Commissioner Wright’s wrong – Part 1

Changing climate and rising seas: Understanding the science

Private prejudice

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

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

Views: 420

Save the planet: give us your money

Josh on IPCC climate standover

IPCC climate talks 2014

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

Views: 96

Eco-minimal criminals

Greenpeace vandalism on an irreplaceable treasure

 

Eco-nazis show their true colours

Greenpeace have brazenly damaged a timeless treasure in Peru by stamping all over the ground and installing a garish activist slogan. – h/t Andy Continue Reading →

Views: 266

Cyber attacks continue

malicious hacker

Malicious hacker.

But we’re winning

Well, last weekend was a washout. I got nothing done that I’d planned, dealing instead with electronic warfare and the extensive site disruption it caused. There were glitches turning up everywhere, caused either by the attack itself or by the methods required to combat it.

Almost two whole days were slowly eaten up, but there was no alternative, for exposing climate change misinformation is more important than anything else. Continue Reading →

Views: 45

A DDOS attack takes CCG down

If you tried to access the blog this morning but were blocked with the message

This Account Has Been Suspended

please accept my apologies.

My web site host explains it was a DDOS attack on this and other sites which brought down their network. We’re back online and on my host’s recommendation I’m looking into CloudFlare, which might bring an end to the malicious inconvenience. Continue Reading →

Views: 63

HotWhopper wrong on ocean heat

a turbulent ocean

 

After reading Bob Tisdale at WUWT I made my first visit yesterday to HotWhopper to examine a post on ocean heat content. (Though this doesn’t concern the report from our Commissioner for the Environment, it addresses the fundamental science, so please bear with me.) Miriam O’Brien (a.k.a. Sou) writes:

The oceans absorb more than 90% of the extra energy that’s being built up in the system.

This caught my attention as lying at the centre of her argument. But we need to ask where the heat comes from and how it gets into the ocean.

As we know, the oceans warm from the direct heat of the sun. The hypothesis (and it’s still only an hypothesis, it’s not yet a theory) that the oceans also warm from the effects of man-made global warming depends on heat energy reaching them by radiation from atmospheric gases (the so-called greenhouse gases).

Trouble is, physics is against it. Continue Reading →

Views: 233

Anthropogenic Global Warming and the Scientific Method

• Guest post •

Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) alarm has been with us for a good while now. The matter seems to become more contentious rather than less. Unhappily, as a result of the mediocre quality of science education, many people do not know how to evaluate either a scientific hypothesis in general or AGW in particular — and irrespective of whatever anyone might think, because of how it is framed and evaluated, AGW is no more than a hypothesis. Continue Reading →

Views: 90

Herald obeys the clamour

Hopes end for levelheaded exemplar from once-leading opinion maker

The Herald nails its colours to the mast

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

Views: 166

Prosperity beats climate change

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

Mark Lynas writes yesterday:

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

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

Continue Reading →

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Everyday uses for the NZTR

1. Computer models that forecast the weather

Gareth Renowden at Hot Topic has finally lost whatever finger-nail grip he ever had on climate science.

He now claims (incredibly) that national temperature records “play no part in planning” since forecasts come from computer models, not carefully-kept historical records. It’s sad, really, that NIWA totally disagrees with him. And we shall prove it.

Continue Reading →

Views: 117

The dark art of falling albedo

Ruapehu eruption 2007

A story on Mother Jones last July by John Vidal described the world’s highest glacier, Khumbu, turning visibly darker as particles of fine dust, blown by fierce winds, settled on the bright, fresh snow. “One-week-old snow was turning black and brown before my eyes,” said American geologist Ulyana Horodyskyj. Unfortunately she lacked the presence of mind to make a photographic record of this startling event. Continue Reading →

Views: 88

‘Honey’ calls down a woman’s wrath

Not climate conversation, but assuredly the climate of conversation

According to the Herald:

Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority boss Roger Sutton said: “Hugs, jokes … I do do those things, and I’ve hurt somebody with that behaviour and I’m very, very sorry about that.”

Another man bullied into apologising for being a man. Continue Reading →

Views: 51

New Greens

Victoria University of Wellington is to quit its modest investments in fossil fuel.
“The University recognises that the world is still reliant on the fossil fuel industry and the intent of this decision is not to vilify responsible companies in the sector. The University [wants to align] its investment decisions with the results of its scientific research and its public stance on climate change,” said vice-chancellor Grant Guilford.

