Huub Bakker admonished us, saying:

Guys,

Much as Brandoch may throw unsubstantiated statements and ad hominems around, the responses are also laden with ad hominem attacks. This hardly does anyone on this website any favours.

Richard Treadgold, I see that you slapped Brandoch over the knuckles for calling people liars but then didn’t do the same when Richard C accused Brandoch of lying. [although Richard C made the point that his "accusation" was merely a spoof of what Brandoch had said, it's a fair point that I rarely admonish "friends" - RT]

I enjoy reading a good discussion of the facts and putting people in their place using facts and references but we really could do without the abuse from both sides. Please enforce politeness and respect on both sides, Richard. People coming to this site to be informed would be horrified with the slanging that is currently going on here and might conclude that sceptics are no better than alarmists.

I agree with him. But with one enormous caveat: I have no wish to rule the world. One reason there are no “Rules of conduct” posted here is to avoid adding to the rules we already endure. Courtesy is enough. Read more… »

Thank you to all our visitors – both voluble and silent – for making this small corner of the free blogoverse a forum both informative and influential.

I just checked last month’s Climate Conversation web traffic figures out of cPanel and I’m mightily pleased. All metrics show record high figures. This is only for the CC sub-domain of WordShine (I really must shift it to climateconversation.org.nz, huh?). Here is the cPanel graph with October highlighted:

CCG traffic summary for October 2012. Four days plus a few minutes of the fifth day of November’s traffic are included, making the stats package divide by 5, not 4. If you divide the Monthly Totals for November by 4 you see a considerable increase in all metrics over the October daily averages. It’s early days, but shows the growth continues into this month for a while at least.

The release of the judge’s decision and the recently-filed costs arguments are obvious sources of increased interest. But there have been some notable threads of conversation on climate science which have pitted determined warmists against equally tenacious sceptics. Read more… »

It was Ava’s birthday yesterday (she’s one year old). There is a party tonight at Diana’s place. Afterwards some of us – probably not including Ava – will watch the Super Rugby 14 final.

Go the Chiefs!

I’ll see you tomorrow some time.

UPDATE: Some time tomorrow today

How were you to know that Ava is alleged to be my grand-daughter, one of an alleged six such lucky children. It was great to be hosted so well at our daughter Diana’s place in Pakuranga, with her fiance Carl, and staying overnight let me imbibe an extra glass of wine and tankard of ale while watching the climax of the Super Rugby competition.

And it was of course terrific to celebrate Ava’s birthday – go the Chiefs!

To prove beyond doubt Ava’s extremely high cuteness factor, here’s one of the pics I clicked yesterday.

Ava captivating at her first birthday party. “It was a wonderful ball, the prince was fabulous!
Somehow I lost a slipper…”

John O’Sullivan expressed interest in our court project against NIWA. But some of his comments describe more hope than fact, possibly through a misunderstanding of NZ law and the nature of our court case, and perhaps my inadequate reporting has contributed to that.

This morning my inbox was filling up with requests to explain and I could sense some people becoming distinctly over-stimulated by the imaginary achievements of the brave Kiwi sceptics.

The problem is that the judge hasn’t even made his decision, which my recent posts have made clear. We run a distinct risk of contempt of court if we appear to endorse the wild claims about the state of the case, of legal moves, even of victory, that are beginning to sound around the world.

It’s a shame, for the case contains enough of genuine merit; it can do without being overshadowed by needless exaggeration.

In an attempt to calm emotions, I’ve left a comment at John’s blog Read more… »

Alexa world-wide rankings

I bow to you, my reader.

As measured informally on my Alexa toolbar, you’ve raised this humble blog into a leading Kiwi site for sceptical discussion of global warming. Though many of you are silent and your participation limited to quiet reading, you’ve achieved a remarkable thing with your frequent loyal visits (I’ll be sure to keep the kettle hot).

It shows that north of sixty thousand visitors per month prefer a moderate tone over stridency and a restrained view of climate data better than a doomsday clamour. Large numbers! MSM, are you noticing?

In June last year there was a bit of a fuss over climate blog rankings and whether the numbers were reliable. Nothing to do with climate, of course.

