Simple test shows sulphates not cooling

There is no statistically significant warming trend since November of 1996 in monthly surface temperature records compiled at the University of East Anglia. Do we now understand why there’s been no change in fourteen and a half years?

Well, yes, because “blame” for this interruption in warming has been placed on sulphates emitted by China’s power stations zealously burning coal. Hasn’t it?

Has this hypothesis been tested? No. Can it be tested? Yes.

Most of the aerosols are in the northern hemisphere, and there’s little mixing of air between the hemispheres. Reason tells us that the northern hemisphere should be cooling and the southern hemisphere should be warming.

Well, go on, this is the big test, look it up. Continue Reading →

Visits: 56

Renowden misdirects in a septic meander

misdirection

de Freitas feeds his students sceptic propaganda …

So says the radical Renowden, he of the non-sceptical “believe everything they say” warmist persuasion. But read what he says about Chris de Freitas’ crimes and you’ll realise he says nothing, because no crimes exist.

Gareth Renowden is himself guilty of attempting to abridge the academic freedom to study and teach inconvenient facts.

It’s all arm-waving, and Renowden cites nothing in the Geography 101 course that’s untrue. He says many unkind things about the graphs and their provenance, but he never says they’re wrong, and that’s a strange thing to forget, which means he didn’t forget it — he omitted it, because they’re not wrong. Continue Reading →

Visits: 94

de Freitas on solid ground

what is weather

(h/t Bob D for most of the references)

Journalist Chris Barton has a story in yesterday’s Herald titled The climate dissenter holds his ground. After looking at Barton’s alarmist arguments I’ll stand with Chris de Freitas on the solid ground.

The story begins with the implication (not that the journalist says it this plainly) that, even with the planet battling weather extremes, that is not enough to convince an Auckland climate scientist (Associate Professor Chris de Freitas, at the University of Auckland) of the truth of human-induced global warming. We’re supposed to feel exasperation: “What will it take to get that man to see sense?”

But Barton is dead wrong. For why should “extreme” weather be an indication of man-made global warming? How could we get more extreme weather out of global warming? Continue Reading →

Visits: 132

Monckton may visit New Zealand

[UPDATE Sun 17 July 2011 16:05 NZT] An announcement is expected soon from the organisers and I’ve been given no reason for pessimism. Let’s hope this is the news we’ve been waiting for.

[UPDATE Sat 16 July 2011 21:05 NZT] There has been good progress and everyone’s optimistic that we will see Lord M in the country. However, it’s not quite a done deal yet, so keep your fingers crossed.

[UPDATE Sat 16 July 2011 12:40 NZT] This post was removed for a while at the request of the organisers while they confirmed funding. It’s still unclear to me whether funding is secure, although the probability seems high that it is. The Dominion Post has published a piece on it and got feedback from James Renwick, who was at first keen on a debate. There’s a lot of interest in getting Monckton over here.

Lord Christopher Monckton

Plans are afoot to bring Christopher Monckton to New Zealand on 4th–7th August, though details are sketchy and sponsors unconfirmed.

Groups known to support his visit include the Climate Realists Network, Investigate Magazine, the NZ Climate Science Coalition and of course us here at the Climate Conversation. Continue Reading →

Visits: 91

Species decline or scaremongering?

tiger in the snow

A study from the University of Exeter on species decline declares “climate change warnings not exaggerated.”

However the press release leaves one singularly unimpressed with the raw activism of the lead researcher, who says: “It is time to stop using the uncertainties as an excuse for not acting. We need to act now to prevent threatened species from becoming extinct. This means cutting carbon emissions.” Continue Reading →

Visits: 116

Climate science learns more — not settled at all

sky, location of climate

Yesterday I saw the headline: Climate change reducing ocean’s carbon dioxide uptake. If they mean the temperature’s been rising, I thought, these guys need a lesson in 1) recent, 15-year-long atmospheric temperature non-rise and 2) the gas laws, or specifically, Henry’s Law.

Henry’s Law states that the solubility of a gas in a liquid at a particular temperature is proportional to the pressure of that gas above the liquid. If the temperature of the liquid rises, it can’t hold so much gas, so some will leave (“outgas”). It hardly requires a paper based on 28 years of observations to confirm this. Continue Reading →

Visits: 170

Letter to the editor

Carbon Tax Mk IV flimsy, cancerous

quill pen

To the Editor
Climate Conversation
10th July 2011

Carbon Tax Mark 4 is flimsy but dangerous.

