Dave Frame talks rot on climate poll


New Zealanders are more satisfied with the Government’s efforts to combat climate change than they were a year ago, but fewer than half actually rate the effort as good.

Last month’s IAG poll didn’t ask people what they might pay to fix climate change — and shame on them, for previous surveys show very low willingness. Families must be fed, so there’s little sense of climate change urgency. Thirty-one percent were more concerned about the effects of climate change on them than about any influence they might have on climate change.

Since the IPCC give no proof of a human influence on the weather, there’s no cause for concern. If you disagree, tell us why below. You’ll get no money, but you’ll enjoy the satisfaction of saying what the IPCC find impossible to say, and you’ll spread enlightenment everywhere.

The Stuff article summarises the 1000-respondent poll and I recommend you check it out for yourself. There’s no explanation of why it took a month to publish this account. Government approval ratings seem anomalously high, though it’s not clear why — give us your thoughts. Perhaps some approval spilling over from government performance on COVID-19?

IPCC — deficient climate comprehension

Top climate scientist Professor David Frame contributes thoughtless, uninformed statements that don’t conform even with the seriously deficient climate comprehension of the IPCC.

I don’t recall ever saying that he has an impressive string of degrees, but they deserve mention: BSc in Philosophy and Physics, MSc with Honours in Astronomy and Astrophysics and PhD in Physics, all from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch. He’s Director of the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute at the Victoria University of Wellington, which is a plum climate job right now. His degrees have little to do with climate science, which raises the question of how he gained knowledge of climate science — and his biographical notes at Victoria don’t mention it.

Still, he’s done a lot of hard work and impressed some top people to get where he is today. But he sure drops some clangers in this Stuff piece.

He says the poll shows New Zealanders have a “high level of climate literacy”. Look nobody’s got the time to research what happens in eighty years! It’s more likely that Kiwis are getting the propaganda message so often that it’s finally sinking in. Because there’s no indication their opinion proceeds from science. Frame says:

More than eight out of ten people correctly identified that climate change would lead to more frequent and extreme floods, wildfires, droughts, storms, water shortages, heat waves and flooding of coastal locations from sea level rise.

Zombie science

So they did, but the IPCC did not, so what does Dave mean by “climate literacy”? Both the SREX and AR5 reveal that the IPCC find no increase in frequency or intensity of extreme events. The only sign of this happening comes from unverified climate models. But, because the complex physics and chemistry problems are impossible to resolve, vital factors such as how much warming to expect from a given quantity of CO2, the temperature effects of clouds, hurricanes, and many other elements very significant for temperature but too small for the models to use, such as thunderstorms, are entered into those models by hand.

Roger Pielke Jr contributed unambiguously to our understanding of extreme events when he summarised his Senate testimony in 2013:

There is really not much more to be said here—the data says what it says, and what it says is so unavoidably obvious that the IPCC has recognized it in its consensus. Of course, I have no doubts that claims will still be made associating floods, drought, hurricanes and tornadoes with human-caused climate change—Zombie science—but I am declaring victory in this debate. Climate campaigners would do their movement a favour by getting themselves on the right side of the evidence.

I shall ask Professor Frame what authority says climate change will be disastrous — it is not the IPCC, as we’ve seen. But he goes on.

Dave reckons the poll shows high numbers of people understand the links between climate change and extreme events, especially droughts. But if people are frequently hearing that there’s a link, then when they parrot ‘climate change is worsening extreme events,’ it might sound as though they understand, when they do not. It’s perhaps significant that he is currently studying how climate change is (not whether it is) actually worsening extreme events, so he naturally puts the cart before the horse.

UN redefines climate change as man-made

Those poll responses are a result of the repetition over decades that “climate change” is evident in the weather. Ordinary people may not recognise the fact that climate is weather, they just assume that, whatever the weather, it’s “climate change” (not just climate). Remember the blatant redefinition of climate change in the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change? Eight years ago I wrote:

Climate change was defined then, and it still is, as:

a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.”

