Climate Conversation Group

What appeared to be a startling development in the important topic of global warming started with Dr James Renwick on Sunday 17 March, 2013, in an interview aired on TV1 at about 11:17 am. Susan Woods introduces it by describing the current severe drought.

TVNZ issued a press release a few hours later, stating: “Dr Renwick told the programme that global warming was the only explanation for the drought,” even though that was not a faithful reflection of the interview.

The NBR followed up the same day with an article in which they make an identical statement: “Dr Renwick told the programme that global warming was the only explanation for the drought,” which suggests that the NBR obtained the statement from TVNZ.

Rodney Hide picked up the story (which is how I discovered it) a week ago with an article in the NBR criticising Renwick for blaming global warming for the drought.

My initial post supported Rodney’s article in the NBR and I defended him when he was lambasted by Gareth Renowden.

It was a startling story, since reputable scientists say that you cannot blame this or that specific weather event on global warming. Although warming might increase the frequency or ferocity of an event, warming alone cannot create one. But the statement was corroborated by the very broadcaster which interviewed Renwick. They should know. So it appeared to be true.

This is just not so

Because the statement was outrageous, I was sceptical, but after reading the transcript and studying the video, I thought that taking that meaning from it was plausible and I wrote a post carefully explaining my reasoning.

There was a clamour of dissent until Andy suggested someone contact James Renwick. Good idea, I thought, and I emailed him.

Within half an hour, James politely confirmed that he never blamed the drought on global warming: “This is just not so.” It’s good to hear him say that, actually, but we must deal with the fallout.

So, I apologise to Dr Renwick for misquoting him so badly — that is, over a statement so disastrously incorrect. And I am asking TVNZ for an explanation.

Our public broadcaster has told a very naughty porky.

When Rodney Hide, in an NBR article, criticised Dr James Renwick for, in a TV1 interview, blaming anthropogenic warming for the recent drought, Gareth Renowden accused him of misrepresentation.

First I defended Rodney. Later I pointed out that the NBR took exactly the same message from Renwick’s interview as Rodney had. It reported: “Dr Renwick told the programme that global warming was the only explanation for the drought.” In a detailed analysis of the interview and its introduction I show how this was the reasonable conclusion. Read more… »

I haven’t seen much lately of Gareth Renowden’s climate writing, although I came across him burbling recently about US activist Bill McKibben.

Today I read Renowden’s post at The Daily Blog complaining about Rodney Hide’s NBR article. In it, Rodney criticises Dr James Renwick for comments Renwick made during this interview for TV1′s Q+A programme.

Nasty stuff

In the Daily Blog post, Renowden is distinctly combative, immediately smearing Rodney as ‘irrelevant’ and ‘rabid.’ It’s nasty stuff, but Renowden seems inured to the dirt he shovels. There was nothing in Rodney’s article to deserve this treatment. It’s unclear why Renowden bothers with such an “irrelevant” commentator but comparing Rodney with a mad dog is as outrageous as it is patently untrue.

In the end Renowden shreds his own credibility by inviting Rodney to join the warmists, claiming rather feebly ‘we need all hands on deck’ — as though the rabidly irrelevant would chance his welcome.

Disagreeing further with Rodney’s article, Gareth makes a point I cannot ignore: “There’s been no warming for 17 years, apparently. Tell that to the Greenland ice sheet, or the Arctic sea ice. Tell that to the warming oceans. Global surface temperatures may not be shooting up as fast as in the recent past, but heat continues to accumulate in the climate system. Rapid climate change is here, now.” Read more… »

Rodney Hide continues to support a realistic view of dangerous anthropogenic global warming.

The NBR today carries his article “Faith, not facts, drive[s] global warming.”

Rodney says Renwick “was in no doubt that man-made global warming was causing the summer drought,” then quotes Renwick from his TV interview:

“Oh, no, no. There’s no other explanation that’s remotely plausible.”

But Rodney rightly points out:

That’s religious zealotry in action. Science is never that certain. The best-ever scientific knowledge was Newtonian mechanics. And Einstein blew it to bits. That’s the nature of science.

He goes on to show how Renwick’s theory is falsified. It’s the right stuff.

Dr James Hansen, former respected space scientist, “father” of global warming, now an unrepentant (now full-time) activist warning of nothing less than the imminent “destruction of the world” — which at one time was the very definition of ‘crank’. It is quite difficult to destroy the life in the world and it shows no sign of becoming easier.

Yesterday, Dr Vincent Gray sent out his Climate Truth Newsletter (no. 310). In it he adverts to an outrageous admission of common sense by James Hansen. Years ago, Hansen admitted on his GISS web page that there’s no agreement among scientists on what constitutes an acceptable surface air temperature.

Sensationally, he also said that it’s IMPOSSIBLE to obtain a scientifically meaningful surface air temperature (SAT).