Because of public opposition to a new tax on everything, the tax has been gutted. The PM hopes to buy public support by giving exemptions to almost everyone and offering widespread bribes to voters. It is now feeble and ineffective.

But the Green-Gillard coalition is desperate and such people cannot be trusted. They will say or promise anything in order to get this new tax introduced.

Once on the law books, the exemptions will be whittled away, the tax rate will increase and the tax bribes will disappear. It is a stealthy cancer in the gut of the Australian economy.

The cost of electricity, food, fuel and travel will increase, but few people will recognise the root cause. Politicians will blame “Woolworths, power suppliers and Big Oil” for the pain.

This new stealth tax is the thin edge of the wedge.

It will have no effect on the climate, but is a fiscal weapon too dangerous to be left in the hands of green extremists.

Letting Bob Brown loose with the vast powers of a carbon tax is like leaving the grandkids alone in the hayshed with a box of matches.

“Abolish the Stealth Tax” will be the next election slogan.

Viv Forbes

Visits: 79

Failure comprehensive, swift, humiliating

Global Warming Hysteria: Gore’s Profound Failure of Leadership

First published in www.firstthings.com
Sunday, June 26, 2011
by Wesley J. Smith

Ouch. A notable political scientist (and believer in global warming, at least in the general sense) has mounted a powerful critique of the disastrous political leadership on the issue by Al Gore. From “The Failure of Gore, Part 1″ by Walter Russell Mead in his blog at The American Interest:

Gore has the Midas touch in reverse; objects of great value (Nobel prizes, Oscars) turn dull and leaden at his touch. Few celebrity cause leaders have had more or better publicity than Gore has had for his climate advocacy. Hailed by the world press, lionized by the entertainment community and the Global Assemblage of the Great and the Good as incarnated in the Nobel Peace Prize committee, he has nevertheless seen the movement he led flounder from one inglorious defeat to the next. The most recent, failed global climate meeting passed almost unnoticed last week in Bonn; the world has turned its eyes away from the expiring anguish of the Copenhagen agenda.

Newspapers

This is an adopted article.

The state of the global green movement is shambolic. Continue Reading →

Visits: 43

UN climate policy now dangerous

chimneys pouring out smoke

Several people drew my attention to James Delingpole’s attack on the UN economic and social survey. Examine the report for yourself — scratch its toxic socialist surface — and you’ll easily discover that its policy prescriptions, rather than being proposals for voluntary action suggested in all humility for our best welfare, are destined to become mankind’s inescapable future if the UN is permitted to continue its relentless pursuit of world domination, and our opinion will be neither considered significant nor requested.

World Economic and Social Survey 2011

This is a report from the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations (DESA) dedicated to something they call “The Great Green Technological Transformation.”

The authors a) cannot conceal their sense of self-importance in their chosen role of directing the rest of us and b) reveal their intention to specify policy while maintaining the public fiction that they don’t. Continue Reading →

Visits: 59

UN has a mission

UN logo

They want to rule us not love us

On the United Nations’ web site a brief description of the General Assembly includes the statement:

The General Assembly is not a world government — its resolutions are not legally binding upon Member States.

That’s reassuring, because everyone appreciates their own country’s ability to make decisions about matters that affect them. Nobody likes strangers telling them what to do, what to have, what to avoid or what to endure.

But there’s next a “but” which bears the thin end of a very important wedge. Continue Reading →

Visits: 34

‘Clueless’ cries the credulous truffle grubber

Don Brash

But Brash simply reflects reality

A post today at Hot Topic gets really stuck in to Don Brash. Don gave a speech today to the Federated Farmers annual conference. He mentioned the ETS, which exists because of a belief in the dangerous global warming created by the actions of humanity, which Don and many others disbelieve.

Therefore Gareth Renowden, the dynamic self-starter who runs the Hot Topic blog (named after the book he wrote — guess what that’s about?), which exists to sell more copies of his book, so he’s never going to admit he’s wrong about the climate (yes, he has a strong vested interest in this “discussion”), couldn’t let it go without having his say. Thing is, he vilifies more than he informs.

Don wondered aloud (in his speech to the farmers) why we have an ETS. He had to admit (answering himself) that he knows of no good reason at all. I agree we’ve been given no good reason. Continue Reading →

Visits: 477

Arctic ice definitely melting

iceberg melting

From the Washington Post

Associated Press

The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulafft, at Bergen, Norway.

Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone.

Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 metres showed the Gulf Stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared.

Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.

Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.

 


Continue Reading →

Visits: 82

Ooh! Real blog wars

Hah! Gareth’s upset about the Alexa rankings I’ve started publishing in the sidebar.

