep to their warmist line. Now they’re keen to highlight a steep increase in carbon dioxide emissions, without letting on that it hasn’t affected the temperature.

The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped last year by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.

The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst-case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.

In 2008, the annual increase was half of the year before. Now there’s a crisis?

It is a “monster” increase that is unheard of, said Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, who has helped calculate Department of Energy figures in the past.

Which just means it hasn’t happened before that we know of.

Visits: 60

Ridley warms heretical hearts

Everyone loves well-crafted prose, even when the author of it opposes their point of view. So it is with Matt Ridley, well-known author of The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, in less than a week earning nearly 9000 Google hits on his “Scientific heresy” address to the Royal Society of the Arts in Edinburgh on 31 October, posted at Bishop Hill. Even alarmist Gareth Renowden appreciates Ridley’s wordcraft before scorning his so-called climate science.

Ridley’s given us an admirable piece of work on several levels. His writing is a pleasure to read, he gives good information and clearly sets out his thinking on a tour of the weaknesses in the current alarmist view of the global climate. In doing so he warms the cockles of sceptical hearts everywhere while enraging the alarmists with his “well-known sceptic tropes”. That’s the view according to Renowden. Poor things; claiming emptiness for Ridley’s contentions is a flaccid stand-in for a cogent rebuttal.

Ridley concludes that science “needs heretics” and one can appreciate the radical point that even heretics should be heard. But he leaves unstated his crucial implication that evidence elevates the climate “heretic” above all the cereologists, astrologers and eugenicists in history, while true heretics need no evidence.

Here’s his address, copied from Bishop Hill with appreciation and thanks. I also repost the document Mr Montford prepared, with its helpful diagrams (pdf, 1865KB).


Matt Ridley

Scientific heresy

by Matt Ridley

It is a great honour to be asked to deliver the Angus Millar lecture.

I have no idea whether Angus Millar ever saw himself as a heretic, but I have a soft spot for heresy. One of my ancestral relations, Nicholas Ridley* the Oxford martyr, was burned at the stake for heresy.

My topic today is scientific heresy. When are scientific heretics right and when are they mad? How do you tell the difference between science and pseudoscience?

Let us run through some issues, starting with the easy ones.

Astronomy is a science; astrology is a pseudoscience.

Evolution is science; creationism is pseudoscience.

Molecular biology is science; homeopathy is pseudoscience.

Vaccination is science; the MMR scare is pseudoscience.

Oxygen is science; phlogiston was pseudoscience.

Chemistry is science; alchemy was pseudoscience.

Are you with me so far? Continue Reading →

Visits: 188

Only threat to Christchurch is Salinger’s alarmism

the beginning of the Christchurch earthquakes

From the Christchurch Press today comes alarming news:

Rising sea levels are a greater threat to Christchurch’s seaside suburbs than previously realised, a climate scientist is warning.

Speaking at Canterbury University this afternoon, Jim Salinger said latest estimates could have major implications for Christchurch’s earthquake rebuild.

Christchurch City Council should be working to a one-metre estimate for sea level rise, he said.

“It’s the opportunity for Christchurch in its rebuild, it should be looking at at least a metre. Some local bodies in Australia are using one metre.”

Salinger plucks the same alarmist harp strings he’s been picking for decades. He specifies one metre: does he include those places which are 500mm higher after the earthquake? They should get a discount.

But the Coalition chairman Barry Brill decisively puts this loose cannon of a climate scientist down, demanding evidence: Continue Reading →

Visits: 108

Multiple meltings of Arctic sea ice

The Skate at North Pole in 1959

Australis posted this link to Steven Goddard’s Real Science list of newspaper articles for us here in comments. I highly recommend it.

Whenever anyone – anyone at all – becomes anxious over apparently excessive melting of Arctic sea ice, this long list of previous such meltings will demonstrate that Nature can cope with it and bounce back from it.

Whenever anyone tries to alarm others with the modern, allegedly excessive, melting of Arctic sea ice, this long list of historical events will stop them in their tracks and prevent alarm.

