Klein denies deniers’ denials

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When Naomi Klein uses the word “denier” and its derivatives no fewer than 28 times* in a single article, she telegraphs her belief that those so labelled cannot be motivated by facts. Jo Nova, once again prepared to fearlessly battle climate bigotry, confronts Klein’s vacuous arguments with her usual cutting perspicacity, real science and humorous mockery of her opponent’s weaknesses.

Though there’s little chance of any direct reply from Klein, the sceptical climate scene is sadly lacking in such talented writers and thinkers as our beloved Jo. Here, she’s done it again, treating another breathless Earth-saver with robust scorn.

Naomi Klein’s lengthy ramble is notable for not commenting on the science or refuting sceptical claims. Instead, she rabbits on about opinion polls, political loyalties, age and ethnic groups and, of course, it’s all about America — the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Continue Reading →

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Climate blackmail from China

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Bastion of freedom threatens everyone else

A few hours ago China shocked the world.

China has responded to efforts to ban the trading of widely discredited HFC-23 offsets by threatening to release huge amounts of the potent industrial chemical into the atmosphere unless other nations pay what amounts to a climate ransom.

This will have sensitive people trembling in their boots. Those who believe these gases can actually alter the climate and make holes in the ozone layer (which contradicts the science) will have nightmares; the rest of us simply encourage our leaders to refuse to bend to China’s bullying.

This strangely naive description of what’s been going on must have been framed to retain a semblance of decency for the CDM, which was always a rort waiting to be exploited (emphasis added):

China’s threat comes after the European Union and other nations moved to ban HFC-23 credits from internal carbon markets in recognition of the perverse incentives created by these credits under the UN Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The vast amounts paid for HFC-23 offsets have led factories in China and elsewhere to manufacture far more HCFC-22 and its HFC-23 by-product than necessary, just to maximize the amounts paid to destroy HFC-23 through the UN-backed carbon trading scheme.

Why not admit the truth, which is that China (and others) have deliberately set up shop to manufacture these CFCs solely in order to collect the unreasonably huge bounties (70 times the cost of destroying it) offered by the outstandingly stupid (or frankly self-serving) UNFCCC under its “Clean Development Mechanism”.

China displays clear belligerence in this “climate” official’s direct threat against the very environment his job is meant to safeguard. Continue Reading →

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Dutch treat

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Owen McShane draws our attention to a report from the Netherlands showing that wind farms are a net cost to human society and the environment.

Who would have thought?

The report is titled Electricity in The Netherlands – Wind turbines increase fossil fuel consumption & CO2 emission, and the author is C. le Pair.

He says the models commonly used to calculate the economic and environmental benefits of wind farms are incomplete and overstate the expected savings.

The conclusion is stark:

The wind projects do not fulfill ‘sustainable’ objectives. They cost more fuel than they save and they cause no CO2 saving — on the contrary, they increase our environmental ‘footprint’.

A decision to invest billions (thousands of millions) of Euros in the construction of wind projects ‘to save fossil fuel and to reduce CO2 emissions’ is irresponsible. There are no savings, THERE IS LOSS!

We do not consider it likely that more knowledge of the factors influencing the present outcomes would change our results appreciably. It is more likely that including the factors we identified as not having sufficient data on, would actually increase the loss.

So far, our New Zealand windfarm operators are happy to go it alone with no overt subsidies, only hidden ones. This post from December 2010 reveals how we help our fledgling wind operators.

But if they start to whinge about losing money, now you know that it’s the nature of wind turbines to cost money and degrade the environment, you won’t let the government waste our money in subsidies, will you?

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Canned climate science

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Canned Climate Science

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Government certified and licensed by the IPCC under the Tropical Grasslands Protocol, successor to the short-lived Antarctic Protocol, after it refused to melt.

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Errors remain

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Earth’s temperature has never been taken, actually

A story, Analysis confirms global warming data, accounts for urban heat islands, appeared in the Science Media Centre (SMC) on 21 October. I missed it then, but it’s been brought to my attention in correspondence within the Climate Science Coalition.

A member saw the SMC story and commented:

Wratt and Renwick are quick to assert that this non-peer-reviewed temp study reinforces their suspicion that UHI is an insignificant factor. They both refer to numerous other authorities. I thought the leading paper supporting this view was Phil Jones’ China study of about 1991, which he has recently admitted to be based on a mistake. Are there any others which debunk UHI?

This raises several interesting elements which I’d like to follow at some time, but it also prompted this succinct analysis from the evergreen Dr Vincent Gray, who responded: Continue Reading →

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‘Monster’ increase in emissions

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The Associated Press, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, keep to their warmist line. Now they’re keen to highlight a steep increase in carbon dioxide emissions, without letting on that it hasn’t affected the temperature.

The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped last year by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.

The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst-case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.

In 2008, the annual increase was half of the year before. Now there’s a crisis?

It is a “monster” increase that is unheard of, said Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, who has helped calculate Department of Energy figures in the past.

Which just means it hasn’t happened before that we know of.

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Suppression of sceptical views continues

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Climate Realists carried a letter from John O’Sullivan on 2 November, claiming ill treatment at the hands of Suite101.com, in terminating their publishing arrangement with him. I note that two of O’Sullivan’s articles are still available at Suite101 but this is his letter:

Friends,

I write to announce my employment with my publishers, Suite101 was terminated today without prior notice or explanation and all my articles published over a two-year period with them are now removed from the Internet. I believe this is in retaliation for my latest article ‘New Satellite Data Contradicts Carbon Dioxide Climate Theory’ revealing the shocking fact that the Japanese ‘IBUKI’ satellite measuring surface carbon dioxide emissions shows that Third World regions are emitting considerably more CO2 than western, industrial nations. Continue Reading →

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Ridley warms heretical hearts

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Everyone loves well-crafted prose, even when the author of it opposes their point of view. So it is with Matt Ridley, well-known author of The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, in less than a week earning nearly 9000 Google hits on his “Scientific heresy” address to the Royal Society of the Arts in Edinburgh on 31 October, posted at Bishop Hill. Even alarmist Gareth Renowden appreciates Ridley’s wordcraft before scorning his so-called climate science.