He gets going in a scholarly way and lengthily, but listen:

Treadgold’s Climate Conversation blog ranks at around 500,000. By way of comparison, David Farrar’s Kiwiblog.co.nz is ranked #68,226 in the world (#88 in NZ). Climate Conversation is so far down in Alexa’s long tail that the Alexa rank Treadgold is keen to trumpet is effectively meaningless.

What he fails to mention is that we’re not so far down Alexa’s long tail as he is. Where is Hot Topic ranked by Alexa? Anywhere meaningful? Continue Reading →

Visits: 91

Czech Republic steadfast against the carbon madness

Prague Castle

The Czech Republic, led by courageous President Vaclav Klaus, resists the latest European efforts to deepen the climate crisis. For the crisis is man-made, just as it is in New Zealand, consisting entirely of increasing the financial pressure on families and depriving them of modern conveniences in order to “save” the world’s climate, using expensive mechanisms that can’t affect the climate. Even though the climate continues to regulate itself within ancient, well-known thresholds entirely suitable for life. Continue Reading →

Visits: 63

First icebergs, now penguins

Emperor penguin on Pekapeka Beach.

Oh, it’s cooling all right

It’s got so cold here that penguins are arriving.

A penguin's journey

The NZ Herald has some great shots of Mr Emperor on the beach, taking in the sights and getting used to the adulation.

On the Google Earth clip at right you can see the shortest possible track he could have swum in reaching us from the nearest part of the Antarctic coast. It measures a mind-bending 3300 kilometres. Of course, it’s beyond question that he would have travelled far more than that, because of ocean currents.

Nice to see him here, but I hope he goes on his way soon, because there’s not much future for his kind in New Zealand. We’re not cooling that much.

Visits: 67

NZ blog rankings

Alexa rulz!

Just a quick note to draw your attention to a new feature on the sidebar: scroll down one page and you should see it. There’s a little table showing the recent Alexa rankings for the Climate Conversation, SciBlogs and Hot Topic. At the moment we’re leading them by big margins.

It’s not automated, just a table I’ll fill in when I remember.

My wife and son just accused me of boasting, and I suppose to some degree I am boasting. However, it’s humbling to see that this modest little blog is more popular and thousands more people visit it than other, brasher sites around the country that even get into the newspapers.

I’m content to boast a little if it means that more ordinary Kiwis hear about us and get the opportunity to participate in a calm, polite and informative conversation about “the biggest challenge facing humanity today.”

This is a bit of bragging I won’t apologise for and the mainstream media can go hang. Notice we’ve just gone under 1000, which means we’re one of the thousand most popular sites in the country. Course, it could change tomorrow!

Visits: 55

Now sea levels are rising fast

Rash of news alerts

From News.Scotsman.com comes worrying information of rapid sea level rise.

Global warming is causing sea levels to rise at a faster rate today than at any time in the past 2,100 years, according to new research.

Scientists used the fossils left by tiny marine animals to record two millennia of sea levels along the US Atlantic coast.

Some inspired comments

In the most detailed look yet at sea level change, scientists on Monday reported that waters along the East Coast have risen far faster over the past century than at any time in the previous 2000 years. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

20th-Century sea-level rise on the U.S. Atlantic coast is faster than at any time in the past two millennia. [Real Climate]

The research confirms what has often been assumed, that there’s a very strong link between sea levels and temperatures. More worryingly, it also seems to confirm just how uniquely pronounced the current climate change really is. [io9]

Visits: 35

Wool gets in the eyes

wool over eyes

Royal Society banner

With the Royal Society smoke ‘n’ sea level rise

Last September, the Royal Society published a report entitled “SEA LEVEL RISE Emerging Issues”, available as a pdf (645 KB). In the accompanying press release they had this to say:

Professor Keith Hunter, the Society’s Vice President of Physical Sciences, who contributed to the paper, says researchers are starting to be able to estimate the amount of rise that we should expect to see over this century and beyond. But he says these projections of future sea level rise depend upon the future melting of ice sheets, which is poorly known.

“The uncertain knowledge about ice sheet behaviour is the key reason why IPCC projections in 2007 did not state upper bounds for sea level rise. Similarly, Ministry for the Environment guidance in 2008 wisely left open the question of any upper limit on sea level rise.”

The paper states that some early scientific work into the effect of a warming climate on ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica suggested that many metres of sea level rise could occur within a century. However, it says few scientists now consider that such rates are possible.

What do we learn from this?