Now, with Hansen’s resignation from NASA, Gavin Schmidt has rushed in to take charge of these surprising admissions. Curiously, I see that Schmidt’s description is “NASA Official,” where Hansen was the “Responsible NASA Official.” Significant, interesting or irrelevant? Speculation might be endless…

The link above to the previous version of the page at the Wayback Machine is from 15 October, 2008, but that page is marked as last updated on 12 July, 2005. There are three more words in the body text of the current version than on the old page; I conclude they’re essentially identical.

These comments asserting the impossibility of determining the SAT put a disturbing slant on Hansen’s alarmism based on the SAT during the last 20 years of the 20th Century. Read more… »

Wind power is not free. All natural energy resources such as coal, wind and sun appear “free” — no one has to incur costs to create them. But turning a “free” resource into usable electricity costs money for collecting, generating and distributing that energy. To consumers and tax payers, the real cost of wind power is very high, no matter how well it is hidden by politicians.

Wind power is not reliable. No one can make the wind blow when the energy is needed Read more… »

Comments here from someone who shall remain nameless (thanks a lot, Andy!) forced my twice-yearly drive-by glance at Hot Topic, finding again that its unending invective, rancour, impatience, embarrassing ignorance and sheer mindless chatter is all too irksome.

But a recent post by Renowden calls for comment. He talks about Bill McKibben.

Bill McKibben — that most thoughtful and interesting of climate campaigners — is bringing his very successful Do The Maths campaign to New Zealand next month [June], and will be speaking in Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin. Bill’s argument is straightforward:

The maths are simple: we can burn less than 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide and stay below 2°C of warming — anything more than that risks catastrophe for life on earth. Read more… »

50 to 1 project

Four days ago I received the following appeal for help. Others have posted their expressions of support and I’m a little tardy, but here it is.

Lord Christopher Monckton has teamed up with Topher Field, a documentary maker, to produce a short video for YouTube. The theme is Christopher’s calculation of the cost of fighting climate change. He uses the IPCC’s figures at every step to prove that we cannot restore the climate for anything like an affordable sum. We cannot even afford the cost of simply trying to restore the climate. Not even if each of us were Germany. The temperature just won’t go down enough.

I’m more than happy to help publicise Field’s worthy project. It could save western industrialised nations more money than they’ve dreamed of since the Industrial Revolution.

Rather than spilling endless billions uselessly into the climate change swamp making amends for our decades of climate crimes (how dare we become prosperous!) we might now pay for practical purposes like reducing pollution, providing clean water, education, medical care and persuading wayward governments to care for their nation not just their own tribe.

The project page shows the money count has already reached $27,546 towards a goal of at least $130,000. Well done, there, crowd members!!

Topher might have an odd name but he’s an attractive, persuasive speaker with a wholesome message, as you’ll see in the promotional video he provides.

He just needs a few dollars to be getting on with it.

Topher’s polite email

My name is Topher Field, I’m an Australian film maker and activist. I’m working with Lord Christopher Monckton on a project called ‘50 to 1.’

It’s all about the TRUE cost of trying to ‘stop’ climate change versus the cost of adapting to climate change as and if it happens. I think it may be of interest to you and you can see a short video which explains what it’s about here:

We are running a crowd-funding campaign to try to raise the required budget in order to make this project a reality. We would be extremely grateful for any publicity, blogging, emailing of contacts etc., which you could do in order to get the word out about this project.

Please have a look at the link and do with it as you see fit.

Best Regards

Topher Field

Professor Michael Kelly, Prince Philip Professor of Technology, University of Cambridge, kindly sends us his comments on a letter this month to Nature Geoscience, Test of a decadal climate forecast, by Myles R. Allen, John F.B. Mitchell and Peter A. Stott. I previously commented on the letter in Climate forecasts fulfilled or what? Mike just returned to England after spending seven months as Visiting Professor at the prestigious MacDiarmid Institute, Victoria University of Wellington.

The recent paper of Allen et al. does a careful job of estimating errors in forward projections of global temperatures from earlier calculations on global circulation models of the atmosphere. Given the simple question — are the models doing a good job or not — the increasing level of sophistication needed to defend them is of concern. For many of us, a temperature stasis of 17 years is enough to suggest that the models are not as robust as some of their advocates maintain. Read more… »

From a correspondent

I think the game is up for the pro-AGW crowd due to the lack of temperature rises over the last 16-23 years.

It looks like Gavin Schmidt might be jumping from the sinking ship now as well. To me, Gavin looks like he’s positioning himself for a back-down on his AGW position – why would he point out the flaws with Nuccitelli’s post otherwise, it’s no concern to him? I think Hansen, even though he admitted the lack of a temp rise over the last 16 years, was given the boot from NASA Read more… »

Redolent of the grey men running the climate scam and the IPCC, here’s a similar illusion in grey. The colours of squares A and B are identical. Click for larger version and to see proof. Reflect on what you know of the image of the “scientific” IPCC and the “thousands” of scientists who “write” the assessment reports. Consider what is true. Let us know.