Ridley’s given us an admirable piece of work on several levels. His writing is a pleasure to read, he gives good information and clearly sets out his thinking on a tour of the weaknesses in the current alarmist view of the global climate. In doing so he warms the cockles of sceptical hearts everywhere while enraging the alarmists with his “well-known sceptic tropes”. That’s the view according to Renowden. Poor things; claiming emptiness for Ridley’s contentions is a flaccid stand-in for a cogent rebuttal.

Ridley concludes that science “needs heretics” and one can appreciate the radical point that even heretics should be heard. But he leaves unstated his crucial implication that evidence elevates the climate “heretic” above all the cereologists, astrologers and eugenicists in history, while true heretics need no evidence.

Here’s his address, copied from Bishop Hill with appreciation and thanks. I also repost the document Mr Montford prepared, with its helpful diagrams (pdf, 1865KB).

Matt Ridley

Matt Ridley

Scientific heresy

by Matt Ridley

It is a great honour to be asked to deliver the Angus Millar lecture.

I have no idea whether Angus Millar ever saw himself as a heretic, but I have a soft spot for heresy. One of my ancestral relations, Nicholas Ridley* the Oxford martyr, was burned at the stake for heresy.

My topic today is scientific heresy. When are scientific heretics right and when are they mad? How do you tell the difference between science and pseudoscience?

Let us run through some issues, starting with the easy ones.

Astronomy is a science; astrology is a pseudoscience.

Evolution is science; creationism is pseudoscience.

Molecular biology is science; homeopathy is pseudoscience.

Vaccination is science; the MMR scare is pseudoscience.

Oxygen is science; phlogiston was pseudoscience.

Chemistry is science; alchemy was pseudoscience.

Are you with me so far? Continue Reading →

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Reducing emission’s a mission

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Now where should we start?

How confusing is this?

Climate Realists announce that new satellite data from Japanese scientists show carbon dioxide is emitted mostly by the third world, with much less coming from industry in the west. For those asleep in the back, that’s the reverse of our previous understanding (so it’s a confusing result). On the map, pink is where emissions are occurring, green is where absorption is occurring.

IBUKU satellite CO2 data

Hmm, New Zealand apparently doesn’t exist. Panic!

Life is now officially upside down — the giant northern hemisphere economies are not emitting CO2 after all, they’re absorbing the stuff! Continue Reading →

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Trust in the IPCC

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Pachauri

Yes, yes, but it’s easy. More severe taxes will make people seriously cut their energy use, we could even move them down here to Antarctica. It’ll soon be warm enough. That will keep the Earth safe and protect it from changing. That’s all we want.

Many people trust the IPCC, that it tells governments around the world the truth about global warming. But their trust is being seriously challenged by accumulating lines of evidence that this is not a good characterisation of the IPCC’s process.

The IPCC is coming under ferocious attack by climate sceptics using documentary evidence of astonishing, widespread disregard of fidelity. Continue Reading →

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What’s this shale gas gig?

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— by Matt Ridley, British author and journalist. Originally titled “Gas against wind”.

shale rock

Shale rock where you can see it. Deep under the earth, shale is frequently full of natural gas, which moves only slowly through the rock. Water injected under high pressure cracks the rock and releases the gas. Clean, plentiful natural gas is ideal for producing the huge amounts of electricity we depend on, since the combustion products are merely water and carbon dioxide. Natural gas is left over from the formation of the earth, or it may even be generated naturally deep in the mantle — it does not rely on fossils, for methane is plentiful on other planets.

Shale gas will save us. It has no nasty emissions like coal does, its modest wellheads sit in our landscapes much gentler than great, ugly, noisy wind turbines, it’s more abundant than oil, it’s easy to extract (with a clever new technique), it’s far cheaper than any “renewable” energy, including nuclear, it could last the world for 250 years and it beats wind and solar handsomely when the wind stops and the sun sets. What’s not to like? Here I’ve somewhat shortened Ridley’s superb summary, but his laconic style is available in full at The Rational Optimist. H/T Bob Carter.

Which would you rather have in the view from your house? A thing about the size of a domestic garage, or eight towers twice the height of Nelson’s column with blades noisily thrumming the air. Over ten years, eight wind turbines of 2.5 megawatts (working at roughly 25% capacity) roughly equal the output of an average Pennsylvania shale gas well (converted to electricity at 50% efficiency).

Let’s make the choice easier. The gas well can be hidden behind a hedge. The eight wind turbines must be on hilltops, where the wind blows. New pylons are needed; the gas well is connected by an underground pipe.

Newspapers

This is an adopted article.

Unpersuaded? Wind turbines kill thousands of birds of prey every year. And bats: the pressure wave from the passing blade just implodes the little creatures’ lungs. You and I can go to jail for harming bats or eagles; wind companies are immune.

Still can’t make up your mind? The wind farm requires eight tonnes of an element called neodymium, which is produced only in Inner Mongolia, by boiling ores in acid leaving lakes of radioactive tailings so toxic no creature goes near them. Continue Reading →

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One man’s mission

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Will NIWA ever be free of Jim Salinger? What will it take to rid the organisation of his pervasive influence? He was fired long ago for his maverick media mouth, but his spirit never leaves, and the bright ideas of his younger self, not good enough to attract other scientists, still torment NIWA’s management as they strive to defend them. Salinger’s youthful enthusiasm for the then-radical crisis of man-made global warming, hatched by his mates in his old stamping ground at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, has crippled New Zealand with a “scientific” temperature “record” that shows remarkable warming — a feature we now know is entirely reliant on fiction, not on fact. – RT

— by Barry Brill, Chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

Jim Salinger

Dr Jim Salinger. Looking a little anxious?

When young geographer James Salinger was at Otago University in 1974, he noticed that a number of the glaciers in the Southern Alps were retreating. So he wrote an article for the journal Nature, contending that New Zealand was warming up.

This made him a noted sceptic, as the scientific consensus then was that the world was rapidly cooling. The news media worldwide were running horror stories, demanding that governments “do something” about the impending ice age. Continue Reading →

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Quote of the week

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what a thing to say

Global warming reason

“We’re not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business.”