But the truth is, climate change is all natural, because there has never been proof that mankind changes it significantly. It’s an entirely reasonable proposition that we might alter the climate, because we see man-made changes on local and regional levels, but we have yet to detect it at the global scale.

When the definition says “attributed directly or indirectly to human activity,” we must bear in mind that attributing is not justifying. This egregiously misleading clause implies that the act of attribution somehow adheres to some undefined scientific process we can rely on, but it’s not, it’s just a guess. Without evidence, it must be a guess.

Without fear or favour

Dave says this is “powerful evidence that a large majority of people in New Zealand can see how climate change is manifesting itself in our lives” but it’s no such thing. It’s just as likely to be powerful evidence that a large majority of people in New Zealand follow the news. The news media have abandoned their calling to report the news “without fear or favour” and kowtow to the wishes of their owners. This is propaganda 101: control the news media.

The article cites the Australian bushfires earlier this year, noting: “New Zealand skies turned red and brown” and says they burnt through “an estimated 186,000 square kilometres, destroying 5,900 buildings, killing a billion animals and 34 people, and cost an estimated five billion New Zealand dollars.”

They want us to think the bushfires were caused by man-made “climate change”. But how does that work? Man-made climate change, says the IPCC, caused global temperatures to rise maybe 0.5°C over 60 years.

Australian experimental data show flame temperatures in bushfires range from ~300°C to ~1100°C, and it’s difficult to see how this was made possible by climate change.

Only 45% of those polled thought New Zealand’s response was on the right track. He thinks that’s high, I think that’s low. Wait till the personal cost gets near substantial, then we will start to see people’s real climatic resolve.

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11 Thoughts on “Dave Frame talks rot on climate poll

  1. Simon on 15/08/2020 at 11:26 am said:

    Who is more qualified to talk about climate change? Daved (sic) Frame or yourself?
    I choose Dave. He knows what he is talking about. There are some major inaccuracies in your above statements, all of which I have previously addressed.

    • Richard Treadgold on 15/08/2020 at 12:12 pm said:

      Simon,

      Thanks for pointing out the spelling error. Fixed.

      Your other comments are a complete cop-out. First, Frame certainly appears to be more qualified than I am, but (as I say) we don’t know how he came by any climate expertise. He knows what he is talking about? Some of the time, perhaps, but some errors are obvious. It’s clear that he merely assumes knowledge lies behind the poll responses, where it could easily be belief based on propaganda. Also, to be unaware the IPCC has NOT CONCLUDED extreme events show a rising trend displays rank ignorance, his reliance on projections of climate models betrays a slackness in examining their shortcomings (or those of science, such as the sign of cloud response to temperature and temperature effects of small-scale events like thunderstorms) and, with every other public climate scientist in the country, his failure to correct the extreme predictions of climate activists (a climate crisis??!!) confirms his agenda and his shame. I quite understand why you haven’t mentioned these points, but maybe you’ve spotted something else. I cannot endorse or refute what else you say about the post, because I don’t know what you’re talking about. Kindly specify what’s wrong.