Then a while back I reinstalled the Alexa toolbar, just out of interest. Apparently you have to give Alexa time to get settled information on your traffic, so I waited. Just now I noticed our world ranking is up to 844,719, having started at over 1.3 million. The NZ rank is under 900. Wow! So it’s time to tell you. Read more… »

In my previous post I said that, since the temperature hasn’t gone up (much) in about 15 years, nothing has happened as a result – in short, global warming hasn’t caused anything, harmful or otherwise.

That short chain of reasoning seemed justified by the observed and documented lack of significant warming of the near-surface atmosphere around the globe during the last 15 years, and I thought the logic unassailable.

The above link shows the HadCRUT3 record, but you’ll see a very similar trajectory with the GISTEMP dataset, UAH, RSS or NCDC. All of these records show that, from about 1997, there’s been precious little warming or cooling and that the global monthly mean temperature anomaly has, in the last six months or less, steeply descended through exactly the same band through which it rose in 1997.

To repeat: because global warming hasn’t occurred for about 15 years, global warming hasn’t caused anything else to occur in that time. Very simple. Read more… »

Climate Models has been added under Climate Science.

Comments related to the NZCSET court case against NIWA have been moved to NZCSET application for judicial review

This appalling outrage is not going away. Much has been written already (but nothing by me) and it seems much is to come. Here is a place to contain it so you can stop adding to “I’ve been busy” — as though that’s an important theme.

I hasten to say I’m still busy, and would that I were not!

Business commitments have kept me from covering any climate topics for a while, but I plan to post an article or two at the weekend. There’s a paper on clouds by two Auckland researchers that has come to my attention and I may have time for further items.

So, my apologies, but I haven’t stopped either being interested in climate matters or spending time reading and writing about them. There’s a lot happening and some people have been quite excited at the extra realistic (sceptical) coverage of global warming.

I avoid getting excited because the great carbon-based wheel is now turning at a fair clip and will take a power of stopping. That’s no reason to slacken our efforts, but is a reason to raise the gaze to a slightly more distant finish line.

It’s one thing to be misunderstood, quite another to be repeatedly misquoted.

A misunderstanding can be a mere message muddle – happens all the time – and mistakenly misquoting is minor misconduct.

But continuing to misquote someone after being told what they actually said is unforgivable. Crafting your assertions to your own ends rather than to the truth is detestable.

Children make no bones about it. They call it lying and they hate it. Read more… »

It’s not possible even to keep track of the alarmist stories about climate, far less to refute them all. But when one is personally cited close to home and statements are wrongfully attributed to one, one ought to address them. This Laking/Herald howler is a case in point. Laking has taken his information from the Hot Topic side of the tracks without verification, not knowing the distortions of Renowden and friends (no matter how often corrected) and must now suffer the consequences; the formerly revered Herald similarly. My good friend Barry Brill here humorously draws our attention to the doctor’s faux pas. Regular readers will know that Richard C and Andy already mentioned the Herald article in comments on our Brash post. Thanks, guys. Apologies – one is only just getting around to it – but a refuting post will follow this. – RT

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

The NZ Herald runs climate alarm propaganda in every shape and size, and from every imaginable point of view. But it was scraping the barrel with its recent patronising but content-free sermon from a certain George Laking – presented on its weather page under the heading of “Epsom and climate change”.

Laking is apparently an oncologist. He transparently knows nothing whatever of meteorology, and even less about economics – and therefore relies upon a quote from an IEA economist to define the state of the science. He then buttresses his scientific bombast with other strongly-held opinions from non-scientists – the World Bank, UK Ministry of Defence, the Medical Association, and the World Health Organisation.

Each one of his sources has heard a real scientist say something, somewhere, about climate science. And they are almost sure they can remember part of what was said. But, says George, global warming isn’t about science anyhow, it’s about MORALITY!

If you want to know how morality works, ask a cancer doctor. George has seen what tobacco sellers got up to and he wouldn’t be a bit surprised if climate sellers weren’t just as bad.

And it turns out George’s medical training also left him well-versed in the need to manipulate raw data to get the result you are after. He says:

“If you take the raw temperature recordings alone (like ACT or… Richard Treadgold did), you won’t see a temperature rise. But that is because the readings have to be corrected for changes in site location, exposure, and instrumentation. Treadgold overlooked this and so ACT constructed a whole court case on the most abysmal scientific howler.”

Hmm. George obviously doesn’t read very much in pursuit of his climate hobby. He certainly doesn’t express any methodological preferences as between Salinger (1981) and RS93; or even NIWA’s 2010 review versus the audit published by the NZ Climate Science Coalition. He doesn’t even differentiate between the old 7SS and the NZT7.