In other news
Continue Reading →

Views: 78

Critical debating points answered – Part 3

Environmental Modeling & Assessment

Wherein we rebut Points 7, 8 & 9

In What Mullan actually says on 7 November I answered the Hot Topic post Danger Dedekind heartbreak blah blah of 5 November, in which Mr Gareth Renowden, presumably advised by Dr Brett Mullan, principal climate scientist at NIWA, had levelled criticisms at the recently published reanalysis of the NZ temperature record. I set out to identify clear, falsifiable statements that Gareth Renowden (or Brett Mullan) was making. There were nine debating points, which you can find in What Mullan actually says. We promised every one would be rebutted. Continue Reading →

Views: 185

Critical debating points answered – Part 2

Environmental Modeling & Assessment

Wherein we rebut Points 4, 5 & 6

In What Mullan actually says on 7 November I answered the Hot Topic post Danger Dedekind heartbreak blah blah of 5 November, in which Mr Gareth Renowden, presumably advised by Dr Brett Mullan, principal climate scientist at NIWA, had levelled criticisms at the recently published reanalysis of the NZ temperature record. I set out to identify clear, falsifiable statements that Gareth Renowden (or Brett Mullan) was making. There were nine debating points, which you can find in What Mullan actually says. We promised every one would be rebutted. Continue Reading →

Views: 81

Critical debating points answered – Part 1

Environmental Modeling & Assessment

Wherein we rebut Points 1, 2 & 3

In What Mullan actually says on 7 November I answered the Hot Topic post Danger Dedekind heartbreak blah blah of 5 November, in which Mr Gareth Renowden, presumably advised by Dr Brett Mullan, principal climate scientist at NIWA, had levelled criticisms at the recently published reanalysis of the NZ temperature record. I set out to identify clear, falsifiable statements that Gareth Renowden (or Brett Mullan) was making. There were nine debating points, which you can find in What Mullan actually says. We promised every one would be rebutted. Continue Reading →

Views: 100

Ocean, not CO2, caused past climate change

oceans

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

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

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Dazzling solar generator fails promise

Wants half-billion public bailout

From The Hockey Schtick (h/t Richard Cumming) we learn that the Ivanpah solar thermal plant (the world’s largest), on the edge of the Mojave desert in California, has failed to keep its promise of renewable, reliable, cheap, climate-changing electric power. Which is a shame, but at least it’s their own money they’re playing with. Continue Reading →

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Posting delayed

A personal note

I’ve been laid low for the last three days by a virus (according to my ever-accurate wife it’s a virus, though it might be a bacterium; when I asked her why she calls it a virus, she was nonspecific—so it left me unsatisfied but ended the conversation) which has gone through the family from one end and out the other from babies to grandparents. Nobody said life would be easy.

Your host is back with reduced but reviving vigour.

Views: 26

Wind alone cannot keep the lights on

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

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

Views: 130

Tampering at Australian BOM exploded

Devastating criticism from William Kininmonth

This is dynamite. Heartland’s November Environment & Climate News reports scientist Jennifer Marohasy and environment editor Graham Lloyd, among others, have learned the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has been “fudging” historical temperature records to fit a warming narrative. Continue Reading →

Views: 82

What Mullan actually says

In Renowden’s latest apologia at Hot Topic it is quite difficult to discern Brett Mullan’s arguments through the thicket of abuse and misdirection created by Renowden. But I think these are the debating points he’s trying to make, lined up with the passages in which he makes them.

Point 1

When he says:

Let me pose a question. What does Dedekind think Rhoades and Salinger were doing in their 1993 paper? Indulging in a purely theoretical exercise? In fact, they developed their techniques by working on what became the Seven Station Series (7SS), and from 1992 onwards the 7SS was compiled using RS93 methods properly applied.

We’ll call that Debating point 1. From 1992 onwards the 7SS was recalculated using the Rhoades & Salinger (1993) measurement techniques.

Continue Reading →

Views: 286

Chinese cyber attack thwarted

The Climate Conversation web site has been under determined attack by cyber criminals over the last two months. Over 5.5 million web requests and 1.3 million spam messages deluged the server during September and October. I wondered at the persistently slow responses and recently complained. My web host provider was already diagnosing the problem and yesterday brought the attacks to an end, though at the cost of isolating China. Sorry, China!

