Contempt is not evidence

Climate warmistas mouth off at us for the global warming we cause but universally, staunchly and ignorantly refuse to say how we cause it. It’s time this was stopped, and the only way to stop it is for us to keep asking for the evidence and complain fairly loudly each time we are ignored.

The warming experts paint endless scenarios of different amounts of warming in different decades up to a century from today, describing multifarious ills and tragedies that might befall various kinds of living things. Continue Reading →

Visits: 86

No warming, no worries, no windmills

caption

The Freedom Clock shows nearly 20 years without global warming

Christopher Monckton thoughtfully keeps us acquainted with some essential moving targets on the climate change range. One monthly chore he undertakes is to update the RSS global mean temperature at Watts Up With That and (the neat part) find out whether the pause has got longer. It usually has. This is from his latest post a week or so back. Continue Reading →

Visits: 250

Scientist: Give us evidence we cause climate change

This article was submitted to NZ Farmer but the editor, Jon Morgan, rejected it on the grounds he had run one piece on each side of the argument and that was all he wanted. Further contributions had to be mere letters (250 words). So, feel free, gentle reader! Send him your letters. – RT
Dr Doug Edmeades

Dr Doug Edmeades – smart scientist

When Dr Doug Edmeades, MNZM, (independent soil scientist, managing director of agKnowledge and perhaps the smartest scientist in the country) wrote recently in NZ Farmer about the theory that we are the major cause of climate change, he said: “On this subject I am a sceptic.”

He didn’t ridicule the theory or mock those who believe it. Rather, he carefully explained the reasons for his doubts that our activities are responsible. Continue Reading →

Visits: 271

If even one climate model was accurate we wouldn’t need another

On the Helix Facebook page yesterday, Richard Betts writes about High-End Climate Impacts and Extremes.

He claims “the chances are that global warming will exceed the 2°C “guardrail” that the EU and UN aim to stay below,” and doesn’t disagree with alarmist interpretations of the scale and effects of man-made global warming, such as the possibility of 6°C warming. But “science” says little about our future climate. Continue Reading →

Visits: 76

Fatal deficiencies destroy scientific case for climate catastrophe

snow flake

As a member of the NZ Climate Science Coalition, I am frequently privy to learned conversations. Occasionally I publish excerpts, suitably altered to preserve privacy. The conversation below emerged sedately over several weeks and expertly defines the fatal deficiencies in the believers’ case for alarm. It deserves a big audience. Continue Reading →

Visits: 502

Yes, Dr Hansen says our oceans will boil

The man is dangerous

This loony scientist-turned-climate-activist is reckless with science and his unfounded claims of peril are a threat to public order. Even his followers cannot believe he really said the oceans will boil, but here is the evidence. Should you not believe my biased sceptical transcript, just read his lips.

James Hansen: The Runaway Greenhouse Effect   (video posted Jan 10, 2012)

At 1:55 (the link goes straight there) Hansen poses the question:

Dr James Hansen

What is the runaway greenhouse effect?

Which he answers concisely and unambiguously:

That means once the planet gets warmer and warmer then the oceans begin to evaporate, and water vapour is a very strong greenhouse gas, even more powerful than carbon dioxide, so you can get to a situation where it just… the oceans will begin to boil and the planet becomes so hot that the ocean ends up in the atmosphere and that happened to Venus. That’s why Venus no longer has carbon in its surface. It’s atmosphere is made up of… basically of carbon dioxide because it had a runaway greenhouse effect.

Continue Reading →

Visits: 459

Climate concern misaimed

volcano under ice sheet

Volcano under modern ice sheet. Lava plays havoc with that iceman, I mean ice, man.

• Opinion •

— by Viv Forbes, Chairman of Carbon Sense

“Climate” is formally the thirty-year “average” of weather. Climate is what we expect, on average—weather is what we actually get.

It is true that atmospheric conditions (dust, smoke, smog, aerosols, aircraft contrails, clouds and trace gases) can affect Earth’s weather. But none of these minor atmospheric constituents can generate energy—they merely filter, reflect, transfer or redirect a portion of solar energy. The effects of any changes tend to be short-lived, reversed as the atmosphere clears or they often trigger negative feedbacks that largely offset the initial effect. In particular, carbon dioxide does not drive the weather. No weather forecaster notes what tomorrow’s level of CO2 is likely to be, and no farmer wonders what it will be next spring. Continue Reading →

Visits: 356

EPA’s McCarthy: ‘Every voice needs to be in this discussion’

Of course, we only listen to normal people

h/t Richard Cumming. When he pointed to Jamie Glazov’s article I discovered the McCarthy outrage.

