Climate Conversation Group

I’m sick of all these claims that we should, or even can, limit the world’s warming to 2 °C.

Here’s a challenge: name a scientist prepared to make this assertion and describe the evidence for it.

It appears to be no more “settled science” than an unsubstantiated urban myth. At the very least, there’s so much uncertainty about the climate sensitivity to warming that we don’t know the effect on temperature of, say, 5 billion tonnes of CO2.

Ignoring for a moment the obvious question of what’s so wrong with two degrees, how do “scientists” reason their way from 2 degrees of warming to (as it says below) 44 billion tons of CO2 in 2020? Read more… »

Now it’s official.

There is no truth in the rumour that humanity is influencing the climate in any measurable way. The proof of that is that our world-leading climatologists don’t believe it.

They only say so in public, the dirty deceivers. Filthy liars, from Britain to America to New Zealand and even our own NIWA.

This deception has been exposed once already, yet they have persisted and built it up all over again. Calling them imbeciles gives honest morons a bad name. Will they never learn that misleading their electorate is not the way to prosper?

Incredible.

UPDATE 5:00 pm NZDT

Gratifying that the MSM are responding right away. Richard Black, at the BBC, takes a laid-back view, opting to invent exculpatory explanations for some of the incriminating-sounding statements.

Still, he essays some concern, too, suggesting: “UEA’s Prof Phil Jones may find some more phrases he wishes he hadn’t written.”

A Google search for “Climategate II” (with quote marks) already returns over 97,000 hits.

Yes, it’s going to be entertaining.

Tallbloke’s Talkshop

Jo Nova

James Delingpole

Watts Up With That

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… »

When Naomi Klein uses the word “denier” and its derivatives no fewer than 28 times* in a single article, she telegraphs her belief that those so labelled cannot be motivated by facts. Jo Nova, once again prepared to fearlessly battle climate bigotry, confronts Klein’s vacuous arguments with her usual cutting perspicacity, real science and humorous mockery of her opponent’s weaknesses.

Though there’s little chance of any direct reply from Klein, the sceptical climate scene is sadly lacking in such talented writers and thinkers as our beloved Jo. Here, she’s done it again, treating another breathless Earth-saver with robust scorn.

Naomi Klein’s lengthy ramble is notable for not commenting on the science or refuting sceptical claims. Instead, she rabbits on about opinion polls, political loyalties, age and ethnic groups and, of course, it’s all about America — the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Read more… »

Earth’s temperature has never been taken, actually

A story, Analysis confirms global warming data, accounts for urban heat islands, appeared in the Science Media Centre (SMC) on 21 October. I missed it then, but it’s been brought to my attention in correspondence within the Climate Science Coalition.

A member saw the SMC story and commented:

Wratt and Renwick are quick to assert that this non-peer-reviewed temp study reinforces their suspicion that UHI is an insignificant factor. They both refer to numerous other authorities. I thought the leading paper supporting this view was Phil Jones’ China study of about 1991, which he has recently admitted to be based on a mistake. Are there any others which debunk UHI?

This raises several interesting elements which I’d like to follow at some time, but it also prompted this succinct analysis from the evergreen Dr Vincent Gray, who responded: Read more… »

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.

Everyone loves well-crafted prose, even when the author of it opposes their point of view. So it is with Matt Ridley, well-known author of The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, in less than a week earning nearly 9000 Google hits on his “Scientific heresy” address to the Royal Society of the Arts in Edinburgh on 31 October, posted at Bishop Hill. Even alarmist Gareth Renowden appreciates Ridley’s wordcraft before scorning his so-called climate science.

Ridley’s given us an admirable piece of work on several levels. His writing is a pleasure to read, he gives good information and clearly sets out his thinking on a tour of the weaknesses in the current alarmist view of the global climate. In doing so he warms the cockles of sceptical hearts everywhere while enraging the alarmists with his “well-known sceptic tropes”. That’s the view according to Renowden. Poor things; claiming emptiness for Ridley’s contentions is a flaccid stand-in for a cogent rebuttal.

Ridley concludes that science “needs heretics” and one can appreciate the radical point that even heretics should be heard. But he leaves unstated his crucial implication that evidence elevates the climate “heretic” above all the cereologists, astrologers and eugenicists in history, while true heretics need no evidence.