UK Chancellor George Osborne finally displays some common sense in his address to the Tory conference, putting the cat among the Lib Dem pigeons as they squawk over the looming “slow-down” or “turn-around” in Britain’s over-ambitious emissions reduction programme.

Some seem truly to believe that huge new emissions-related expenses will improve industry, boost the economy, produce another golden age and evoke adulation from the populace. It must be really hard for them to keep finding new ways to state such an obvious fallacy.

I earnestly hope that this message, which applies as sensibly to New Zealand as to any country, is absorbed by all those agitating to reduce our industrial emissions, including the climate committee of our Royal Society, some senior climate scientists in public service, Nick Smith, John Key (who probably knows it already but avoids stating it in public), the Green Party, NZ Herald senior journalists, Greenpeace and Jim Salinger.

People at Hot Topic will, I trust, note this unexpected assertion from “the greenest-ever government in the UK” — although nobody could expect them yet to understand or absorb it.

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Ocean acidification and then what?

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shellfish

Evidence that observed or predicted levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide will cause sufficiently strong widespread acidification to harm shellfish is difficult to obtain.

The School of Chemical Sciences at the University of Auckland hosted a lecture by Assoc-Prof. Mary A. Sewell, of the School of Biological Sciences, on “Ocean Acidification: Integrating chemistry and marine biology and what it means for you.“
 
Our friend Roger Dewhurst, engineering geologist and founding member of the NZ Climate Science Coalition, went along and paid close attention. Then he sent Mary Sewell the following entertaining and informative letter, which he kindly shares with us to provoke conversation.

Past is key to future; CO2 ruined nothing before; there’s no evidence of ruin to come; alarming climate predictions are inconsistent and unconvincing.
Roger Dewhurst writes:

Thanks for an interesting seminar.

Demonstrating that the appendages of a larval echinoderm tend to be stunted when the little beastie is grown in soda water is one thing. To extrapolate that to an absence of oysters, mussels and scallops on the dinner table next year is, in my view, stretching things a little too far. I was reminded of Al Gore’s polar bear on an iceberg!

When I was at Victoria University in the 1960s science was divorced from politics, and zoology, botany and geology were separate subjects. Now zoology and botany are lumped together as biology, and geology has been lumped in with geography as earth science and includes — would you believe it — a strand called ‘feminist geography’. I suppose that feminist mathematics is next in the pipeline. Sic transit gloria [“thus fades the glory of the world” – RT].

I suspect, on the basis of opinions from two universities, that no science student will get a decent degree now without paying obeisance to anthropogenic global warming and its apostles, ‘Piltdown’ Mann and his gang who, I presume, you know as ‘The Team’. This is not science as I know it but the ‘science’ of Lysenko. Continue Reading →

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Liquid fossil fuels and climate change

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petrol pump

How much does our ETS increase petrol & power prices?

The following passage is from our government’s web page explaining the ETS. It’s only a short piece, but there are numerous examples of non-sequiturs, or illogical derivations from the previous statement.

Anyone convinced it’s based on science or logic? Anyone at all?

The government reasons*

Most forms of travel are fuelled by liquid fossil fuels, such as petrol and diesel, which result in emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

New Zealanders travel frequently and have a high level of vehicle ownership. Our use of freight transport has increased as the economy has grown, and our geographical isolation makes us reliant on ships and planes to connect us and our products to the rest of the world.

Between 1990 and 2006, total transport emissions increased by 5.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, or 64 per cent. If we do not make changes to the ways we travel and transport freight, or to the technology and fuels we use, transport energy use will grow further. Public transport, biofuels, electric vehicles, rail, cycling and walking, as well as improved vehicle efficiency will all help – as will the ETS.

*Of course, this is among the worst of oxymorons.

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Carbon credits drive brutal land grab

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an evicted woman

An evicted woman showed proof of her family’s land ownership.

Ugandans left homeless, child dies

The UN’s ingenious global warming money-making scheme, called the clean development mechanism (CDM), was predicted to lead to abuse and fraud. The essence of the CDM is built around trust, so you just know it’s headed for disaster. Another scandal has come to light, in Uganda.

A reader posted a link to a dramatic headline at Prison Planet, Armed Troops Burn Down Homes, Kill Children To Evict Ugandans In Name Of Global Warming. Which quickly took my attention away from the All Blacks’ fine win against France.

The Prison Planet story was taken from a NY Times story with a milder headline: In Scramble for Land, Group Says, Company Pushed Ugandans Out. In that story, it turns out that a single child was murdered when his house was burned down.

The NY Times article, in turn, was taken from an Oxfam report about land grabs. So some of the lurid flavour of the story has been watered down, though there’s plenty left of concern. Continue Reading →

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Gas or coal? The quandary, the indecision!

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coal protest

Well, now we have a peer-reviewed scientific paper that says you can.

It’s hard to know what to say about Tom Wigley’s new paper on the climatic repercussions of replacing coal with natural gas: he says gas and coal are both good, and they’re both bad, but the truly remarkable thing is that, where for years the greens have been telling us to hate coal and everyone who uses it, now it’s hard to choose between coal and gas.

It doesn’t matter whether you believe mankind is warming the planet dangerously or not, Wigley tells us that it makes hardly any difference to the warming whether you use gas or coal. So why switch to gas? There’s no advantage in it. Continue Reading →

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Our CO2 emissions are not the half of it

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human CO2 emissions

Human emissions of CO2 1990 to 2010.
From PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

Two days ago we heard about the long-term trend in atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions, copied above.

This graph functions as a fine graph of productive output, and doesn’t it reveal the new world order? The countries with the highest emissions are (broadly speaking) doing the most work, making the most money and having the most influence.

It was ever so. If our leaders wake up to that simple fact they might be able to make sensible plans to maximise our work. Perhaps improve on the half-baked notion of a magic “knowledge economy” — as though knowledge alone would succeed without the application of intelligent planning, consistent effort and good service. Continue Reading →

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Only threat to Christchurch is Salinger’s alarmism

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the beginning of the Christchurch earthquakes

The moment of the sudden earthquake where none had been known before. Click for larger version.

From the Christchurch Press today comes alarming news:

Rising sea levels are a greater threat to Christchurch’s seaside suburbs than previously realised, a climate scientist is warning.