Lots of people have stopped listening to climate science, which observes no warming for 20 years. They are now being exhorted to stop listening to ‘climate deniers’.

US EPA chief Gina McCarthy is spouting insidious totalitarian doctrine hidden beneath a pretended admiration of democracy and camouflaged by appeals to the good of the majority. So she prepares the ground for legal restraints against honest free speech, and someone must point it out. Continue Reading →

Visits: 178

New Kiwi study — warming not linked to CO2

Gary Kerkin, a scientist member of the NZ Climate Science Coalition, has released a study of surface temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels (pdf, 349 KB) over New Zealand during the last hundred years and finds they are unrelated. This is similar, Gary says, to observations around the world, which find “a small increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere but no significant upward trend in temperature.” Continue Reading →

Visits: 276

Global warming the Wicked Witch of the West

Wave takes dog, owner yells global warming

The beach at St Clair, Dunedin, in a bit of breeze. Photo ODT

On Monday came a story of blatant disregard of nature’s power. A woman walks a small dog on a beach pounded by violent waves. A large wave swamps them and the dog is swept away.

Source: ‘Rogue wave’ sweeps dog from owner – Otago Daily Times

Passers-by watched in horror as a “rogue wave” surged up to engulf a woman and her dog walking on a Dunedin beach yesterday.

Continue Reading →

Visits: 413

Hope that Pope can cope with climate dope

Monckton and Heartland in Rome with message of hope for Pope Francis:

There is no crisis!

pope francis

The popular, avuncular Pope Francis. Realistic climate information is almost guaranteed to challenge his open-mindedness. Let us pray he mans up to meet it. Click to enlarge.

The usual dope on climate change is soaked in exaggeration, obfuscation, scare-mongering, twisted statistics and fact-free insinuation, rather than frank, open-hearted science. To counteract this, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences of the Roman Catholic Church is holding a global warming workshop at the Vatican on Tuesday.

In some quarters there is little optimism that the workshop will see through the widespread deceptions in modern climate science, so the Heartland Institute has gone along to assist. Continue Reading →

Visits: 349

In climate believers the river of reason runs uphill

Professor Michael Kelly last night gave a deeply thoughtful presentation full of insight into what has become the perilous intersection between UK policies on energy and climate change. (Thanks to Bryan Leyland and the Auckland branch of IPENZ for hosting the event at the University of Auckland.) This is a brief note; I’ll be saying more about Michael Kelly’s plain and practical message shortly. Continue Reading →

Visits: 98

Educating climate science—or how AGW propaganda gets away with it

— by Anthony J. Sadar, American Thinker, 22 December 2014

With the close of another college semester, the long holiday break can give educators a chance to ponder the dismal state of science literacy in the U.S. The sad decline in robust science education is certainly part of the problem and is perhaps most obvious in environmental science classrooms. Contributing to the issue is the skewed content in many college textbooks on the environment and ecology. Continue Reading →

Visits: 65

McLean reveals IPCC confessions

John McLean is a PhD candidate, climate researcher, computer scientist and IPCC reviewer and lives in Melbourne. He has long made thoughtful and informed contributions to the debate on dangerous man-made global warming (DAGW). Two weeks ago I received a copy of a letter he had sent to the Dominion Post in Wellington concerning the spat between Carter and Leyland, Hot Topic and Wratt, Reisinger and Renwick (WRR). The letter contained startling revelations from the latest IPCC Assessment Report, AR5, and John kindly agreed I could publish them, though they’re new only to me. As far as we know the letter was not published. His letter takes its facts from an article he wrote for Quadrant Online last year. – RT

Oddly, NIWA scientists conceal them

UPDATE 1: 28 Mar 1300 NZDT, see below.

John’s letter refers to the WRR article Human role in climate change is clear. The following are excerpts from the AR5 then the WRR article (emphasis added). Notice the stinging observation that WRR failed to disclose what was inconvenient for the IPCC to say, because it contradicted the alarming sounds of doom. Continue Reading →

Visits: 174

Hot Topic cites Cook’s lies, both happy

Leyland and Carter: the rebuttal that isn’t and the hypocrisy that is featured Gareth Renowden (GR) purporting to rebut Leyland and Carter (L&C) in their article Right of reply – Responding to Hot Topic, which was in turn a response to Renowden’s blog post (mirrored on SciBlogs) containing typically ad hominem-filled attacks on a scientific analysis by one sceptical engineer and a sceptical scientist.

In that “Dom Post failed its readers” blog post GR contributes a vapid series of mis-statements, diversions and lies which I won’t bother with.