Here’s his address, copied from Bishop Hill with appreciation and thanks. I also repost the document Mr Montford prepared, with its helpful diagrams (pdf, 1865KB).

Matt Ridley

Scientific heresy

by Matt Ridley

It is a great honour to be asked to deliver the Angus Millar lecture.

I have no idea whether Angus Millar ever saw himself as a heretic, but I have a soft spot for heresy. One of my ancestral relations, Nicholas Ridley* the Oxford martyr, was burned at the stake for heresy.

My topic today is scientific heresy. When are scientific heretics right and when are they mad? How do you tell the difference between science and pseudoscience?

Let us run through some issues, starting with the easy ones.

Astronomy is a science; astrology is a pseudoscience.

Evolution is science; creationism is pseudoscience.

Molecular biology is science; homeopathy is pseudoscience.

Vaccination is science; the MMR scare is pseudoscience.

Oxygen is science; phlogiston was pseudoscience.

Chemistry is science; alchemy was pseudoscience.

Are you with me so far? 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… »

Yes, yes, but it’s easy. More severe taxes will make people seriously cut their energy use, we could even move them down here to Antarctica. It’ll soon be warm enough. That will keep the Earth safe and protect it from changing. That’s all we want.

Many people trust the IPCC, that it tells governments around the world the truth about global warming. But their trust is being seriously challenged by accumulating lines of evidence that this is not a good characterisation of the IPCC’s process.

The IPCC is coming under ferocious attack by climate sceptics using documentary evidence of astonishing, widespread disregard of fidelity. Read more… »

Carbon Tax – still a Foolish Thing

To the Editor
Climate Conversation

14th October 2011

Even if 74 prominent people in Parliament say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

Viv Forbes

Global warming reason

“We’re not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business.”

UK Chancellor George Osborne finally displays some common sense in his address to the Tory conference, putting the cat among the Lib Dem pigeons as they squawk over the looming “slow-down” or “turn-around” in Britain’s over-ambitious emissions reduction programme.

Some seem truly to believe that huge new emissions-related expenses will improve industry, boost the economy, produce another golden age and evoke adulation from the populace. It must be really hard for them to keep finding new ways to state such an obvious fallacy.

I earnestly hope that this message, which applies as sensibly to New Zealand as to any country, is absorbed by all those agitating to reduce our industrial emissions, including the climate committee of our Royal Society, some senior climate scientists in public service, Nick Smith, John Key (who probably knows it already but avoids stating it in public), the Green Party, NZ Herald senior journalists, Greenpeace and Jim Salinger.

People at Hot Topic will, I trust, note this unexpected assertion from “the greenest-ever government in the UK” — although nobody could expect them yet to understand or absorb it.

Evidence that observed or predicted levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide will cause sufficiently strong widespread acidification to harm shellfish is difficult to obtain.

The School of Chemical Sciences at the University of Auckland hosted a lecture by Assoc-Prof. Mary A. Sewell, of the School of Biological Sciences, on “Ocean Acidification: Integrating chemistry and marine biology and what it means for you.“
 
Our friend Roger Dewhurst, engineering geologist and founding member of the NZ Climate Science Coalition, went along and paid close attention. Then he sent Mary Sewell the following entertaining and informative letter, which he kindly shares with us to provoke conversation.

Past is key to future; CO2 ruined nothing before; there’s no evidence of ruin to come; alarming climate predictions are inconsistent and unconvincing.

Roger Dewhurst writes:

Thanks for an interesting seminar.

Demonstrating that the appendages of a larval echinoderm tend to be stunted when the little beastie is grown in soda water is one thing. To extrapolate that to an absence of oysters, mussels and scallops on the dinner table next year is, in my view, stretching things a little too far. I was reminded of Al Gore’s polar bear on an iceberg!

When I was at Victoria University in the 1960s science was divorced from politics, and zoology, botany and geology were separate subjects. Now zoology and botany are lumped together as biology, and geology has been lumped in with geography as earth science and includes — would you believe it — a strand called ‘feminist geography’. I suppose that feminist mathematics is next in the pipeline. Sic transit gloria ["thus fades the glory of the world" – RT].

