Climate Conversation Group

The Telegraph quotes John Hayes, the new energy minister, saying “enough is enough” on wind farms.

It’s quite refreshing to hear the DAGW nonsense called an “article of faith”.

The energy minister said he had ordered a new analysis of the case for onshore wind power which would form the basis of future government policy, rather than “a bourgeois Left article of faith based on some academic perspective”. Read more… »

Let us fervently hope so

Fervently, fervently.

Look what someone sent me. Gives me hope for a sensible future – although the concluding comments from new Fed Farmers’ president Bruce Wills again confirm that he’s chosen the hogwash side of the climate panic (emphasis added):

New Zealand has been tipped to quit the Kyoto Protocol, designed to cut global emissions.

Government officials next month travel to Doha in Qatar for the latest round of negotiations on the treaty, but with less than four weeks before the summit, acting Climate Change Minister Simon Bridges says the Government has “not made a decision” on its commitment.

“My understanding is that decisions have yet to be made on that matter,” he said.

But the actions of participants in the carbon market, and market signs, suggest the Government is preparing to walk away. Read more… »

Simon asked in comments:

What fundamental central and local government policy decisions have been based exclusively on the 7SS?

The question is too restrictive. Possibly the only “exclusive” policy was the decision to spend $70,000 reconstructing the national temperature record using the wrong method and then ignoring public-spirited citizens who found serious faults in it. Read more… »

UPDATE1

So shut up, you lot!

NIWA, in its memorandum to Justice Venning about the costs of our court case, says some curious things. I’ve pulled out a few of the ripostes that the NZCSET’s lawyers have just delivered to the judge and which I’m delighted to share with you. (Bear in mind that the APPLICANT is the Coalition. The DEFENDANT is NIWA.) This one’s a pearler:

29. The defendant alleges in paragraph 17 that the proceeding did not concern climate change…

This is breathtaking. It will surprise their long-suffering supporters – having endured NIWA’s hogwash about the 7SS not being “official” or even a “national” temperature record (“oh, it’s only for study”), and that this organisation of top scientists has no obligation WHATSOEVER to strive for excellence, they now have to stand cringing as their favourite publicly-paid climate scientists argue that the court case had nothing to do with climate change.

Really? What rot. I’d like to shake these men up and make them see sense. Read more… »

NIWA displays an unattractive arrogance toward challengers.

The question arises, m’lud, of costs

Unaffordable justice is not justice.

But before payment ever becomes an issue, the very availability of a Court of law is vital, for it guarantees that the ordinary citizen may have his grievances examined by a disinterested judge. We shouldn’t underestimate the power of the unperturbed mind to resolve disputes, remedy wrongs and instil peace; it’s fair to say that nothing else can.

The significance of the Court’s availability increases with the increasing power of one’s adversary, until the adversary is the Crown itself, when the importance of an open Court surpasses everything. For in battling the Crown or the State one stands to lose everything, the combat is so unequal. Only the judge stands between the citizen and the Crown. Outside the courtroom the citizen would be crushed without thought, but before the judge the agent of the Crown will discover that he meets an equal Read more… »

How much more ‘official’ do we need?

It’s time for the regular news services to PAY ATTENTION!!

PUBLISHED: 21:42 GMT, 13 October 2012 | UPDATED: 23:36 GMT, 13 October 2012

Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals a quietly-released Met Office report… and here is the chart to prove it:

UPDATE BELOW

Global temperature changes

NOTE: I’ve looked for the original Met Office report but can’t find it. I’m busy right now, so if anyone can locate it, I’d be grateful to learn the url, thanks. [UPDATE: After the Met Office statement, we now know the report referred to doesn't exist. I'm not very pleased with David Rose of the Mail on Sunday - although he has achieved considerable publicity for the lack of global warming, which is good.]

The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012 there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.

Read more… »

For years we’ve been fed the propaganda that only warming causes less ice (and oh, what a shame!) and now we learn that it causes more ice as well (and oh, what a shame!).

Whether the warmists predict more ice or less ice, it’s still all caused by warming. Amazing.

More ice is bad, it’s caused by our evil kind of warming and our punishment is to give all our toys to the poor people living near the sea. Or far from the sea, so long as they’re poor. The old ice that sinks the earth’s crust into the magma which requires thousands of years to rebound after melting is not evil ice. But this ice is evil. Nor was that old ice caused by warming. But our evil ice is.

Amazing. I’m almost speechless. Read more… »

I’ll keep this simple, to avoid ecclesiastical clashes. Last thing I want is a fight to break out between science and religion. Oh, wait …

First, a reader, Rob Taylor, said:

So, in denier fairyland, this all balances out, somehow? Let’s see – crippling drought in one place, horrendous floods in another simply shows that all is hunky-dory?

Then I said:

“Who could approve of them, you twit? But this is Mother Nature. This is God’s will. There’s nothing new here – not for thousands of years. This is life. This is how it goes.”

