Climate Coalition conversations

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 →

Visits: 146

Hey, Renwick says climate ‘could’ get hotter

He ‘could’ be worth reading

— by Owen Jennings
Member, NZ Climate Science Coalition

Someone called James Renwick, described as a “climate scientist”, managed to get himself on the front page of Granny Herald. I’m not sure what a climate scientist is. We never used to have such a term – we just had geologists, physicists, biologists, chemists, etc. Continue Reading →

Visits: 1173

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

Why you must heed this pathetic climate emergency

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTmn64JLA5WHGzi6zPpB2vyGZdpo0Tw5Lm0jbC_hxJk4ky0xfXY

Even the good Professor Renwick tells a story of emergency.

UPDATE BELOW

The outlandish declaration of a climate emergency is short on substance — there’s no evidence for it.

It’s no surprise that the sponsors of this charade try to intimidate us with abusive language. They’re hoping we won’t question their proclamation. Continue Reading →

Visits: 181

Reprehensible display by Renwick

Professor James Renwick

Just two weeks ago Dr James Renwick published an article in The Spinoff provocatively titled Slaying the zombie memes in that ‘climate sceptic’ column on Stuff. Dr Doug Edmeades had posed some perfectly sensible questions to the science behind the claims of dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW), yet Dr Renwick apparently gave them little thought, slating him as presenting “zombie memes”—using a shallow warmster meme himself to denigrate his colleague. It’s amazing what he does next. Continue Reading →

Visits: 2426

Strange new paper on NZ climate – Part 2

Franz Josef glacier, New Zealand

Stupefying reversal after all the propaganda

The warmsters have been squawking at us since the IPCC was founded in 1988 for using abundant, affordable hydrocarbons to power engines and to create all kinds of materials, from the ordinary (like tar and ink) to the fantastical (like heart valves and aspirin). They demand we stop drilling anywhere, stop mining anywhere and stop creating affordable products to improve and save lives. But this is blinkered madness oozing from the dystopian IPCC stink-tank.
Continue Reading →

Visits: 860

Renwick distorts evidence

Auckland mayoral candidate Vic Crone

During an interview a few days ago, Auckland mayoral candidate Vic Crone would not say if she believed the earth was warming due to man-made pollution, saying only: “Gosh, that’s a very contentious debate.”

Dr James Renwick, a professor of physical geography at Victoria University of Wellington, has slammed Crone’s statement. “The climate is changing and it is due to human activity and that is very clear from all sorts of lines of evidence,” he said. “To say that it’s very contentious suggests a real lack of understanding of the area.” The evidence showed that human influence was the dominant cause of global warming, Renwick said. “To try and say that we’re not sure is very backward thinking.” [emphasis added]

But that’s just not the case.  Continue Reading →

Visits: 354

Paris agreement endangers climate

The symbol of endless labout

Symbol of arduous labour

Eternal useless labour was the lot of King Sysephus, whom the gods made to roll a boulder each day to the top of a mountain and watch as it rolled down again. This was a punishment, not a reward. It’s a Greek tale among many at the heart of Western civilisation, instructive and memorable to countless generations of people raised to be thoughtful, and a heritage to value. But the climate hoax contains eternal labour for us all and we just don’t see it. Continue Reading →

Visits: 98

Ethics breach by Renwick and Naish – shock Royal Society probe

NZ Climate Science Coalition announcement

The Royal Society of New Zealand has confirmed the commencement in accordance with its rules of a process to consider a complaint by several of its members that two Victoria University academics, Professors James Renwick and Tim Naish, have breached the society’s Code of Ethics in their public programme of lectures throughout the country entitled “Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Climate Change”. Continue Reading →

Visits: 509

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

DAGW hypothesis fails on every measure

The story so far: the scientifically and climatically inept Dr Jarrod Gilbert pontificated hysterically that it should be a crime merely to discuss ambiguities in the theory of dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW), taking the view that only “those who deny climate change” cause doubt. He says reasonable doubt doesn’t exist, which of course is flagrant nonsense—just as no sceptics deny that climate change exists. Continue Reading →

Visits: 202

Renwick weak in climate quarrel

Dr James Renwick criticises Dr Chris de Freitas for keeping a cool head and saying there’s no need to worry about normal climate change. James says:

I am puzzled that de Freitas can review the evidence, the melting ice sheets, rising seas, warming oceans and atmosphere, and see nothing to worry about.

He claims four points of evidence. Let’s have a look at them. Continue Reading →

Visits: 232

Renwick, Naish invoke malignant ‘consensus’, cite scandalous papers

Desperation palpable

See UPDATE, below

Professors James Renwick and Tim Naish are sounding global warming warnings around the country. We have received a copy of their presentation, called Ten by Ten: Climate Change – Ten things you didn’t know about climate change.