But then he quotes L&C in their original Dominion Post article Hypothetical global warming: scepticism needed which got me properly annoyed: Continue Reading →

Visits: 92

Another Herald letter languishes

caption

NZ Herald, 10th February, 2015.

The letter at right appeared in the NZ Herald on 10th February and that day I emailed the following letter in response. To the best of my knowledge my letter was not published, so here it is.

Dear Sir,

Your correspondent Philip Jones claims Bryan Leyland’s assertion of ‘no warming’ is incorrect, saying the temperature data do not support it.

He says recent high temperatures prove they have been rising and he’s right. But they haven’t been rising for some time and so he’s wrong. Continue Reading →

Visits: 259

Naked lust from Greenpeace

vanuatu cyclone

A house on Vanuatu destroyed by Cyclone Pam.

Greenpeace lusts after your donations.

Every storm, every flood, every bush fire drags them from the shadows to whine nakedly for your money. Don’t believe them just because they sound altruistic—Greenpeace unfailingly lies about the climate. Why else did they declare years ago they would no longer debate climate change with anyone? If you believe they tell the truth about climate change, try asking for some evidence. Continue Reading →

Visits: 81

The profiteers of doom are at it again

by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

Christopher Monckton puts together a riposte to the rather weak-kneed criticism by Wratt, Reisinger and Renwick of the Dominion Post article by Bob Carter and Bryan Leyland in which they make a case for open climate discussion. – RT

When climate scientists unfairly give only one side of the story, as Professor Wratt et al. did earlier this week (Opinion, Dominion Post, February 10), taxpayers should keep a tight grip on their wallets. Continue Reading →

Visits: 103

Butter and global warming

butter

Openly back on the menu—the inimitable taste of butter!

The wonderful James Delingpole ropes two tenaciously resistant problems to the one horse.

Following current revelations that the saturated-fat health scare was based on now-discredited studies and was such very wrong advice that it actually caused the current epidemic of obesity, James discovered the role of compliant scientists, industry, Nanny State politicians and professional societies in the campaign to push the scare of animal fats. Continue Reading →

Visits: 64

Commissioner Wright’s wrong – Part 2

Changing climate and rising seas: Understanding the science

UPDATE No.1 12 FEB 2015 9:50PM

Go to UPDATE 1.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Jan Wright, published a report last November, Changing climate and rising seas: Understanding the science (CCRS) (pdf, 2MB). While reading it I marked more than a hundred places where her evidence or reasoning is questionable. Part 1 discussed a first batch of questions; this post discusses another.

Power and privilege

The Commissioner for the Environment enjoys a privileged position: the Environment Act 1986 grants the Commissioner wide powers to investigate and engage staff and consultants, along with millions of dollars. The Parliamentary Vote for this financial year permits a departmental expenditure of $3,258,000, including a personal salary of $296,000. The Commissioner enjoys the same powers as a commission of inquiry, and the same immunities and privileges as a District Court Judge. For investigations the Commissioner initiates, she has “such powers as may be necessary” to see them through—extensive powers, for whatever she wants to do, she has the power to do. Continue Reading →

Visits: 73

Letters to the Editor

Another alarmist temperature lie

quill pen

To the Editor
Climate Conversation

27th January 2015

2015 is the make-or-break year for climate alarmism, with a crucial battle planned for Paris in November, so we can expect regular bursts of global warming propaganda.

The year started on cue with a breathless announcement from the US National Climate Data Centre: “2014 was Earth’s warmest year on record” (their records start in 1880).

The Little Ice Age ended in about 1880, therefore it is no surprise that global temperatures have generally risen since then, and warming reveals nothing about the cause of warming.

Moreover the announcement hides more than it reveals. Continue Reading →

Visits: 58

Commissioner Wright’s wrong – Part 1

Changing climate and rising seas: Understanding the science

Private prejudice

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Jan Wright, published a report last month, Changing climate and rising seas: Understanding the science (pdf, 2MB). While reading it I marked more than a hundred places where her evidence or reasoning is questionable. This post discusses some of those.

The commissioner’s errors cause concern—just as errors from any prominent public servant[1. Dr Wright is highly paid. The Vote for the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment in 2014/15 provides for an annual remuneration of $296,000 in a total departmental budget of $3,258,000.] cause concern—and her agitation for policy change means she sides with environmental activists against at least half our population, and possibly even three-quarters of our population—those who are not persuaded that global warming is a problem. You can see that this arises directly from her personal views, Continue Reading →

Visits: 420

Save the planet: give us your money

Josh on IPCC climate standover

IPCC climate talks 2014

The latest climate talk-fest has again degenerated into the poor countries (I mean the developing nations) nakedly demanding large sums of money from the leading countries (sorry, the developed nations) to save them from the horrendous consequences of global warming caused entirely by the leading nations’ appalling development of advanced sources of energy – h/t Len Mills.

