Climate Conversation Group

A group of unknown people protested our case this morning at the High Court. Although they handed out copies of this amusing letter they remain unidentified. I wonder who they are?

They single out two leading members of the NZ Climate Science Coalition: Honorary Secretary Terry Dunleavy and Energy Spokesman Bryan Leyland.

The thoughtful and amusing letter from the Flat Earth Society. Click for page one.

An Open Letter and Appeal to Lords Terence Dunleavy and Bryan Leyland of the Climate Science Education Trust

On this day 16 July in the year 2012 in the Northern Township of Auckland, Middle Earth

On the Occasion of the Lords’ Good Endeavours to Strike Down the temperature muddlings of the Dark Lords of the National Institution of Water and Atmosphere in the High Court of our Land

Hear Ye Honourable and Esteemed Lords of Middle Earth

We of the Flat Earth Society would like to extend to you a hand of friendship and solidarity… etc., etc.

Click for page two

It’s an attractive, fairly consistent piece of wordsmithing, almost worthy of former ages that valued speech for its beauty before its utility. In a sensible society, entirely the right way around. Read more… »

Close your eyes. Think of glaciers. Now, exguesstrapolate.

This comment from Historical Imagery of Greenland Glaciers Lessens Sea Level Rise Alarm at WUWT is too good to be allowed to languish in the comments section:

*****
Severian says:
June 4, 2012 at 10:00 pm

As for extrapolations and such, remember what Mark Twain said:

“In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Read more… »

Tui billboard image removed by request of DB Breweries’ legal representatives – yeah, that’s right! The day the laughter died: 1100 hrs Thursday 10 May 2012.
OUR SPOOF BILLBOARD READ: I still believe in global warming. Yeah right.

Read about the Heartland Institute’s brief experiment with provocative marketing.

UPDATE Thursday 10 May

At five to nine this morning I received an email from Nick Downes, who works for Federation Media (“We specialise in doing the web right”) whose web site displays some spectacular work for some spectacular clients.

After taking some advice, I removed the Tui billboard facsimile above. Read more… »

Pink lamingtons

From today’s Herald:

Auckland Mayor Len Brown was the target of a lamington attack at Auckland University yesterday by an angry supporter of wharf workers.

Mr Brown was coming to the end of one of his regular Mayor in the Chair public sessions in the university quadrant when a young man with dreadlocks approached him with a pink lamington, smearing pieces of the sponge cake on the mayor’s face and shirt. The man then ran off.

He was part of a group of 10 to 15 Socialist Aotearoa members protesting against Mr Brown’s lack of support for workers in the bitter Ports of Auckland dispute where 300 striking union workers were fired by management on Wednesday.

Is this a sinister new tactic by our city’s youngest socialists, or is it simply a waste of a good lamington? Only time will tell.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Government certified and licensed by the IPCC under the Tropical Grasslands Protocol, successor to the short-lived Antarctic Protocol, after it refused to melt.

Steve Williams said “it was my aim to shove it up that black arsehole.”

People are upsetting themselves. This was tremendously rude, but they say it was outrageously racist. In my lexicon the rude part of it was “arsehole” (a word I never use), which is not being mentioned.

There were two parts to the comment and one was false. Tiger has an arsehole, so Williams was incorrect to say he is an arsehole, because if you are one you cannot have one.

Of course, our favourite system of criticising people is to name them with a part of our anatomy, from the nether regions. Only a few parts are suitable. It doesn’t work to call someone a chin or an elbow. Although it can enhance the epithet to add their skin colour, which is always suitable for criticism.

Woods is undeniably black. In every photograph of him that I’ve seen, he does not have white skin, he has black skin. But people are objecting to calling him black.

Which means that Williams is being excoriated for telling the truth. Why?

Because we demand truth to be varnished, to have some gloss and to sound softer to sensitive souls.

But if the skin is black, it’s black, and why can’t you say so?

Climate changes and we didn’t see it coming.

French soccer team 1959

French football team 1959.

French soccer team 2008

French football team 2008.

The effects of climate change can no longer be ignored

h/t Keith Hancox.

Hone Harawira. Doesn’t believe in global warming, apparently. yee ha

Well, I’m gobsmacked!

I’ve received a report that Hone Harawira has a redeeming feature.

It would seem that, among his many sins, he doesn’t believe in Global Warming, according to TV3 News this evening.

Well done, him; seems he’s not such a bad egg after all!

A window in the fluffy snow.

Thanks, Ross!

I just got off the phone with a friend in Minnesota.

He said that since early this morning the snow has been nearly waist high and is still falling. The temperature is dropping below zero and the north wind is increasing. His wife has done nothing but look through the kitchen window all day. He says that if it gets much worse, he may have to let her in.

Ross Muir

The letter below surfaced in an email group today (on the right is its earliest incarnation). It’s creative writing and, if you’re in a good mood when you read it, finely stimulating, even hilarious.

But I was moved to investigate. Google gave several recent references, the earliest was May 7, 2006. I kept looking; there are a score of references dated December 2009.

Then, on a blog from Quite Interesting Ltd (www.qi.com), came word it was from 1982. The writer traces it back from 2006 to an entry in Hansard in October 1994. I urge you to take a look; the story is interesting enough, to be sure.

The matter has by now quite fastened on our writer’s imagination and he presses his investigation on and on, discovering it on both sides of the Atlantic and in ever earlier decades. Eventually he turns it up, almost fully formed, in 1935, with beginnings in Hansard, no less, in a shipping context, in 1934!

Old or new, early or late, it contains elementary economics lessons for ever. Not to mention some of the driest British (or American) humour you’ll find anywhere.

Our laughter can wound or caress. It’s hard to laugh with real amusement at our enemy because it feels like embracing them. We don’t want to approve.

I invite you to do so now. Of course, this cartoon isn’t a bit funny. Is it?