Thanks to those who advised me of this amazing email from the Climategate 2 collection, either through comments here or private email. It concerns the pre-1930 cooling of the New Zealand temperature record, and makes food for thought, especially for those supporting NIWA, Salinger and the increasingly shaky AGW story. Although it’s more of a novel, and a bad one at that, with gaping holes in the plot and evidence so carelessly thrown together it fools nobody. Now, as many of us feared was the case, comes evidence that the NZ temperature record has been applied to far more places than where it was observed. We now know it was stretched over far-flung places it was never intended to go. This is the worst result possible.

Cc: t.osborn@uea.ac.uk
date: Mon, 7 Sep 2009 00:13:56 +0100 (BST)
from: “Tim Osborn”
subject: New Zealand summer temps
to: p.jones@uea.ac.uk

Hi Phil,

just a quick Q before I go to bed!

I’ve just updated the IPCC paleo chapter Southern Hemisphere plot where we
showed, amongst other things, Ed Cook’s New Zealand TRW reconstruction,
with CRUTEM2v Jan-Mar smoothed temperatures.

For my update I’ve used CRUTEM3v, expecting them to be rather similar but
with a few more years on the end.

But the pre-1930 temperatures are now very different, being much cooler
(by > 0.5 degC for a 25-year low-pass mean) in CRUTEM3v than CRUTEM2v.
Previously they had been, on average, near or even above the 1961-1990
mean, now they’re at -0.5 degC.

Is this a result of some homogenization work on New Zealand summer temp
data? Or just some random artefact of minor changes somewhere?

Cheers

Tim

– Dr. Tim Osborn RCUK Academic Fellow Climatic Research Unit School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/

I started preparing this last August, when the NZ Climate Science Coalition published its audit of NIWA’s review of the official NZ temperature record. The topic is important to me, so now, embarrassed, I tidy it up because it’ll do more good being posted in the wild than sitting on my hard drive. – Richard Treadgold

Errors in the new 7SS

The shocking breakthrough in our audit is that NIWA didn’t use the adjustment method they said they would use. Barry Brill, chairman of the Coalition, released an overview entitled New Zealand Unaffected by Global Warming (pdf, 1.3 MB). The discovery that the country hasn’t experienced global warming is another startling finding. In Chapter 8, on page 24, he identifies nine criticisms of NIWA’s newest 7SS. These multiple defects destroy the credibility of the 7SS as a source of the NZTR. Read more… »

Hand-in-hand with the IPCC theory that we’re dangerously changing the climate go many inaccuracies, distortions and outright lies supporting its stupendously false diagnosis, ruinously expensive remedies and tyrannical administration.

The distortions have wormed their way into thousands of places, both public and private, open and secret, taking our taxes and governing us in ways we’re already forgetting, even if we knew when they began. Will we ever be rid of them?

For to destroy each of the distortions, you need time and patience to find references to, references against and develop a refutation. Then you wait for people to hear about it and agree with you. It’s slow work.

Here’s one of the lies: mankind is ruining a perfectly good climate which never changed before we came along. Read more… »

This is surely too good to be true for the warmists.

In the last few days of a failing international conference, here’s a paper carrying strong confirmation of global warming. It’s not attribution, of course, but nobody will notice that. Proof of warming is enough to tweak the guilt nerve.

The Washington Post says:

The global temperature series is one of the clearest pieces of evidence that the planet is heating up. Over the past century, it’s easy to see from, say, NASA’s data that surface temperatures have risen dramatically. But there’s also a fair bit of short-term natural fluctuation from year to year, which can sometimes obscure what, exactly, is going on.

Read more… »

Climate crisis called off

UPDATE 1500 NZDT – see below

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has published the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) to a Special Report, Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX). (Actually, they haven’t.)

The SPM (I’ll call it the “report” from now on) is remarkable in its candour. The IPCC, once wanting to become the world’s evil overlord, with fingers in public and private pies everywhere to compel compliance with its anti-carbon agenda, acknowledges its ignorance and uncertainty about the climate.

The evil giant has finally spewed forth something wholesome. Read more… »

Climate Realists carried a letter from John O’Sullivan on 2 November, claiming ill treatment at the hands of Suite101.com, in terminating their publishing arrangement with him. I note that two of O’Sullivan’s articles are still available at Suite101 but this is his letter:

Friends,

I write to announce my employment with my publishers, Suite101 was terminated today without prior notice or explanation and all my articles published over a two-year period with them are now removed from the Internet. I believe this is in retaliation for my latest article ‘New Satellite Data Contradicts Carbon Dioxide Climate Theory’ revealing the shocking fact that the Japanese ‘IBUKI’ satellite measuring surface carbon dioxide emissions shows that Third World regions are emitting considerably more CO2 than western, industrial nations. Read more… »

Now where should we start?

How confusing is this?

Climate Realists announce that new satellite data from Japanese scientists show carbon dioxide is emitted mostly by the third world, with much less coming from industry in the west. For those asleep in the back, that’s the reverse of our previous understanding (so it’s a confusing result). On the map, pink is where emissions are occurring, green is where absorption is occurring.

Hmm, New Zealand apparently doesn’t exist. Panic!

Life is now officially upside down — the giant northern hemisphere economies are not emitting CO2 after all, they’re absorbing the stuff! Read more… »

Human emissions of CO2 1990 to 2010.
From PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

Two days ago we heard about the long-term trend in atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions, copied above.

This graph functions as a fine graph of productive output, and doesn’t it reveal the new world order? The countries with the highest emissions are (broadly speaking) doing the most work, making the most money and having the most influence.

It was ever so. If our leaders wake up to that simple fact they might be able to make sensible plans to maximise our work. Perhaps improve on the half-baked notion of a magic “knowledge economy” — as though knowledge alone would succeed without the application of intelligent planning, consistent effort and good service. Read more… »

The Holy Grail

Independently peer-reviewed scientific papers published in learned journals are the Holy Grail of climate science alarmists, and the IPCC in particular. So they want to get friendly papers in and keep contrary papers out.