Be in no doubt

A reader, Simon, made some interesting points when he commented on my assertion that scientists “incite” policy, saying:

The relatively recent trend of activism by individual scientists is solely because of the way their work is being misrepresented and their concern over the changing environment.

What he calls “concern over the changing environment” is the motivation for activism, so I’m glad we agree on that. But if they only looked more closely rather than satisfying their expectations at first glance they wouldn’t detect any change beyond the ordinary. Because no unprecedented climatic fluctuations have been reported. So why be concerned?

He refers to scientific activism as a “recent trend”, blatantly ignoring the fact that the whole climate scam was started by activists, and describes activism by “individual scientists” to imply they are few. In fact, they are thickly distributed throughout the UN, the IPCC, national and international scientific organisations and national governments, and their pronouncements and opinions are broadcast constantly.

How much more must they do before Simon notices them? Read more… »

Every policy document is written by a person or a panel. The question is, who else filled it with ideas and who else, therefore, is responsible?

It’s hard to know if a reader, Simon, was being serious when he said “Scientists don’t set policy either, politicians do that” because it’s blindingly obvious that scientists don’t keep their hands off policy. They constantly agitate because — surprise — they constantly need funding.

That’s the very reason we’re in this climate change mess, because politicians alone couldn’t have done it. A few smart leaders might have come up with the idea of dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW) justifying deep government interference in our lives, but they had to be assisted by publicly-funded scientists who became heavily involved in supporting policy proposals, even to the point of activism.

At all levels of science and of government, scientists have spent thirty years providing assistance of varying magnitude to politicians; it’s not only cynics who remark that scientists made friends with politicians only to safeguard their funding. Read more… »

Dr. David Deming in the Washington Times: “With each passing year, it is becoming increasingly clear that global warming is not a scientific theory subject to empirical falsification, but a political ideology that has to be fiercely defended against any challenge. It is ironic that skeptics are called “deniers” when every fact that would tend to falsify global warming is immediately explained away by an industry of denial.”

via Quote of the Week: the industry of denial | Watts Up With That?.

These documents posted two days ago on the NZ Climate Science Coalition’s web site record Christopher Monckton’s complaint against Victoria University of Wellington for refusing him access to its campus, for dishonesty and for slandering him.

Document 1. Lord Monckton’s complaint, repeated below.
Document 2. Is CO2 mitigation cost-effective? A paper to be published soon.
Document 3. Professor Boston’s fraudulent graph. Referring to the professor’s use in 2008 of a faulty IPCC graph from the AR4, 2007.

Here is the full text of his complaint, addressed to the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Pat Walsh.

11 April 2013

Professor Pat Walsh, Vice-Chancellor,

Victoria University of Wellington.

pat.walsh@vuw.ac.nz

Sir,

Dishonesty and other serious misconduct by three staff

I should be grateful if you would investigate dishonesty and other serious breaches of your university’s code of conduct on the part of three staff. Read more… »

Earlier today someone mentioned to me that a Guardian article confirmed the remarkable claim that climate models correctly predicted the evolution of this century’s temperatures. By implication, either they predicted the hiatus or the hiatus hasn’t occurred. I was intrigued.

It turns out the article came from a paper (actually a letter), Test of a decadal climate forecast, by Myles R. Allen, John F.B. Mitchell and Peter A. Stott, published online by Nature Geoscience on 27 March.

All I can access at present is the abstract and a single page (through ReadCube) but I can see some things to question, and I’d like to ask readers to help give some understanding of it.

The hiatus could falsify the DAGW hypothesis, so weakening the hiatus strengthens DAGW. It’s important we understand it correctly.

UPDATE 13 Apr 2013 11:55 am

Professor Mike Kelly, of Cambridge University, has kindly sent me a copy of the paper, saying he would review it for us. Reading through the extra page (two pages that change everything!), I find it packed with questions and comments.

Abstract

To the Editor — Early climate forecasts are often claimed to have overestimated recent warming. However, their evaluation is challenging for two reasons. Read more… »

Are current temperatures hotter than ever?

Not so far

Was there a Medieval Warm Period somewhere in the world in addition to the area surrounding the North Atlantic Ocean, where its occurrence is uncontested? This question is of utmost importance to the ongoing global warming debate, for if the Medieval Warm Period is found to have been a global climatic phenomenon, and if the locations where it occurred were as warm in medieval times as they are currently, there is no need to consider the temperature increase of the past century as anything other than the natural progression of the persistent millennial-scale oscillation of climate that regularly brings the earth several-hundred-year periods of modestly higher and lower temperatures that are totally independent of variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration.

via CO2 Science.

The CO2 Science web site thus introduces a literature review of temperature studies around 950–1400, known traditionally as the Medieval Warm Period.

The review concludes that the findings of the 24 studies examined suggest “there is nothing that is unusual, unnatural or unprecedented about the current level of Earth’s warmth, which further suggests that the historical increase in the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration may not have had anything to do with concomitant 20th-century global warming.”

