Recruiting AR5 reviewers on ‘spoofed’ IPCC website

I’ve been sent some emails from people connected with the IPCC review process. The First Order Draft of the WGI contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis is available for Expert Review from 16 December 2011 to 10 February 2012.

The WGI Bureau invites all experts with expertise and/or publications in the specific areas covered by the WGI Report to assist in the IPCC assessment process by registering to review here.

I have to say that it’s strange that the web site for this professional organisation, which is meant to be secured by encryption certificates, isn’t set up correctly and makes Firefox think the site is being spoofed. It appears quite amateurish. Continue Reading →

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Letter to the editor

Will Tony Abbott leave Australia Legless
and Powerless in the Global Storms?

quill pen

To the Editor
Climate Conversation

22nd December 2011

Some at the big end of town are worried that Mr Abbott may keep his promise to repeal the carbon tax. No doubt they and their smart lawyers fear losing the clever green schemes that rely on ripping off tax payers, consumers and other businesses.

Australia’s wealth and jobs have always rested on three legs – mining and farming, making and processing things, and rich foreigners; in short, resources, manufacturing and money from tourists and investors.

The Gillard carbon tax will white-ant all three legs. Continue Reading →

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In a climate of listening

The Editor
NZ Listener

Dear Sir,

I was not going to bother to respond to your editorial (Listener Dec 17) forewarning us of the impending catastrophe of man-induced dangerous global warming; in any case there was no time — I have been like everyone else caught up in that state of human-induced seasonal silliness.

Today is different. All the shopping is done, all the last-minute reports completed. I am at home now in relative peace on Christmas Eve. I reach for my weekly palliative dose of intellectual fare — my Listener (dated Dec 31) has arrived. It contains two long letters beating the the same dangerous human-induced global warming drum. We are all doomed! We are destroying planet earth!!!! Spare me, I thought, it’s Christmas.

So, in the spirit of the festive season, I offer your readers the following facts:

1) There has been no global warming for 13 years despite increasing emissions of carbon dioxide.
2) The earth was warmer during the medieval warm period than it is today, long before man discovered oil!
3) The earth’s climate has always changed, both up and down, relative to the present and long before man appeared on the scene — maybe something else apart from carbon dioxide drives the earth’s temperature?
3) The only evidence now for the theory of dangerous carbon dioxide-induced global warming is the IPCC models, which assume, incorrectly it now appears, that clouds exacerbate the warming due to carbon dioxide.
4) NIWA tells us that NZ has warmed by about 0.9 °C in the last 100-odd years but they have been unable to put forward the crucial supporting evidence.

So my New Year wish to all is: relax, enjoy life, be glad and proud of what mankind has achieved. Mother nature will continue to do what she has always done, both good and bad. All we need to do is what all life on earth has done for eons: to continue to adapt and evolve. Go well.

Dr D. C. Edmeades
Managing Director
AgKnowledge Ltd
www.agknowledge.co.nz

Finalist Agribusiness Person of the Year 2011

“The only antidote to pseudo-science is science itself”
Carl Sagan

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Merry Christmas

caption

Merry Christmas to everyone

As the premier Christian celebration, rivalled only by Easter, when He died/rose from the dad – I mean, the dead (though the dad is not so far from the story!) – it lies near the centre of our religion, our culture, art, music, literature and folklore. Christmas is now understood and observed around the world. Two thousand years ago, who would have imagined it?

Christmas is an event marked not so much by stern faces, authority or rigid ritual, but by merriment. Of all things! Merry Christmas? This is how we greet one another? How wonderful!

That’s something we can join in with without having to bow down before a god or any conception of a god. Without requiring the acceptance of a creed, or supernatural event or spiritual condition or even the existence of any spiritual region, we can greet one another with merriness!! We can be merry! I shall be merry!

In this odd and unexpected rebound from the strictures of the Victorian age, when everything started out so laissez-faire, when we tossed out so many rules, we turned our backs on conventions near and far, and began, as though we were the first to discover sex, to disavow all reasons for resisting its allure, then started drugs with a similar lack of restraint, then turned with our new axe to all the rules wherever they are found, and even called ourselves post-modern, this rebound which has turned so grim, so very grim, so politically correct, so dour, so freedom-less, while the word freedom itself drips oh so regular from everyone’s lips, as we tut-tut the racial words and correct our Maori pronunciation while our English language languishes for lack of learning and we lay complaints of sexism and females are personally offended and males are routinely feared and suspected and ignored and disrespected and why don’t the men take proper care of their women first and then their own children and racial taunts are elevated now above the sexual sins of yesteryear, and never mind the affronted spouse, we don’t refer to anybody’s colour except the white, white skin of the ever-powerful, ever-present, all-knowing, ever-selfish white man, Christmas gives a little pressure release valve so we can be merry. I love you all.