I suspect, on the basis of opinions from two universities, that no science student will get a decent degree now without paying obeisance to anthropogenic global warming and its apostles, ‘Piltdown’ Mann and his gang who, I presume, you know as ‘The Team’. This is not science as I know it but the ‘science’ of Lysenko. Read more… »

Well, now we have a peer-reviewed scientific paper that says you can.

It’s hard to know what to say about Tom Wigley’s new paper on the climatic repercussions of replacing coal with natural gas: he says gas and coal are both good, and they’re both bad, but the truly remarkable thing is that, where for years the greens have been telling us to hate coal and everyone who uses it, now it’s hard to choose between coal and gas.

It doesn’t matter whether you believe mankind is warming the planet dangerously or not, Wigley tells us that it makes hardly any difference to the warming whether you use gas or coal. So why switch to gas? There’s no advantage in it. 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 moment of the sudden earthquake where none had been known before. Click for larger version.

From the Christchurch Press today comes alarming news:

Rising sea levels are a greater threat to Christchurch’s seaside suburbs than previously realised, a climate scientist is warning.

Speaking at Canterbury University this afternoon, Jim Salinger said latest estimates could have major implications for Christchurch’s earthquake rebuild.

Christchurch City Council should be working to a one-metre estimate for sea level rise, he said.

“It’s the opportunity for Christchurch in its rebuild, it should be looking at at least a metre. Some local bodies in Australia are using one metre.”

Salinger plucks the same alarmist harp strings he’s been picking for decades. He specifies one metre: does he include those places which are 500mm higher after the earthquake? They should get a discount.

But the Coalition chairman Barry Brill decisively puts this loose cannon of a climate scientist down, demanding evidence: Read more… »

The nuclear-powered USS Skate at an ice-free North Pole in 1959. (Click to go to the Real Science list of newspaper articles.)

Australis posted this link to Steven Goddard’s Real Science list of newspaper articles for us here in comments. I highly recommend it.

Whenever anyone – anyone at all – becomes anxious over apparently excessive melting of Arctic sea ice, this long list of previous such meltings will demonstrate that Nature can cope with it and bounce back from it.

Whenever anyone tries to alarm others with the modern, allegedly excessive, melting of Arctic sea ice, this long list of historical events will stop them in their tracks and prevent alarm.

It’s what we might call proof that modern sea ice melting is not unprecedented, despite the efforts made by the likes of Greenpeace to make us believe that it is.

Speaking of Greenpeace

For example, in August 2009, Greenpeace were caught in a lie. Read more… »

The Associated Press chills our blood again with a story on record Arctic sea ice melting.

Arctic sea ice melted this summer to the second lowest level since record-keeping began more than 50 years ago, scientists reported Thursday, mostly blaming global warming.

“This is not a random event,” said oceanographer James Overland of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “It’s a long-term change in Arctic climate.”

Only in 2007 was there less summer sea ice, which has been dramatically declining since scientists began using satellites to monitor melt in 1979.

So, unless I’m mistaken, in each of the last four years there has been more ice than there was in 2007. That sounds like a recovery — it’s certainly not getting worse. Read more… »

 

NIWA has an interesting web site which they change frequently. One must visit often to keep up with the changes, because NIWA never sends one a memo.

There’s a section under Climate called “NZ temperature record” where you can see the latest version of the seven-station temperature series.

I think the judge supervising our application for judicial review would be keen to know that what NIWA solemnly pledged to the Court was not the “official or formal New Zealand temperature record” is in fact named on its web site in effectively that very manner.

For taking the words “NZ temperature record” in their most natural meanings, without strain, one understands that NIWA is presenting to the public the very thing it promised the judge it does not have. Read more… »

Few people admire farming as we once did when we understood where this country’s wealth was created. On the contrary, farming has come under sustained attack, and from none more strongly than the National Party, once almost a fellowship of farmers and the industry’s staunchest supporter. Now our formerly admired farmers must tolerate the impending ETS tax on ruminant eructation, which farmers are helpless to reduce, yet for which they are further harassed by the modern epithet of “emitter”. As though those clean, natural gases could pollute the environment that has been creating them in vast quantities for millions of years. The “carbon tax” is a significant imposition, yet it’s hardly remarked upon except by those who strive to get it noticed and repealed — or others, apparently more numerous (certainly more vocal and popular with the media), who would gladly see it increased. The Coalition here rails against the unreasonable burden of an ETS which purports to “fight” in our name against so-called “anthropogenic global warming”. Do we still call it that? I guess this month’s stupid synonym is “climate disruption.” But since climate never goes for long without disruption the term defines tautology — how completely brainless to then declare it a crime and seek a culprit. (This press release first published on Scoop).