Visits: 96

Herald obeys the clamour

Hopes end for levelheaded exemplar from once-leading opinion maker

The Herald nails its colours to the mast

The NZ Herald has finally burned any bridges it may have retained with decently sceptical climate scientists by publishing the above advertisement today pretending the obvious falsehood that the “science on climate change” is “settled”. Continue Reading →

Visits: 166

Prosperity beats climate change

A really sensible and balanced note is sounded by a leading alarmist blogger. Is some common sense emerging after all the name-calling?

Mark Lynas writes yesterday:

Climate campaigners 350.org recently had an ‘India Beyond Coal’ day of action, supported by assertions such as this:

Our excessive dependence on coal threatens a future where we can pull millions of Indians out of poverty. Rising costs of coal, reduced availability, excessive deforestation, negative health impacts and the climate crisis are strong reasons to begin the transition towards renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Continue Reading →

Visits: 50

Ocean, not CO2, caused past climate change

oceans

Len Mills tells us of a study showing past climate change was caused not by atmospheric carbon dioxide but by changed ocean circulation releasing heat into the atmosphere.

Most of the concerns about climate change have focused on the amount of greenhouse gases that have been released into the atmosphere, but in a new study published in Science, a group of Rutgers researchers have found that circulation of the ocean plays an equally important role in regulating the earth’s climate. Continue Reading →

Visits: 55

Wind alone cannot keep the lights on

Len Mills sends us a study of wind farms reported in the Daily Mail. It emerges that their real production history falls a long way short of the breathless claims some make for them.

I too wish to save the world, but not by using wind turbines, because they’ll ruin us first. They’re expensive, ugly, short-lived, noisy to the point of ill-health, ugly, kill bats and birds, they stop generating if there’s too little or too much wind, they demand lots of rare metals and they’re ugly.  Continue Reading →

Visits: 130

Warmth is good; cold is the killer

Once again, Viv raises a basic mismatch between green alarmism and reality. This time he puts the fear of ‘warm’ to his blowtorch (so to speak) and makes a good case for heat. – RT

For decades green extremists have been spreading doomsday forecasts of global warming.

But where do we find the greatest abundance of life on land? Follow the equator around the globe—the Amazon, the Congo, Kenya, Indonesia and New Guinea—all places where it is warm and wet. Continue Reading →

Visits: 43

Climate research needs redirection

• Guest post •

Governments are running huge deficits, but still spend billions on climate research, especially trying to model the effect of the atmosphere and its trace of carbon dioxide on surface temperature. Benefits are hard to find. It may have improved weather forecasts by a day or so, but official long-term predictions have not improved in the last fifty years. This is because carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not the driver of weather or climate. Continue Reading →

Visits: 70

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

Greens have a plan

Details are scarce, but we’ll pay $1 billion

Greens voting logo

The Greens sent an email yesterday offering some kind of a national development plan so we vote for them in the election. Russel Norman says:

Yesterday I announced the first of the Green Party’s economic policies to build a smarter greener economy that benefits every New Zealander.

At the centre of our plan is an additional $1 billion of government investment in research and development, including tax breaks for business.

Continue Reading →

Visits: 722

Modern journalism meets a lion of a man

hyena handler of Nigeria

While sceptics learn to laugh at themselves

A Harley biker is visiting Taronga Park Zoo, Sydney, when he sees a little girl leaning into the lions’ cage.

Suddenly, a lion grabs her by the jacket and tries to pull her inside, in full view of her terrified, screaming parents. Continue Reading →

Visits: 65

IPCC clouds the issue

clouds

In researching the post about the list of sceptical scientists I was set on a new course and discovered a couple of interesting facts in the TAR. The narrative describing the list referred to three statements from the 2001 Third Assessment Report (TAR) of the IPCC. The first is:

The global average surface temperature has risen 0.6 ± 0.2 °C since the late 19th century, and 0.17 °C per decade in the last 30 years.

The rise of 0.6 °C was unexceptional, but I wondered at the 0.17 °C because it represents a rate of recent warming nearly three times higher than earlier. Continue Reading →

Visits: 73

Salinger incites Grimes

So June was warm—what of it?

Gareth Renowden, known here as Grimes the shambling truffle grubber, makes the breathless claim that “winter warmth during June” has broken a 140-year-old NZ record. However, he fails to mention his real thinking—that the world is igniting because of our filthy CO2. No doubt he hopes we’ll draw that conclusion anyway, after all the brainwashing we’ve had about it. And of course we do.