It’s what we might call proof that modern sea ice melting is not unprecedented, despite the efforts made by the likes of Greenpeace to make us believe that it is.

Speaking of Greenpeace

For example, in August 2009, Greenpeace were caught in a lie. Continue Reading →

Visits: 83

Moon on Kiribati

Ban-Ki Moon

Hear the lies? Anyone?

We’ve covered the coral-islands-in-great-danger-from-rising-seas theme many times. But something isn’t working — could it be the brains of certain people, like most of our reporters, the head of our nascent world government and the official NZ climate scientists at NIWA, who let everyone tell the most outrageous fibs in public without correcting them?

Coral islands began forming at least 250 million years ago and some of them are a million years old, although many are from 5000 to 10,000 years old. In the 20,000 years since the last Ice Age, sea level has gone up about 130 metres (426 ft).

That’s a long way to fall. Yet, amazingly, coral islands are still on the surface. They kept up with the rising water. Well, some drowned, but not (of course) the ones that are left. Continue Reading →

Visits: 381

We’ll ask them about that consensus

Earth with a thermostat

We hear repeatedly about an alleged overwhelming “consensus” of climate scientists who apparently all believe the same thing about the world’s climate. What, precisely, they all believe is not only undefined but also variable, according to whether we’re discussing human emissions of GHG, ocean acidification, the spread of malaria, the “loss” of polar ice caps, altered butterfly populations, extra floods, extra droughts, loss of polar bears, harm to poor people or dangerous sea level rise.

As, for example, in today’s story about NASA noticing a slight fall in sea level over the past year, where the reporter says, all wide-eyed and trusting:

The vast majority of climate scientists agree that the release of greenhouse gases Continue Reading →

Visits: 46

Revkin declines Joe Romm’s bet on Arctic sea ice

Andrew Revkin

Andrew Revkin – Dr Who?

Warmist internecine strife has never really appeared on my radar, but now it’s actually spoiling the image. How encouraging it is to my sceptical heart to hear leading warmists brawling in their little playground. They express perfect hatred for each other.

Are they frustrated that their warmist preferences for scientific conclusions and policy recommendations are becoming as last season’s fashions? Does it sting their vanity that they can do nothing to halt the loss of face that now disfigures their darling beliefs in global warming?

Does the sudden, inexorable and widespread use of the terms “scam”, “myths” and “fallacies” associated with “climate change” drive them insane with rage? We can but hope. Continue Reading →

Visits: 88

Poor Al Gore can’t take the heat

Al Gore

Al Gore

The Washington Times rips into the famous Al Gore, he of the warmist persuasion, the alarmist disposition and the iconic, truth-bending book and movie An Inconvenient Truth, for ignoring his long-cultivated good manners and giving vent to a stream of public profanity at sceptical scientists.

It’s clear that the practice of quietly stating the truth and asking pertinent questions does start to unpick the foundations of belief. Poor Al.

Here’s how H. Leighton Steward puts it: Continue Reading →

Visits: 96

A wee debate

free speech

Free speech in New Zealand?

Everyone claims the right to free speech, but not necessarily for ‘others’. All talk of curbing free speech is for ‘other’ people, never for oneself.

What is a debate? It’s just a few people talking to each other. Who could be afraid of a little debate? Well, when vested interests are concerned, any number of people.

Andy mentions in comments that readers at Hot Topic are talking about emailing PRINZ to stop the climate debate with Christopher Monckton. They say the debate is “unethical” because it spreads confusion.

They complain about Monckton’s use of the phrase “Hitler Youth”. He used this at Copenhagen when a group of youth activists tried to shut down his debate.

Doesn’t anyone do irony any more?

Ironic indeed, but it’s a sinister trend. We live in a free country. We champion free speech everywhere. We were leading activists for freedom from apartheid in South Africa. Now look what’s happening to us. Continue Reading →

Visits: 133

Taxus, taxus, hurryup and taxus!

no dice? loaded dice?

Altogether now: taxus, taxus…

What an unedifying spectacle: thousands of moronic Australians shouting for more taxes. There’s hardly anything I can add. Let’s lend the sensible Australians our voices against the utterly useless expense of it.