We learn that we can’t guess future sea level rise, since we can’t guess future ice sheet melting; our mates at the UN and the MfE won’t touch it, and our first guess was several metres but now only the cranks go that far.

The press release expresses complete ignorance on future sea level rise. Great. So we also learn that scientists can make complete ignorance appear very interesting. Continue Reading →

Visits: 125

All the trusting children of the world

lots of children

1.2 billion screaming babies

Scientific American, under the title Doctors Prepare to Explain and Treat Climate-Related Symptoms, discusses the role of medical practitioners in supporting public health measures. Measures which may, it says, legitimately involve them in activism, if they truly care about public health. Fair enough.

Note the reference in the title to preparing for the future. But in the sub-heading Climate change is beginning to impact public health, the view shifts. Suddenly we’re talking about the present. However, our not-so-Scientific American has overlooked the evidence.

For there’s been no global warming for about 15 years.

I found out how many babies have been born during the last 15 years. It’s staggering — over 1.2 billion. That’s a lot of nocturnal screaming. Continue Reading →

Visits: 134

Oh, IPCC, how dare thee?

Perhaps it was simply poor management. Although it would still be grounds to disband the whole dysfunctional team.

Mark Lynas, of all people (for he’s a confirmed believer in man-made warming), writes an excellent article on the ramifications of one Sven Teske, an IPCC lead author and also, by-the-by, a lead author for Greenpeace, using his elevated position on the UN body to get world exposure for his Greenpeace activism.

In applauding Steve McIntyre’s discovery of the latest embarrassment from the IPCC, Mark comments: “McIntyre and I have formed an unlikely double-act.” He’s got that right.

Steve concludes:

The public and policy-makers are starving for independent and authoritative analysis of precisely how much weight can be placed on renewables in the energy future. It expects more from IPCC WG3 than a karaoke version of [a] Greenpeace scenario.

I concur.

Visits: 53

We’ve moved

A hard disk drive

WordShine moving tomorrow today

Saturday 14:50: Done. Whew!

After spending two days studying the database material I last looked at about six years ago, altering files, moving files and creating and deleting databases, I’ve finally managed to migrate the WordPress installation without breaking it.

Hurrah! This calls for a celebration!

I’m sorry for the interruption to normal service, and I’ve missed you all! But the advantages of moving to the new hosting company include accommodating all the conversations you could ever want to have, even inviting the rest of the world! And if more disk space is needed, it’s fantastically cheap to add it.

Please tell me of glitches

I should ask you (please) to let me know if you come across errors or anomalies on the blog, because I can’t be everywhere.

Thursday 21:56: Still waiting.

I love it that computer equipment is getting cheaper by the month and competition makes the leading entrepreneurs more creative in attracting customers. Because after being hit with an extraordinary invoice for over $2000 for next year’s hosting, I knew I must change web hosts.

That’s when I discovered how inexpensive web hosting has become!

Annual hosting of the Climate Conversation Group (plus WordShine itself) will cost less than half what it did last year. At the same time, we get unlimited bandwidth! Instead of biting my fingernails as the bandwidth rose inexorably and the end of the month approached, I can forget paying for extra bandwidth and concentrate on research and writing. Continue Reading →

Visits: 57

Slowing Sun = cooling Earth

Science story of century

Mini Ice Age on way?

Strange happenings in the sun

End of global warming?

At WUWT Anthony Watts announces: The American Astronomical Society meeting in Los Cruces, New Mexico, has just made a major announcement on the state of the sun. Sunspots may be on the way out and an extended solar minimum may be on the horizon.

“This is highly unusual and unexpected,” Dr. Frank Hill, associate director of the NSO’s Solar Synoptic Network, said of the results. “But the fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation.”

Spot numbers and other solar activity rise and fall about every 11 years, which is half of the Sun’s 22-year magnetic interval since the Sun’s magnetic poles reverse with each cycle. An immediate question is whether this slowdown presages a second Maunder Minimum, a 70-year period with virtually no sunspots during 1645-1715.

“We expected to see the start of the zonal flow for Cycle 25 by now,” Hill explained, “but we see no sign of it. This indicates that the start of Cycle 25 may be delayed to 2021 or 2022, or may not happen at all.”

All three of these lines of research to point to the familiar sunspot cycle shutting down for a while.

“If we are right,” Hill concluded, “this could be the last solar maximum we’ll see for a few decades. That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth’s climate.”

h/t Andy Scrase.