Has Grimes found evidence of global warming in New Zealand? And would that be in the same way as Lemon and Paeroa is considered world-famous in New Zealand?  In other words, it’s not global warming in any scientific sense? Continue Reading →

Visits: 85

New paper says CO2 not a greenhouse gas after all

Promoted from comments

This would change everything

Bulaman said “Bula. Check the latest over at Chiefio’s” so we did. The Chiefio says:

It looks like the only thing with black body radiation is a real black body and that transparent things, like gasses, are not quite the same. In particular, CO2 likes to heat up instead of emit a photon. Continue Reading →

Visits: 105

TV3 on thin ice over glacier

Who wants to write a letter?

Once again, Campbell Live runs an alarmist piece on disappearing New Zealand glaciers.

Tonight they featured a climate scientist from Victoria claiming “climate change” is affecting the Franz Josef glacier. It has retreated over the last few decades.

Apparently it’s a “problem”. Actually, listening to the reporter’s tone you’d think it was a tragedy. Loss of a national icon and all that. Continue Reading →

Visits: 70

Curbing Fallow’s emissions and correcting his maths

Brian Fallow

The Herald explains that Brian Fallow is its Economics Editor, but he belly-aches and pontificates about climate change more than anyone.

I suppose he must be an economist, since he’s divertingly keen to discuss all kinds of fascinating financial and structural details of transforming New Zealand society but little concerned with evidence that might justify it.

The result is he carps noisily on a ruinous, indefensible crusade. He insists the country spend time and tax “adjusting” to a “low-carbon” economy, though he freely admits we won’t thereby affect the climate even minutely.

Worse, he won’t say why we should do it. Not really why — not scientifically, plausibly tell us the necessity for it.

Let me highlight this error of judgement by rebutting a couple of his latest points. Continue Reading →

Visits: 88

Herald no help

Bryan Leyland started the following letter, I finished it and the Herald refused to publish it.

Smell any smoke?

Dear Sir,

Jill Whitmore says, “Right now, we are all standing around saying ‘I smell smoke’ and doing nothing about it.”

But it’s not true that we all smell smoke. Many scientists and informed observers want real evidence of a fire. I’ve been asking for years but so far the best “evidence” comes from uncalibrated computer models that predict fire in a hundred years.

It’s a bit early to join a bucket line. Continue Reading →

Visits: 23

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

Refute the nonsense

…see it as propaganda

…then starve it of light

I thought religion was dead — for practise only behind closed doors in the privacy of one’s home — then Gwynne Dyer thunders on the pages of the Herald with a rant about “the gods of climate.” Setting an unequivocally moralistic tone, he threatens divine punishment for our sins! Thoroughly unscientific. Amazing.

Dyer often mindlessly repeats all manner of misleading science about global warming, but this time he gives the science a staunchly moral cast. Well, how else to instil a proper sense of guilt? Continue Reading →

Visits: 295

The boring climate

Why you won’t see headlines as climate science enters the doldrums

Posted on November 4, 2013, at Watts Up With That

Guest post by Dr. Robert G. Brown, Physics Department of Duke University (elevated from a comment on a WUWT thread: RSS Reaches Santer’s 17 Years).

This (17 years) is a non-event, just as 15 and 16 years were non-events. Non-events do not make headlines. Other non-events of the year are one of the fewest numbers of tornadoes (especially when corrected for under-reporting in the radar-free past) in at least the recent past (if not the remote past), the lowest number of Atlantic hurricanes since I was 2 years old (I’m 58), the continuation of the longest stretch in recorded history without a category 3 or higher hurricane making landfall in the US (in fact, I don’t recall there being a category 3 hurricane in the North Atlantic this year, although one of the ones that spun out far from land might have gotten there for a few hours). Continue Reading →

Visits: 199

Lawrence Solomon mocks models

via Lawrence Solomon: Model mockery | Financial Post.

Top economist, a true believer in global warming, proves predictions of catastrophe are meaningless

All predictions of global warming doom and destruction rest on meaningless computer models, say climate change skeptics such as Freeman Dyson, America’s best known scientist, and Antonino Zichichi, Italy’s best known scientist. They and other skeptics looked at models touted as reliable and declared them meaningless.

Now these unabashed skeptics are joined by an unabashed true believer in rising sea levels, greater climate variability and other perils associated with global warming: Robert S. Pindyck, a physicist, engineer and Professor of Economics and Finance at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Continue Reading →

Visits: 162