  2. Gwan on 16/08/2020 at 6:03 pm said:

    The definition of a useful idiot =Simon
    The weather is not getting worse if any thing it is becoming milder .
    The sea around the New Zealand coast is rising at the same rate that it was first measured .No acceleration.
    1.5 mm per year which is by the year 2100 1,5 x 80 =120 mm 12 centimeters or less than 5 inches in 80 years .
    Useful idiots like Simon want to destroy New Zealands economy in the vain quest to save the world from a very small increase in temperature if any .
    The report on New Zealands response to global warming just released is so full of errors and it is not worth the paper that it is written on .
    It states that 35% of our emissions are from agriculture which is pure fantasy as they are calculating enteric methane from livestock , multiplying it by some insane figure between 20 to 80 times CO2 equivalent.
    Methane from livestock should never be counted as an emission as all fodder consumed by livestock has absorbed CO2 from the air and the very small amount of methane emitted is broken down in the upper atmosphere in a very short time into CO2 and water vapour .
    Not one atom of carbon or molecule containing carbon is added to the atmosphere over any time frame .
    The process is a cycle .
    The next ridiculous statement that I read was that a lot of mature forestry had been cut down in the last 5 years and although the vast majority of the logs were exported ,all the carbon contained in the logs are counted towards New Zealands emissions .
    The same applies to growing trees as methane from livestock ,the process is a cycle and not one additional molecule of CO2 is added to the atmosphere over any time frame .
    What is wrong with these people ?
    The unproven theory of climate change is that mankind is extracting and combusting fossil fuel that has been locked up beneath the earths surface for thousands of years .
    It is a well known fact that the doubling of CO2 from 280ppm to 560 ppm will only raise the temperature of the earth by Point six of one degree Celsius .6C.
    The effect of CO2 is logarithmic so that means that we should only expect half of the warming that we have seen since 1900 till now about .4 C { 280 ppm to 410 ppm } .
    As CO2 increases from 410 ppm to 560 ppm .2 C. will be the very minor effect on world temperatures.
    Any increased warming above that level will have to be caused by positive water vapour feedback and the tropical hotspot both have never been found at this time .
    There is nothing to worry about increasing CO2 levels
    Graham

  3. Andrew on 17/08/2020 at 9:43 am said:

    Graham – you say: “The sea around the New Zealand coast is rising at the same rate that it was first measured .No acceleration. 1.5 mm per year…..” 1.5mm would have to be within margin for error surely – how can it be measured so accurately? For the sea to rise around NZ it would also have to rise at the same corresponding amount around Britain as all oceans are connected (this assumes air pressure is exactly the same for the entire sea/ocean network for the purpose of this comment). How do we know the sea is rising and not as a result of eg a large high pressure system sitting over the middle of the Pacific which due to physics, the sea on outside of the system would rise naturally (& fall when the system dissipated). Has anyone ever been able to accurately calculate the effects of a high air pressure system on sea-levels? I struggle with how one can accurately measure such small rises when so many natural influences are at play.
    Can I add to your comment “livestock has absorbed CO2 from the air……” that ruminants do much more than remove CO2 from the air, they eat GREEN grass and for that grass to be green it has to have absorbed bucket loads of CO2. It has always been a mystery to me why pasture was never included in the calculations of the Zero carbon bill. Also, in my questions to various politicians that ruminants are in fact very good converters of CO2 to food – & when I raise it with the Greens all I got was a blank look! (never mind the bill should never have been introduced in the first place!)
    Andrew

    • Cambridgedon on 24/08/2020 at 2:43 pm said:

      The blank look? They didn’t believe you didn’t know the immediate problem with ruminants is methane, CH4, which is a much more powerful GHG than CO2. In round figures 80X over 30 years or 30X over 100.

      However. Fugitive methane from the oil company activities, including fracking, is of far greater concern for the world. Trump is trying hard to make it worse, but he is a “fucking moron” according to his former secretary of state, Rex Tillerson.

      And please note water vapour is not a forcing. It follows temperature and precipitates out in 10 days.

    • Rick on 27/08/2020 at 5:11 am said:

      “…the immediate problem with ruminants is methane, CH4, which is a much more powerful GHG than CO2. In round figures 80X over 30 years or 30X over 100….”

      This looks like baseless climate doomsday-cult propaganda to me, Cambridgedon. Where is your scientific proof of these dogmatic assertions? You haven’t shown it to us.

      “Fugitive methane from the oil company activities, including fracking, is of far greater concern for the world.”

      How so? You still haven’t given us any objective scientific reasons to believe that methane from any source is of any concern for the world at all.

      “Trump is trying hard to make it worse,…”

      How do you know what Trump is trying to do? Have you heard him say that he is ‘trying to make it worse’? Or do you have mind-reading superpowers, perhaps?

      “And please note water vapour is not a forcing.”

      Who said that it is one? Aren’t you raising a Straw Man with this?

      “It follows temperature and precipitates out in 10 days.”

      So you say, but where is the proof?

  4. Cambridgedon on 24/08/2020 at 2:30 pm said:

    The oil companies no longer deny burning fossil fuels is causing global warming thus climate change.