The Climategate emails show continuous collusion between members of the “Hockey Team” to prevent journal publication of any paper which challenged the IPCC dogma. Because, once published, a paper becomes part of “the scientific literature” and authors are obliged thereafter to take it seriously.

Of course, the IPCC manipulates the system outrageously. After Chairman Pachauri assured the media that it disregarded non-peer-reviewed opinions, revelations came that more than one-third of the material used by some Working Groups came from the “grey” literature (usually written by Big Green activists).

NIWA closely follows the party line. That’s why it has insisted endlessly that the New Zealand temperature record (NZTR) included adjustments “described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature” which were “in accord with internationally accepted techniques.” Read more… »

NIWA’s paper finds strong warming. But when their temperature data are processed according to the proper methodology, there’s no unusual warming. Throughout their paper, NIWA cite the proper method, but they never use it. Why not?

NIWA’s data confirms: little warming

When it’s calculated correctly

Why did they lie to us?

In December last year, NIWA released their long-awaited review of the NZ temperature record (NZTR). We’ve reviewed that report and found serious errors. NIWA used the wrong method and created strong warming. We used the right method and found mild warming.

There are a few things we need to understand about weather stations. The first is that these stations sit there for a long time. Some of them have been in the same place for 80 years and more. If you sat in one place for that long, you’d see stuff happening around you — same for the weather station.

Trees grow, buildings go up, airport runways get covered in tarseal or concrete, roads appear, and these and other non-climatic influences affect the temperature readings, usually making them warmer, but not always. Sometimes the station gets moved, and it’s always better to keep all that history if you can, so you try to adjust it rather than start again with a new station.

NIWA had to start from scratch

Knowing this, when scientists examine a series of temperature readings they look for what has changed at the different stations. If the changes affected the temperature readings, they adjust the readings. Read more… »

There is no statistically significant warming trend since November of 1996 in monthly surface temperature records compiled at the University of East Anglia. Do we now understand why there’s been no change in fourteen and a half years?

Well, yes, because “blame” for this interruption in warming has been placed on sulphates emitted by China’s power stations zealously burning coal. Hasn’t it?

Has this hypothesis been tested? No. Can it be tested? Yes.

Most of the aerosols are in the northern hemisphere, and there’s little mixing of air between the hemispheres. Reason tells us that the northern hemisphere should be cooling and the southern hemisphere should be warming.

Well, go on, this is the big test, look it up. Read more… »

Beautiful tiger in the snow, presumably at some risk of extinction. We should save these and remember that it’s human encroachment on the tigers’ habitat that threatens their survival, not burning petrol. In the meantime, forget about preserving Antarctic nematode worms, which we couldn’t eradicate if we tried. There just aren’t enough people down there to threaten their habitat.

A study from the University of Exeter on species decline declares “climate change warnings not exaggerated.”

However the press release leaves one singularly unimpressed with the raw activism of the lead researcher, who says: “It is time to stop using the uncertainties as an excuse for not acting. We need to act now to prevent threatened species from becoming extinct. This means cutting carbon emissions.” Read more… »

The sky, location of most of the climate.

Yesterday I saw the headline: Climate change reducing ocean’s carbon dioxide uptake. If they mean the temperature’s been rising, I thought, these guys need a lesson in 1) recent, 15-year-long atmospheric temperature non-rise and 2) the gas laws, or specifically, Henry’s Law.

Henry’s Law states that the solubility of a gas in a liquid at a particular temperature is proportional to the pressure of that gas above the liquid. If the temperature of the liquid rises, it can’t hold so much gas, so some will leave (“outgas”). It hardly requires a paper based on 28 years of observations to confirm this. Read more… »

Rash of news alerts

From News.Scotsman.com comes worrying information of rapid sea level rise.

Global warming is causing sea levels to rise at a faster rate today than at any time in the past 2,100 years, according to new research.

Scientists used the fossils left by tiny marine animals to record two millennia of sea levels along the US Atlantic coast.

Some inspired comments

In the most detailed look yet at sea level change, scientists on Monday reported that waters along the East Coast have risen far faster over the past century than at any time in the previous 2000 years. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

20th-Century sea-level rise on the U.S. Atlantic coast is faster than at any time in the past two millennia. [Real Climate]

The research confirms what has often been assumed, that there’s a very strong link between sea levels and temperatures. More worryingly, it also seems to confirm just how uniquely pronounced the current climate change really is. [io9]

Woolly thinking?

No, this is the Royal Society of NZ.
Listen carefully as they try to pull the wool over your eyes.

With the Royal Society smoke ‘n’ sea level rise

Last September, the Royal Society published a report entitled “SEA LEVEL RISE Emerging Issues”, available as a pdf (645 KB). In the accompanying press release they had this to say:

Professor Keith Hunter, the Society’s Vice President of Physical Sciences, who contributed to the paper, says researchers are starting to be able to estimate the amount of rise that we should expect to see over this century and beyond. But he says these projections of future sea level rise depend upon the future melting of ice sheets, which is poorly known.

“The uncertain knowledge about ice sheet behaviour is the key reason why IPCC projections in 2007 did not state upper bounds for sea level rise. Similarly, Ministry for the Environment guidance in 2008 wisely left open the question of any upper limit on sea level rise.”

The paper states that some early scientific work into the effect of a warming climate on ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica suggested that many metres of sea level rise could occur within a century. However, it says few scientists now consider that such rates are possible.

What do we learn from this?

We learn that we can’t guess future sea level rise, since we can’t guess future ice sheet melting; our mates at the UN and the MfE won’t touch it, and our first guess was several metres but now only the cranks go that far.