Press Release: New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

Friday, 16 September 2011, 5:08 pm

NZ farming remains at threat from ETS

“New Zealanders know that their prosperity relies heavily on the farm sector” says the Hon Barry Brill, chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, “and yet the biggest threat to the future of farming is an attack by our own Government. Read more… »

Propaganda works!

“44% think food and drink would be safer if it had no carbon or CO2 in it.”

Let us pause for a moment and recognise the deep ignorance of our beloved brethren and sistren around the world. Please remember all those wonderful people force-fed the illogical propaganda of their green masters and who now believe the following seven impossible things before breakfast.

Of the Australian public, and no doubt our own “public”

• 93% think CO2 constitutes more than 1% of the atmosphere
• 53% believe climate change causes tsunamis
• 47% think CO2 is ‘pollution’
• 44% think food and drink would be safer if it had no carbon or CO2 in it
• 40% believe climate change causes earthquakes
• 37% believe climate change causes volcanic eruptions
• 37% think we should try to reduce carbon in the body

Nothing I might say could make it sound any better. But those people need your help…

Global agreement transcends environment.

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

When the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997, the base year for calculating emissions was back-dated to 1990. They knew then that the ratification process would take many years (it was actually completed in 2005), so why did it hark back to the distant past?

EU

Two big European events occurred in 1991. As a result of the Soviet collapse, heavy industry had closed down in droves throughout the East. And North Sea gas came ashore in the West with a “dash to gas” displacing coal power in the UK, Netherlands, Germany and Denmark.

At the time of the Berlin COP in 1995, EU countries collectively had enough past credits from the 1991-94 period to cover all the obligations they later accepted under the Protocol. It was a no-brainer for them to demand that other developed countries match the EU misfortunes during “the First Commitment Period.” Read more… »

Scientists have long debated the impact on global climate of water evaporated from vegetation. New research from Carnegie’s Global Ecology department concludes that evaporated water helps cool the earth as a whole, not just the local area of evaporation, demonstrating that evaporation of water from trees and lakes could have a cooling effect on the entire atmosphere. These findings, published on 14 September in Environmental Research Letters, have major implications for land-use decision making.

The researchers even thought it was possible that evaporation could have a warming effect on global climate, because water vapour acts as a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

Using a climate model, they found that increased evaporation actually had an overall cooling effect on the global climate. Read more… »

NIWA is creeping closer to court to answer our allegations. It can’t fudge the facts in there.

Where the fudges have judges

UPDATE 1, 16 Sep 9:30 – If anyone harbours lingering doubts that NIWA claim to have used a particular method in calculating the adjustments in their “Review report” published last December, let them check NIWA’s web site, where they say: “The methodology for adjusting for site changes in the NZ temperature record was published in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Climatology in 1993: Rhoades, D.A. and Salinger, M.J., 1993: Adjustment of temperature and rainfall records for site changes. Int. Journal of Climatology 13, 899 – 913.

UPDATE 2, 16 Sep 10:15 – Looking through NIWA’s web site this morning I discovered a seriously fraudulent statement. On the national temperature record review page there’s a section at the bottom that describes (and makes light of) our judicial review application in the High Court and makes this astonishing claim: “The reanalysis and peer review of the seven station series forms part of the judicial review action.” But that’s impossible — NIWA announced the review six months before we filed the papers with the court! Wayne Mapp, the Minister, had already announced NIWA’s review of the 7SS on 18 February 2010, and we didn’t lodge our application with the court until 16 August 2010, so is NIWA claiming to have extra-sensory perception? Is there a serial fraudster running NIWA’s media centre? Why can’t that organisation just tell the truth?