Visits: 394

Off-line again, sorry

The doctors wanted to give me a life-saving procedure in the hospital tomorrow (Monday) and I decided to let them. Hope to be home again on Tuesday.

Please don’t worry, I’ll be fine — I’ve done this before. I think the surgeons have, too.

UPDATE 14 JUNE

I’m back with more health than before.

The kind thoughts you wrote here gently overspoke my fears of what could be and my heart lightened.

You didn’t have to do that — thank you.

Visits: 55

Contrary climate voices grow in confidence

Obsession with climate change ‘damaging Britain’

The Government’s highly damaging decarbonisation policy, enshrined in the absurd Climate Change Act, does not have a leg to stand on. It is intended, at massive cost, to be symbolic: To make good David Cameron’s ambition to make his administration “the greenest government ever”.

So says Lord Lawson, respected former Chancellor under Margaret Thatcher, in a scathing attack in the Daily Mail against Prime Minister David Cameron’s energy policy. Continue Reading →

Visits: 68

Bogus profits from solar power axed

solar panels on a house

UK solar industry feels chill

Complaints are purpling the British air after the government announced drastic cuts in formerly cosy subsidies for solar panels.

The Government’s decision to cut subsidies for solar energy to all but the smallest projects will threaten investment and job creation in the alternative energy sector, environmental and industry groups warned yesterday.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said the change to feed-in tariffs would maintain funding for households to put up panels by diverting them from larger projects.

So-called feed-in tariffs provide an operator with a guaranteed price for surplus power sold (or “fed in”) to the national grid. The subsidy is all that makes the expensive solar panel technology profitable. Continue Reading →

Visits: 444

Guess, meet fact

Clive Best IPCC comparison

Several readers, among them the evergreen Mike Jowsey (thanks, Mike!) have drawn my attention to Clive Best’s simple yet remarkable post from yesterday. It brings together in a most accessible way the early IPCC forecasts (or “scenarios”, actually — they were never predictions) and the latest observations of global temperature.

So, after 20 years, how well have the consensus scientists done in forecasting the climate? It could be said the results are patchy. Continue Reading →

Visits: 214

Methane, m’thane: methinks it stinks

The methane molecule

In July last year, and after more than a year’s absence, NIWA got around to publishing another issue of their “flagship” publication, Water & Atmosphere. It’s an attractive magazine, but it contains some curious information which deserves comment.

First, we notice a helpful comment by NIWA Chief Executive, John Morgan:

NIWA has a responsibility as a Crown Research Institute to share the results of publicly-funded science.

Hmm. Morgan should compare that statement with the conclusion of the methane article in the same issue:

if any real solution [to agricultural emissions] is on the horizon it’s likely to be a closely kept secret.

The article has some gems:

methane levels have grown by 150 per cent since organised animal farming began in the early 1700s.

They tell us methane’s a problem

Was farming disorganised until the 18th century? That’s not what the history books say. Continue Reading →

Visits: 233

Global warming not for Kiwis

thermal pools

Countless people

  • told us we’ve been warming
  • warmed up to the warming
  • watch the warming
  • guard against the warming

But…

But there’s been no warming — and NIWA’s graphs prove it. Not only that, but NIWA’s chief climate scientist says firmly that there’s little warming on the way.

So why is there now a giant bureaucracy in Wellington dedicated to “fighting” the warming? Why, in the 2008-09 financial year alone, have government contracts to research climate change been let worth over $2,700,000?

Claims of harm to New Zealand from future global warming have been made for a long time. Here are just a few to remind ourselves what we’ve been listening to for about 20 years. Continue Reading →

Visits: 98

Truth about climate is winning

We often wonder about the prevailing mood in the population towards our favourite subject. What do people really think about global warming?

Opinion polls are the only credible way of determining this, of course, so we tend to examine them for signs. Sometimes, we make do with small samples and apocryphal stories impossible to verify. Here’s one of those.

A member of the NZ Climate Science Coalition gave this concise description of a silly television story a while back:

And this morning’s TV One Breakfast Session showed a photo of a polar bear cub on its mother’s back because there is now so little polar ice that they have to ride on mummy’s back since they cannot swim – all because of global warming – and the item came from the WWF, who are a trusted outfit with authority on the subject……… Yeah , Right !! This was dwelt on a couple of times as a heart-wrenching thingy showing how serious global warming is. TV1 has a large audience. Unfortunately, political decisions are based on what the great unwashed voting public want, not on unpopular facts or logic. The latter does not win elections. As we are all painfully aware, the “silly” side is what sells newspapers and TV time – and attracts funding.