Speaking at Canterbury University this afternoon, Jim Salinger said latest estimates could have major implications for Christchurch’s earthquake rebuild.

Christchurch City Council should be working to a one-metre estimate for sea level rise, he said.

“It’s the opportunity for Christchurch in its rebuild, it should be looking at at least a metre. Some local bodies in Australia are using one metre.”

Salinger plucks the same alarmist harp strings he’s been picking for decades. He specifies one metre: does he include those places which are 500mm higher after the earthquake? They should get a discount.

But the Coalition chairman Barry Brill decisively puts this loose cannon of a climate scientist down, demanding evidence: Continue Reading →

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Blame or repair?

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The Herald today fumes over fumes from farming.

There’s so much in their editorial with which to take issue, but a single point glares out from the page. They say:

The whole point of the ETS is that emitters take financial responsibility.

The Herald appears to replace concern for the environment with a vindictive crusade to lay blame. And I thought they just wanted to repair the environment.

Who is the emitter?

Is it the farmer or his customer? Or the customer’s customer? Surely everyone who eats butter or cheese shares a slice of the “blame” for the emissions caused in producing what he eats.

So the final customer should pay a share.

You think they do? But, in an auction, how does the farmer ensure extra on top of the auction price for his milk or meat or whatever, to compensate him for the ETS tax? That’s not going to happen.

Farming is unique in being mostly helpless to recover the ETS costs. Fonterra can adjust their wholesale prices or their payout, Air NZ can charge extra for a carbon footprint and ordinary businesses set or negotiate higher prices as costs increase.

But farmers’ selling prices are dictated by the auction system. They can neither alter the prices nor reduce their emissions. It’s like shooting trout in a barrel. Hardly fair. Unless they’re on a canning or a supermarket contract, and we know how easy it is for the farmer to dictate terms to the buyer…

Responsibility?

The farmer bears the same responsibility for his animal’s “emissions” as Australia bears for the fumes from Chinese power stations burning Australian lignite.

Which is none, of course – China takes responsibility for those emissions; or it would, if it joined the game.

The farmer’s final customers should take responsibility for the products they select, for without their purchase, the farmer would not produce it. Still, it’s far too hard to levy every user of mutton, bacon or milk; much easier to attack the helpless farmer.

And everyone knows the ETS won’t repair the environment anyway.

It’s all symbolic. What a sham.

And we call ourselves grown-ups.

♣

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Multiple meltings of Arctic sea ice

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The Skate at North Pole in 1959

The nuclear-powered USS Skate at an ice-free North Pole in 1959. (Click to go to the Real Science list of newspaper articles.)

Australis posted this link to Steven Goddard’s Real Science list of newspaper articles for us here in comments. I highly recommend it.

Whenever anyone – anyone at all – becomes anxious over apparently excessive melting of Arctic sea ice, this long list of previous such meltings will demonstrate that Nature can cope with it and bounce back from it.

Whenever anyone tries to alarm others with the modern, allegedly excessive, melting of Arctic sea ice, this long list of historical events will stop them in their tracks and prevent alarm.

It’s what we might call proof that modern sea ice melting is not unprecedented, despite the efforts made by the likes of Greenpeace to make us believe that it is.

Speaking of Greenpeace

For example, in August 2009, Greenpeace were caught in a lie. Continue Reading →

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More ice in scary melting

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Arctic ice

The Associated Press chills our blood again with a story on record Arctic sea ice melting.

Arctic sea ice melted this summer to the second lowest level since record-keeping began more than 50 years ago, scientists reported Thursday, mostly blaming global warming.

“This is not a random event,” said oceanographer James Overland of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “It’s a long-term change in Arctic climate.”

Only in 2007 was there less summer sea ice, which has been dramatically declining since scientists began using satellites to monitor melt in 1979.

So, unless I’m mistaken, in each of the last four years there has been more ice than there was in 2007. That sounds like a recovery — it’s certainly not getting worse. Continue Reading →

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Miraculous: computer game finds missing heat

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Argo buoy being deployed

Argo buoy being deployed.

From today’s Summit County Citizen’s Voice, we read Bob Berwyn’s account of Kevin Trenberth’s favourite paper so far this century.

Global warming: ‘Missing’ heat found deep in the ocean

Changes in ocean currents and circulation are capturing some of the sun’s incoming heat deep in the ocean, according to researchers with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who said their latest computer models account for some of the global warming heat that’s “missing” from land and sea surface temperature readings.
…
This implied that heat was building up somewhere on Earth, according to a 2010 study published in Science by NCAR researchers Kevin Trenberth and John Fasullo.

Observations from a global network of buoys showed some warming in the upper ocean, but not enough to account for the global build-up of heat. Although scientists suspected the deep oceans were playing a role, few measurements were available to confirm that hypothesis.

To track where the heat was going, Meehl and colleagues used a powerful software tool known as the Community Climate System Model, which was developed by scientists at NCAR and the Department of Energy with colleagues at other organizations.

Well, well, who would have thought? All the missing heat, safe in the ocean deep, alive and well, having nipped through the upper reaches of the ocean without warming it. I never guessed — did you? Truly amazing.

But there’s no data, just more modelling

The computer game doesn’t care about realism, so the lack of any plausible mechanism whereby the heat might have reached more than 1000 ft (305 m) deep while leaving the upper levels unwarmed didn’t affect its findings.

When the game “found” extra heat deep in the ocean, there was nothing to say “that’s impossible.”

So, because they’re real scientists, we can expect an announcement very soon of a new study aimed at discovering how the missing heat got to where it was found.

One day they’ll get around to actually observing the climate effects they report. When they do, you can read about it here!

♥

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NIWA’s web site a revelation

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NIWA's logo

 

NIWA has an interesting web site which they change frequently. One must visit often to keep up with the changes, because NIWA never sends one a memo.

There’s a section under Climate called “NZ temperature record” where you can see the latest version of the seven-station temperature series.

I think the judge supervising our application for judicial review would be keen to know that what NIWA solemnly pledged to the Court was not the “official or formal New Zealand temperature record” is in fact named on its web site in effectively that very manner.