The New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust (NZCSET), on 1 July 2011, filed an amended statement of claim to challenge NIWA’s revised NZ temperature record (the old 7SS, now called the NZT7) published in December, and NIWA failed to file a statement of defence within the time limit. A tentative agreement to meet and narrow the issues was advised to the Court but has not been followed up. NIWA has not responded to correspondence in recent weeks. Read more… »

The way some people talk, you’d think the Arctic was burning.

What a joke, doctor

At the Huffington Post, “field biologist” Dr Reese Halter talks of the “unprecedented warming of our globe” and claims that “missing” Arctic sea ice is a “wake-up call.” He says the news of Arctic sea ice reaching its lowest point since the start of satellite observations in 1972 (actually 1979) is “outright heartbreaking.”

The heartbroken biologist meanders through observations on the climate, economics and some waffling, brainlessly misleading arguments against climatic scepticism. Read more… »

The beautiful Arctic.

Georg Heygster, head of the Physical Analysis of Remote Sensing Images unit at the University of Bremen’s Institute of Environmental Physics, announces a new record Arctic ice minimum today.

Ignoring the fact that they actually report 140,000 square kilometres more ice today than in 2007 (the previous record minimum) because of altered methods, the good Georg raises more questions than he answers. Like any good climate scientist. First (though this could be the AFP reporter):

Arctic ice cover plays a critical role in regulating Earth’s climate by reflecting sunlight and keeping the polar region cool.

QUESTION: At the last minimum, in 2007, how much did global temperature rise due to the reduced ice cover? ANSWER: Global temps did not rise in 2007 — they fell about 0.4°C. Any albedo effect reducing global temperatures is likely to be insignificant. Read more… »

Ban Ki-moon. Nice man, a careful diplomat (flatters New Zealand), but obviously no scientist. Head of the UN, outranks the famous panel on climate change (IPCC) but never consults them. Because he still hasn’t found out that sea levels aren’t threatening the coral islands. He’s even been to Kiribati, but he still didn’t find out.

Hear the lies? Anyone?

We’ve covered the coral-islands-in-great-danger-from-rising-seas theme many times. But something isn’t working — could it be the brains of certain people, like most of our reporters, the head of our nascent world government and the official NZ climate scientists at NIWA, who let everyone tell the most outrageous fibs in public without correcting them?

Coral islands began forming at least 250 million years ago and some of them are a million years old, although many are from 5000 to 10,000 years old. In the 20,000 years since the last Ice Age, sea level has gone up about 130 metres (426 ft).

That’s a long way to fall. Yet, amazingly, coral islands are still on the surface. They kept up with the rising water. Well, some drowned, but not (of course) the ones that are left. Read more… »

A great storm in America.

This is from The Nelson Daily (British Columbia) on 31 Aug 2011. The story tries to induce anxiety about the increased storminess we humans are causing.

The idea is as loony as thinking that sacrificing a virgin to the gods might increase the harvest.

The title is Hurricane Irene and the staggering costs of climate change, and the first thing I notice is that the author, Richard Matthews, has a professional grip on the landscape of global warming and its off-shoots.

Richard Matthews is a consultant, eco-entrepreneur, green investor and author of numerous articles on sustainable positioning, eco-economics and enviro-politics. He is the owner of THE GREEN MARKET, a leading sustainable business blog and one of the Web’s most comprehensive resources on the business of the environment.

He has, in short, very good business reasons to magnify man’s impact on the environment, including our contribution to global warming. Matthews’ opening statement leads the way in brushing aside the need for evidence or logic. Read more… »

Village fires cause global warming, apparently. But the immediate local health risk is more important, so our scientists shouldn’t be so short-sighted. (Sorry about the tongue-twister.) Before anything, we should improve the fireplaces themselves. How hard can it be?

How convenient this is! With all the doubt now falling on the culpability of carbon dioxide (“carbon”) in the crime of global warming, the worried warmists have wheeled in a new culprit accused, already chained and bearing a conspicuously disreputable name — Black Carbon.

Just as CO2 has been wilting under an intensive examination and showing undisputable signs of innocence, how lucky to have soot standing by to shoulder the blame on behalf of we horrid humans. Read more… »

Some fairly ordinary houses in Sighisoara, Romania.