This academic presentation is filled with errors, though it’s funded by the Victoria University of Wellington and the Royal Society—which means your taxes, at least in part. Continue Reading →

Visits: 344

Umpteen degrees of blind panic

A lot of exaggeration and misdirection – take a look

Herald - Nine degrees

NZ Herald two days ago:

Burning the rest of the world’s untapped fossil fuel resources – an equivalent five trillion tonnes of carbon emissions – would push up the average global temperature by between 6.4C and 9.5C.

Those are the big figures behind a major new study published today in the journal Nature Climate Change—and they’re much more serious than had previously been anticipated.

The study, led by the University of Victoria in Canada, further estimated that this level of extra emissions would elevate Arctic temperatures between 14.7C and 19.5C.

In the absence of efforts to mitigate climate change, cumulative carbon emissions would likely exceed two trillion tonnes of carbon before the end of this century.

Etc., alarming, blah, blah, scary, blah. Continue Reading →

Visits: 127

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

Public climate boffins give poor service

Drs Wratt, Reisinger & Renwick

From left, Drs David Wratt, Andy Reisinger and James Renwick.

Bob Carter and Bryan Leyland published a sceptical article in the Dom Post. Gareth Renowden penned a response which was republished on SciBlogs (run by the Science Media Centre), it’s scatalogical title signalling his customary toxic tone. Continue Reading →

Visits: 3186

The ocean according to Renwick

Prof James Renwick

One of our favourite Kiwi climate scientists has again made alarmist climate predictions.

The predictions come from the IPCC, but I’m sure Professor James Renwick takes responsibility for repeating them (I mean, he must have satisfied himself over their accuracy). He frequently cites the IPCC’s predictions but keeps quiet when they’re wrong. For example, when they and their computer models forecast strong warming over the last 17 years instead of the lack of warming we observe. Continue Reading →

Visits: 113

Strike three for TVNZ

Sorry, I’ve been trying to post this for a week. – Richard Treadgold

Wrong, but no apology

TVNZ now admits to me that its press release was wrong in claiming that Dr Renwick blamed the recent drought on global warming.

But TVNZ don’t apologise to us or the New Zealand public — or even to Dr Renwick. The Corporate Affairs Department is entirely absorbed in explaining their mistake, rather than caring that they made it.

That’s the third strike against these public relations masters.

Un – be – lievable. Continue Reading →

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Strike two for TVNZ

caption

A few days ago I reported on TVNZ’s naughty porky after James Renwick’s March interview. I have since been in correspondence with TVNZ and have news.

In their reply TVNZ have made an amazing error. Like a careless schoolboy failing to read the exam directions, someone didn’t read my letter properly. They’ve given a response that annoys me and will surely displease senior managers. Continue Reading →

Visits: 98

Climate porkies from TV One

What appeared to be a startling development in the important topic of global warming started with Dr James Renwick on Sunday 17 March, 2013, in an interview aired on TV1 at about 11:17 am. Susan Wood introduces it by describing the current severe drought.

TVNZ issued a press release a few hours later, stating: “Dr Renwick told the programme that global warming was the only explanation for the drought,” even though that was not a faithful reflection of the interview.

The NBR followed up the same day with an article in which they make an identical statement: “Dr Renwick told the programme that global warming was the only explanation for the drought,” which suggests that the NBR obtained the statement from TVNZ.

Rodney Hide picked up the story (which is how I discovered it) a week ago with an article in the NBR criticising Renwick for blaming global warming for the drought.

My initial post supported Rodney’s article in the NBR and I defended him when he was lambasted by Gareth Renowden.

It was a startling story, since reputable scientists say that you cannot blame this or that specific weather event on global warming. Although warming might increase the frequency or ferocity of an event, warming alone cannot create one. But the statement was corroborated by the very broadcaster which interviewed Renwick. They should know. So it appeared to be true.

This is just not so

Because the statement was outrageous, I was sceptical, but after reading the transcript and studying the video, I thought that taking that meaning from it was plausible and I wrote a post carefully explaining my reasoning.

There was a clamour of dissent until Andy suggested someone contact James Renwick. Good idea, I thought, and I emailed him.

Within half an hour, James politely confirmed that he never blamed the drought on global warming: “This is just not so.” It’s good to hear him say that, actually, but we must deal with the fallout.

So, I apologise to Dr Renwick for misquoting him so badly — that is, over a statement so disastrously incorrect. And I am asking TVNZ for an explanation.

Our public broadcaster has told a very naughty porky.

Visits: 270

Renwick doesn’t blame AGW for drought

When Rodney Hide, in an NBR article, criticised Dr James Renwick for, in a TV1 interview, blaming anthropogenic warming for the recent drought, Gareth Renowden accused him of misrepresentation.


