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.

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. Read more… »

A masterful performance. Inferior opposition knocked out of the park.

Viscount Monckton of Brenchley opened his debate at the National Press Club in Australia two days ago by reminding his audience that England not only took the Ashes off Australia, but also held on to them in the next rematch. He said: “I just thought I’d rub it in.” Then he proceeded to take his cudgel to his feeble debating opponent.

Economist Richard Deniss must be no intellectual weakling, but he gave the impression of not knowing where he was, so he said the things he normally said. Which usually works, because his normal audience has heard them before and agrees with him. But here, he floundered and had no idea what he was doing. Read more… »

An excellent sceptical letter sent to the NZ Listener on 14 May and copied today to Climate Conversation.

Rupert Wyndham in New Zealand

To the Editor
NZ Listener

14th May 2011

Dear Ms. Stirling,

I am a visitor to New Zealand, and only yesterday had sight of your 14 May edition of the New Zealand Listener with its entertainingly fanciful lead story, accompanied by appropriately lurid graphics.

Since this is a topic which raises much controversy, let me try and see if I can encapsulate in a few lines what it is that you would wish your readers to believe. You propose, it would seem, that marginal increases in the concentrations of what is no more than a trace gas, amounting in total not to 10% of the earth’s atmosphere, not even to 5% — nay, not even to 1%, can bring about cataclysmic changes in global climate.

So, what exactly is the percentage concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere? Why, to be sure, it is a gasping, asphyxiating 1/27th part of a single percentage point. But even that’s not the complete picture, is it? After all, as someone (such as you) who has addressed the data for herself will know, even human-induced climate change proselytisers acknowledge that, by itself, the radiative potential of CO2 (vanishingly small anyway) fails to account for the “scenarios” promoted by them and by unquestioning and compliant organs of the media — such, indeed, as The New Zealand Listener.

So, to get over this little inconvenience, what should be done? Read more… »

Principled sceptical stance

An extraordinary letter to the Taranaki Daily News (copied to Climate Conversation) from a climate sceptic well-placed to hear and and well-qualified to judge competing sides in the global warming controversy. Professor Kelly’s written testimony to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, for The Reviews into the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit’s E-mails, published on 25 January 2011, set out pointed questions directed to Jones and Briffa. This letter, clear and moderate, is in stark contrast to Miss Stewart’s anguished squalling and offers those who share her beliefs an easy delivery from the gut-wrenching fears of their own alarming predictions: check the facts. We echo Prof Kelly’s appeal for moderate language because so-called climate change has a profound importance for the vast amounts of money in it, the tyranny it’s bringing over our lives and the damage being done in its name to scientific integrity. (I hope the Daily News publishes the letter.)

4 June 2011

Dear Editor,

As a New Plymouth Boy, I would like you to do me a favour and let Rachel Stewart know that I think she is doing journalism a disservice.

I expect better from my home town.

Professor Mike Kelly

It is perfectly possible to adopt a position, as I have, of ‘a principled climate science scepticism.’ It is based on the fact that every time an engineering-standard analysis is done of the climate data, one ends up contradicting the results of the climate change modellers. I am heavily involved in the debate in the UK.

My views on the East Anglian Science are on the web, and in the UK Parliamentary record. See pp21ff of The Reviews into the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit’s E-mails.

If she cares to take a look at the attached ppt slides, she will see that there is a systematic divergence, now 16 years old, between the modelling results and the actual data on climate temperatures. At what point do we accept the data over the IPCC models?

She might like to look at the recent analysis by Pat Franks which tightens the conclusion that the anthropogenic contribution is at most 0.3°C per century. This concludes that it is rising temperatures that are increasing the atmospheric carbon dioxide, not the other way round. Read more… »

The Taranaki Daily News two days ago published a polemic notable more for its rancour than its precision regarding climatic facts.

It’s a good example of one-eyed thinking, skewed views and perfectly furious ad hominem attacks — all teeth and talons and only the hissing missing.

Lost her cuddly toy?

Written by the doubtless-locally-renowned scribe Rachel Stewart, it strikes some of the sourest notes I’ve come across in the climate debate since finding Hot Topic. But her thunderous venom simply accents her foolhardy logic. She wears a filthy expression in the accompanying photo. Did someone steal her favourite cuddly toy? It would certainly explain the spleen.

With a headline recalling Gore’s thoroughly discredited film “An inconvenient truth”, you’d think the article was about global warming. But it quickly becomes clear that Miss Stewart has it in for farming itself, not just its emissions. Don’t know how she thinks we’ll eat. Or, in this country, import buses or computers.

Last refuge of the defeated

She repeats lies about Bob Carter and the alleged funding of his opinions, as though that’s all that produces his opinions, but I would like to point out some of the fraudulent assertions she repeats about global warming. I like Bob and I could listen to him all day, but he would himself agree that his personal reputation, though valuable, is meaningless beside the lies being told about climate science. They are my target. Read more… »

A duck assassination. Sad, but assassinating the duck illustrates an ad hominem attack. There’s a head in the sights, but no insights ahead. You might kill the duck, but you’re out for a duck if you duck the issue. There’s no argument in this tepid denial of reactor safety, and without a challenge, the point stands, dummkopf! You lose.