Some people, like NZ Climate Science Coalition energy spokeman Bryan Leyland, have been warning for years that the introduction of trading in invisible, unmeasurable, so-called “carbon credits” (or ‘fume permits’) is an open invitation to fraud.

Since 2002, Carbon Trade Watch has been keeping a close eye on the effectiveness of and criminal activity in carbon trading around the world. They wrote a good summary in April this year of frauds in the European scheme.

Now, we see the involvement of an entire country in “irregularities”, with Romania being completely barred from trading in carbon credits.

The Kyoto Protocol created a Compliance Committee (or Carbon Police), responsible for setting fines or deciding other punitive action when countries fail to meet their obligations under the Protocol.

The Compliance Committee has suspended Romania from participating in the carbon “market” because, they say, there are “irregularities” in Romania’s emissions data. The country was anticipating earning $US2.2 billion towards reducing its national debt from sales of carbon “offsets”.

The temptation to misreport the nation’s emissions and sinks is perhaps too easy, but one wonders what nasty political considerations might lie behind this severe and rapaciously expensive sanction (if the country loses the whole of the potential earnings, the fine is $US2.2 billion for what might have been an administrative lapse). One has strong doubts that the same thing happen to, say, the UK or Germany if they counted the invisible gases improperly.

Notice how emissions of carbon dioxide (with a few even less important gases) are demonised in this report from AFP by referring to the process as “pumping industrial gases.”

The scheme allows around 12,000 companies including huge multinationals to buy and sell rights to pump industrial gases into the atmosphere.

There has been a clever and very successful propaganda campaign to turn us against greenhouse gases.

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… »

What fabulous gobbledygook.

We hear repeatedly about an alleged overwhelming “consensus” of climate scientists who apparently all believe the same thing about the world’s climate. What, precisely, they all believe is not only undefined but also variable, according to whether we’re discussing human emissions of GHG, ocean acidification, the spread of malaria, the “loss” of polar ice caps, altered butterfly populations, extra floods, extra droughts, loss of polar bears, harm to poor people or dangerous sea level rise.

As, for example, in today’s story about NASA noticing a slight fall in sea level over the past year, where the reporter says, all wide-eyed and trusting:

The vast majority of climate scientists agree that the release of greenhouse gases Read more… »

See commentary on WUWT.

Nature has just published Cloud formation may be linked to cosmic rays, which acknowledges results from an experiment at CERN probing a connection between climate change and radiation bombarding the atmosphere.

[In comments, Alan Burke quickly diminishes the significance.]

In the meantime, Nigel Calder posts CERN experiment confirms cosmic ray action, nailing confirmation of such a “connection” to the scientific wall.

You can draw your own conclusions from the revealing graph he gives:

A graph they’d prefer you not to notice. Tucked away near the end of online supplementary material, and omitted from the printed CLOUD paper in Nature, it clearly shows how cosmic rays promote the formation of clusters of molecules (“particles”) that in the real atmosphere can grow and seed clouds. In an early-morning experimental run at CERN, starting at 03.45, ultraviolet light began making sulphuric acid molecules in the chamber, while a strong electric field cleansed the air of ions. It also tended to remove molecular clusters made in the neutral environment (n) but some of these accumulated at a low rate. As soon as the electric field was switched off at 04.33, natural cosmic rays (gcr) raining down through the roof of the experimental hall in Geneva helped to build clusters at a higher rate. How do we know they were contributing? Because when, at 04.58, CLOUD simulated stronger cosmic rays with a beam of charged pion particles (ch) from the accelerator, the rate of cluster production became faster still. The various colours are for clusters of different diameters (in nanometres) as recorded by various instruments. The largest (black) took longer to grow than the smallest (blue). This is Fig. S2c from supplementary online material for J. Kirkby et al., Nature, 476, 429-433, © Nature 2011. See original graphic.

Take your pick between Nature and Calder. Is the link alleged or confirmed? Is there a non-GHG-induced magnification of solar influence on cloud formation, and therefore global lower tropospheric temperature, or not?

This must give Nick Smith cause to review our ETS.

Stand back as the warmists rush the exits.

NIWA shows 168% more warming than Rhoades & Salinger – the method NIWA betrayed. The blue dashed line shows the warming trend when the method is used correctly. The red line reveals NIWA’s outrageous fraud – it’s much stronger warming, but it’s empty of truth.

