People talkin’ #11

The nets are on the vineyard, the peaches are picked and the pool is warm, friends are scheduled, and Hot Topic will be briefly unattended while the boss takes a short break from the world of climate in order to bask in what he hopes will be a benign one. Please talk amongst yourselves. I will check in from time to time, but not frequently. The world is your lobster…

122 thoughts on “People talkin’ #11”

  1. This morning’s ChCh Press has 3 pertinent headlines: “No Valentine love found at petrol pump” bemoaning another rise in fuel prices, “Electric cars wait for battery technology” relating to just that and “Vehicle choice incentives needed” as David Moore, the motoring editor suggests government support of one kind or another to encourage EVs.

    The first headline is inevitable, if we are fracking for fossil fuel, we are by definition scraping the bottom of the barrel. The question rises, what is the price going to do in the future? Rise steadily, rise sharply or bounce about all over the place but still rise?

    The 2nd is worth noting. New technologies for better batteries (and better solar PVs) are tumbling off the drawing boards and we just have to wait impatiently through the decade between idea and stock item.

    I must confess to surprise at Moore’s apparently new-found enlightenment. I have regularly despaired at his Press columns reviewing ever-growing behemoths bereft of the slightest inkling that probably within the expected lifetimes of these SUVs they’ll be forced off the roads by rising fuel costs.

    If our Glorious Leaders up at Fort Fumble seriously wanted to reduce NZ’s fossil carbon footprint rather than just pay paper-thin lip service to the idea, they would revise the tax structure on small efficient cars and start talking about rethinking the way our cities work (or more exactly, don’t work). They will have to eventually, why not start now before we wreck the planet?

  6. Stan explained that in the Q&A.
    We both talked at the same small workshop and we both put up graphs and compared notes. I’ve been looking forward to their paper since June, especially after spending a few hours with Amanda and Rachel, who spent as much time lolling at Form 90s as I have, and even more digging through the LTDL.

  8. I now live on State Highway One between Auckland city and Northland. On a holiday Monday recently I counted 111 vehicles travelling south, in 5 minutes. Most of them only had one occupant. That rate of traffic-flow went on until about 8pm. There has to be a better way!
    On the positive side, a new library is being built in our town with solar panels on the roof to power the lighting system.

  13. One for AndyS:
    Wind energy is now significantly cheaper than coal or gas in Australia.
    This was confirmed by a Bloomberg news report.

    Electricity can be supplied from a new wind farm in Australia at a cost of A$80 ($84) per megawatt hour, compared with A$143 a megawatt hour from a new coal-fired power plant or A$116 from a new station powered by natural gas when the cost of carbon emissions is included, according to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report.

    Of cause Andy will scoff at this as the calculation includes the cost of carbon emissions on the side of the fossil fuel burning stations. Andy will likely cry foul over that and would much rather see the plight of future generations subsidize today’s fossil fuel industry by allowing them use the atmosphere and the oceans as a free dumping ground for their detritus…

    1. These “studies” that show that wind is cheaper then coal are based on lots of flawed analysis.

      This recent article
      by Bjorn Lomborg tells us the complete opposite of your “Bloomberg” article

      Meanwhile, in Scotland and Wales, thousands of hectares of forest are being clear felled to make way for turbines. A village in Ayrshire is being completely surrounded by hundreds of turbines

      This “strange fascination” of mine I keep track of here:
      http://windmad.tumblr.com

      1. Hey Andy, you know Australia is not in the UK or Europe right? I’m pretty sure most Aussie’s couldn’t care less if the outback was filled with wind turbines.

        1. I am aware that Australia is not in Europe. I guess most people in Aussie couldn’t care less, but those unfortunate to live next to industrial turbines such as at Waterloo and MacArthur are having a very hard time as you can see from my link

            1. I know Bill, it is a good giggle isn’t it. I put a short video up on my tumblr site about the problems the locals are having in Waterloo, causing many to abandon their homes.

              Presumably they are just all making it up, like the others all around the world who are also making up stories about infrasound and lack of sleep.

              It’s probably a bit like all those people in Christchurch making up stories about earthquakes.

              And why I am on my short quote of comments, I didn’t hear back from Taylor about my question on time series. He seems to think that Keenan is wrong. He published this article in the WSJ. I guess they are also wrong.

              In fact everyone is wrong, except you.

            5. Worked it out (I think). I had WordPress set to limit nested/threaded comments to 6 levels, but replied to Andy’s comment (already at maximum nesting) from the admin page. This seems to have thrown a spanner in the works. Fixed it by setting nesting to 8 levels. Will report to WordPress…

            7. Hey, andy, here’s another of those crazy-making South Australian wind-farms!

              Frankly, while I don’t doubt that there are some who are genuinely upset, I think that most of what’s going on in Waterloo and nearby is a collective-hysteria induced by an understandable but entirely mis-directed fear of the future, all fanned by fanatics – like you!

              I mean, seriously, look at he maps at the upper right-hand of the flickr photo pages! They’ve even got scale bars on them! I live miles frickin’ closer to Adelaide Brighton Cement’s constant conveyers and high-temperature incinerator, and a freight line that services SA’s major port – and plenty live closer still – and yet these full-on industrial facilities have never developed a quasi-mystical capacity to harm via vibrations transmitted through the ether!