For taking the words “NZ temperature record” in their most natural meanings, without strain, one understands that NIWA is presenting to the public the very thing it promised the judge it does not have. Continue Reading →

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Suddenly everyone hates farming

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Few people admire farming as we once did when we understood where this country’s wealth was created. On the contrary, farming has come under sustained attack, and from none more strongly than the National Party, once almost a fellowship of farmers and the industry’s staunchest supporter. Now our formerly admired farmers must tolerate the impending ETS tax on ruminant eructation, which farmers are helpless to reduce, yet for which they are further harassed by the modern epithet of “emitter”. As though those clean, natural gases could pollute the environment that has been creating them in vast quantities for millions of years. The “carbon tax” is a significant imposition, yet it’s hardly remarked upon except by those who strive to get it noticed and repealed — or others, apparently more numerous (certainly more vocal and popular with the media), who would gladly see it increased. The Coalition here rails against the unreasonable burden of an ETS which purports to “fight” in our name against so-called “anthropogenic global warming”. Do we still call it that? I guess this month’s stupid synonym is “climate disruption.” But since climate never goes for long without disruption the term defines tautology — how completely brainless to then declare it a crime and seek a culprit. (This press release first published on Scoop).

Press Release: New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

Friday, 16 September 2011, 5:08 pm

NZ farming remains at threat from ETS

“New Zealanders know that their prosperity relies heavily on the farm sector” says the Hon Barry Brill, chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, “and yet the biggest threat to the future of farming is an attack by our own Government. Continue Reading →

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Quote of the Week

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Propaganda works!

what a thing to say

“44% think food and drink would be safer if it had no carbon or CO2 in it.”

 

 

 

Let us pause for a moment and recognise the deep ignorance of our beloved brethren and sistren around the world. Please remember all those wonderful people force-fed the illogical propaganda of their green masters and who now believe the following seven impossible things before breakfast.

Of the Australian public, and no doubt our own “public”

  • 93% think CO2 constitutes more than 1% of the atmosphere
  • 53% believe climate change causes tsunamis
  • 47% think CO2 is ‘pollution’
  • 44% think food and drink would be safer if it had no carbon or CO2 in it
  • 40% believe climate change causes earthquakes
  • 37% believe climate change causes volcanic eruptions
  • 37% think we should try to reduce carbon in the body

Nothing I might say could make it sound any better. But those people need your help…

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Forget global warming — Kyoto is about trade

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handshake

Global agreement transcends environment.

— by Barry Brill, Chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

When the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997, the base year for calculating emissions was back-dated to 1990. They knew then that the ratification process would take many years (it was actually completed in 2005), so why did it hark back to the distant past?

EU

Two big European events occurred in 1991. As a result of the Soviet collapse, heavy industry had closed down in droves throughout the East. And North Sea gas came ashore in the West with a “dash to gas” displacing coal power in the UK, Netherlands, Germany and Denmark.

At the time of the Berlin COP in 1995, EU countries collectively had enough past credits from the 1991-94 period to cover all the obligations they later accepted under the Protocol. It was a no-brainer for them to demand that other developed countries match the EU misfortunes during “the First Commitment Period.” Continue Reading →

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Doubling ETS tax acceptable to Minister but not to Kiwis

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Barry Brill’s sharp analysis brings the ridiculous, unsustainable logic of the Hon Nick Smith under a scrutiny it cannot weather — and that’s without even mentioning the absence of scientific support for the theory of dangerous anthropogenic global warming. What warming? What sea level rise? The sooner John Key’s cabinet realises how Key and Smith have been leading them a nonsensical climatic dance around our trading image and the chance to make a quick buck from trading in the empty-headed, vaporific “carbon credits” the sooner we can eliminate the expensive bureaucratic carbon footprint we’ve acquired for reporting our Kyoto compliance (this press release first published on Scoop).

Press Release: New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

Friday, 16 September 2011, 11:01 am

“The Caygill Review’s recommendation for doubling the current emissions trading scheme (ETS) energy levy over the next three years may be acceptable to the Minister for Climate Change, but it is certainly not acceptable to the people of New Zealand,” said the Hon Barry Brill, chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition.

“The Government’s constant refrain has been that New Zealand will not try to be a world leader and that Kiwis will never be forced to do more than their ‘fair share’ in reducing emissions,” said Mr Brill.

“But what’s ‘fair’ about the ETS?” Continue Reading →

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More learned about water — science still not settled

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Scientists have long debated the impact on global climate of water evaporated from vegetation. New research from Carnegie’s Global Ecology department concludes that evaporated water helps cool the earth as a whole, not just the local area of evaporation, demonstrating that evaporation of water from trees and lakes could have a cooling effect on the entire atmosphere. These findings, published on 14 September in Environmental Research Letters, have major implications for land-use decision making.

The researchers even thought it was possible that evaporation could have a warming effect on global climate, because water vapour acts as a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

Using a climate model, they found that increased evaporation actually had an overall cooling effect on the global climate. Continue Reading →

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Courting NIWA

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judge's gavel

NIWA is creeping closer to court to answer our allegations. It can’t fudge the facts in there.

Where the fudges have judges

UPDATE 1, 16 Sep 9:30 – If anyone harbours lingering doubts that NIWA claim to have used a particular method in calculating the adjustments in their “Review report” published last December, let them check NIWA’s web site, where they say: “The methodology for adjusting for site changes in the NZ temperature record was published in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Climatology in 1993: Rhoades, D.A. and Salinger, M.J., 1993: Adjustment of temperature and rainfall records for site changes. Int. Journal of Climatology 13, 899 – 913.

UPDATE 2, 16 Sep 10:15 – Looking through NIWA’s web site this morning I discovered a seriously fraudulent statement. On the national temperature record review page there’s a section at the bottom that describes (and makes light of) our judicial review application in the High Court and makes this astonishing claim: “The reanalysis and peer review of the seven station series forms part of the judicial review action.” But that’s impossible — NIWA announced the review six months before we filed the papers with the court! Wayne Mapp, the Minister, had already announced NIWA’s review of the 7SS on 18 February 2010, and we didn’t lodge our application with the court until 16 August 2010, so is NIWA claiming to have extra-sensory perception? Is there a serial fraudster running NIWA’s media centre? Why can’t that organisation just tell the truth?