The press release expresses complete ignorance on future sea level rise. Great. So we also learn that scientists can make complete ignorance appear very interesting. Read more… »

All of the 159 documents in BoM’s “Schedule” are said to be communications received in confidence by the Australian Federal Government from a foreign Government.

Hah!

They simply cannot reconcile that claim with these actual Bureau descriptions:

Have a look at them: Read more… »

Amazing Australian storm seems to reach down to a puny, isolated ship. This is emblematic of our lonely struggle with a gargantuan government bureaucracy. What secrets, sinister or not, does the storm conceal? Will our two countries’ information laws combine to reveal them or to hide them away forever?

In Australia, Warwick Hughes has followed with interest our attempts to obtain from NIWA details of their adjustments to the NZ temperature record. When the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) supplied a letter apparently certifying the Bureau’s “peer review” of NIWA’s review of the temperature record, he noted our complaint that “there must be more than this.”

Hearing of my request to NIWA for records relating to that review by the Bureau, he was minded to help. So, back in February, he filed a Freedom Of Information (FOI) request with the Australian Information Commissioner.

In response to that FOI request, the Bureau submitted to the Information Commissioner a Schedule of Documents dated 6 May 2011.

Somebody at the Bureau has put in hours of work tracking these documents down, describing them, analysing their relevance to Warwick’s request and assessing whether they met the provisions for exemption. Well done, them.

The schedule describes 159 relevant documents, amounting to several thousand pages, and what do you know? The BoM claims full exemption from the FOI Act in respect of every single page! Who could have predicted that? Read more… »

Atmospheric water vapour.

Water vapour more significant than CO2?

A study released last year reveals water vapour has an important role in global warming and more research is needed. When water vapour declines it seems to lead to global cooling, preventing overheating.

The story was covered in The Guardian on 29 January, 2010:

Water vapour caused one-third of global warming in 1990s, study reveals

Experts say their research does not undermine the scientific consensus on man-made climate change, but call for ‘closer examination’ of the way computer models consider water vapour.

Scientists have underestimated the role that water vapour plays in determining global temperature changes, according to a new study that could fuel further attacks on the science of climate change.

The research, led by one of the world’s top climate scientists, suggests that almost one-third of the global warming recorded during the 1990s was due to an increase in water vapour in the high atmosphere, not human emissions of greenhouse gases. A subsequent decline in water vapour after 2000 could explain a recent slowdown in global temperature rise, the scientists add. Read more… »

We can now reveal that in trying to prove significant but unjustified warming, NIWA’s temperature shenanigans are pitting it directly against NOAA, the US climate giant, in a delightful dataset dustup. Guess who comes out of it with a bloody nose?

and the winner is… well, never mind: the loser is science

(Nobody’s won yet.) Now here’s more of the saga…

The ‘Seven-station Series’ (7SS) constructed by NIWA scientists claims a 20th-century warming trend for New Zealand of 0.9°C. The warming arises entirely from their in-house adjustments to the raw thermometer readings and they’re now very keen to find some corroboration for that warming.

Why are they so anxious to vindicate the 7SS? Because they’re finding it almost impossible to achieve. This conclusion of warming is an orphan — it contradicts all other official temperature records, going back decades. Read more… »

Recent domestic icicles in Germany brought on by the mind-altering greenhouse gas, CO₂.

All right, so it might not be getting down to out-of-the-ordinary freezing temperatures, but it’s certainly not unduly warm, which is the claim we’re constantly hearing in the mainstream media, even now. Even after all the contrary evidence. Here’s more.

To show that there is scientific data backing up the refutation of strong, even dangerous, warming brought on by our over-indulgence in the famous capitalist mind-altering industrial pollutant, carbon dioxide, the NZ Climate Science Coalition just issued a press release. The 2009 paper from McLean, de Freitas and Carter shows the uncanny correlation between the Southern Oscillation Index and global temperature several months later. The press release shows how the paper “predicts” the current temperature plunge.

And I really mean plunge, because McLean et al speculate this year could be the coldest since 1956. Brrr!

Now be my guest: show how wrong it is! Show us how the correlation is not really a correlation. It’s a free world!

Oh — and you’ll also have to demonstrate, of course, that global temperatures are NOT following the SOI graph from about seven months ago (please don’t forget that part). The press release is next. Read more… »

There are many temperatures in this place. Which one is the ‘right’ temperature?

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

Official temperature records have been maintained in New Zealand since shortly after European settlement began in 1840. Throughout the ensuing 150 years, mean temperature levels appeared to remain stable. But NIWA (the responsible Government agency) has recently questioned the historical record, suggesting a long-term warming trend may have been hidden in the data.

Publications from 1868¹, 1920² 1960³ and contemporary records⁴ indicate that mean temperatures in New Zealand cities have not significantly changed since records began (Tables 1,2,3). Degrees Fahrenheit in the early figures have been converted to degrees Celsius. Read more… »

Light shining through water reminds us of heat and depth, subjects of this brief review,
while giving us enjoyable images.

Richard Cumming takes a look at recent observational data on two topics often raised and guaranteed to cause concern. They are used both to “prove” the existence of rapid warming and as an example of the ills soon to befall us if we don’t prevent them. But both uses fail on a cool examination of the facts. The Climate Conversation Group calls for calm to prevent public hysteria.

Recent global mean sea level and ocean heat content trends

by Richard Cumming

UPDATE 31 JAN 2011

“The sea level continues to rise” is a familiar refrain, but the AGW hypothesis, along with the IPCC AR4, both predict an accelerating rate of rise in the global mean sea level. The IPCC prediction is simply:

“Anthropogenic forcing is also expected to produce an accelerating rate of sea level rise.”

That sea levels are rising is undisputed, but what are the recent trends of both mean sea level (MSL) and its companion, ocean heat content (OHC)? Is MSL accelerating in accordance with the predictions?