Poor George seems to think Richard Treadgold is helping ACT to sue somebody in Epsom. Perhaps the teacup taper?

Does the Herald read these Op-Eds before publication, or is a burning zeal to hurl abuse at non-believers seen to be a sufficient qualification?

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.

Hah! Gareth’s upset about the Alexa rankings I’ve started publishing in the sidebar.

He gets going in a scholarly way and lengthily, but listen:

Treadgold’s Climate Conversation blog ranks at around 500,000. By way of comparison, David Farrar’s Kiwiblog.co.nz is ranked #68,226 in the world (#88 in NZ). Climate Conversation is so far down in Alexa’s long tail that the Alexa rank Treadgold is keen to trumpet is effectively meaningless.

What he fails to mention is that we’re not so far down Alexa’s long tail as he is. Where is Hot Topic ranked by Alexa? Anywhere meaningful? Read more… »

Alexa rulz!

Just a quick note to draw your attention to a new feature on the sidebar: scroll down one page and you should see it. There’s a little table showing the recent Alexa rankings for the Climate Conversation, SciBlogs and Hot Topic. At the moment we’re leading them by big margins.

It’s not automated, just a table I’ll fill in when I remember.

My wife and son just accused me of boasting, and I suppose to some degree I am boasting. However, it’s humbling to see that this modest little blog is more popular and thousands more people visit it than other, brasher sites around the country that even get into the newspapers.

I’m content to boast a little if it means that more ordinary Kiwis hear about us and get the opportunity to participate in a calm, polite and informative conversation about “the biggest challenge facing humanity today.”

This is a bit of bragging I won’t apologise for and the mainstream media can go hang. Notice we’ve just gone under 1000, which means we’re one of the thousand most popular sites in the country. Course, it could change tomorrow!

The doctors wanted to give me a life-saving procedure in the hospital tomorrow (Monday) and I decided to let them. Hope to be home again on Tuesday.

Please don’t worry, I’ll be fine — I’ve done this before. I think the surgeons have, too.

UPDATE 14 JUNE

I’m back with more health than before.

The kind thoughts you wrote here gently overspoke my fears of what could be and my heart lightened.

You didn’t have to do that — thank you.

Joanne Nova. Great climate warrior.

I want to pass on some kind words from Joanne Nova for our blog and our campaign for truth in climate science.

A few days ago I was catching up with Jo’s site and I was blown away (again!) by the number and quality of her posts. I told her so, and said she’s like the Energiser bunny!

After noting we were missing from her site’s blog roll, I asked her to include us. She swiftly acceded to my request, saying:

Done. Sorry you had to ask.
There’s no real reason it wasn’t done before except that I pay little attention to blog rolls. Thanks for pointing out the omission! You are doing a masterful job of NIWA. It’s inspiring…

Cheers!

Nice lady! Great climate warrior! Read her posts!

I’ll be out of town over Easter, visiting the latest grandchild who is to be christened. I expect to be back to the computer on Tuesday night, but don’t expect much out of me until later in the week. If anything crops up, feel free to use this “Easter” thread or use the famous Open threads set up by Richard C.

Good luck to you all.

Richard Treadgold.

Climate Conversation Group site traffic figures.
Part 1. Click for larger version.

Analyse this!

Perhaps I bang these traffic figures into this post like slamming a report onto the desk.

Just hear the satisfying report!

After firmly refusing and being advised to refuse, I grudgingly present the traffic figures for the first seven days of this month. They apply, as the screen dumps make clear, only to the subdomain ‘climateconversation’, not to the whole ‘wordshine’ domain.

Ken will get no more than this from me. I do this only to remove the bad taste that lingers in my mouth after being accused of lying by a man whose admitted aim is quarrel, dissent and discord. That’s what you told me, Ken, isn’t it?

Who knows what innocent visitor might have that unsubstantiated slur stick? Where might it again surface? Better to strangle it at birth — and strangle it with the truth. Better many things had such short lives. Pity more don’t.

What the figures mean, I don’t know. If there are deficiencies in them, point them out, argue about them. I prefer to spend my time fighting climate ignorance and spreading climate facts.

But in this thread, at least, these inane hostilities will not be off topic.