The New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust (NZCSET), on 1 July 2011, filed an amended statement of claim to challenge NIWA’s revised NZ temperature record (the old 7SS, now called the NZT7) published in December, and NIWA failed to file a statement of defence within the time limit. A tentative agreement to meet and narrow the issues was advised to the Court but has not been followed up. NIWA has not responded to correspondence in recent weeks. Continue Reading →

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Taking the chill off the Arctic

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burning ice

The way some people talk, you’d think the Arctic was burning.

What a joke, doctor

At the Huffington Post, “field biologist” Dr Reese Halter talks of the “unprecedented warming of our globe” and claims that “missing” Arctic sea ice is a “wake-up call.” He says the news of Arctic sea ice reaching its lowest point since the start of satellite observations in 1972 (actually 1979) is “outright heartbreaking.”

The heartbroken biologist meanders through observations on the climate, economics and some waffling, brainlessly misleading arguments against climatic scepticism. Continue Reading →

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Cool that ice nonsense

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Arctic ice

The beautiful Arctic.

Georg Heygster, head of the Physical Analysis of Remote Sensing Images unit at the University of Bremen’s Institute of Environmental Physics, announces a new record Arctic ice minimum today.

Ignoring the fact that they actually report 140,000 square kilometres more ice today than in 2007 (the previous record minimum) because of altered methods, the good Georg raises more questions than he answers. Like any good climate scientist. First (though this could be the AFP reporter):

Arctic ice cover plays a critical role in regulating Earth’s climate by reflecting sunlight and keeping the polar region cool.

QUESTION: At the last minimum, in 2007, how much did global temperature rise due to the reduced ice cover? ANSWER: Global temps did not rise in 2007 — they fell about 0.4°C. Any albedo effect reducing global temperatures is likely to be insignificant. Continue Reading →

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Moon on Kiribati

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Ban-Ki Moon

Ban Ki-moon. Nice man, a careful diplomat (flatters New Zealand), but obviously no scientist. Head of the UN, outranks the famous panel on climate change (IPCC) but never consults them. Because he still hasn’t found out that sea levels aren’t threatening the coral islands. He’s even been to Kiribati, but he still didn’t find out.

Hear the lies? Anyone?

We’ve covered the coral-islands-in-great-danger-from-rising-seas theme many times. But something isn’t working — could it be the brains of certain people, like most of our reporters, the head of our nascent world government and the official NZ climate scientists at NIWA, who let everyone tell the most outrageous fibs in public without correcting them?

Coral islands began forming at least 250 million years ago and some of them are a million years old, although many are from 5000 to 10,000 years old. In the 20,000 years since the last Ice Age, sea level has gone up about 130 metres (426 ft).

That’s a long way to fall. Yet, amazingly, coral islands are still on the surface. They kept up with the rising water. Well, some drowned, but not (of course) the ones that are left. Continue Reading →

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Public service balanced or merely on a knife edge?

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Our friend Mike Jowsey says in comments: “It is headed for a total government of NZ by Maori. Think of Fiji or Rhodesia.” A scant three hours earlier, I received Colin James’s Management Magazine column for September 2011, which I reproduce below. The synchronicity of topics is unmistakable and James’ optimism clear. I take heart from the contrast with Mike’s scepticism.
 
There’s great concern for the position of Maori in society, with the majority responsible for filling the prisons, the dole queues and many of the hospital beds. Courageous, genuinely transformative interventions — and not merely feel-good, hand-holding sops to convention — are called for to let them restore their dignity and again earn an honest living. Whether this happens with the children or the adults, we’re looking at a lead time of 20 to 50 years, so we need to get started.
 
It concerns me to hear Muriel Newman tell us “many New Zealanders [are] completely unaware of what is really going on.” For she’s talking about me — I don’t know about you.
 
This is no off-topic digression either, for the link with global warming is through public policy decision-making. If we don’t know, or we disagree with, how public decisions get made, we must inform ourselves and agitate for improvement.
 
I want to know what Muriel is talking about. A rigorous examination seems called for. – Richard T

A radical departs the public service still sparking

Peter Hughes moves on after 10 years at the top of the Ministry of Social Development at the end of September. He takes with him — to the academic School of Government and some other appointments — his pre-eminent reputation as a chief executive. And he’s still pushing change.

The Maori party reckons whanau ora a revolutionary social policy initiative. But Hughes already had established the base from which whanau ora’s aim of a wraparound service could be developed: Community Link centres.

Peter Hughes

Peter Hughes.

There will be 80 Community Link centres by end-2011 and 130 by end-2012. The aim is to transform the benefit and social assistance systems so they address in one place a range of people’s needs supplied by several services. They replace Work and Income centres which essentially dole out benefits and get people work-ready and into work.

Building on that, Hughes wants to transform the whole public service model. Continue Reading →

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Maori for past or for present, for then or for now?

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old maori village

Nineteenth century Maori village. Click for whole scene.

From Owen McShane’s newsletter Straight Thinking comes his article The Reactionaries and the Modernists – Maori at the Cross Roads, published in the National Business Review (behind a paywall) on 22nd August.
 
Owen presents the choice between modernism and tribalism as being Maori’s to make, but the consequences equally punish or reward the rest of us. The infiltration of our public decision-making by regressive, animist religious practices impedes our development.

Maori have a choice

One road will take Maori into a future in which they participate in the modern world, contribute to economic growth and development, and contribute to their own and their children’s wellbeing.

The other road leads them backwards into a Tribal World based on animist religious beliefs such as mauri, (the life force) and which regards science as the “latest force of colonization.” Continue Reading →

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The staggering thought we cause storms

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a great storm

A great storm in America.

This is from The Nelson Daily (British Columbia) on 31 Aug 2011. The story tries to induce anxiety about the increased storminess we humans are causing.

The idea is as loony as thinking that sacrificing a virgin to the gods might increase the harvest.

The title is Hurricane Irene and the staggering costs of climate change, and the first thing I notice is that the author, Richard Matthews, has a professional grip on the landscape of global warming and its off-shoots.

Richard Matthews is a consultant, eco-entrepreneur, green investor and author of numerous articles on sustainable positioning, eco-economics and enviro-politics. He is the owner of THE GREEN MARKET, a leading sustainable business blog and one of the Web’s most comprehensive resources on the business of the environment.