    Weather is the climate system moving energy around. More energy means worse weather.

    The insurance companies are planning accordingly.

    Scott Morrison ignored the scientists and went on holiday; Australia paid a high price for his climate denial.

    Science progresses. The IPCC report out next year will make it harder for cranks to deny what is obvious even to wildlife, or as we used to call them, dumb animals.

  5. Andrew on 25/08/2020 at 9:30 am said:

    You may very well be correct that the assumed power of CH4 is greater than CO2, however the “experts” tell us CH4 only lasts 10years in the atmosphere so your point about how powerful CH4 is over 30years is irrelevant!

    When I went to Uni (admittedly a long time ago) we were taught the carbon cycle which shows the breakdown of CH4 to CO2 & H2O so the gas is essentially recycled – so is less accumulative in the atmosphere than CO2, besides any left overs are burnt up in a thunder / lightning storm!! At <2ppm I don’t think we should be too worried about methane, idiot politicians are more dangerous!

    There are plenty of daily weather forecasts, & we see the role that water (as rain), humidity and clouds play on temperature, the weather and the effects thereof. CO2, CH4 and N2O have little impact on daily, weekly and yearly weather and I have read plenty of scientific evidence that suggests the radiative impact of those three trace gases is negligible by comparison with the radiative effect of water vapour!

    Aussie bush fires have been an annual event for a very long time, it is only recently that they have become more newsworthy as people migrate to the country & become at greater risk! Like with most things, if the bureaucrats had done their job properly & managed the clearing of fire fuels (grasses) properly many of these fires would not have been so widespread, never mind the pyromaniacs – much like the Port hills fire a few years ago! not a lot to do with climate change, more bureaucratic miss-management!

  6. Gwan on 25/08/2020 at 11:33 am said:

    Well said Andrew
    This Cambrigedon is another useful idiot for the global warming scam.
    What he dosent want to see is that he has been fed a load of rubbish .
    Methane from livestock is a cycle that will never in a thousand years raise the amount of methane in the atmosphere .
    Why should live stock get the blame for rising methane levels ?
    I can tell you why .
    Activists decided that they wanted to destroy livestock farming and cripple countries like New Zealand that has the lowest GHG profile of any country on exported food to the world .
    Enteric methane is a closed cycle the same as a filter pump on a swimming pool nothing is added to raise the level in the pool just the same as the atmospheric methane level cannot be raised by enteric methane emissions .
    Talk about dumb !
    Australia has had bush fires since before Captain Cook sailed passed and there were very bad bush fires back in the 1930s when it was just as warm as present but a lot less CO2 .
    It makes no sense to vilify livestock and then moan about wild fires .
    You will never get grass fires on well farmed land .
    All the latest fires in Nelson and the Port Hills were in poorly farmed land with rank dry grass, gorse and dry scrub with some pine trees .
    Talk about a dumb animal Cam !
    Proud to be farming and feeding the world .
    Graham

    • Mack on 25/08/2020 at 4:37 pm said:

      The fire in Nelson was started by a farmer in Wakefield, who got out and started to do some disking, behind a tractor, at the height of summer when the grass was tinder dry and there was the huge pine plantation on the hills just next to his property. Of course, one of the disks hit a stone causing the spark which ignited a grass fire which the wind blew rapidly across the field to the pine trees.
      So definitely anthropogenic, … there are some knuckle-draggers among us.

  7. Mack on 25/08/2020 at 6:04 pm said:

    “Scott Morrison ignored the scientists and went on holiday, Australia paid a high price for his climate denial”

    The fires in Australia started way too soon for them to be caused by natural means. Australia was ablaze all over the place well before the fire season commenced.
    So if looney “climate change” believers are prepared to glue themselves to the street to gain attention ; they would certainly commit arson to justify to others, their delusion that “climate change” driven thermal Armageddon was imminent.
    This Koolaid saturated climate clown, Cambridgedon is unhinged enough to blame Scott Morrison for Australia’s “high price”.

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