NIWA didn’t use Rhoades & Salinger. We can prove it. They lied.

NZ Climate Science Coalition statisticians have uncovered evidence of scarcely believable deception from our National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA).

Last December, NIWA released a reconstructed NZ temperature series Report on the Review of NIWA’s Seven Station Temperature Series (“7SS Review”) (pdf, 8.5 MB). It has a fresh new graph (below) that’s all but indistinguishable from the previous graph. But that’s not the point.

The point is the new series is a lie. Read more… »

Andrew Revkin – Dr Who?

Warmist internecine strife has never really appeared on my radar, but now it’s actually spoiling the image. How encouraging it is to my sceptical heart to hear leading warmists brawling in their little playground. They express perfect hatred for each other.

Are they frustrated that their warmist preferences for scientific conclusions and policy recommendations are becoming as last season’s fashions? Does it sting their vanity that they can do nothing to halt the loss of face that now disfigures their darling beliefs in global warming?

Does the sudden, inexorable and widespread use of the terms “scam”, “myths” and “fallacies” associated with “climate change” drive them insane with rage? We can but hope. Read more… »

Al Gore

The Washington Times rips into the famous Al Gore, he of the warmist persuasion, the alarmist disposition and the iconic, truth-bending book and movie An Inconvenient Truth, for ignoring his long-cultivated good manners and giving vent to a stream of public profanity at sceptical scientists.

It’s clear that the practice of quietly stating the truth and asking pertinent questions does start to unpick the foundations of belief. Poor Al.

Here’s how H. Leighton Steward puts it: Read more… »

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… »

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

Graphic kindly provided by International Climate Science Coalition

In the latest Rasmussen national telephone survey of American adults, 69% say it’s likely that some scientists have falsified research data in order to support their own theories and beliefs. Only 6% say it is not at all likely. 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… »

Albert Einstein.

To defeat relativity one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact.

– Albert Einstein.

This statement is not true because Einstein made it — it’s true because it accords with reason. Theory must always bow to observation.

… or just one paper

Unfortunately, in CAGW (catastrophic anthropogenic global warming) we have a theory which is undefined in a peer-reviewed paper, which means it’s almost impossible to refute. This is deliberate. Sceptical questions provoke the inevitable challenge to “produce a better theory” — as though their opponents’ failure to do so proves the half-baked theory correct, which it cannot.

Any evidence contrary to part of the theory is answered by talking about some other part. “Heads we win, tails you lose.”

Any change in the climate, especially any violent weather event which injures us or damages our property, “proves” climate change, which, by a mere trick of linguistic association, “proves” global warming. That, in turn, is our fault. After all, so many people wouldn’t be talking about how to prevent it if it didn’t exist, right?

Well, no, actually. Read more… »

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (July 26, 2011) — Data from NASA’s Terra satellite show that when the climate warms, Earth’s atmosphere is apparently more efficient at releasing energy to space than models used to forecast climate change have been programmed to “believe.”

The result is climate forecasts that are warming substantially faster than the atmosphere, says Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Read more…

from a variety of sources & correspondents

What a month

A visit from the incomparable Monckton was suddenly proposed and he’s already on his way. There’s nothing like hearing your own community mentioned by the famous, so here’s hoping he finds local matters to comment on and to make our leaders respond. People like Key, Smith and the honchos at NIWA have been simply avoiding our sceptical questions, which makes it impossible to hold their feet to the fire.

I wanted to attend both the Northern Club lunch and the debate at AUT but I will only get to the evening debate.

Hessell

The other day an article titled Jim Hessell: Climate change and hot air appeared in the Herald. An odd little rambling article to match its headline. Read more… »

This event is over. It was a great success, with as many turned away as were admitted.

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… »

de Freitas feeds his students sceptic propaganda …

So says the radical Renowden, he of the non-sceptical “believe everything they say” warmist persuasion. But read what he says about Chris de Freitas’ crimes and you’ll realise he says nothing, because no crimes exist.

Gareth Renowden is himself guilty of attempting to abridge the academic freedom to study and teach inconvenient facts.