James Renwick has confirmed by email that he did not blame global warming for the recent drought. 10:00 pm 16 May 2013


First I defended Rodney. Later I pointed out that the NBR took exactly the same message from Renwick’s interview as Rodney had. It reported: “Dr Renwick told the programme that global warming was the only explanation for the drought.” In a detailed analysis of the interview and its introduction I show how this was the reasonable conclusion. Continue Reading →

Visits: 280

Renowden a scaring warmist

I haven’t seen much lately of Gareth Renowden’s climate writing, although I came across him burbling recently about US activist Bill McKibben.

Today I read Renowden’s post at The Daily Blog complaining about Rodney Hide’s NBR article. In it, Rodney criticises Dr James Renwick for comments Renwick made during this interview for TV1’s Q+A programme.

Nasty stuff

In the Daily Blog post, Renowden is distinctly combative, immediately smearing Rodney as ‘irrelevant’ and ‘rabid.’ It’s nasty stuff, but Renowden seems inured to the dirt he shovels. There was nothing in Rodney’s article to deserve this treatment. It’s unclear why Renowden bothers with such an “irrelevant” commentator but comparing Rodney with a mad dog is as outrageous as it is patently untrue.

In the end Renowden shreds his own credibility by inviting Rodney to join the warmists, claiming rather feebly ‘we need all hands on deck’ — as though the rabidly irrelevant would chance his welcome.


James Renwick has confirmed by email that he did not blame global warming for the recent drought. 10:00 pm 16 May 2013


Disagreeing further with Rodney’s article, Gareth makes a point I cannot ignore: “There’s been no warming for 17 years, apparently. Tell that to the Greenland ice sheet, or the Arctic sea ice. Tell that to the warming oceans. Global surface temperatures may not be shooting up as fast as in the recent past, but heat continues to accumulate in the climate system. Rapid climate change is here, now.” Continue Reading →

Visits: 154

Hide sticks it to Renwick

Rodney Hide
Rodney Hide continues to support a realistic view of dangerous anthropogenic global warming.

The NBR today carries his article “Faith, not facts, drive[s] global warming.”

Rodney says Renwick “was in no doubt that man-made global warming was causing the summer drought,” then quotes Renwick from his TV interview:

“Oh, no, no. There’s no other explanation that’s remotely plausible.”

But Rodney rightly points out:

That’s religious zealotry in action. Science is never that certain. The best-ever scientific knowledge was Newtonian mechanics. And Einstein blew it to bits. That’s the nature of science.

He goes on to show how Renwick’s theory is falsified. It’s the right stuff.

Visits: 229

Policy: politicians write it but scientists incite it

policy document

It’s hard to know if a reader, Simon, was being serious when he said “Scientists don’t set policy either, politicians do that” because it’s blindingly obvious that scientists don’t keep their hands off policy. They constantly agitate because — surprise — they constantly need funding.

That’s the very reason we’re in this climate change mess, because politicians alone couldn’t have done it. A few smart leaders might have come up with the idea of dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW) justifying deep government interference in our lives, but they had to be assisted by publicly-funded scientists who became heavily involved in supporting policy proposals, even to the point of activism.

At all levels of science and of government, scientists have spent thirty years providing assistance of varying magnitude to politicians; it’s not only cynics who remark that scientists made friends with politicians only to safeguard their funding. Continue Reading →

Visits: 171

Coming climate clouded but present panic pretty plain

Well, which is it?

Will it be a nightmare or not?

In comments, I cited a statement by Jim Renwick from a few months ago. He said:

I feel a kind of morbid fascination with this stuff. It’s a really fascinating science issue – and I’m really interested to find out what’s going to happen to the climate and how much ice is going to melt and what’s the temperature in 2020 going to be and all the rest of it. It’s intriguing, it’s my bread and butter but you know what I feel is – I look at this and say jeez we’re really doing this, we’re doing this experiment, we’re really playing this game with the Earth, we’re gambling with millions of lives and I sort of feel disgusted with myself that I find it interesting from a scientific point of view. It’s certainly interesting, but it’s more than interesting — it’s a very dangerous game we’re playing.

I was illustrating a comment that only a few climate scientists of the alarmist school venture to tell us we’re destroying the world. Most of them are more cautious, almost as though they’re setting up for the long-term defence that they were never really converts to that alarmist view of climate change they claim is the consensus.

The reader Simon said Continue Reading →

Visits: 439

“Leading climate scientists” make false allegation

We never said it was fraud

Professor James Renwick’s press release yesterday celebrating NIWA’s court “victory” was wrong. The opening paragraph said:

A group of leading New Zealand climate scientists (listed below) welcomed Justice Geoffrey Venning’s ruling to throw out the claim by the New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust (CSET, a small group of climate change “sceptics”) that NIWA had acted fraudulently in putting together its ‘7-station’ temperature series.

But the Trust did not claim fraud in its Statement of Claim to the High Court, which nowhere uses any derivative of the word fraud. The Coalition never accused NIWA of fraud and these scientists cannot justify their claim that it did.