The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change was founded by Dr Craig D. Idso (the present chairman), Dr Sherwood B. Idso is its President and Dr Keith E. Idso its Vice President. Craig and Keith are brothers, Sherwood is their father; each is a respected scientist with an impressive publication record.

h/t WUWT, who includes this handy comparison:

Cost-benefit analysis, anyone?

The Green Party today revealed that the National Government is allowing mining companies to search for minerals on our most protected conservation land.

To reassure New Zealanders that our National Parks and most precious conservation land won’t ever be open for mining, the Government should stop allowing minerals prospecting and exploration there.

via Our most precious wilderness not safe from mining | Greenweek, the newsletter

They say 50,000 people wanted to tell 4 million what to do. Without even discussing whether to measure the value of having reserves against the cost of locking away their natural resources.

Actually, our wilderness is not so precious that we’d give up prosperity to keep a particular piece of it. That’s taking the principle too far. We can replace a piece of any old reserve with another piece somewhere else. There’s plenty of it. Look at a map. Read more… »

Freedom by any means is freedom

Auckland’s transport system is clogged up, and as it’s our largest city, the whole country will benefit from freeing it up.

The solutions already exist and are achievable. Please join me, and our transport spokesperson Julie Anne Genter, this Sunday afternoon at the Green Party Auckland office to launch our new transport campaign Reconnect Auckland.

Green transport solutions, like the City Rail Link, will help build a smart, green city of the future.

via Free up Auckland | Greenweek, the newsletter

Whenever new lanes, tunnels and bridges are proposed to accommodate more vehicles and alleviate Auckland’s transport woes, the Greens oppose them, even though it always becomes faster to get around.

Now they argue that the “whole country” will benefit from the “green” solution of a few more buses and trains, seeming not to realise that’s also the aim of the extra motorways and tunnels. Also seeming not to understand that public transport is no solution.

That’s because we already have private transport, which we control. We can already go wherever we want to, whenever we like.

A bus or a train cannot take a person where they want to be, because nobody (beyond a few sex “workers”) has business at a bus stop or railway station. Sure, in the city there’s no difference between a short walk to the office from the bus stop or the car park and it’s a trivial thing. But we’re talking about every trip, not only into a crowded city, but also around the suburbs and even, oddly, into the far more spacious countryside, where no bus can serve everyone. Each of these trips must negotiate the perilously crowded main roads in and around the city.

Importantly, buses and trains don’t use the most efficient route, or go at the right time, so they are more expensive — and less convenient — than a private car.

But don’t try telling the Greens that people insist on going where they want to go, right when it suits them.

Because the Greens know little about serving the people and don’t seem to care.

Big roads and private cars are the “greenest” of transport solutions, because they keep the big dangerous bus monsters off our roads.

Today, the NZ Herald announced:

New Zealand’s climate is forecast to warm by at least 1°C by 2050, while the average rate for the world has been put at more than 2°C.

via Warming likely boost to vineyards – NZ Herald.

The article said it was good news for wine. James Renwick was asked to comment and thought stonefruit and pipfruit wouldn’t suit warmer conditions and “other potential negatives included more floods and cyclones, sea level rises, and more plant and insect pests.” (There’s always someone with a gloomy view, isn’t there?)

But this move in temperatures is hard to reconcile with what we know. Read more… »

For all of its apparent complexity, the threat of dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW) formulated at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 is based on a very simple assumption:

When X = 560, Y = ECS

where

X = atmospheric concentration of CO2e in parts-per-million
Y = the increase in temperature since pre-1880, in °C
ECS (Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity) = 1°C plus the ultimate net effect of feedbacks

X is taken from the Mauna Loa observatory and Y is provided by five published temperature series, neither being deeply controversial. The sole debatable element is ECS, the assessment of which is described in Wikipedia: Read more… »

But she never asked this expert IPCC reviewer about climate change! It was either a lost opportunity or she didn’t know what to do with it.

Today I emailed Michele Hewitson to learn whether she asked Lord Monckton anything about the climate and how he may have annoyed her. I hope she replies, but she may not, especially if she spots these comments, posted before she had a chance to reply to me. But I must comment — her journalistic behaviour was crude, unprofessional, unattractive, unfair and unworthy of Christopher Monckton. To specialise in painting a “personality” in her subject can be admired. A descent into hollow chatter and rambling, malicious gossip cheapens both subject and reader.

via Michele Hewitson interview: Christopher Monckton – NZ Herald:

There was one question I really wanted to ask Viscount Christopher Monckton, the visiting climate change sceptic, and it wasn’t about climate. It was about … giving those pesky Argies the squits … during the Falklands War…

She refuses to ask intelligent questions about his vast knowledge of climate change, which brings him here, and instead employs a 30-year-old scatalogical yarn to mock him against today’s values. To assert that this spicy question was her most important raises to a virtue either mere vapidity or a taste to scandalise, neither of which empty urges sits well with the formidable tradition of the Herald. Read more… »

Pull straying journalist back into line

The NZ Herald has given Lord Monckton the floor to allow him to rebut the ridiculous criticisms of him by a bunch of so-called Kiwi scientists. Or perhaps it was a bunch of merely shallow scientists who were journalistically ambushed and their comments taken out of context. Who knows?