Cumulative sea level change from 1905 to 2000, adapted from Holgate (2007), shows a steadily decelerating trend over the period: Read more… »

UN climate conferences obsolete

New study considers vegetation cooling

A new NASA computer modelling effort has found that the additional growth of plants and trees in a world with doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide levels would create a new negative feedback — a cooling effect — on the Earth’s climate system that could work to reduce future global warming to only +1.64°C if carbon dioxide was doubled. The IPCC had assumed a +3°C warming in that case.

The cooling effect would be -0.3 degrees Celsius globally and -0.6 degrees C over land, compared to simulations where the feedback was not included, said Lahouari Bounoua, of Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Bounoua is lead author on the paper that was published Dec 7, 2010, in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

With the negative feedback included, the model found a warming of 1.64 degrees C globally when carbon dioxide was doubled.

Doubling the CO2 contents in the atmosphere from 390 ppmv to 780 ppmv would require some 195 years with the present growth rate of 2 ppm/year. This means, however, that until the year 2100 we have to expect a temperature increase of only 0.75°C. Also, with the higher IPCC value, the resulting temperature growth would be well below the limit of 2°C which has been decided as a limit by the recent conference in Cancun.

Apparently none of the 15,000 participants in Cancun has recognized this fact (or, rather, did not want to do so) since this means that the political UN conference-circus is indeed obsolete. No new post-Kyoto agreement is required, nor a reduction of CO2 emissions at all.

However, we must expect that the expensive annual mega-meetings will continue, since no participant wants to give up these free vacation weeks in one of the more beautiful places of this planet (Kyoto – Bali – Nairobi – Rio de Janeiro – Geneva – New Delhi – Marrakesh – Buenos Aires – Copenhagen – Cancun – and next year Durban, South Africa).

The most important decision at each of 16 conferences was to meet again next year. And if it were only for that reason, then the “fight against climate change” must be continued.

sourced from the Climate Sceptics group in Yahoo Groups

The official NZ temperature graph showing both the raw readings and the effect of NIWA’s adjustments. Click for larger version.

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

This graph summarises how NIWA’s recent adjustments to the historical temperature data has created a 20th century warming trend of 1.0°C. There were 22 changes in the period 1900-75 and almost all of those adjustments went downwards. Over 90% of the adjusted station-years moved in the same direction – a very surprising result.

Another curious aspect of the NIWA adjustments is that their amplitude is almost directly proportional to their chronological age. The further back one goes from 1975, the larger the adjustment becomes. Read more… »

Does this new method perform better than the IPCC?

NIWA, where are you?

The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, is calculated from the monthly or seasonal fluctuations in the air pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin.

In July last year three climate scientists published a paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research. “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature” concluded that nature, not man, was responsible for “recent global warming.”

The paper, by John McClean, Chris DeFreitas and Bob Carter, shows that what the SOI does now, the temperature will do in between five and eight months’ time.

Simple. But does it work to predict global temperatures? Read more… »

It’s easy to accept that the little band of sand beside this mighty metropolis occasionally registers slightly higher temperatures than caused solely by meteorological conditions.

UPDATE 1: 15 NOVEMBER

UPDATE 2: 17 NOVEMBER

There’s some excitement around blogdom with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) apparently questioning the UHI adjustments it’s made to the temperature record.

The actual press release

But the story is proving difficult to pin down. I’ve located the BOM Media Release of 13 October, 2010, which says (emphasis added):

Wednesday 13 October 2010
MEDIA RELEASE

Hot cities

If you thought our cities are getting warmer, you’re right.

Bureau of Meteorology researchers have found that daytime temperatures in our cities are warming more rapidly than those of the surrounding countryside and that this is due to the cities themselves. Read more… »

The unadjusted NZ temperature history. Click for larger version.

Barry Brill makes a strong case for the New Zealand temperature record to ignore the period before 1930. In essence, he says that a 70-year-long record is plenty long enough to establish a trend, and in any case the early data is either missing or unreliable — just chuck it out! He says it at greater length and more politely than that in a sometimes tongue-in-cheek article that makes sly digs at NIWA for the mistakes or naked bias that have given us a deeply suspect temperature “history.”    - Richard Treadgold

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

Climate Change policy is driven by forecasts of temperatures over the next 100 years. But the computer models need to be checked against the actual temperature trends of the last 100 years. If back-casts are wrong, then fore-casts will also be wrong.

The NZ temperature record averages seven weather stations — Auckland, Masterton, Wellington, Nelson, Hokitika, Lincoln and Dunedin — through the twentieth century. But there are many gaps and flaws up to about 1930 and, apart from these seven, there are very few other records to use as benchmarks.

First 30 years a chequered history

Auckland: Moved from the Museum to Albert Park in late 1909, and was affected by rapid tree growth and urbanisation during the next 20 years. Read more… »

How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists

I’ve reposted Roy’s announcement because the book sounds stunning and because of the penetrating comments he makes, such as:

The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists. By Dr Roy Spencer, who’s been a tenacious sceptic of anthropogenic global warming for many years. Click for previews at Amazon.

Read more… »

A few fish in the sea, possibly searching for the “missing heat” they’ve heard about from some fishy friends. The whole affair’s a bit fishy, however, since the idea of heat hiding somewhere is unknown to science. Of a certainty, this is the first time the world has been warned it might be “haunted” by heat that cannot currently be located. It must be just a ghost of an idea. We cannot take it seriously, even if the Royal Society might. More importantly, this Science article takes direct aim at our Royal Society’s recent “proof” of global warming.

Here’s an article by Kevin Trenberth from this week’s Science Journal that directly contradicts the recent statement on Science, Climate Change and Integrity by Professor Keith Hunter, Vice-President of the NZ Royal Society. We look forward eagerly to the public debate that will surely follow this disclosure of discord within the formerly close-knit climate science community.

‘Missing’ heat may affect future climate change

Satellite instruments and ocean sensors limited

Current observational tools cannot account for roughly half of the heat that is believed to have built up on Earth in recent years, according to a “Perspectives” article in this week’s issue of the journal Science.

Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, warn that satellite sensors, ocean floats and other instruments are inadequate to track this “missing” heat, which may be building up in the deep oceans or elsewhere in the climate system.

“The heat will come back to haunt us sooner or later,” says NCAR scientist Kevin Trenberth, the article’s lead author. Read more… »

A snow-covered Stevenson screen — which seems to put global warming into perspective. This standard enclosure for weather recording instruments, such as thermometers, hygrometers, psychrometers and barometers, was invented in 1818 by a British engineer. It keeps the instruments dry and shades them from direct rays of the sun while allowing the air to circulate freely. For more on Stevenson screens, weather stations and generally measuring temperatures, visit Watts Up With That (perhaps our favourite climate site).

NIWA keep talking about various reasons to adjust the official New Zealand temperature readings. They say one must account for changes in location, exposure, urbanisation and instrumentation. For some reason they continually harp on about the altitude difference between Thorndon and Kelburn (Wellington).

But it is empty talk, because they have never made changes for those reasons. Are you listening? People of New Zealand: scientists from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), your country’s publicly-funded, premier environmental research organisation, have lied to you and continue to lie to you. Read more… »

An old book, similar in age to the thesis
we’ve been trying to get access to.
No, just joking.

Yes, the title is correct: I can now reveal that NIWA have actually disowned the famous Salinger thesis, which describes a method of adjusting a time series of temperature readings when they become no longer homogeneous. Despite their repeated citing of the 30-year-old student paper, they don’t actually regard it as important. This has become clear after several months of diligent research by members of the NZ Climate Science Coalition.

But first, we’ve discovered the true nature of the “public” access that NIWA claims for the thesis. And not is all as it seems.

Thesis available, but only in Wellington

ACT MP John Boscawen asked a question in the Parliament of the Minister of Research, Science and Technology, Dr Wayne Mapp:

Can the minister confirm that Dr Salinger’s PhD thesis is still “publicly available”? If so, where, and how may it be obtained?

A simple question, you might think, and so it is. Listen to the answer from Dr Mapp. Read more… »

The surface of the Sun, which is hotter than you can imagine. It is hotter even than a sausage being fried to the edge of its existence in a hot frying pan, so it is very hot indeed. A picture of the sun’s surface is often used like this to illustrate a story involving heat, but when the amount of heat involved in the story is vastly different from the amount pictured, it’s a deceptive trick. This is a trick.

UPDATED and expanded on awakening Saturday morning — 13 Mar 2010, 10:45 am

John Key: you must bring NIWA to heel

The Waikato Times yesterday wrote:

Niwa principal climate scientist Dr Brett Mullan said Niwa “had the original data, knew the method of the calculations, and we have the answers”. There was “no scientific issue from our perspective”, and Dr Salinger’s work had stood the test of time.

So what are the adjustments

The NZ Climate Science Coalition began asking NIWA for the adjustments to the national temperature record in late November.

NIWA have told us where we could find the adjustments; we searched for them where they told us to search; the adjustments are not there.

NIWA have said: “We have the methodology, it’s in a student’s thesis [and other sources] from 1981, just read it.” The Coalition never asked for the methodology, we asked for the adjustments, but we looked anyway. Read more… »

On Friday, 27 November 2009, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) published a short press release at Scoop.

Under the heading “Combining Temperature Data from Multiple Sites in Wellington”, NIWA described in some detail the process of adjusting temperature readings when the weather station has been moved. By way of example, they cited Wellington, where, they said, the Thorndon weather recording station was moved in 1928 to Kelburn.

The Kelburn site is colder because it is about 120m higher than the Thorndon site. The process of combining data from various Wellington sites is illustrated below.

The day before, David Wratt was quoted in another NIWA press release:

Such site differences are significant and must be accounted for when analysing long-term changes in temperature. The Climate Science Coalition has not done this.

NIWA climate scientists have previously explained to members of the Coalition why such corrections must be made. NIWA’s Chief Climate Scientist, Dr David Wratt, says he’s very disappointed that the Coalition continue to ignore such advice and therefore to present misleading analyses.

But now, in a dramatic turnaround, they confess, in a written answer to a Parliamentary question, that this “example” of adjustments for the reason of altitude change was fiction.

They have not changed any temperatures for that reason at any station in the national “seven-station” series.

They were lying to us. They openly mocked Rodney Hide for not knowing about that sort of thing and scolded the inquiring scientists at the NZ Climate Science Coalition and falsely incited their supporters, such as the rabid warmers at Hot Topic, into making vicious attacks on the credibility of the NZ CSC and the Climate Conversation Group.

That’s all I have time for, but here’s the official Parliamentary answer (my emphasis):

Station adjustments are not made on the basis of elevation differences, either for Wellington or for any of the other six locations. Adjustments are calculated from comparisons of different stations’ records, as described in the NIWA document Creating a Composite Temperature Record for Hokitika.

Wellington is a special case where two sites, Thorndon and Kelburn, are very close to one another horizontally but with a large (approximately 120m) altitude separation. This does not occur for any of the other six locations in the “seven-station” series.

Temperature differences between Wellington sites correlate well with measurements, in many parts of the world, of temperature decrease with altitude. This “lapse-rate” effect has been used to confirm that the adjustment between Thorndon and Kelburn, calculated by inter-station comparison, would be expected from the altitude difference between the sites.

The slippery scientists at NIWA now admit that they didn’t use the altitude “lapse rate” method to calculate adjustments. They say it only “confirmed” adjustments made by another method.

So why did they ridicule us?

If NIWA have any credibility left it would be surprising.

How will Gareth Renowden respond to this? Is he getting the picture yet?

More later.

Peeling the onion in the Parliament. Like the onion, everything associated with Parliament has layers. As we make our way through the Parliamentary questions we discover more and more.