A member of the NZ Climate Science Coalition, addressing another member on a silly polar bear item aired on TV1, said this earlier: Continue Reading →

Visits: 30

Open question for the NZ Herald

Editorial writers – please glance over here

I have a question.

The aftermath of United Nations climate change summits is becoming depressingly familiar.

With these words last December 14, the New Zealand Herald editorial writer signalled his slant. It’s a bias towards the official line on global warming. The Herald joins the chorus of activists baying for Western compensation for the third world to answer the allegations of “injury by climate”.

According to this view, every other good and time-honoured cause for foreign aid is eclipsed by this one: that the effects of global warming will be — even are already — too onerous for emerging nations to bear, therefore we must stop doing what has created our wealth and, on top of that, pay heavy fines for many years to come, perhaps forever — they haven’t told us when to stop.

There must be a reason for this.

What is it?

Visits: 19

Perspective, raw and bleeding

Alexa NZ rankings

The best in New Zealand is no. 1. All others fall into line astern according to their number. So far, we at the Climate Conversation are proud of our standing. However, should this ranking fall, we will still be proud of our standing.

Latest rankings – 21 June, 2011

(The closer the number is to 1, the more popular the site.)

Climate Conversation – 928    SciBlogs1879    Hot Topic3478    Open Parachute3602

This is a dose of reality. Has the warmist bluster lost its lustre?

20 June, 2011 — CCG 989;           SB ;           HT 4204;           OP
14 June, 2011 — CCG 1021;           SB 1709;           HT 4142;           OP 4988
12 June, 2011 — CCG 1038;           SB 1611;           HT 4398;           OP 6013
9 June, 2011 — CCG 1045;           SB 1584;           HT 4122;           OP 7113
8 June, 2011 — CCG 1100;           SB 1541;           HT 4113;           OP 6504

Visits: 68

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

Listener lambasted concerning climate claims

An excellent sceptical letter sent to the NZ Listener on 14 May and copied today to Climate Conversation.

Rupert Wyndham in New Zealand

To the Editor
NZ Listener

quill pen

14th May 2011

Dear Ms. Stirling,

I am a visitor to New Zealand, and only yesterday had sight of your 14 May edition of the New Zealand Listener with its entertainingly fanciful lead story, accompanied by appropriately lurid graphics.

Since this is a topic which raises much controversy, let me try and see if I can encapsulate in a few lines what it is that you would wish your readers to believe. You propose, it would seem, that marginal increases in the concentrations of what is no more than a trace gas, amounting in total not to 10% of the earth’s atmosphere, not even to 5% — nay, not even to 1%, can bring about cataclysmic changes in global climate.

So, what exactly is the percentage concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere? Why, to be sure, it is a gasping, asphyxiating 1/27th part of a single percentage point. But even that’s not the complete picture, is it? After all, as someone (such as you) who has addressed the data for herself will know, even human-induced climate change proselytisers acknowledge that, by itself, the radiative potential of CO2 (vanishingly small anyway) fails to account for the “scenarios” promoted by them and by unquestioning and compliant organs of the media — such, indeed, as The New Zealand Listener.

So, to get over this little inconvenience, what should be done? Continue Reading →

Visits: 136

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 →

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Rachel recycles climate con

The Taranaki Daily News two days ago published a polemic notable more for its rancour than its precision regarding climatic facts.

It’s a good example of one-eyed thinking, skewed views and perfectly furious ad hominem attacks — all teeth and talons and only the hissing missing.

Rachel Stewart

Written by the doubtless-locally-renowned scribe Rachel Stewart, it strikes some of the sourest notes I’ve come across in the climate debate since finding Hot Topic. But her thunderous venom simply accents her foolhardy logic. She wears a filthy expression in the accompanying photo. Did someone steal her favourite cuddly toy? It would certainly explain the spleen.

With a headline recalling Gore’s thoroughly discredited film “An inconvenient truth”, you’d think the article was about global warming. But it quickly becomes clear that Miss Stewart has it in for farming itself, not just its emissions. Don’t know how she thinks we’ll eat. Or, in this country, import buses or computers.