SYDNEY — Thousands of Australians across the country rallied on Sunday to support a tax on the carbon emissions blamed for global warming, as a new report outlined the risks of rising sea levels from climate change.

In Sydney, demonstrators carried banners reading “Say yes to cutting carbon pollution” and “Price carbon — our kids are worth it” while similar rallies attracted crowds in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Hobart and Canberra.

“This should send a clear message to the government to set an ambitious price on carbon that will kick-start investment in clean energy,” said rally organiser Simon Sheikh, national director of the activist group GetUp.

Kick the habit?

Those who describe our emissions of carbon dioxide as a habit in the same vein (sorry, pun intended) as heroin are evilly misled and wickedly mislead others. Continue Reading →

Visits: 104

Prof Kelly shows the middle way

Principled sceptical stance

An extraordinary letter to the Taranaki Daily News (copied to Climate Conversation) from a climate sceptic well-placed to hear and and well-qualified to judge competing sides in the global warming controversy. Professor Kelly’s written testimony to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, for The Reviews into the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit’s E-mails, published on 25 January 2011, set out pointed questions directed to Jones and Briffa. This letter, clear and moderate, is in stark contrast to Miss Stewart’s anguished squalling and offers those who share her beliefs an easy delivery from the gut-wrenching fears of their own alarming predictions: check the facts. We echo Prof Kelly’s appeal for moderate language because so-called climate change has a profound importance for the vast amounts of money in it, the tyranny it’s bringing over our lives and the damage being done in its name to scientific integrity. (I hope the Daily News publishes the letter.)

4 June 2011

Dear Editor,

As a New Plymouth Boy, I would like you to do me a favour and let Rachel Stewart know that I think she is doing journalism a disservice.

I expect better from my home town.

An ancient foot in the mouth

It is perfectly possible to adopt a position, as I have, of ‘a principled climate science scepticism.’ It is based on the fact that every time an engineering-standard analysis is done of the climate data, one ends up contradicting the results of the climate change modellers. I am heavily involved in the debate in the UK.

My views on the East Anglian Science are on the web, and in the UK Parliamentary record. See pp21ff of The Reviews into the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit’s E-mails.

If she cares to take a look at the attached ppt slides, she will see that there is a systematic divergence, now 16 years old, between the modelling results and the actual data on climate temperatures. At what point do we accept the data over the IPCC models?

She might like to look at the recent analysis by Pat Franks which tightens the conclusion that the anthropogenic contribution is at most 0.3°C per century. This concludes that it is rising temperatures that are increasing the atmospheric carbon dioxide, not the other way round. Continue Reading →

Visits: 1027

Nuclear reactor: blast impossible, meltdown no sweat

Here are the facts

Andrew Bolt today posted this excellent comment plus the originating article. Some have already blamed this earthquake on global warming, but we shall ignore that nonsense. This objective and expert summary opinion of the real situation is urgently needed because all we’re getting from our green press corps is nuclear fear-mongering (h/t Bob Carter for the link). This is reassuring, but it’s very long — get yourself a coffee, put your feet up…

nuclear explosion

From: The Courier Mail / Herald Sun

Before you give in to the media’s nuclear meltdown…

Andrew Bolt – Monday, March 14, 11 (12:15 pm)

Newspapers

This is an adopted article.

Via our friend Professor Barry Brook, comes this marvellously sane and cool explanation of the emergency at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactor by Dr Josef Oehmen, a research scientist at MIT, in Boston.

Read the fascinating and reassuring article in its entirety. But if you have time only for Oehmen’s bottom line, it’s this:

– The plant is safe now and will stay safe.

– Japan is looking at an INES Level 4 Accident: Nuclear accident with local consequences. That is bad for the company that owns the plant, but not for anyone else.

– Some radiation was released when the pressure vessel was vented. All radioactive isotopes from the activated steam have gone (decayed). A very small amount of Cesium was released, as well as Iodine. If you were sitting on top of the plants’ chimney when they were venting, you should probably give up smoking to return to your former life expectancy. The Cesium and Iodine isotopes were carried out to sea and will never be seen again.