Another reader, Nick, said:

“this is Mother Nature. This is God’s will” – is that really what you believe? I had been conducting these discussions on the assumption everyone accepted that science rather than divine intervention could explain the weather. Please correct me if my assumption is false. Does anyone else here think that any changes in the climate are “Gods will”?

My meaning here was perverted and then Nick hijacked it. However, together they raise an arguable point about our relationship with our surroundings, so let me explain. Rob made out that we can prevent these natural disasters. His mistake was in believing that we have sufficient influence on the weather to ameliorate droughts and floods. It’s a nutty idea and we don’t. Read more… »

From a scientist friend, who comments:

About two weeks after it was noised on various blogs and electronic news sources, and is old “news”, The Australian finally deigns to notice the record Antarctic sea-ice (I wonder whether the SMH and The Age will now me-too the story as well?). Leaving aside the wonderful headline, the article itself is a classic attempt to weasel out of accepting the obvious conclusion. The scientists involved really ARE shameless.

I entirely agree with him. This story presents a deplorable mish-mash of propaganda from a scientist who should be a lot better behaved. Be nice to see this covered in the Herald – or has it been – anyone know?

Please note the frank distortion in the original headline: the sea ice hasn’t expanded “against the odds”, it has simply defied certain (wrong!) predictions. Emphasis added, my comments in green. – RT

PAYWALLED AT: The Australian.

* by: Graham Lloyd
* From: The Australian
* October 06, 2012 12:00AM

ANTARCTIC sea ice has expanded to cover the largest area recorded since satellite mapping began more than three decades ago, in stark contrast to this year’s record melt on the northern pole.

The expansion continues a trend of increasing Antarctic sea ice cover of about 1 per cent a decade and is at odds with predictions of climate change models that continue to forecast a long-term decline. Read more… »

from The Global Warming Policy Foundation

The Street, 4 October 2012

Bill Gunderson

When Al Gore talks, people listen. Just ask the folks who hand out Academy Awards and Nobel Peace Prizes.

Al Gore also talks to investors. Since 2007, the former Vice President in Bill Clinton’s administration has been preaching the benefits of putting your money where his mouth is: Alternative energy.

But if Al Gore has any message for investors today, it might very well be this: “Stay the hell away from alternative energy!” Not that he would say so. At least out loud. Read more… »

from The Global Warming Policy Foundation

The Daily Telegraph, 5 October 2012

Britain faces an increasing risk of power blackouts and higher electricity bills in the next four years, power regulator Ofgem has warned in a report.

An “unprecedented combination” of the eurozone crisis, tough EU environmental laws and the closure of ageing coal and oil-fired power stations, has increased “the risk to consumers’ energy supplies”, Ofgem said in its annual Electricity Capacity Assessment on Friday.

The regulator, which first highlighted the problems in its Project Discovery report in 2009, said: “Today’s report shows that these problems have not gone away.” Read more… »

from The Global Warming Policy Foundation

Financial Times Deutschland, 5 October 2012

The EU Energy Commissioner opposes a tightening of the EU’s climate targets. Instead, energy policy should focus more closely on the needs of European industry. In Berlin, Günther Oettinger made jokes about the green “do-gooders” in his own party.

Günther Oettinger fears the decline of Europe if energy prices continue to rise and competitiveness deteriorates further compared to the United States and other parts of the world. He wants to convince his colleagues in the European Commission to introduce an industrial policy objective instead of new climate targets. At a meeting of the European Christian Democrats (EPP) in Berlin last night, Oettinger said the share that manufacturing contributes to the GDP of the economies of the EU should increase from currently 18 percent to 20 percent. Within the European Commission, he is fighting for a corresponding definition.

His appearance before a few dozen party members in Berlin’s Adlon Hotel was a day of reckoning with the EU’s energy and climate policies. Energy policy had long been climate policy, he said, but in the future it must be industrial policy. Read more… »

Well, which is it?

Will it be a nightmare or not?

In comments, I cited a statement by Jim Renwick from a few months ago. He said:

I feel a kind of morbid fascination with this stuff. It’s a really fascinating science issue – and I’m really interested to find out what’s going to happen to the climate and how much ice is going to melt and what’s the temperature in 2020 going to be and all the rest of it. It’s intriguing, it’s my bread and butter but you know what I feel is – I look at this and say jeez we’re really doing this, we’re doing this experiment, we’re really playing this game with the Earth, we’re gambling with millions of lives and I sort of feel disgusted with myself that I find it interesting from a scientific point of view. It’s certainly interesting, but it’s more than interesting — it’s a very dangerous game we’re playing.

I was illustrating a comment that only a few climate scientists of the alarmist school venture to tell us we’re destroying the world. Most of them are more cautious, almost as though they’re setting up for the long-term defence that they were never really converts to that alarmist view of climate change they claim is the consensus.

The reader Simon said Read more… »