We’re working through several answers from the Hon Wayne Mapp, Minister of Research, Science and Technology, concerning questions posed by ACT about the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA).

The last of the questions posed by John Boscawen on behalf of ACT on February 19 asked about the official graph of the seven-station temperature series which shows warming over New Zealand during the 20th Century.

The answer, on March 1, said the iconic graph was finally justified by work done over about six weeks, from mid-December to early February. I’m sorry, that’s wrong: the graph was not justified by this work; the graph remains unjustified except for the portion related to Hokitika — that’s right, yes, I’ve got it now.

The work NIWA did justified only the temperature history at Hokitika, although it hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet by independent scientists, only by colleagues at NIWA, so there might still be errors in it.

You wouldn’t get away with it at high school

So the temperature graph made from seven weather stations, which NIWA has used for years to prove that the New Zealand climate has warmed, and thus we must take expensive action against global warming caused by humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide, has never had proper scientific standing. 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… »

Peeling the onion in the Parliament. Like the onion, everything associated with Parliament has layers. As we make our way through the Parliamentary questions we discover more and more.

We’re working through several answers from the Hon Wayne Mapp, Minister of Research, Science and Technology, concerning questions posed by ACT about the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA).

Dr Mapp was asked on 19 Feb, 2010:

If only raw temperature data is supplied by NIWA to NASA, NOAA and the Hadley Centre, what additional information is supplied so that NASA, NOAA and the Hadley Centre are able to make their own judgements about temperature adjustments?

To which he answered:

Along with the raw data NIWA provides latitude, longitude, altitude of the site, period of record, along with information on site exposure and instrument history.

Why don’t the overseas agencies trust NIWA to make accurate adjustments? Have they found reasons to doubt they were made properly?

For that matter, why do NIWA mistrust the adjustments made by NASA, NOAA and the others? Why do they make their own?

Peeling the onion in the Parliament. Like the onion, everything associated with Parliament has layers. As we make our way through the Parliamentary questions we discover more and more.

We’re working through several answers from the Hon Wayne Mapp, Minister of Research, Science and Technology, concerning questions posed by ACT about the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA).

A further question asked the minister why he tabled the Hokitika analysis instead of an analysis for all seven stations, as Rodney Hide had asked and David Wratt had agreed to do during the December meeting of MPs. Nick Smith prevented a record being kept of that famous meeting, so the only account of it came from Rodney Hide in a late-night phone call. You can read it here on the CCG blog.

If you haven’t seen the “NIWA squirms” article before, I’ll ask you to take particular notice of this part:

Rodney said, “That’s the sort of thing [a description of the adjustments at Wellington] I want to see for every site.” Wratt admitted there were other adjustments at Hokitika. Rodney said, “Well, just explain those, then do the same for the other five sites” [Rodney thought that the Wellington adjustments had been described, so only five sites remained. It proved to be untrue — they have still not described Wellington, so there are six to go.]

Rodney’s request to see all seven stations is unambiguous and undeniable. Read more… »

Peeling the onion in the Parliament. Like the onion, everything associated with Parliament has layers. As we make our way through the Parliamentary questions we discover more and more.

We’re working through several answers from the Hon Wayne Mapp, Minister of Research, Science and Technology, concerning questions posed by ACT about the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA).

One question concerns the production of what we have referred to as the Schedule of Adjustments (SOA). It’s simply a statement of what changes were made to the raw temperature readings, why and when, in order to record the scientific justification for them.

The Climate Conversation Group (CCG) and the NZ Climate Science Coalition (CSC) have been asking NIWA since November to disclose the SOA. Privately, they have told us they are “reconstructing” the SOA, and, indeed, on February 9, they quietly posted a list of all the adjustments to the seven-station series together with a discussion of the reasons for Hokitika. Well done, them.

On January 30, Eloise Gibson wrote in the NZ Herald:

The country’s climate forecaster is bowing to public pressure and putting all of its temperature data and calculations on the internet because of mistrust fuelled by errors overseas.

Principal climate scientist James Renwick said Niwa had decided to bare all because “if we don’t we appear to be hiding something”.

Two people in Niwa’s climate group have prepared a full set of documents including all the data from climate stations and a full explanation of the adjustments made to records, which should be available online in about a week.

Read more… »

Peeling the onion in the Parliament. Like the onion, everything associated with Parliament has layers. As we make our way through the Parliamentary questions we discover more and more.

NIWA supply temperature data to the big overseas teams that maintain the global temperature datasets, including NASA, NOAA, the Hadley Centre, the WMO, NCDC and the UK Met Office (Hadley Centre).

It’s a bit odd that not all those organisations get the same sets of data.

For instance, the WMO gets monthly summaries comprising Kaitaia, Rotorua, Gisborne, New Plymouth, Paraparaumu, Kaikoura, Hokitika, Christchurch, Tara Hills, Invercargill, Raoul Island, Chatham Islands and Campbell Island — 13 stations in total.

From time to time, “Other data are provided in response to requests to NIWA.” So in August 2005, NCDC and NOAA reveived data from Kaitaia, Gisborne, New Plymouth, Paraparaumu, Hokitika, Tara Hills, Invercargill, Campbell Island, Chatham Islands and Raoul Island. That’s a bunch of 10 stations.

In August 2003, NIWA apparently sent (isn’t this fascinating?) the WMO data from 17 New Zealand sites: Kaitaia, Rotorua, Gisborne, New Plymouth, Napier, Paraparaumu, Nelson, Kaikoura, Hokitika, Christchurch, Tara Hills, Dunedin, Invercargill, Raoul Island, Chatham Island, Campbell Island and Scott Base, Antarctica. So that’s a New Zealand site?

In 1994, the UK Met Office (Hadley Centre) got temperature data for the seven-station series, plus Havelock North and Mt Cook (my emphasis).