This post is not directly about climate, but concerns our relationship with reason and science, in which there are parallels with the conduct of the climate debate.

Shrill cries of alarm

Shortly after the momentous earthquake and tsunami wreaked such terrible havoc in Japan on March 11, the press and broadcast media began a chorus of shrill, poorly-informed warnings about the nuclear crisis developing at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Sober description of fail-safes

Then a blog posting appeared on March 13, describing the operation of those 40-year-old reactors and their numerous fail-safe systems. It was written by one Dr Josef Oehmen, a mechanical engineer and scientist, and concluded there was no reason to be alarmed and very little possibility of a meltdown. Even if a meltdown occurred, he said, the plant’s systems and trained engineers would handle the event safely. The article was quickly picked up and widely distributed around the Internet.

It was published here as Nuclear reactor: blast impossible, meltdown no sweat.

Maladroit attack on public peace of mind

On March 15 one Justin Elliott published Debunking a viral blog post on the nuke threat which tried to pour cold water on Oehmen’s analysis. Elliott didn’t do this by refuting what Oehmen had said or by disagreeing with his analysis; instead, he ripped into Oehmen’s reputation.

Oehmen’s article begins with a candid admission:

I am a mechanical engineer and research scientist at MIT. I am not a nuclear engineer or scientist, or affiliated with Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT, so please feel free to question my competence.

But in a supremely bungling introduction, Elliott swaggers right on past this clear, honest disclaimer and arrogantly reports, as his own words, that Oehmen has no special expertise in nuclear power. Hmm. The cautious would note that and read on with care. Read more… »

Here are the facts

Andrew Bolt today posted this excellent comment plus the originating article. Some have already blamed this earthquake on global warming, but we shall ignore that nonsense. This objective and expert summary opinion of the real situation is urgently needed because all we’re getting from our green press corps is nuclear fear-mongering (h/t Bob Carter for the link). This is reassuring, but it’s very long — get yourself a coffee, put your feet up…

Nuclear explosion — it’s quite impossible. Even a meltdown will be contained and won’t hurt anyone, don’t be such a nervous ninny. The people suggesting these things don’t want any nuclear power stations so they’re trying to make us frightened of them — doing a good job, too, by the look of it.

From: The Courier Mail / Herald Sun

Before you give in to the media’s nuclear meltdown…

Andrew Bolt – Monday, March 14, 11 (12:15 pm)

This is an adopted article.

Via our friend Professor Barry Brook, comes this marvellously sane and cool explanation of the emergency at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactor by Dr Josef Oehmen, a research scientist at MIT, in Boston.

Read the fascinating and reassuring article in its entirety. But if you have time only for Oehmen’s bottom line, it’s this:

- The plant is safe now and will stay safe.

- Japan is looking at an INES Level 4 Accident: Nuclear accident with local consequences. That is bad for the company that owns the plant, but not for anyone else.

Read more… »

More media taking firm stand against alarmists

Cancun anti-climate beach conference.

Around the world more and more publications, commentators and blog writers are declaring opposition to, even outright disgust of, the global warming scam.

Increasingly, people are waking up to the fact that, in the words of senior IPCC official, Ottmar Edenhofer, we must “free ourselves from the illusion” that international climate policy has anything to do with environmental problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.

That is in addition to the extreme disillusionment arising from the failure of the scientific climate predictions to come anywhere near true. Read more… »

The eyes of New Zealand mainstream journalists, in print and broadcasting, are deliberately out of action. It is a strange event of mass delusion.

How obvious must the lack of credibility in AGW become before New Zealand’s so-called journalists wake up to it?

Their disconnection from reality now transcends mere embarrassment for the onlookers; it has become actually humiliating, because the only remaining reason for our nation’s professional journalists to hold to the IPCC line on dangerous man-made global warming is an intentional neglect of the facts. Read more… »

The Holy Bible, once widely considered the word of God. A new scripture has arisen in the name of “The Environment” claiming it has the right to avoid change. Though Nature has constantly changed the environment and always will, the new scripture hectors us to spend a lot of time and money to ensure that it doesn’t change. If a change is observed, the religion states that it’s a problem, it’s our fault and we must act in super-human ways to change it back again as soon as possible. Apparently it is our duty to do this because we are fundamentally wicked and selfish and we don’t deserve to be here on this nice planet.

From the Independent, written by Steve Connor, Science Editor, and echoed uncritically by the NZ Herald yesterday, comes an amazing story of faith. It must be faith because it cannot be science — there are too many opinions and the facts are wrong.

With the original Independent headline advertising the ignorance the story is steeped in (Humans must be to blame for climate change, say scientists) the articles of faith are reiterated for the global warming multitudes.