The culprit was the leftist idealogue employed by the APNZ as the “journalist” (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) Kurt Bayer. I notice Bayer’s byline, which accompanied the original article, has been removed from today’s story, no doubt as part of his punishment for treating a subject with complete, premeditated disdain. His only concern was clearly the advancement of a private agenda.

Under the heading “Climate change sceptic rejects criticism as ‘hate speech’” the NZ Herald has published an APNZ response to Lord Monckton’s complaint about the APNZ’s woefully innaccurate and shamefully unbalanced article in last Tuesday’s Herald.

Today’s article says:

Lord Christopher Monckton has rejected criticism of his views about climate change as his public speaking tour of New Zealand continues.

It then goes on to quote much of Christopher’s remarkably moderately-phrased written complaint verbatim.

Well done, them.

Christopher’s well-attended presentation last night in Northcote was stunning. I look forward to more of the same in central Auckland tonight.

Should try practising responsible journalism

The following correspondence from Lord Monckton to the NZ Herald concerning a scurrilous, misleading and repugnant APNZ article published today was posted on the NZ Climate Science Coalition’s web site

VISCOUNT MONCKTON’S RESPONSE TO DENIGRATORY ARTICLE IN NZ HERALD

Posted 3 April 2013

Viscount Christopher Monckton, who has just begun a speaking tour of New Zealand, has responded to an article in the on-line edition of the New Zealand Herald, attacking his qualifications and motives.

Lord Monckton comments: “I have attached some recent material, for interest. The paper on climate economics has been accepted for publication in the Annual Proceedings of the World Federation of Scientists, now in its 45th year of publication. My expert-review comments on the forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report will, I hope, demonstrate that I have taken a constructive approach.

For the sake of correcting the factual record, I am inviting the Climate Science Coalition to post up and circulate widely a copy of my letter to the editor correcting the slew of malicious inaccuracies in the Herald’s article as soon as the Herald has published it, so as to minimize the intended damage to my reputation.” Read more… »

Itinerary

Lord Monckton officially began his tour of New Zealand on Easter Monday with meetings in Northland, and a visit to Auckland is due to begin tomorrow (Thursday).

You can see Lord Monckton’s itinerary here in the menu above, or at Climate Realists.

But then, we knew that, right?

The “carbon footprint” justification is loopy (because it cannot alter global warming, even if there was any), but its righteousness distracts people so they forget about other ways of saving money.

Auckland['s publicly-funded War Memorial Museum] expects to spend 35 per cent less on gas and electricity, saving $340,000.

Auckland Museum is being touted as a green example for other city organisations after it succeeded in slashing its carbon footprint by 30 per cent in just two years.

The reduction – saving the museum around $340,000 this year – has prompted a call by Auckland Mayor Len Brown for others to follow its lead. Read more… »

Published at Quadrant Online on March 26, 2013

The planet is no longer warming. The brief warming episode of the late 20th century completed its course in the mid 1990s, and is now extinct. These are now uncontroversial statements. They are based on hard data which has been available for many years on the websites of many official agencies. But somehow those agencies found ways to interpret the data differently, and to continually sidestep the elephant in the room.

Read more… »

Published at Quadrant Online on March 12, 2013

– by John McLean

The end of this week (March 15) marks the cut-off for scientific papers if they are to be cited in the Working Group I contribution to the forthcoming IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, due in 2014. Unless the papers are published or accepted for publication the report cannot refer to them. The final expert review of the draft document ended on November 31, 2012, some 15 weeks ago. But according to IPCC procedures, the draft document can still be modified to accommodate new papers.

This is an adopted article.

You might reasonably wonder what’s going on, especially when the IPCC claims that its report is comprehensively reviewed by experts. To borrow the catch phrase beloved of ads for “miracle” knives and so much of the other schlock merchandise sold on late-night TV: but wait, there’s more! Read more… »

Published at Quadrant Online on March 6, 2013

Just one day after the IPCC Chairman claimed that global warming had stopped happening 17 years ago, the Australian Climate Commission rushed out a press statement (February 23), “The Earth Continues to Warm.”

Clearly, there is a lack of consensus here. Are these diametrically-opposed views between leaders in the field of climate change? Not at all. On closer inspection, it all turns out to be that well-known sleight-of-hand which Americans call “bait and switch.” Read more… »

Dr Pachauri said nuclear energy was a reality that “you can’t wish away” and would be dealt with in the upcoming fifth IPCC report.

via ‘Nothing off-limits’ in climate debate | The Australian.

1. Why might one wish to wish away nuclear energy?
2. How and why might nuclear energy be “dealt with” in a report on global warming?

The Antithesis of Earth Hour

A Reality Game for those Concerned about the Future for their Families

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called on electricity consumers to boycott Earth Hour grandstanding by pampered people too silly to recognise the realities and benefits of reliable electricity.