Last refuge of the defeated

She repeats lies about Bob Carter and the alleged funding of his opinions, as though that’s all that produces his opinions, but I would like to point out some of the fraudulent assertions she repeats about global warming. I like Bob and I could listen to him all day, but he would himself agree that his personal reputation, though valuable, is meaningless beside the lies being told about climate science. They are my target. Continue Reading →

Visits: 122

The Economist adds earth-moving

History of CO2 and temperature

First sins of emission, now earth-moving

Here’s an amazing story from the Economist of 26 May. Why is it amazing? Three reasons. It casually and thoughtlessly swallows the IPCC global warming myth. Then it becomes an unquestioning advocate for that fatally tarnished, scientifically indefensible, “moral” crusade. Finally, for an extra spiciness I have never seen, it conflates our invisible sins of emission with the newborn sin of (may God protect us) earth-moving, to present a hideous picture of our terrestrial depravity.

Earth-moving? Yes, that’s right. Terrible, isn’t it? Of all the wicked things we do! Continue Reading →

Visits: 77

Briefly in hospital

I’m having tests for the good of my health and regrettably cannot contribute as usual. North Shore Hospital doesn’t provide public Internet access and I don’t have the right gear to connect the laptop to the phone.

I’m obliged to type this on a teensy keyboard little larger than a postage stamp, which makes contributing wearisome.

My apologies, therefore, for a seeming absence. Be assured I am here in both body and spirit, carrying a watching brief with the doctors briefly watching.

Visits: 49

Lindzen dismisses Hansen’s defamations

Tobacco/cancer comment mere malicious slur

Answers his critic as a true gentleman

See UPDATE below

I was disturbed about the comments I posted last night from a member of ‘Slick’ Hansen’s audience in Massey the previous evening. In an astonishing, unprovoked outburst, Hansen suddenly turned on the absent Dr Dick Lindzen, besmirching his character with outright lies. After trying to verify Hansen’s claim that Dr Lindzen doesn’t believe smoking causes cancer, I sent Lindzen the following email.

Dick’s reply is most thoughtfully written and I commend it for your consideration. As an outstanding example of fine thinking under personal pressure it’s a pleasure to publish it. Jim Hansen should be ashamed of himself for repeating misleading slurs and outright lies. I’m certainly ashamed of him. Continue Reading →

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What are the Aussies hiding?

Australian storm

In Australia, Warwick Hughes has followed with interest our attempts to obtain from NIWA details of their adjustments to the NZ temperature record. When the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) supplied a letter apparently certifying the Bureau’s “peer review” of NIWA’s review of the temperature record, he noted our complaint that “there must be more than this.”

Hearing of my request to NIWA for records relating to that review by the Bureau, he was minded to help. So, back in February, he filed a Freedom Of Information (FOI) request with the Australian Information Commissioner.

In response to that FOI request, the Bureau submitted to the Information Commissioner a Schedule of Documents dated 6 May 2011.

Somebody at the Bureau has put in hours of work tracking these documents down, describing them, analysing their relevance to Warwick’s request and assessing whether they met the provisions for exemption. Well done, them.

The schedule describes 159 relevant documents, amounting to several thousand pages, and what do you know? The BoM claims full exemption from the FOI Act in respect of every single page! Who could have predicted that? Continue Reading →

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Slick Jim Hansen slanders Lindzen

he has nothing else — his climate predictions have failed

he’s a disgrace

James Hansen under arrest

I received a report about Hansen’s address at Massey last night. Don says:

I have just returned from James Hansen’s lecture at Massey. The Japan Lecture Theatre was packed; I didn’t count, but there were probably about 200 people in the audience.

At the end I got to ask a question. I was very polite, and said how grateful we all were that such a distinguished expert had come to talk to us about his beliefs, but I was concerned that his whole talk rested on the premise that the science is settled. He had said the only dissenters are those in the pay of the oil industry, and I expressed regret that they hadn’t offered any lucre to me.

Dr Richard Lindzen

His reply was polite, but condescending. He conceded there are a few scientists whose chronic skepticism blinds them to the truth. For example, he said, he knows Richard Lindzen, who is a nice guy, but doesn’t dare, when he’s with other scientists, talk the kind of nonsense he writes in his newspaper columns. Also, Lindzen has never accepted that tobacco causes cancer, so obviously his judgement can’t be trusted.

Afterwards a few members of the audience came up and thanked me for what I had said.

The belief is strong in that one

Thanks for that, Don. That’s an intriguing look into ‘Slick’ Hansen’s attitudes. Continue Reading →

Visits: 317

World temp prediction

Bryan Leyland has sent us his latest report of the Southern Oscillation Index and its ramifications on the global average temperature.

He says that, if the relationship holds, next month will be cooler rather than warmer.

Here’s his latest graph, showing the blue SOI, shifted forward seven months, behind the red global temperature record.