Our web traffic, already busy, had soared to three times normal, 80% to 90% of it from China, enormously inflating our log files. The SysAdmin told me:

Your logs have been much larger than normal for months, but only caused the server to stop all processing in the last few weeks. Your logs haven’t processed for over a month but others on the server only stopped when yours hung for a week.

Continue Reading →

Views: 45

Hot Topic of hatred

First foray against Renowden’s latest polemic. There’ll be more.

Hot Topic keeps its hands grubby with another poisonous piece of writing. In Danger Dedekind! Heartbreak Ahead (still wrong, still digging, NZ still warming fast) Gareth Renowden first attacks Chris de Freitas:

Given de Freitas’ track record, it is unsurprising that I queried the peer review process at Environmental Modelling and Assessment.

No, it IS surprising, since it’s a completely different journal and Chris is not the editor. Continue Reading →

Views: 62

Bite the third

toast-with-bite-660

… and another bite…

There’s a third bite to be had from Gareth Renowden’s inept rebuttal of the new paper A Reanalysis of Long-Term Surface Air Temperature Trends in New Zealand by de Freitas, Dedekind and Brill (2014), just published in Environmental Modeling & Assessment. Recall that he said:

The paper as published contains no workings or supplemental material that would allow reproduction of their results,

Continue Reading →

Views: 91

Bite the second

toast-with-bite-660

Now for another bite…

Let me take a second bite at Gareth Renowden’s toxic commentary on the new national temperature reanalysis.

Remember that Renowden says in his vitriolic post:

dFDB 2014 repeats the old canard that NIWA’s Seven Station Series (7SS) before the 2010 review was based on the adjustments made in Jim Salinger’s 1981 thesis. This was … so transparently at odds with written reports and papers from 1992 onwards that it was easy for NIWA to refute.

There are two rebuttals I can make: Continue Reading →

Views: 106

Renowden on the reanalysis

Gareth Renowden posted comment on the new paper in what seems to be his customary style: unpleasant, vexing, offensive, loathsome and short on fact. Still, along the way he did venture some factoids which I shall rebut while ignoring the vexatious.

First, his article was headlined: NZ cranks finally publish an NZ temperature series – but their paper’s stuffed with errors. To the first phrase, I note that publishing a temperature series is clearly beyond him and, to the second, I say we’ll see about that. Continue Reading →

Views: 146

Paper adds interesting perspective on NZ temperature trend

Today a paper on the New Zealand temperature record (NZTR) was accepted by the journal Environmental Modeling & Assessment. Submitted in 2013, we can only imagine the colossal peer-review hurdles that had to be overcome in gaining acceptance for a paper that refutes the national temperature record in a developed country. The mere fact of acceptance attests to a fundamental shift in scientific attitudes to climate change, but expect strident opposition to this paper. Continue Reading →

Views: 376

DiCaprio recaptivated, oh, the dated fiction, how it palls

The facts, DiCaprio, the facts. We’ll all perish? All humanity?! Perish the thought.

Leonardo DiCaprio has once again been completely captured by the IPCC misinformation campaign on global warming. A few days ago he addressed the United Nations conference on climate change to echo in their own chamber their self-created myths. This is my message to Mr DiCaprio.

In addressing world leaders at the United Nations, you claimed humankind has been pretending that global warming is a fiction. What a strange belief. Continue Reading →

Views: 230

Russell misleads electorate

Greens Herald interview

Bigs up geothermal rise

The Greens’ co-leaders are demanding senior cabinet posts from Labour after the election. Judging by Dr Norman’s statements on changes in the global energy picture, they don’t deserve cabinet posts. In an interview on August 5 he mentioned geothermal energy, saying:

It happens to be the fastest growing electricity generation sector in the world  according to the International Energy Agency and it’s set to overtake gas as the second-biggest source of electricity in the world. This is the green economy. It is happening right in front of us.

Continue Reading →

Views: 185

Greens have a plan

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

Greens voting logo

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

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

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

Continue Reading →

Views: 722

Modern journalism meets a lion of a man

hyena handler of Nigeria

While sceptics learn to laugh at themselves

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

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

Views: 65

Letter to the Editor

The sky fell last month, but almost nobody noticed

atomic model

An atomic model. Symbolises atoms in the atomsphere… sorry, atmosphere.