The Chairman of Carbon Sense, Mr Viv Forbes, is supporting an alternative proposal that “Earth Hour” be replaced by “Energy Roulette Week”. Read more… »

I don’t have much time for research or writing these days, more’s the pity. So I must make do with snippets when they’re available. My favourite oceanographer made a few comments the other day on the ocean “heating” being discussed in the blogosphere. I’d like to pass them on.

He made some interesting and helpful remarks for the benefit of those of us not intimately acquainted with oceanography. However, to quieten the discussion which was threatening to get out of control he said pointedly, “I don’t have time to waste on Skeptical Science distortions.” We must hope that doesn’t make John Cook feel too inadequate. Read more… »

I’m busy, but here’s a place for your thoughts and reports.

Mr FOIA, eh? Hmmm.

Professor Myles Allen -- will you ignore him?

Bishop Hill has an account — Lindzen at the Oxford Union — of the recent Oxford debate involving (mainly) Professors Richard Lindzen and Myles Allen. The latter comments (1.25pm):

“I was deeply embarrassed to be associated with Hasan’s ad hominem attacks on Dick Lindzen, in particular his going on about speaker fees and airline tickets. I thought this was going to be a discussion of climate science, and most of it seemed to be, as ever, about people and politics. As I hope I made clear when I had the chance, these were completely irrelevant to the discussion (and nothing he brought up seemed in any way exceptionable anyway) and that kind of attempt at personalising everything is just what is preventing a sensible discussion. I am very sorry that a visitor to Oxford was treated in this way.

On the science side, I’m happy to accept that studies comparing simple models with observations of the recent record, of which several have been published recently, suggest a climate sensitivity in the region of 2 degrees (although this isn’t the only line of evidence). But even a two degree sensitivity, if we do decide to burn all available fossil carbon, which would take concentrations well over 1000ppm, would be more than enough for 4+ degrees of warming. The real question, therefore, is whether 4+ degrees is OK. That’s what we need to be discussing, and unfortunately, because once again it was side-tracked onto irrelevancies, the debate didn’t go there.” (emphasis added)

Read more… »

Lord Christopher Monckton’s latest NZ tour is a must-see. Whether you trust the UN or not, you need to hear this — hot and shocking from the climate change trenches. Click to see details of Lord Monckton’s tour at Climate Realists.

Agenda 21

After 21 years, Agenda 21 is still not a household word, but it should be. For we should know our enemy.

It is a tribute to the UN’s polished propaganda machine that relatively few have heard of Agenda 21, yet we all know its other name: “sustainability.” Which is to see only the camouflage and not the beast within; the gentle mouth of murmured counsel, not the crafty scheming that destroys dissent.

For, widely disseminated since it was spawned by social-engineering do-gooders in 1992, Agenda 21 has both the power and the intention to destroy the basic freedoms that we in the well-ordered western democracies naively presume are as fundamental to us as eating or breathing. We fondly imagine that where there are human beings there is freedom. But while freedom is indeed fundamental, loss of freedom occurs routinely wherever human life is devalued.

Only those who still possess freedom are at any risk of losing it. So listen up. Read more… »

The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) seems to believe that we’re causing global warming and we must be stopped.

The alternative is that they’re really trying to save us money. But it’s impossible to accept that they really want the best for us. As the old joke puts it: “I’m from the government; I’m here to help you.” Ha ha.

EECA spends about $130,000,000 a year (p48). In the year ended June 2012 the actual expenditure was $123,016,000 against a budget of $155,761,000 from revenue of $127,926,000 (budget was $154,600,000). I don’t yet know where all the money goes. Through the “Energy Spot” they tell us we spend too much on electricity, although they don’t mention that could be due to constant price hikes from the “national” power stations our fathers and grandfathers proudly paid for, rather than actual increases in the cost of generating electricity. [The original comment here said that our power stations now have private owners, but that's wrong. The shareholder is our government. My apologies. - RT] They also nag us nightly to use less petrol and they hand out government subsidies for biodiesel and an experimental wave power device. Read more… »

– by Mike Jowsey, regular participant in the Climate Conversation Group

Habeas Corpus – late Middle English: Latin, literally ‘you shall have the body (in court)’ (oxforddictionaries.com)

Environment reporter Raveena Aulakh.

A heart-string-tugging humanitarian piece was published in the Toronto Star last weekend. It concerns the plight of some 250 million climate change refugees expected worldwide by 2050 and was entitled Climate change forcing thousands in Bangladesh into slums of Dhaka.

Rising sea levels could flood 17 per cent of Bangladesh and create between 20 million and 30 million refugees, experts say. The Star’s environment reporter Raveena Aulakh recently travelled to the country to look at how climate change is affecting one of the world’s most densely populated countries and its people. Read more… »

Among the difficult, arcane arguments entangled in the doctrine of dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW), the simplest, most immediate and most understandable is that a general warming leads to dangerous climate change. First warming, then dangerous changes. Nobody seems to argue with that — not openly, anyway.