The Climate Conversation Group site traffic figures for the first seven days of January, 2011.
Part 2. Click for larger version.

An enduring symbol of joyful abundance.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone. May this season bring vitality and refreshment to you for whatever lies ahead.

Thank you for your support over the last 12-month; you have driven the traffic figures for the CCG site, depending on the measure, from 400% to 600% higher than a year ago.

That’s astonishing growth, and tells me we’re doing something right.

I look forward to continuing the battle after the holidays.

So keep your eyes open; look out for those around you; persevere.

For those unfortunates in deep and unexpected winter conditions on the top half of the world, our sympathies; however, entering our summer holidays as we are, we see no reason not to make fun of it:

At WUWT, on December 20, Robert M commented:

Look people, you have to understand that the temps outside your front doors are simply raw data, and will not be accurate until adjusted and homogenised. Next summer, after everyone forgets how cold it is, the Met will discover some heat that ya’ll are missing now and it will turn out that this winter is not nearly as cold as you are experiencing…

So there is hope!

Please be patient

The blog must be upgraded to WordPress 3.0.2. This should take just a few minutes, but who knows? It must be done, and the time is now.

If things stop working, please be patient; I’m aware of it.

Thank you. See you all again shortly.

Starting at 16:53 NZT.

Richard Treadgold

UPDATE 17:36 NZT

Took longer than I hoped, but it seems to have worked. Please let me know if you notice any shortcomings, thanks.

I still can’t do automatic upgrades because my file permissions are incorrect. One day soon I’ll replace the lost widgets from the sidebar (I miss the oil prices).

UPDATE 1

Sat 16 Oct 2010 10:20

I’ve returned to the familiar CCG style for now. Since the new style wasn’t giving us everything we wanted, there was no point in leaving it there. As I look around the Internet I see little that I like; finding a good blog theme is not proving easy. If anyone wants to give links to excellent themes, I’d be grateful. – Richard T

Open threads have been put up today, as requested by several very active members of our Conversation. They’re accessible from the menu bar (look for Open threads) and the sidebar on the right. I guess I should start to move relevant comments from the “Housekeeping” post to the new topics.

The record number of comments previously was 68 recorded on “Observations on NIWA’s Statement of Defence” but now the record is up to 138 143 161 recorded on “World of sceptical questions unfolds…“. Rodney take note: see what you started? (thanks again)

I’ve activated a new theme, called Blocks2. No, BLOCKS2!! It gives comment numbers, which makes it really easy to refer to the comment you’re responding to, plus it allows threaded comments, letting you reply to a particular comment, indenting as it goes.

Let’s see how it works for a few days; let me know when something seems broken. I’m keen to make things easier, not more difficult!

Now we can refer directly to comment numbers, which are consistent and unchanging within a thread.

Let me know of problems.

— Richard T

A hard disk drive, symbol of computers, source of web sites, linked by the Interweb.

I’m sorry if you couldn’t reach our site today (Friday). A technical glitch has been resolved and we’re up and running again. Some comments have been delayed but not, I think, lost. If your comments don’t appear, please post them again.

Thanks,
Richard.

UPDATE 3: Tue 12 Jan 2010 4:15 pm

It’s been four days without the blog

On Friday afternoon I asked for technical help from my web hosting provider. Something went wrong when they moved the site to a new server. While I was waiting for them to fix it, I formed a desire to install a second copy of WordPress as a test bed. I thought: what could possibly go wrong?

The minute I created the second database, the first one stopped working, meaning nobody, myself included, could access the Climate Conversation Group blog.

However, it turned out that there was no connection between the two events; they just coincided.

It’s very frustrating not having the blog available. The traffic logs show that a lot of people visit here every day, so I’m sorry about the lack of service.

Feel free to leave any comments, questions or complaints below.

UPDATE 2: Fri 8 Jan 2010 1:30 pm

Well, the upgrade still hasn’t happened, but the whole site is now on a server with the latest software that WordPress requires, hurrah! My thanks to the technical support staff at The Kiwi Web Hosting Company in Wellington for their help.

After the nameservers have replicated the new details I’ll do the WordPress upgrade. Boring, really, isn’t it? Computers have nothing to do with the subject, yet without them we’d wait weeks to hear each others’ messages, so it’s sensible to take care of them.

UPDATE 1: Thu 7 Jan 2010 10:28 am

Read more… »