Continue Reading →

Visits: 122

Never the twain shall meet

the finger of God

OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!

from The Ballad of East and West
by Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)


Toward a conversation

A reader of the Climate Conversation, Matt Flaherty, has made some intelligent and generous comments after taking yours truly to task for issuing a partially misleading press release last December.

Those comments deserve proper consideration in this separate post, for Matt raises the superb subject of what we ought to call each other in the climate debate. I’d like us to have a go at resolving this.

It would be especially interesting to hear from the ‘pro-AGW’ readers who have commented here lately, like the perspicacious Keith Hunter, David Winter, Matt Flaherty of course, and any others who have been just lurking until now. How would you like to be characterised, if at all?

For simplicity, there are two sides: the ‘warmists’ and the ‘deniers’; those on the one hand compelled to believe that mankind is destroying the planet and those on the other hand who cannot believe it. Continue Reading →

Visits: 116

Resistance to climate scam thriving

More media taking firm stand against alarmists

Beach conference

Cancun anti-climate beach conference.

Around the world more and more publications, commentators and blog writers are declaring opposition to, even outright disgust of, the global warming scam.

Increasingly, people are waking up to the fact that, in the words of senior IPCC official, Ottmar Edenhofer, we must “free ourselves from the illusion” that international climate policy has anything to do with environmental problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.

That is in addition to the extreme disillusionment arising from the failure of the scientific climate predictions to come anywhere near true. Continue Reading →

Visits: 49

Filmed free for nothing

1010 logo

UPDATE1: OCT 3 12:25 AM

Apology from O2. See end of story.

UPDATE2: OCT 3 10:30 AM

Many more sponsors and partners than I realised. H/T Huub Bakker.

Join the boycott of Sony, O2 and Kyocera

(see end of story)

After all the work they put into it, the film “No Pressure” lasted just a few hours on the Internet before the torrent of abuse from scandalised viewers forced the producers to apologise and withdraw the movie. Or they tried to. Unfortunately for them it went viral and is still available all over the place. Anyway, their apology wasn’t worth the ether it was posted into.

What a storm of outrage the film aroused! Oddly enough, it affronted both sides of the climate debate equally. The film was deeply disturbing because it crossed a boundary in gruesomeness and the corruption of youth. Even in the cause of saving the Earth, reasonable people everywhere are saying “that’s a brutality too far.”

Slick but sick

I’m talking, of course, about the mini-movie released yesterday by 10:10, a global campaign to “cut carbon” by 10% a year, starting in 2010.

Produced by Richard Curtis (writer of Blackadder, Four Weddings, Notting Hill and others), acted by some famous names along with footballers from Tottenham Hotspur and with a full professional film crew giving their time for free, the film production was certainly slick.

Slick, but sick. Let us hope we never see its like again for any reason. The production of “No Pressure” marks a terrible new low in the propaganda that passes for information in the climate wars. What a shame all that effort went for nothing. Continue Reading →

Visits: 488

Hot Topic semi-science now in the Herald

NZ Herald crest
Hot Topic logo

Now we have the NZ Herald echoing Hot Topic’s posts from Sciblogs. Man, the Herald have really burned their bridges on impartiality, haven’t they? By patronising Hot Topic they unquestionably declare their belief in the non-science of dangerous anthropogenic global warming.

Don’t expect any material from them in the near future to be critical of the now-established doctrine of climate change according to the IPCC.

Comments on poll uncover Hot Topic’s dearth of science

Yesterday, they published an article by Bryan Walker, one of Gareth’s support writers, Ask me why – polling the public on climate change. The first thing Bryan does is denigrate the organisation behind the poll; good one, Bryan, ignore the issue — go straight for the man.

Note also Walker’s disconnect from the real world where people must make a living:

But their notion of what constitutes appropriate measures is severely constrained by their determination to protect what they call the competitiveness of all sectors of NZ industry.

“What they call” competitiveness? He says that as though it’s a bad thing. Continue Reading →

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