He has, in short, very good business reasons to magnify man’s impact on the environment, including our contribution to global warming. Matthews’ opening statement leads the way in brushing aside the need for evidence or logic. Continue Reading →

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Personal update

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I’ve been sick in bed for the week with a watery head cold. My wife took very good care of me while trying to keep her distance — nasty and painfully spluttery, it was. Much sleeping, reading and eating went on, all in bed, some of it at the same time.

I’m still not fit for polite company but I’m now catching up with work and trying to catch up with this writing. There’s so much to say, and I still like to pass on some current stories to help keep readers informed, such as today’s on black carbon.

I hope you visit other sites, too, just as I do, but putting stories here gives us an opportunity to converse about them and inform local communities. And somebody has to mention the latest sceptical climate news, since the MSM aren’t doing it, are they?!

Thing is, I just cannot cover them all, so I’m sorry if I left something out or haven’t touched on your favourite topic lately, but I’ll get round to it. Drop me a line, if you like, to remind me or to make a suggestion.

There are some things I want to say about NIWA, our legal case and the abortion that is their latest temperature record.

I hope all this will be accomplished soon, with your help and patience.

Cheers,
Richard T.

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The dirt on Black Carbon

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village fires

Village fires cause global warming, apparently. But the immediate local health risk is more important, so our scientists shouldn’t be so short-sighted. (Sorry about the tongue-twister.) Before anything, we should improve the fireplaces themselves. How hard can it be?

How convenient this is! With all the doubt now falling on the culpability of carbon dioxide (“carbon”) in the crime of global warming, the worried warmists have wheeled in a new culprit accused, already chained and bearing a conspicuously disreputable name — Black Carbon.

Just as CO2 has been wilting under an intensive examination and showing undisputable signs of innocence, how lucky to have soot standing by to shoulder the blame on behalf of we horrid humans. Continue Reading →

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‘Fume permits’ perfect for fraud

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Romanian houses

Some fairly ordinary houses in Sighisoara, Romania.

Some people, like NZ Climate Science Coalition energy spokeman Bryan Leyland, have been warning for years that the introduction of trading in invisible, unmeasurable, so-called “carbon credits” (or ‘fume permits’) is an open invitation to fraud.

Since 2002, Carbon Trade Watch has been keeping a close eye on the effectiveness of and criminal activity in carbon trading around the world. They wrote a good summary in April this year of frauds in the European scheme.

Now, we see the involvement of an entire country in “irregularities”, with Romania being completely barred from trading in carbon credits.

The Kyoto Protocol created a Compliance Committee (or Carbon Police), responsible for setting fines or deciding other punitive action when countries fail to meet their obligations under the Protocol.

The Compliance Committee has suspended Romania from participating in the carbon “market” because, they say, there are “irregularities” in Romania’s emissions data. The country was anticipating earning $US2.2 billion towards reducing its national debt from sales of carbon “offsets”.

The temptation to misreport the nation’s emissions and sinks is perhaps too easy, but one wonders what nasty political considerations might lie behind this severe and rapaciously expensive sanction (if the country loses the whole of the potential earnings, the fine is $US2.2 billion for what might have been an administrative lapse). One has strong doubts that the same thing happen to, say, the UK or Germany if they counted the invisible gases improperly.

Notice how emissions of carbon dioxide (with a few even less important gases) are demonised in this report from AFP by referring to the process as “pumping industrial gases.”

The scheme allows around 12,000 companies including huge multinationals to buy and sell rights to pump industrial gases into the atmosphere.

There has been a clever and very successful propaganda campaign to turn us against greenhouse gases.

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NIWA’s sham: but wait — there’s more

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holy grail

The Holy Grail

Independently peer-reviewed scientific papers published in learned journals are the Holy Grail of climate science alarmists, and the IPCC in particular. So they want to get friendly papers in and keep contrary papers out.

The Climategate emails show continuous collusion between members of the “Hockey Team” to prevent journal publication of any paper which challenged the IPCC dogma. Because, once published, a paper becomes part of “the scientific literature” and authors are obliged thereafter to take it seriously.

Of course, the IPCC manipulates the system outrageously. After Chairman Pachauri assured the media that it disregarded non-peer-reviewed opinions, revelations came that more than one-third of the material used by some Working Groups came from the “grey” literature (usually written by Big Green activists).

NIWA closely follows the party line. That’s why it has insisted endlessly that the New Zealand temperature record (NZTR) included adjustments “described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature” which were “in accord with internationally accepted techniques.” Continue Reading →

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We’ll ask them about that consensus

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Earth with a thermostat

What fabulous gobbledygook.

We hear repeatedly about an alleged overwhelming “consensus” of climate scientists who apparently all believe the same thing about the world’s climate. What, precisely, they all believe is not only undefined but also variable, according to whether we’re discussing human emissions of GHG, ocean acidification, the spread of malaria, the “loss” of polar ice caps, altered butterfly populations, extra floods, extra droughts, loss of polar bears, harm to poor people or dangerous sea level rise.

As, for example, in today’s story about NASA noticing a slight fall in sea level over the past year, where the reporter says, all wide-eyed and trusting:

The vast majority of climate scientists agree that the release of greenhouse gases Continue Reading →

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CLOUD proves cosmic ray link

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See commentary on WUWT.

Nature has just published Cloud formation may be linked to cosmic rays, which acknowledges results from an experiment at CERN probing a connection between climate change and radiation bombarding the atmosphere.

[In comments, Alan Burke quickly diminishes the significance.]

In the meantime, Nigel Calder posts CERN experiment confirms cosmic ray action, nailing confirmation of such a “connection” to the scientific wall.