To the Editor
Climate Conversation

9th July 2014

The sky fell on Hawaii last month, all because carbon dioxide levels peeped above the much-hyped 400 ppm ‘hurdle.’ Chicken Littles all over the world squawked into their friendly media megaphones about numerous imminent global warming disasters. One warned: “the fate of the world hangs in the balance.” (Similar alarms were rung when the 350 ppm level was passed).

But nobody else noticed anything scary. Continue Reading →

Views: 133

IPCC clouds the issue

clouds

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

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

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

Views: 73

Slip on a list, a humorous list

We were circulated a list published in Wikipedia of scientists sceptical of the IPCC version of dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW). The list has been published and updated since 2005 and it appears still to be provoking discussion.

On seeing the list yesterday, a sceptical scientist offered some wry observations:

Unintentionally by the writers, this is actually quite an amusing list, despite it managing to omit more than a few known sceptics of standing. Continue Reading →

Views: 112

Salinger incites Grimes

So June was warm—what of it?

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

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

Views: 85

Malice aforethought

High Court Auckland

The High Court at Auckland. Scene of some famous trials.

Unmannerly enmity from Grimes

Gareth Renowden (or, as I picture him, Grimes the shambling truffle grubber) puts poison to his pen once again. His target, again, is the NZ Climate Science Coalition (the coalition), this time in the person of our chairman, the Hon Barry Brill, and the NZ Climate Science Education Trust (CSET).

In an abandonment of proper sceptical debate Grimes is destitute of reason, good sense and evidence. Continue Reading →

Views: 140

David Evans devises solar model to tame climate chaos

Jo Nova and David Evans reveal astounding new work

Will this be the magic bullet to destroy climate ignorance?

This from Jo Nova (note her lack of arrogance):

Behind the scenes, for 18 months, Dr David Evans (my other half) has been quietly working full time on climate research. The Fourier expert with six degrees who studied at Stanford has discovered something extraordinary using silicon-chip maths on the climate system. (Electrical engineers are really going to like this new approach.) This is real science laid bare. Continue Reading →

Views: 732

Eight climate claims debunked, debunked

the atmosphere

Part of the atmosphere from above. Thin, isn’t it? All the weather we’ll ever see happens right there.

Climate counter-claims

AGW theory may not be a hoax, but it fails because it’s wrong

I’d never heard of Bill Moyers until Bob Carter circulated the link to what Bob calls this piece of malignant venality (have to love that wordsmithing!).

Mr Moyers, an ancient US journalist, runs billmoyers.com, on which Joshua Holland, a few days (oops) three weeks ago, published “pseudo-scientific climate claims debunked by real scientists“, which he sought from climate scientists and offered “as a public service.” Joshua gets sceptical thinking all wrong and regurgitates errors, while the arguments his scientists rely on have been widely discredited. Still, he does us a service, conveniently listing eight arguments for us to refute. Mr Holland finally reveals, at the very end of his post, that they come from the famous alarmist web site, home of John Cook, Stephan Lewandowski and their disreputable, widely discredited and fraudulent “97% consensus” paper: the Skeptical Science web site.

Joshua introduces the sceptics:

Most people who deny that human activity is warming the planet just dismiss a massive body of scientific evidence as a big hoax.

Continue Reading →

Views: 137

Wind and waves scatter sea ice, not AGW

Antarctic sea ice

Antarctic sea ice can be breathtaking.

Waves chase away warming

A paper has arrived from NIWA that says, in effect, warming is not necessary to explain the disappearance of much sea ice. That it removes a warming element from the polar pieces of the global warming puzzle gives me great pleasure. Well done, them!

I’m talking about “Storm-induced sea-ice breakup and the implications for ice extent” (Nature 509, 604–7), published online in Nature on 29 May, by A.L. Kohout, M.J. Williams, S.M. Dean and M.H. Meylan (KWDM). Its major discovery is that large waves travel much farther through pack ice than hitherto realised, thus breaking up much more ice than we realised and allowing it to be swept away by wind and wave—it hasn’t been melting from the heat of global warming. Continue Reading →

Views: 84

Storm waves break up sea ice

Promoted from comments

Kiwi connection on significant anti-alarmist paper

Robin Pittwood apologises for being “way off topic” and mentions a new paper at Nature about wave effects breaking up Antarctic ice.

“The propagation of large, storm-generated waves through sea ice has so far not been measured, limiting our understanding of how ocean waves break sea ice. Continue Reading →

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