It’s all arm-waving, and Renowden cites nothing in the Geography 101 course that’s untrue. He says many unkind things about the graphs and their provenance, but he never says they’re wrong, and that’s a strange thing to forget, which means he didn’t forget it — he omitted it, because they’re not wrong. Read more… »

What is weather?

(h/t Bob D for most of the references)

Journalist Chris Barton has a story in yesterday’s Herald titled The climate dissenter holds his ground. After looking at Barton’s alarmist arguments I’ll stand with Chris de Freitas on the solid ground.

The story begins with the implication (not that the journalist says it this plainly) that, even with the planet battling weather extremes, that is not enough to convince an Auckland climate scientist (Associate Professor Chris de Freitas, at the University of Auckland) of the truth of human-induced global warming. We’re supposed to feel exasperation: “What will it take to get that man to see sense?”

But Barton is dead wrong. For why should “extreme” weather be an indication of man-made global warming? How could we get more extreme weather out of global warming? Read more… »

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

“Biofuels” are combustible liquids made from plants. They can replace petrol and diesel in our engines and are extracted from many different types of plants.

These biologically-based fuels have long been supported by green activists because when you burn them they only emit as much CO2 as the plants absorbed while growing. Their CO2 is taken out of the atmosphere and then returned, while fossil fuels add new CO2, removing nothing. Using biofuels adds no new CO2.

But it was difficult to ignore the fact that world food prices soared in 2008 as a result of US legislation requiring the conversion of US corn into fuel for motor vehicles. That price explosion led to farmers everywhere seeking to expand their cropping areas, often chopping down forests in the process. Here was another of the unforeseen consequences which seem endemic in climate policies.

This led to the new concept known as indirect land-use change (ILUC) being brought into the calculations. If you take a field of grain and sell the crop for biofuel, then somebody, somewhere, will go hungry unless those missing tonnes of grain are grown elsewhere. If the shortfall is grown on farmland created by cutting down forests or draining peat land, it can create enough new climate-warming emissions to cancel out any benefits from using the biofuels in the first place.

That’s an indirect land use change (ILUC). Read more… »

[UPDATE Sun 17 July 2011 16:05 NZT] An announcement is expected soon from the organisers and I’ve been given no reason for pessimism. Let’s hope this is the news we’ve been waiting for.

[UPDATE Sat 16 July 2011 21:05 NZT] There has been good progress and everyone’s optimistic that we will see Lord M in the country. However, it’s not quite a done deal yet, so keep your fingers crossed.

[UPDATE Sat 16 July 2011 12:40 NZT] This post was removed for a while at the request of the organisers while they confirmed funding. It’s still unclear to me whether funding is secure, although the probability seems high that it is. The Dominion Post has published a piece on it and got feedback from James Renwick, who was at first keen on a debate. There’s a lot of interest in getting Monckton over here.

Viscount Monckton, perhaps to visit New Zealand for the first time.

Plans are afoot to bring Christopher Monckton to New Zealand on 4th–7th August, though details are sketchy and sponsors unconfirmed.

Groups known to support his visit include the Climate Realists Network, Investigate Magazine, the NZ Climate Science Coalition and of course us here at the Climate Conversation. 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… »

Global Warming Hysteria: Gore’s Profound Failure of Leadership

First published in www.firstthings.com
Sunday, June 26, 2011
by Wesley J. Smith

Ouch. A notable political scientist (and believer in global warming, at least in the general sense) has mounted a powerful critique of the disastrous political leadership on the issue by Al Gore. From “The Failure of Gore, Part 1″ by Walter Russell Mead in his blog at The American Interest:

Gore has the Midas touch in reverse; objects of great value (Nobel prizes, Oscars) turn dull and leaden at his touch. Few celebrity cause leaders have had more or better publicity than Gore has had for his climate advocacy. Hailed by the world press, lionized by the entertainment community and the Global Assemblage of the Great and the Good as incarnated in the Nobel Peace Prize committee, he has nevertheless seen the movement he led flounder from one inglorious defeat to the next. The most recent, failed global climate meeting passed almost unnoticed last week in Bonn; the world has turned its eyes away from the expiring anguish of the Copenhagen agenda.

This is an adopted article.

The state of the global green movement is shambolic. Read more… »