But we find lots of talk about “climate change” that has nothing to do with warming, as though we can have one without the other, which in turn means that humanity can be criticised for “damage” they have no hand in. In these ways warmists work to alarm the naive. We must keep our heads on our shoulders. Read more… »

It has been discovered that Australian coal has a magical property – it is one of a small group of coals which produce an invisible gas with supernatural properties.

This magic gas, carbon dioxide, first became famous for its claimed ability to warm the whole world, thus removing the threat of a new ice age. The British academic who reported this magic power claimed that winter snow would become “a very rare and exciting event.”

Then an Australian guru predicted that just a tiny addition of magic gas to the atmosphere would abolish floods, and billions of dollars were spent constructing water desalination plants to combat his forecast of never-ending droughts. Read more… »

Abandoned houses (in Detroit). To be useful — even for only a few measly decades — houses need maintenance. That is the principle. Extend the principle, if you have the imagination, to all man-made things: moving (such as engines, pumps and vehicles) and unmoving (such as books, drains and bridges). The larger and more complex the “artificial” thing is (such as a park or an oil tanker), the more frequent maintenance it needs. That principle, which in previous ages was common knowledge, in this disconnected age strikes like a blunderbuss.

We voice some counter-arguments to the mythical and ideological “pristine state” nonsense advanced by extreme environmentalists to prevent exploitation of natural resources. Then we show how much we agree with the environmental Taleban.

Nuts!

They compare every change to imagined past conditions of “perfection” and their policy proposals are aimed at returning to that pristine state.

It’s nuts, really. Just a moment’s reflection shows how idiotic it is, for the welfare of our children, to avoid changing the world, and instead attempt to pass on to them a world unchanged, still pristine — a fragile wilderness in all its untouched splendour. How wonderful. How sentimental. How useless.

For that is precisely what the Inuit, the Bushmen, the Maori and the Korowai, of New Guinea, along with all other primitive peoples, actively practised for thousands of years until more advanced races happened along. Read more… »

Here’s the mainstream media strongly reproaching a pillar of the global warming myth with apparently nary a second thought. Yay! It’s great to see. People serving in public bodies of any country are much improved when publicly expected to justify what they say. It inevitably hatches humility or at least trims their hubris. This is the modern equivalent of the stocks whereby citizens get to hurl herbage at miscreants — only difference now is we fling verbiage, but millions, not dozens, witness their humiliation. Modern times are good. The Daily Mail raises sharp questions about some long-standing and troubling behaviour by the Met Office, whose apologists around the world should themselves pay heed to these questions and how they reflect on the science behind the predictions of global warming. One of the lessons here is that warmists are deceitful in claiming that the debate is over, for there is much to debate — every month there is more doubt over the future course of the climate. But more and more people are voicing questions about the predictions of warming — and what a wonderful thing that they are no longer ashamed to do so, for never in the field of scientific inquiry have so many been silenced for so long by so few. Perhaps the end is beginning.

Editorial, Daily Mail, 10 Jan 2013

To put it mildly, it is a matter of enormous public interest that the Met Office has revised its predictions of global warming, whispering that new data suggest there will be none for the next five years.

After all, the projection implies that by 2017, despite a colossal increase in carbon emissions, there will have been no rise in the planet’s surface temperature for almost two decades.

Why, then, did the Met Office choose to sneak out this intriguing information on Christmas Eve, knowing there would be no newspapers the next day? Read more… »

It’s widely agreed that burning petroleum and other hydrocarbons is steadily increasing the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide. There are suspicions there could be other causes, because the rise in CO2 doesn’t reflect the hydrocarbon usage curve, which shows a lot more variability. But, still, the conventional opinion deprecates the use of “fossil” fuels because increased CO2 will cause dangerous climatic changes (global warming). However one also reads that more CO2 is making the Earth greener — more CO2 means plants are growing faster and larger. This article by Matt Ridley in the WSJ a week ago (rerun at GWPF) mentions two further reasons to thank the use of hydrocarbons — it saves trees and gentle warming boosts plant growth. — Richard Treadgold

How Fossil Fuels Have Greened The Planet

Matt Ridley

This is an adopted article.

Did you know that the Earth is getting greener, quite literally? Satellites are now confirming that the amount of green vegetation on the planet has been increasing for three decades. This will be news to those accustomed to alarming tales about deforestation, over-development and ecosystem destruction.

This possibility was first suspected in 1985 by Charles Keeling, the scientist whose meticulous record of the content of the air atop Mauna Loa in Hawaii first alerted the world to the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Read more… »

The unique and enchanting Maori method of making friends with you. Much as I love them, they don’t deserve, they haven’t established a right to and should not claim special political privileges. The IPCC is deeply misguided to allege that Maoris suffer under “inequalities in political representation,” for the exact opposite is true. Maoris and their supporters should be consistent, and acknowledge for others the same democratic rights they claim for themselves. Granting rights to representation on the basis of race only leads us down the same obnoxious path as South Africa’s apartheid.