Strange that in every case the overseas teams received data from more sites than we ourselves use for the national record.

Why does NIWA select only seven sites to describe the whole country? They really ought to explain it to us.

Peeling the onion in the Parliament. The NZ Parliament Building in the capital, Wellington. The attached “Beehive” (affectionate local name bestowed for obvious reasons), provides office accommodation for MPs and staff. Questions asked in the Parliament of ministers of the Crown must be answered unless they concern “operational matters”. Like the onion, everything associated with the Parliament has many layers. As we make our way through the Parliamentary questions it’s surprising what is being uncovered.

We’re working through several answers from the Hon Wayne Mapp, Minister of Research, Science and Technology, concerning questions posed by ACT about the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA). Some of the answers are bombshells. One reveals that NIWA lost vital worksheets used by Dr Salinger in constructing the national temperature record.

The next question I’ll discuss concerns adjustments NIWA made to the national temperature record. ACT asked a simple question about them, which was this:

… how many of the years before 1950 had their temperature adjusted downward in the NIWA “Seven-Station” Temperature Series and how many upward; and how many of the years after 1950 had their temperature adjusted downward and how many upward?

Read more… »

A destroyed hard disk drive. When it’s in this condition nobody can retrieve the information. Does this represent NIWA’s reputation?

NIWA have admitted that vital original material used to prepare the official New Zealand temperature records was deleted. They do not say when it happened, but it means that, in contravention of time-honoured principles of good science, NIWA is no longer able to verify the work done by Dr Jim Salinger.

The news came in an answer to a written parliamentary question from ACT and comes as NIWA is under pressure to justify the so-called “seven-station” time series that forms the centrepiece of their evidence of long-term warming.

The Climate Conversation Group (CCG), in association with the NZ Climate Science Coalition (CSC), published a report last November into apparent irregularities in the New Zealand temperature record. Read more… »

The official New Zealand temperature graph from NIWA. Their web site claims “a warming trend of 0.9°C over the past 100 years (1909 to 2008)”. But the period since about 1950 (highlighted) is virtually free of warming, verified by senior scientist Jim Salinger (ex-NIWA employee) as having a warming trend of 0.3°C. Click for larger version.

What’s going on?

NIWA goes to a lot of trouble to warn us about the coming “climate change” causing warming between 0.7°C and 5.1°C by 2090. But I can reveal evidence that our top climate scientists don’t believe this.

Should New Zealanders expect significant warming for the next 80 years? You might be surprised to learn — especially if you’re following the discussions here — that scientists with NIWA, whose job is to research the climate, tell us we already haven’t had any warming to speak of for about 60 years and we won’t get serious warming in the future.

Now that’s not the message we normally get from government scientists! Read more… »

Professor Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and a Professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. He admits his record-keeping is ‘not as good as it should be.’

From the Mail Online today comes an incredible turnaround from a scientist at the centre of research into global warming for the past 20 years. Following the Climategate release of emails, he now says there’s been no global warming since 1995 and there is doubt that the Medieval Warm Period was cooler than today. But until recently these points were part of the “unequivocal evidence” for anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and were never denied. These admissions are fatal to the theory of AGW. It cannot survive.

By Jonathan Petre on 14th February, 2010

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming. Read more… »

A spirited dog after a fleeing horse.

Gareth Renowden, in a recent post at his Hot Topic blog, apart from a flash of genuine humour in the heading (“dogging a fled horse”) offers nothing new and requires us to repeat ourselves in pointing out what our regular visitors already know: our questions are reasonable and NIWA has not yet divulged the answers to them.

Mr Renowden queries our statement that NIWA “merely” refers to the scientific literature, patiently explaining to us that “that’s where scientific knowledge is to be found, not in worksheets or computer records” (as though they are the only options).

But we were asking for the specific adjustments to the specific readings from particular thermometers, and we didn’t find them in the citations NIWA gave us. Is that clear enough? We need the adjustments, not references to documents that don’t contain them. If Renowden insists that those documents contain them, he must point them out to us. Read more… »

UPDATE 1 1st Feb, 11:16 pm: The second paragraph should have stated that Jim Renwick was quoted in the Herald, not Jim Salinger. My apologies; this has been corrected.

The unadjusted temperature readings from the seven weather stations NIWA selected for the official NZ temperature graph, presented as anomalies. Can they really not explain why their graph is different from this one? (Are We Feeling Warmer Yet? – NZCSC, CCG, 2009).

Heads must roll

Turning into farce

In an astounding admission of ineptitude, after their former arm-waving and expostulations of injustice, NIWA have finally confessed that they cannot provide the adjustments they made to the original temperature readings in the official NZ temperature record. Read more… »

The striking Tam O’ Shanter sea urchin. Examples like this were found along with three new species during a deep-sea survey of seamounts on the Chatham Rise in June 2009. NIWA’s research vessel Tangaroa explored the Chatham Rise, an area that stretches for 1000 kilometres from near the South Island eastwards to the Chatham Islands.

In the NZ Herald yesterday morning came news that NIWA is “putting all of its temperature data and calculations on the internet”.

It’s been five weeks since the NZCSC request to NIWA’s CEO, John Morgan, under the Official Information Act; it’s only two months since we published our study critical of the handling of the NZ temperature record; and it is decades since Dr Vincent Gray, Dr Warwick Hughes, Dr Jim Hessell and others started asking Dr Jim Salinger for his data and calculations.

This is tremendous news and it is to NIWA’s credit that they are releasing the data. But one comment from Renwick strikes a sour and revealing note:

Yesterday Dr Renwick said that while he had no problem releasing the Niwa data he found it insulting to be singled out when, for example, medical and Treasury researchers were not expected to disclose all of their workings. “There is a real issue of trust here. The assumption is people like myself don’t know what we are doing or we’ve got some kind of agenda just to get research funding.”

