Has the ugly demand for ‘diversity’ reached New Zealand?

Bryan Leyland has decades-long experience in electricity generation projects of all kinds. He applied to the NZ Battery Project to join its Technical Reference Group. This week he learned he had been unsuccessful. Their letter offered a summary of why he missed out. Continue Reading →

Visits: 262

Fight for climate evidence goes on … and on

Our good friend Bryan Leyland wrote this hard-hitting article describing correspondence he had with the newly-formed NZ Climate Change Commission. [Download the correspondence file here (pdf, 536 KB).] He’s been engaged on a dogged search for evidence that human activity dangerously heats the earth. Everyone says the evidence is “overwhelming” but when you ask them nobody actually has any, which strikes us as a confidence trick. He offers us the article in hopes of the widest possible distribution, because everyone’s asking: “What is the evidence?”

NOTE ON THE COMING ELECTION: If you think setting up this commission and hiking the ETS carbon price is bad, wait for the next three years of government by these backward-looking, anti-farming, communist wreckers.

The Climate Commission has no clothes

— by Bryan Leyland, Consulting Engineer
Member, NZ Climate Science Coalition

The Climate Commission claims, “We provide independent, evidence-based advice to Government to help Aotearoa New Zealand transition to a low-emissions and climate-resilient economy.”

Spending huge amounts of money on a low-emissions economy is only justified if proof exists that man-made greenhouse gases cause dangerous global warming. If there’s no evidence there’s no need for the transition. Continue Reading →

Visits: 48

Downunder wind and solar power increasingly unreliable

• Guest post •

— by Bryan Leyland
Consulting Engineer • Member, NZ Climate Science Coalition

Once upon a time New Zealand and Australia had some of the lowest electricity prices in the world. Unfortunately, imposing ill-conceived electricity “markets”, combined with the modern mania for renewable energy, has greatly increased prices in both countries. Newspaper stories on the steadily deteriorating situation in Australia abound. Continue Reading →

Visits: 108

Govt playing chicken with NZ power supply

Bryan Leyland, Consulting Engineer, warns of blackouts

Electricity wholesale prices on the spot market have averaged 25 cents/kWh (four times the normal 7 cents) for the last three weeks because the New Zealand power system is in an appalling state, with severe shortages of water, gas, coal and generating plant. Continue Reading →

Visits: 504

If you can prove dangerous man-made global warming, you win $6000

Power engineer Bryan Leyland yesterday spearheaded a dramatic new challenge to publish a peer-reviewed paper that proves we’re endangering the climate. For such a paper, Bryan announced he will give a cash prize of $NZD2000. Some of us have pitched in and already raised the prize money to $5000 $6000. Continue Reading →

Visits: 543

Another Herald letter languishes

caption

NZ Herald, 10th February, 2015.

The letter at right appeared in the NZ Herald on 10th February and that day I emailed the following letter in response. To the best of my knowledge my letter was not published, so here it is.

Dear Sir,

Your correspondent Philip Jones claims Bryan Leyland’s assertion of ‘no warming’ is incorrect, saying the temperature data do not support it.

He says recent high temperatures prove they have been rising and he’s right. But they haven’t been rising for some time and so he’s wrong. Continue Reading →

Visits: 259

Hear the alarm

Here’s good sceptical climate information all wrapped up in a lovely example of how to deliver it.

My good friend Bryan Leyland, engineer, sent this exchange. He gives us an admirable example of the best practicality and erudition, conjoined as only Kiwis do it, leavened with a charming humanity.

Some while ago Bryan gave an address to IPENZ (Institute of Professional Engineers NZ) members in Whangarei and one of his audience has been thinking carefully about what he said. Bryan just received a letter from this colleague, who describes himself as an environmental engineer, and Bryan replied. Below, the letter writer, with his name and details withheld to preserve his privacy, is quoted in the green text.

In his responses, Bryan listens to the anxiety and the honest intent of a person who looks like an opponent, keeps a level head and gives informed answers that address the substance of the opposing view. It’s an object lesson for us all, on both sides of the great climate divide. Continue Reading →

Visits: 62

Sciblogs ignores climate facts

Talk about spin.

Greenpeace went in to bat for the seabirds killed off by a bit of oil from the Rena – good on them. But they had a big, juicy agenda – killing off deep sea oil drilling near NZ. So they exaggerated the few Rena bird deaths. The 1300 little bodies collected became 20,000 dead, without evidence to justify the expansion.

Then they claimed that 1000 times more again “could” perish in a spill the size of the Gulf of Mexico disaster. That would mean 20 million dead birds. Well, that was ambiguously tentative, although they said later they weren’t talking just about bird deaths.

Our good friend Bryan Leyland complained to the Advertising Standards Authority over Greenpeace’s wild claims. The ASA agreed with him, saying Greenpeace made misleading claims and really shouldn’t. Continue Reading →

Visits: 75

Sceptics query our truth – we shall besmirch and slander them

Denier, denier, pants on fire

Deniers claim debate is ‘over’ because they can’t win it

Constant practise of scepticism is the root of good science

Hot Topic have been reviling our good friend and climate warrior Bryan Leyland for his opinion piece published recently. Not to mention several other sceptical climate articles by other people which they cannot tolerate. In the process Gareth Renowden and his gang spill the beans on their evidence—they don’t have any.

Because, pressed for some evidence of catastrophic man-made warming of our planet, they don’t reveal any. Renowden, Dappledwater and the rest of the fourth-formers threaten that evidence not only exists but increases beyond doubt, yet they still refuse to disclose it.

They also make unsubstantiated allegations of impropriety or even falsehood against Bryan.

Their arguments always seemed fact-poor and this proves it. Again and again they ignore reasonable requests for supporting information or peer-reviewed papers and resort instead to attacking the questioner. Continue Reading →

Visits: 447

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

More proof global temps lag SOI

SOI forecast January 2011

NIWA, listen to this, it’s amazing

UPDATE 1, 11 JAN 2011, 09:30 NZDT

On December 1 last year, we wrote about Bryan Leyland’s prediction of significant cooling before the end of the year coming true. You can see from the chart exactly what happened. Not only that, it would appear that the temperature has not finished going down yet.

This remarkable forecast, now some eight months old, comes out of a 2009 paper showing a lagged correlation between global temperatures and the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), calculated from fluctuations in the air pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin, and indicative also of the start (and the state) of a La Nina (as now) or an El Nino. This correlation is a lot more convincing than comparing global temperature with CO2 levels! Continue Reading →

Visits: 99

NZ wind farm subsidies

NZ wind turbine

Subsidies? In New Zealand? For wind power?

 

A conversation was under way here, sparked by my post on Germany’s “new dark age”. A reader (Andy) posed the question:

“I am intrigued by the NZ wind industry, because it seems, on the face of it, to be just about the only example in the world that is not surviving on subsidies (other than the ETS, of course). Am I missing something here?”

Now Bryan Leyland provides the startling information that NZ wind turbines do enjoy substantial public subsidies. He laid them out for me. I’ll start with the smaller ones and shock you with the biggest at the end.

First, they don’t have to predict in advance what the output will be. Of course, this would be a practical impossibility, like predicting the exact rainfall next month. But we are immediately alerted to one of the most serious drawbacks of wind generation. Continue Reading →

Visits: 631