Harken ye unto them, that ye stray not from the green and carbon-free path of righteousness, I say unto thee, even your sons and your grandsons, keep to these my commandments, yea, even unto the hundredth year from this day, when, verily, these green prophecies shall surely come to pass, but, the Lord says, not before then.

But it’s a message with no punch

First we hear the strong conclusion we are to take from the story to come:

Climate scientists have delivered a powerful riposte to their sceptical critics with a study that strengthens the case for saying global warming is largely the result of man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.

Hear how quickly, as you read that, the idea of a “powerful riposte” dissipates into thin air. So the study merely “strengthens the case” for saying global warming is “largely” the result of our emissions. Well, there’s nothing quite like confidence for persuading people, is there? But they’re not prepared to say this proves anything. This is a message with no punch. Read more… »

This story is datelined London, December 1, and comes from the Australian Associated Press. It was posted on the web site of the Royal Society of New Zealand—behind a paywall. [Full article at the end.]

First: it is frustrating, suspicious and avaricious for our Royal Society to hide its “news” behind a paywall. How widely, really, does it wish the news to spread, when it publishes only to its members?

Second: the level of uninterest evinced by this reporter in the matter he is reporting is quite awe-inspiring. There is not the merest evidence of curiosity, investigation or the most rudimentary checking of facts.

Be a journo — or join our Royal Society

The main assertions in this story are inane, blatantly alarmist, undisguised advocacy and wrong. That the story is promulgated by our once-proud, independent, trustworthy and in particular scientific Royal Society is now a source of shame to all New Zealanders. There is no doubt that our Royal Society has abandoned, in respect of the global warming controversy, any pretence to objective investigation. It has instead adopted such a strong intention to champion the hypothesis of man-made control of the climate that it blinds itself to the necessity of finding evidence.

Their intention moves them to breach their founding principles. Look them up. Their behaviour is a matter of law, so it will give way, given enough pressure, to legal or parliamentary sanction. Swell, public opinion, swell!

Our Royal Society even helps champion, through web site connections, the blatantly alarmist web site Hot Topic, which routinely insults scientific sceptics asking reasonable questions with terms like crank, denialist and worse. We have come to expect that from the likes of Mr Renowden and his bigots, but the support for it from the scientists of the Royal Society is reprehensible. It is scientific misbehaviour.

Here is a sampling of the AAP story’s errors, inadequacies and naked prejudice. Read more… »

The NZ Herald today carries Brian Fallow’s lament over a gap that’s arisen “between what the new Government is saying and what it is doing, with respect to the select committee review of the emissions trading scheme.”

He says that National believes that an ETS is the way to go, but the scheme has “some design flaws” and that’s fair enough. But look, he says, at the terms of reference for the select committee!

It is the Act Party’s wish list “verbatim“, except for what he describes as “the ludicrous suggestion that the committee hear competing views on the science.”

Why is it ludicrous, Brian? Read more… »

TV Works in writing today acknowledged our complaint. They have referred it to their Complaints Committee and say “a formal response will be forwarded to you” after the committee has considered it. Under the guidelines on the BSA web site, they have 20 working days to do this. Then we take it to the Broadcasting Standards Authority if their response is unsatisfactory. So probably nothing more will happen until January.

If you missed it, you can see our letter of complaint on the CCG web site. You can also view the video of the original news story on the TV3 web site. Have a look — for anyone interested in journalism it’s alarming. For anyone interested in global warming it’s also alarming. It’s just generally alarming. Read more… »

A NZ Herald headline today blares “Oceans’ acidity threatening coral and mussel survival”, making us imagine reefs and shellfish beginning to fight for their lives. The article begins:

Rising carbon dioxide levels are increasing acidity in the oceans faster than scientists thought, posing a greater threat to shell-forming creatures such as coral and mussels.

An eight-year project in the Pacific has found that rising marine acid levels will challenge many organisms, because their shell-making chemistry is critically dependent on a less acidic, more alkaline environment.

The study monitored seawater pH levels at the northeast Pacific island of Tatoosh off Washington state in the United States.

Notice how the scope of this alarmist item contracts dramatically from “oceans” in the headline, to “the Pacific” in the second paragraph, to “an island” in the third paragraph. That’s an important point: the scientists haven’t been studying the whole ocean, just one bit of it.

If a scientist claims to know what is happening in the whole ocean after studying a single island, should we award him a medal or just smile politely and agree to humour him? Read more… »

Last Wednesday the NZ Herald tried to shame New Zealand into more grown-up climate behaviour.

A body grandly known as the UN Climate Change Secretariat, a moniker which smoothly conveys an image of sponging up large amounts of cash for no earthly good, had just released figures showing “the growth in New Zealand’s emissions between 1990 and 2006 to be among the worst in the world’s industrialised nations.” Read more… »

Today the NZ Herald published the following:

Polar warming manmade

A British-led group of climate researchers claim that their research has demonstrated for the first time that human activity is responsible for significant warming in both polar regions. Read more… »