He feels insulted? He should stop whining. Any discomfort Jim Renwick feels in being compelled to hand over to the public this public data is of his and his colleagues’ own making. NIWA is being singled out only because of its sustained intransigence over many years. Read more… »

Spencer – finding unsuspected climate processes

In a dramatic recent article on his blog, Clouds Dominate CO₂ as a Climate Driver Since 2000, Roy Spencer sets out clear evidence for internally-forced changes in the climate system. An internal forcing is a feedback, as when a change in temperature causes some other change which itself also changes the temperature.

For example, when temperature rises, it may cause an increase in atmospheric water vapour; that water vapour may condense into clouds, which in turn, by reflecting the incoming sunlight back to space, may cause the temperature to drop.

Such a process might be termed a thermostat, a natural regulator, keeping the temperature within its natural bounds, much as it has done for half a billion years and more.

In our example, the forcing was a temperature increase and the feedback was a temperature decrease – a negative feedback, moving the temperature in the opposite direction from the forcing. A positive feedback would move the temperature in the same direction as the forcing.

To date, the IPCC assumes two vital things: that climate sensitivity is high and internal forcing (feedback) is positive.

I do not follow every detail that Dr Spencer describes, but, after challenging these two assumptions and showing them to be wrong, his conclusion pulls no punches.

Andy Reisinger – powerful global links to climate profits

Dr Andrew Reisinger, Senior Research Fellow, New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute (CCRI), sits at the right hand of God. The god, that is, of the IPCC — Dr Rajendra Pachauri. Andy is head of the Technical Support Unit for the Synthesis Report group of the IPCC, and from that exalted position controls what the world’s national leaders get to know about climate change.

For he was responsible to his “core group” co-author Rajendra Pachauri for co-ordinating the drafting of the Synthesis Report for the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). The SR is “the concluding summary of the IPCC’s most recent assessment of our current knowledge on climate change,” as Andy’s cv puts it.

That sounds like proper influence to me — real, transformative power. For what comes out of the IPCC’s Assessment Report (or more particularly the summary of it) goes straight into the ears of national leaders around the globe and they will act upon it. They don’t read the actual reports, so they won’t spot the differences between them and the summary. Neither will they fault the summary for themselves, because they are not scientists.

So they are necessarily at the mercy of the authors (or manipulators) of the Summary Report. Much has been said elsewhere about the politically-motivated alterations that were made to many of the IPCC reports. The reports are meant to represent the best of current scientific knowledge, but in practice they are watered down, uncertainties are grossly understated, certainty is claimed where it doesn’t exist and what the scientists said has even been reversed — without their approval.

The mother of all conflicts — of interest

Read more… »

First published at the National Post: December 21, 2009, 2:33 pm

There’s trouble over tree rings as the Climategate emails reveal a rift between scientists. For Part 1, go here.

By Terence Corcoran

In the thousands of emails released last month in what is now known as Climategate, the greatest battles took place over scientists’ attempts to reconstruct a credible temperature record for the last couple of thousand years. Have they failed? What the Climategate emails provide is at least one incontrovertible answer: They certainly have not succeeded.

In a post-Copenhagen world, climate history is not merely a matter of getting the record straight, or a trivial part of the global warming science. In a Climategate email in April of this year, Steve Colman, professor of Geological Science at the University of Minnesota Duluth, told scores of climate scientists “most people seem to accept that past history is the only way to assess what the climate can actually do (e.g., how fast it can change). However, I think that the fact that reconstructed history provides the only calibration or test of models (beyond verification of modern simulations) is under-appreciated.”

If temperature history is the “only” way to test climate models, the tests we have on hand — mainly the shaky temperature history of the last 1,000 or 2,000 years — suggest current climate models are not getting a proper scientific workout.

Two scientists, one British and the other American, straddle the initial Climategate battle over recent global temperature history. Later, the same two scientists appear to abandon their internal disagreements and join forces to present a united front to fight off critics and put down skeptics. Read more… »

This summary from the National Post of the Climategate emails and what has been discovered in them is the best I have seen. It is especially pleasing to hear Terence Corcoran’s moderate tone. The contents of the released emails and computer code throw strong doubt on the conclusions of the science of global warming. Everything needs further examination and there are signs this re-examination is happening, in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the USA, Britain and Russia. — Richard Treadgold

First published at the National Post: December 18, 2009, 8:13 PM

The scientists seem to have become captive to the IPCC’s objectives

By Terence Corcoran

Now that the Copenhagen political games are out of the way, marked as a failure by any realistic standard, it may be time to move on to the science games. To get the post-Copenhagen science review under way, the world has a fine document at hand: The Climategate Papers.

On Nov. 17, three weeks before the Copenhagen talks began, a massive cache of climate science emails landed on a Russian server, reportedly after having been laundered through Saudi Arabia. Where they came from, nobody yet knows. Described as having been hacked or leaked from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, the emails have been the focus of thousands of media and blog reports. Since their release, most attention has been focussed on a few choice bits of what seem like incriminating evidence of trickery and scientific repression. Some call it fraud.

Email fragments instantly began flying through the blogosphere. Perhaps the most sensational came from a Nov. 16, 1999, email from Phil Jones, head of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), in which he referred to having “completed Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline” in temperature.

Direct evidence of scientific skulduggery

These words, now famous around the world as the core of Climategate, are in fact the grossest possible over-simplification of what the emails contain. The Phil Jones email and other choice email fragments are really just microscopic particles taken from a massive collection of material that will, in time, come to be seen as the greatest and most dramatic science policy epic in history.

Whether the emails, containing more than 2,000 pages and links to thousands more, are smoking guns and direct evidence of scientific skulduggery is in many ways a secondary issue. The Climategate emails are an unprecedented and unparalleled record of attempts by scientists to crack the mysteries of the world’s climate. They are at the heart of a massive effort to understand the world’s climate history and create models and systems to predict climate hundreds of years into the future. Read more… »