Our friend Warwick Hughes draws our attention to a section of the AR5 which features the Maoris. Not New Zealanders, note, but Maoris.

In it, the IPCC expresses particular concern for Maoris, who, they predict, will be disadvantaged by the progressively worsening effects of anthropogenic global warming. They claim that Maoris’ “choices and actions continue to be constrained by … inequalities in political representation.”

Warwick raises his eyebrows at this and asks whether climate change is a hot topic in Maori society. But the allegation of inequality is so far from true that we can only jeer. Read more… »

Here’s an interesting reflection on the climate system which at a stroke highlights the complexity of climate and puts to one side (at least for a moment) the belief that it must have a single controller, such as a minor atmospheric gas.

Dr Vincent Gray explained today:

The idea that the Earth has a “radiation budget” is inherently wrong.

The climate is a heat engine. The energy comes in from the sun. The exhaust goes out to space.

The exhaust must be less than the input because in between some work must be done. This would include maintenance of all living creatures plus erosion and other changes in the surface.

A scientist comments that the concept of a budget is both sound and useful, even if not strictly applicable all of the time. The energy budget approach is at the heart of modern climatology and is not controversial.

I wonder if any papers have addressed the total work done by the climate system? Read more… »

A homestead burns in Tasmania. Would the Greens seriously sacrifice this home for crayfish?

Australia endures regular bushfires. They destroy property and kill people and wildlife, but they’re necessary for the survival of various plants and trees.

The most important tool in managing bushfires to help ensure they don’t become monster conflagrations is controlled burnoffs in the cooler months — it’s really the only tool, since burning is the only practical way to destroy undergrowth and dead timber. That way, when the fires arise in the hot season they are not so large and damaging.

Burnoffs have a fascinating history. They’ve been practised since Europeans arrived in Australia, and of course the Aborigines, who started the burnoffs thousands of years ago, taught them how to do it. Since then the application of Western science has improved our understanding of the bush.

This week, on the Tasmanian Greens web site, in response to “a few queries about the Greens’ policy on fuel reduction burns,” somebody signing himself “Greens staff” claimed that the Party supports “fuel reduction burns as a vital tool in protecting lives and property in all land tenures including National Parks.”

But it’s only two years ago that they wanted to shut them down. Read more… »

Miranda Devine Blog, Daily Telegraph.

Tuesday, January 08, 2013
h/t Andy Scrase

First

It’s nothing to do with the climate.

WHEN Julia Gillard toured fire ravaged parts of Tasmania on Monday she couldn’t resist opportunism – using the calamity to push a climate change agenda.

“As a result of climate change we are going to see more extreme weather events,” she said.

But the fact is Australia gets hot in summer – sometimes very hot – and if there is fuel on the ground it will burn. The more fuel, the wilder the fire.

Greens are environmentally disconnected

Green activists are mostly city dwellers with little understanding of the natural environment — regardless of how much they talk about it. How else could they put so much bush ecosystem, human property and human life at risk? Why did they go out of their way to meddle with well-tested systems of fire management that were working? Why do we listen to them? Read more… »

Clarence drops in

Under our post about US carbon dioxide emissions flattening out, Clarence gave a pithy analysis. I promote it and add links to verify the points he makes because they’re so devastating to the warmist cause. Clarence’s comments indented and bold.

The graph above shows the startling increase in shale gas output over the last few years. Read more… »

Looking for information on China’s coal use I came across this fact-free summary of the “fight” against CO2 (emphasis added).

Coal already contributes 40 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions—the IEA projects this figure to grow to 50 percent over the next 25 years. Greenhouse gas emissions—which again reached record levels this year—are driving global climate change, the impacts of which we’re already seeing through more extreme weather events, droughts, and rising sea levels.

Say it ten times every day for 20 years and it becomes part of the air we breathe — people accept it.

But it’s hideous, because it’s still a pack of lies.

Old oak tree.

Open letter to environmentalists from A. Tree

The global temperature datasets are slow.

We usually have updates within 30 days of the end of a month, but most are about three months behind, with UAH four months slower than normal.

UAH MSU 7-2012
GISTEMP 8-2012
NCDC 8-2012
RSS MSU 8-2012
HadCRUT3 8-2012

Anyone know why?

Murrays Bay beach in ambiguous mood last May.

The picture was taken long before Christmas, but the image is emblematic of the endless dualities presented by life even in its essential neutrality. We receive good and bad, sorrow and joy, luck and hardship, wealth and poverty, sickness and vigour – we play with nothing but what we’re given and for which if we’re wise we’re thankful. Christmas and the New Year is a season for reflection, as light and dark alike reflect on the moist land. See, there is the oh so neutral water you are obliged to live in — you might as well dive in boldly as timidly dip your toe. May you be at home there. May your prosperity be prolonged. May you be inspired and inspiring. May your joy soar.

Merry Christmas to all