The silliest day of them all

The silliest commemoration in the year is the United Nations “International Day of the World’s Indigenous People” (a day of observance but not a holiday).

Anybody thinking? Who is not indigenous to somewhere? So who would this commemoration be for? Anybody thinking? Anyone born off-planet? Anyone?

It’s the International Day of Everyone and Nobody knows it.

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Cloud watching

I am sent this snippet of correspondence that refers intriguingly to continuing research into the effect of clouds on the climate. No, I won’t say who’s speaking.

Your reference to clouds led me to the work of Prof Roger Davies, who holds the Buckley-Glavish chair in Climate Physics at Auckland U.

He is part of a global group triangulating cloud data from a dedicated satellite, and seems to be developing a view that clouds provide a natural thermostat function (which Richard Lindzen has previously speculated about).

This comes from a 2008 article “Watching the Clouds” in the science faculty magazine:

Over the past eight years of data, there has been little change in the clouds over much of the Earth. However two regions stand out as exceptions. Near the equator, where the high clouds that determine the greenhouse effect are especially numerous, the cloud cover has dropped in height, suggesting a lowering of their greenhouse effect, potentially to offset global warming.

In addition, the reflectivity of the Arctic has changed. In northern summer 2006, the reflectivity of the Arctic decreased significantly, due to less cloud cover and less ice in the area, both of which reflect sunlight. However, from the ground, only a moderate decrease in ice was seen compared to its normal summer melt. The following year, there was a significantly higher ice melt than predicted, despite the fact that satellite pictures were brighter than average, and much brighter than the previous summer, due to increased cloud.

But was the 2007 melt due to the darkness of 2006? Were the clouds of 2007 compensating for the low ice reflectivity to keep a balance? Right now, we don’t know enough to say.

Interesting, but Google shows up nothing recent. He generally seems to keep his head down.

/end snippet

Visits: 347

Global warming spreads by word of morph

Here in New Zealand, the NZ Climate Science Coalition has battled for several years to understand the national temperature record and get the data released that lies behind it. Now we battle to correct it.
 
Because NIWA, in “reconstructing” the record, manages miraculously to lower past temperatures and increase recent ones to create a spurious warming that overstates the actual national warming over the last hundred years by 168%!
 
We’ve told NIWA about it and we’ve sent them our report that proves it, but they refuse to acknowledge our finding, much less explain themselves. It is a national disgrace which our newspapers, magazines, radio stations and television channels strangely refuse to investigate.
 
The warming is truly man-made, for it hasn’t happened in the real world, it has been created only by the adjustments.
 
Now, from C3 Headlines, we learn that an even more invidious process has been going on in the United States. Continue Reading →

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Delayers today, deniers tomorrow

At Durban’s COP 17 climate conference, the EU secured a road map aiming at an international agreement by 2015, to be ratified by all parties by 2020.

Although there was much arm-waving celebration of this “extension” of the Kyoto Protocol, nobody actually believes any legally-binding replacement can be sewn up during the next decade. Some of the most important players think 2020 is too ambitious. The “delayers” include USA, Canada, Japan and Russia. Continue Reading →

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ICSC rejects notion of “climate debt”

Attention: News Editors, Political, Science and Environment Reporters

MEDIA RELEASE

International Climate Science Coalition Rejects Durban Agreement to set New Greenhouse Gas Emission Targets

No “Climate Debt” is owed to developing countries

Ottawa, Canada, December 11, 2011: “Developed nations are not guilty of causing the climate change that developing nations claim they are suffering,” said Tom Harris, executive director of ICSC which is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. “Climate changes all the time—both warming and cooling—due to natural causes and there is nothing that we can do to stop it. However, to the degree possible, and considering our economic circumstances, developed nations still have a moral obligation to devote a proportion of their foreign aid to helping the world’s most vulnerable people adapt to natural climate events.” Continue Reading →

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NZ gives in to common climate sense

A fresh breath of air just blew through the climate. New Zealand (with its buddies Australia) refuse to do more for the climate if nobody else does.

Our climate negotiator, Tim Groser, said what we’ve been telling the Nats for years: “You will not carry public opinion if the debate is ‘you are the only idiots doing anything.’”

The Nats have finally given up the world-leading role they took on climate. Hurrah, hurrah, and break out the balloons! Continue Reading →

Visits: 84

Climate treaty blatantly anti-West

This will blow your socks off.
It is not made up; the people promoting the global climate crisis promise to control the weather — but first they need to control you (actually, don’t be fooled, controlling you is their real objective and it has been since before the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was agreed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992). These people might be highly dangerous, but they are certainly patient.
In the article below, published as an “exclusive” at Cimate Depot, Lord Christopher Monckton blows the whistle on the contents of the “failed” climate treaty being put together in Durban. You won’t hear this from our proper news media — if you want to see them carry it, start writing your letters to them now.