You can draw your own conclusions from the revealing graph he gives:

CLOUD results

A graph they’d prefer you not to notice. Tucked away near the end of online supplementary material, and omitted from the printed CLOUD paper in Nature, it clearly shows how cosmic rays promote the formation of clusters of molecules (“particles”) that in the real atmosphere can grow and seed clouds. In an early-morning experimental run at CERN, starting at 03.45, ultraviolet light began making sulphuric acid molecules in the chamber, while a strong electric field cleansed the air of ions. It also tended to remove molecular clusters made in the neutral environment (n) but some of these accumulated at a low rate. As soon as the electric field was switched off at 04.33, natural cosmic rays (gcr) raining down through the roof of the experimental hall in Geneva helped to build clusters at a higher rate. How do we know they were contributing? Because when, at 04.58, CLOUD simulated stronger cosmic rays with a beam of charged pion particles (ch) from the accelerator, the rate of cluster production became faster still. The various colours are for clusters of different diameters (in nanometres) as recorded by various instruments. The largest (black) took longer to grow than the smallest (blue). This is Fig. S2c from supplementary online material for J. Kirkby et al., Nature, 476, 429-433, © Nature 2011. See original graphic.

Take your pick between Nature and Calder. Is the link alleged or confirmed? Is there a non-GHG-induced magnification of solar influence on cloud formation, and therefore global lower tropospheric temperature, or not?

This must give Nick Smith cause to review our ETS.

Stand back as the warmists rush the exits.

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Incredible sham from NIWA

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NIWA shows 168% more warming

NIWA shows 168% more warming than Rhoades & Salinger – the method NIWA betrayed. The blue dashed line shows the warming trend when the method is used correctly. The red line reveals NIWA’s outrageous fraud – it’s much stronger warming, but it’s empty of truth.

NIWA didn’t use Rhoades & Salinger. We can prove it. They lied.

NZ Climate Science Coalition statisticians have uncovered evidence of scarcely believable deception from our National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA).

Last December, NIWA released a reconstructed NZ temperature series Report on the Review of NIWA’s Seven Station Temperature Series (“7SS Review”) (pdf, 8.5 MB). It has a fresh new graph (below) that’s all but indistinguishable from the previous graph. But that’s not the point.

The point is the new series is a lie. Continue Reading →

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Revkin declines Joe Romm’s bet on Arctic sea ice

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Andrew Revkin

Andrew Revkin – Dr Who?

Warmist internecine strife has never really appeared on my radar, but now it’s actually spoiling the image. How encouraging it is to my sceptical heart to hear leading warmists brawling in their little playground. They express perfect hatred for each other.

Are they frustrated that their warmist preferences for scientific conclusions and policy recommendations are becoming as last season’s fashions? Does it sting their vanity that they can do nothing to halt the loss of face that now disfigures their darling beliefs in global warming?

Does the sudden, inexorable and widespread use of the terms “scam”, “myths” and “fallacies” associated with “climate change” drive them insane with rage? We can but hope. Continue Reading →

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Poor Al Gore can’t take the heat

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Al Gore

Al Gore

The Washington Times rips into the famous Al Gore, he of the warmist persuasion, the alarmist disposition and the iconic, truth-bending book and movie An Inconvenient Truth, for ignoring his long-cultivated good manners and giving vent to a stream of public profanity at sceptical scientists.

It’s clear that the practice of quietly stating the truth and asking pertinent questions does start to unpick the foundations of belief. Poor Al.

Here’s how H. Leighton Steward puts it: Continue Reading →

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Barton earns Canadian rebuke

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Chris de Freitas

Professor Chris de Freitas

This post could be considered tardy. However Donna Laframboise’s illuminating comments lose nothing with the passage of time. They deserve circulation and Auckland’s possibly best-known sceptical climate scientist deserves her thoughtful and eloquent support.

Four weeks ago, on July 16, the Herald published Chris Barton’s attack on Chris de Freitas’s integrity. The next day I posted a defence of a scientist who has given a lot of help to any number of keen climate amateurs like myself and has the courage to say out loud that things are not scientific if to him they appear in fact to be unscientific.

About a week later the uncompromising Laframboise posted a perceptive analysis of Barton’s attempted “critical thinking”. I encourage you to read the whole thing if you have a few minutes. Continue Reading →

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Confidence in climate scientists plummets

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— by Barry Brill, Chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

public confidence survey

Graphic kindly provided by International Climate Science Coalition

In the latest Rasmussen national telephone survey of American adults, 69% say it’s likely that some scientists have falsified research data in order to support their own theories and beliefs. Only 6% say it is not at all likely. Continue Reading →

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What warming?

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what warming?

NIWA’s paper finds strong warming. But when their temperature data are processed according to the proper methodology, there’s no unusual warming. Throughout their paper, NIWA cite the proper method, but they never use it. Why not?

NIWA’s data confirms: little warming

When it’s calculated correctly

Why did they lie to us?

In December last year, NIWA released their long-awaited review of the NZ temperature record (NZTR). We’ve reviewed that report and found serious errors. NIWA used the wrong method and created strong warming. We used the right method and found mild warming.

There are a few things we need to understand about weather stations. The first is that these stations sit there for a long time. Some of them have been in the same place for 80 years and more. If you sat in one place for that long, you’d see stuff happening around you — same for the weather station.

Trees grow, buildings go up, airport runways get covered in tarseal or concrete, roads appear, and these and other non-climatic influences affect the temperature readings, usually making them warmer, but not always. Sometimes the station gets moved, and it’s always better to keep all that history if you can, so you try to adjust it rather than start again with a new station.

NIWA had to start from scratch

Knowing this, when scientists examine a series of temperature readings they look for what has changed at the different stations. If the changes affected the temperature readings, they adjust the readings. Continue Reading →

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Just one fact

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Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein.

To defeat relativity one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact.

– Albert Einstein.

This statement is not true because Einstein made it — it’s true because it accords with reason. Theory must always bow to observation.

… or just one paper

Unfortunately, in CAGW (catastrophic anthropogenic global warming) we have a theory which is undefined in a peer-reviewed paper, which means it’s almost impossible to refute. This is deliberate. Sceptical questions provoke the inevitable challenge to “produce a better theory” — as though their opponents’ failure to do so proves the half-baked theory correct, which it cannot.

Any evidence contrary to part of the theory is answered by talking about some other part. “Heads we win, tails you lose.”

Any change in the climate, especially any violent weather event which injures us or damages our property, “proves” climate change, which, by a mere trick of linguistic association, “proves” global warming. That, in turn, is our fault. After all, so many people wouldn’t be talking about how to prevent it if it didn’t exist, right?

Well, no, actually. Continue Reading →

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