This fictitious accusation against members of the NZ Climate Science Coalition and its Trust might have added to the excitement of the press release, but the stimulus came at the expense of the truth.

To people accustomed to hearing ad hominem remarks of the worst kind, accusing climate sceptics of alleging fraud is perhaps of no great concern, but to those devoted to the even-handed, practical pursuit of truth this accusation is deeply distressing.

It must be withdrawn and Dr Renwick must apologise. They need to man up and admit their mistake, apologise and withdraw the press statement.

Would proper scientists expect anything less of others?

Visits: 431

More Antarctic melting threats

caption

A five-year study just published says methane hydrates buried under kilometres of Antarctic ice and sediment could accelerate global warming if released into the atmosphere. This has given the warmists much grist for their mills of alarm.

The paper, Potential methane reservoirs beneath Antarctica, published on 30 August as a letter in Nature, is behind a paywall, so I’ve only seen the abstract and Supplementary Information (pdf).

The paper contains some interesting information. The sediments are in surprisingly deep basins – down to 10 km or even 14 km in rifts (measured from the earth surface, not the top of the ice), although most are between 0.3 km and 3 km deep. That’s a lot of silt. The amount of overlying ice is similar, from 1 km to 3.5 km. That must all melt before the sediment has any hope of warming enough to release the methane clathrates. Chance would be a fine thing. Continue Reading →

Visits: 114

If it was “settled science” how did you improve it?

For if it had no defects, why did you study it?

But if you studied it, why did you never deny the claim that it was settled?

Climate scientists of New Zealand: you have deceived us.

_______

The RSNZ is planning to announce progress in climate science since the AR4 in 2007.

Since 2007 and earlier, from Al Gore down, these arrogant shouts around the world have escaped challenge by the scientific establishment: “the science is settled” on climate change! The claim has been around for most of the century.

The Royal Society of New Zealand has never, to my knowledge, used the phrase “the science is settled.”

It did set up the government-funded Science Media Centre (SMC), with its Sciblogs department, which re-blogs numerous odious posts from such celebrated centres of scientific excellence as Hot Topic and Open Parachute. And those blogs and their manic commenters provide all the spittle-lipped propaganda you could ever wish for the “settled science” believers without needing contributions from the respected scientists at the RS. Continue Reading →

Visits: 84

Renwick goes off the air

Dr James Renwick

Earlier this year I struck up a conversation with Dr James Renwick, NIWA Principal Climate Scientist. But we only exchanged a few messages; these were the last. After eight weeks I guess he no longer intends answering so I want to reveal the awkward questions he wasn’t prepared to answer. Here is his last email to me, followed by my response.

1 March 2010

Dear Richard:

In response to your mail of 23 February –

We have tabulated the adjustments (the “SOA”) and put them on our web site. Members of the CSC (Warwick Hughes, Vincent Gray) have had the necessary information for some time, as we have pointed out. Your document “Are we feeling warmer yet” illustrates the adjustments as step changes in the station graphs on pages 5-8. Continue Reading →

Visits: 380

FARCE: NIWA don’t have the changes

UPDATE 1 1st Feb, 11:16 pm: The second paragraph should have stated that Jim Renwick was quoted in the Herald, not Jim Salinger. My apologies; this has been corrected.


unadjusted NZ temperature graph

Heads must roll

Turning into farce

In an astounding admission of ineptitude, after their former arm-waving and expostulations of injustice, NIWA have finally confessed that they cannot provide the adjustments they made to the original temperature readings in the official NZ temperature record. Continue Reading →

Visits: 551

NIWA bows at last to pressure, but feels ‘insulted’

Tam-o-Shanter sea urchin

In the NZ Herald yesterday morning came news that NIWA is “putting all of its temperature data and calculations on the internet”.

It’s been five weeks since the NZCSC request to NIWA’s CEO, John Morgan, under the Official Information Act; it’s only two months since we published our study critical of the handling of the NZ temperature record; and it is decades since Dr Vincent Gray, Dr Warwick Hughes, Dr Jim Hessell and others started asking Dr Jim Salinger for his data and calculations.

This is tremendous news and it is to NIWA’s credit that they are releasing the data. But one comment from Renwick strikes a sour and revealing note:

Yesterday Dr Renwick said that while he had no problem releasing the Niwa data he found it insulting to be singled out when, for example, medical and Treasury researchers were not expected to disclose all of their workings. “There is a real issue of trust here. The assumption is people like myself don’t know what we are doing or we’ve got some kind of agenda just to get research funding.”

He feels insulted? He should stop whining. Any discomfort Jim Renwick feels in being compelled to hand over to the public this public data is of his and his colleagues’ own making. NIWA is being singled out only because of its sustained intransigence over many years. Continue Reading →

Visits: 343