Newspapers

This is an adopted article.

UPDATE: Lord Monckton referred me to the UNFCCC site to find the draft documents. He told me the draft he read was dated 7 December, which I guess would be this “amalgamation of draft texts“. But there are others – look under “Latest Documents” on the right-hand side. They’re changing rapidly but you might find them interesting.

Special to Climate Depot – Lord Christopher Monckton reports from UN Climate Summit

Durban: what the media are not telling you

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley in Durban, South Africa

DURBAN, South Africa — “No high hopes for Durban.” “Binding treaty unlikely.” “No deal this year.” Thus ran the headlines. The profiteering UN bureaucrats here think otherwise. Their plans to establish a world government paid for by the West on the pretext of dealing with the non-problem of “global warming” are now well in hand. As usual, the mainstream media have simply not reported what is in the draft text which the 194 states parties to the UN framework convention on climate change are being asked to approve.

Behind the scenes, throughout the year since Cancun, the now-permanent bureaucrats who have made highly-profitable careers out of what they lovingly call “the process” have been beavering away at what is now a 138-page document. Continue Reading →

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Does this destroy sceptical arguments?

This is surely too good to be true for the warmists.

In the last few days of a failing international conference, here’s a paper carrying strong confirmation of global warming. It’s not attribution, of course, but nobody will notice that. Proof of warming is enough to tweak the guilt nerve.

The Washington Post says:

The global temperature series is one of the clearest pieces of evidence that the planet is heating up. Over the past century, it’s easy to see from, say, NASA’s data that surface temperatures have risen dramatically. But there’s also a fair bit of short-term natural fluctuation from year to year, which can sometimes obscure what, exactly, is going on.

Continue Reading →

Visits: 83

Laking recycles dishonesty

It’s one thing to be misunderstood, quite another to be repeatedly misquoted.

A misunderstanding can be a mere message muddle – happens all the time – and mistakenly misquoting is minor misconduct.

But continuing to misquote someone after being told what they actually said is unforgivable. Crafting your assertions to your own ends rather than to the truth is detestable.

Children make no bones about it. They call it lying and they hate it. Continue Reading →

Visits: 867

Laking, liking words, lacking in science

It’s not possible even to keep track of the alarmist stories about climate, far less to refute them all. But when one is personally cited close to home and statements are wrongfully attributed to one, one ought to address them. This Laking/Herald howler is a case in point. Laking has taken his information from the Hot Topic side of the tracks without verification, not knowing the distortions of Renowden and friends (no matter how often corrected) and must now suffer the consequences; the formerly revered Herald similarly. My good friend Barry Brill here humorously draws our attention to the doctor’s faux pas. Regular readers will know that Richard C and Andy already mentioned the Herald article in comments on our Brash post. Thanks, guys. Apologies – one is only just getting around to it – but a refuting post will follow this. – RT

The NZ Herald runs climate alarm propaganda in every shape and size, and from every imaginable point of view. But it was scraping the barrel with its recent patronising but content-free sermon from a certain George Laking – presented on its weather page under the heading of “Epsom and climate change”.

Laking is apparently an oncologist. He transparently knows nothing whatever of meteorology, and even less about economics – and therefore relies upon a quote from an IEA economist to define the state of the science. He then buttresses his scientific bombast with other strongly-held opinions from non-scientists – the World Bank, UK Ministry of Defence, the Medical Association, and the World Health Organisation.

Each one of his sources has heard a real scientist say something, somewhere, about climate science. And they are almost sure they can remember part of what was said. But, says George, global warming isn’t about science anyhow, it’s about MORALITY!

If you want to know how morality works, ask a cancer doctor. George has seen what tobacco sellers got up to and he wouldn’t be a bit surprised if climate sellers weren’t just as bad.

And it turns out George’s medical training also left him well-versed in the need to manipulate raw data to get the result you are after. He says:

“If you take the raw temperature recordings alone (like ACT or… Richard Treadgold did), you won’t see a temperature rise. But that is because the readings have to be corrected for changes in site location, exposure, and instrumentation. Treadgold overlooked this and so ACT constructed a whole court case on the most abysmal scientific howler.”

Hmm. George obviously doesn’t read very much in pursuit of his climate hobby. He certainly doesn’t express any methodological preferences as between Salinger (1981) and RS93; or even NIWA’s 2010 review versus the audit published by the NZ Climate Science Coalition. He doesn’t even differentiate between the old 7SS and the NZT7.

Poor George seems to think Richard Treadgold is helping ACT to sue somebody in Epsom. Perhaps the teacup taper?

Does the Herald read these Op-Eds before publication, or is a burning zeal to hurl abuse at non-believers seen to be a sufficient qualification?

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