Leyland global temp prediction

Visits: 61

Letter to Editor

Proof please, not propaganda

quill pen

To the Editor
Climate Conversation

9th May 2011

We need proof that carbon dioxide is a pollutant in the atmosphere. There is none – only political propaganda.

We need proof that global temperatures are controlled by man-made carbon dioxide. There is none – only computer models which are fiddled to fit the past but unable to predict the future.

We need proof on how the emissions targets will be achieved, especially if the big emitters are exempted and consumers are compensated. How many power stations, steel furnaces and cement plants will need to close, what will replace them and when?

We need proof that a tax on carbon dioxide will produce net benefits for the climate or the environment. There is none – just scare stories, misleading pictures and green fairy tales.

We need an independent audit into the mishmash of mandates and subsidies promoting the ethanol, solar, wind, carbon forest and carbon trading industries. There is none – only government spruikers and lobbyists for vested interests.

On the other hand there is voluminous evidence that carbon dioxide is a beneficial plant food not a pollutant, that global temperatures are set by natural cycles and processes, that a tax on carbon dioxide will increase living costs and close Australian industries and that the climate agenda has more to do with wealth redistribution than with climate or the environment.

Viv Forbes
Chairman
Carbon Sense Coalition

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NIWA correspondence safe in hands of the BoM

What a secret!

See UPDATE, below.

Here’s a development that threatens to place publicly-funded weather data on the same footing as the next budget, or troop movements.

In February, Warwick Hughes lodged a Freedom Of Information request to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to release all documents connected with their peer review for NIWA of NIWA’s review of their seven station series (7SS).

Today, Warwick posted a story about it, Australian FOI law keeps secret the construction of New Zealand seven station temperature series.

What’s so secret about temperature records?

In frustration, Warwick laments: “I am hoping that people smarter than I might see ways to carry on the battle to get these papers and files released. What can be so secret about the things publicly-funded scientists and bureaucrats do to adjust common or garden weather records into a form that suits them? We are not talking about nuclear weapons secrets here.”

I agree. Let’s hope someone with legal expertise and a desire to uncover the truth can pick up Warwick’s endeavour and move it forward.

The NZ situation

We’re waiting for the outcome of an investigation by the Ombudsman into NIWA’s refusal to release to me similar documents related to the peer review.

UPDATE

The BoM, in a document setting out their Reasons for Refusal, reveals that no fee was paid to them by NIWA for the peer review.

Visits: 73

Why is Greenland losing ice?

New report seems to assume it’s melting, but is it?

Greenland is the world’s largest island, about 2600 km long and 1100 km wide at its widest point. Most of the interior is covered by the world’s second-largest permanent ice sheet. Average temperatures rise above freezing only briefly, during the summer. Here’s a simplified graph of monthly temperatures taken from a tourism site.

Greenland temperatures

Yesterday the NZ Herald reported a study finding faster melting of Arctic and Greenland ice. The scientific team thinks global sea levels could rise by as much as five feet (1.5 metres) this century. Continue Reading →

Visits: 87

Praise for CCG from Jo Nova

Jo Nova

I want to pass on some kind words from Joanne Nova for our blog and our campaign for truth in climate science.

A few days ago I was catching up with Jo’s site and I was blown away (again!) by the number and quality of her posts. I told her so, and said she’s like the Energiser bunny!

After noting we were missing from her site’s blog roll, I asked her to include us. She swiftly acceded to my request, saying:

Done. Sorry you had to ask.
There’s no real reason it wasn’t done before except that I pay little attention to blog rolls. Thanks for pointing out the omission! You are doing a masterful job of NIWA. It’s inspiring…

Cheers!

Nice lady! Great climate warrior! Read her posts!

Visits: 74

Study undermines “science is settled” claims

water vapour

Water vapour more significant than CO2?

A study released last year reveals water vapour has an important role in global warming and more research is needed. When water vapour declines it seems to lead to global cooling, preventing overheating.

The story was covered in The Guardian on 29 January, 2010:

Water vapour caused one-third of global warming in 1990s, study reveals

Experts say their research does not undermine the scientific consensus on man-made climate change, but call for ‘closer examination’ of the way computer models consider water vapour.

Scientists have underestimated the role that water vapour plays in determining global temperature changes, according to a new study that could fuel further attacks on the science of climate change.

The research, led by one of the world’s top climate scientists, suggests that almost one-third of the global warming recorded during the 1990s was due to an increase in water vapour in the high atmosphere, not human emissions of greenhouse gases. A subsequent decline in water vapour after 2000 could explain a recent slowdown in global temperature rise, the scientists add. Continue Reading →

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