              The anti-windfarm hysteria is ridiculous, completely disproportionate, and an example of the kind of narcissistic churlishness that is not going to see us well over the next century of dramatic change and real challenges, as many allow their fears and their desire to scapegoat those providing the only workable solutions to problems they simply wish to deny outright to transform them into narcissistic, cynical, reactionary curmudgeons –

              Like you!

            8. Also, andy perhaps you’d like to tell us from which direction the prevailing winds come at the hamlet of Waterloo, and whether any sound from the turbines on a high ridge to the east is thereby routinely being blown towards it or away from it?

              You see, contrary to your ill-informed ex nihilo Moncktonesque accusations of malfeasance, all this gets taken pretty damn seriously indeed when these sites are getting assessed.

            9. Also, since we’re on a roll, exactly whose hymnsheet are you singing from, andy?

              AARON MATÉ: Now, Suzanne, we’ve talked already about the actions of Donors Trust on the state level, and you’ve written about their funding of groups trying to fight wind farming in several states. We have 30 seconds.

              SUZANNE GOLDENBERG: Yeah, I think that’s their new focus, is not to look at trying to oppose action in Washington on climate change, because it’s not happening, but they’re going to go out into the states and oppose efforts to increase the amount of renewable energy, like wind farms and solar farms. I would also look at them to oppose action for—by city councils in coastal communities to protect themselves from climate change in future development planning.

              Yep, you and Marc Morano have a lot in common. That’s actually one of the most repugnant things I can imagine saying about anybody!

            10. Truly laughable Andy. I challenge anybody to go to Google Earth and see the Waterloo site. See if you can find the houses!

              Andy: There will always be people that are in one way or another affected by the noise our civilization makes. The noise of Windfarms is absolutely miniscule in comparison to the cacophony of a metropolis, the constant roar around our major highways or the frequent rumble along our rail lines, the large areas of severe noise impact around the departure and approach paths of airports or the antics of boy racers shredding tires in the early hours of the day…
              Get over it Andy!

            11. Thomas, I am glad that you find the infrasound issues around windfarms “laughable”.

              Did you watch the Youtube clip on my blog? There are serious medical issues associated with windfarms. People are abandoning their houses (without compensation) because they find it unbearable to be there

              [Snipped: GR]

            12. From the South Australian study that actually measured infrasound at Waterloo (quoted here:

              …the contribution of wind turbines to the measured infrasound levels is insignificant in comparison with the background level of infrasound in the environment

            13. Thanks Gareth, another report commissioned by a self-interested lobby group

              The stench of corruption in the wind industry is getting so overwhelming that eventually people here might smell it. At some point, you might actually have to acknowledge that there is a problem

            14. ‘Self-interested lobby group’?! The EPA? Priceless!

              I’ll certainly pass that on to some mates of mine who work there. Here were they thinking they were dull, if worthy, highly-constrained bureaucrats…

            15. That would be the Environment Protection Agency of the State of South Australia, dismissed by a sad zealot as a “lobby group”.

      2. Windmad? Strange about face from you andyS, you got so riled by any use of NIMBY but now you reclaim the negative vernacular.
        What is not surprising is that you chose to label yourself mad rather than the more ‘politically correct’ “Wind Learning Difficulties”
        Wind Twit suits you andyS, and I think would be a good name for your parade of dodgy photo-montage, telephoto images with dramatic foreshortening and posters declaring wind is a ‘Total Fraud’, no partial fraud a total one. Wind Twit is yours andyS if you want it, after all, you have earned it.

      1. Yep. And one could counter with the fact that entire species of birds (Penguins as an iconic example) will be threatened with extinction as we warm the planet over 3, 4 perhaps 5 or 6 degrees over the course of a century or so…. which would make the bird windmill chop tally obviously look completely insignificant in comparison. But then a dead bird under a windmill is something Andy and his mates can photograph, while species going extinct requires a tad of imagination, extrapolation and abstraction…. not everybody’s forte! 😉

      2. Much of the bad press re birds and wind turbines started from one early site (Altamont Pass) where poorly sited small turbines endangered the local golden eagle population. The industry discovered that merely replacing small turbines with big ones significantly reduced bird strike but since then other measures have included siting to free up bird coridors, slowing blades during bird migrations and even stopping them in some cases, radar assisted, to allow raptors an migrating flocks through safely.

        Then there is the matter of context and proportion. Bird deaths due to human activity reduces current wind turbine birdstrike to very small proportions indeed compared to death by blunt force trauma brought about by hard polarised surfaces, reflective glass surfaces of large buildings, and by fireworks disturbing roosts of diurnal birds. Then there is light trapping of migratory birds flying by night, particularly by tall lighted buildings but also by illuminated follies, communication towers, trees, pools, commercial centres, industrial sites. Star navigation is screwed. Most bats are seriously affected by light barriers, roads for instance. Add to all that habitat loss, cars cats and climate change, the last probably becoming the biggest killer of all.

        On reflectve glass surfaces see this Canadian court verdict just made.

        On blunt force trauma,also fireworks.

        A comprehensive commentary from Nature magazine

  14. Up here in the Bay of Islands we must be the only place in the World where we take children to school in Nissan Patrols. When I was in the UK last year I only saw one Land Cruiser in six weeks and that was driven by a Brit.
    Most people have small economical cars and even a BMW will do 67 MPG and go like sh.t off a shovel.
    We need to to get real about the cost of fuel and realize that cheap oil is not going to last much longer and then we are going to need transport that we can afford. I keep banging on about switching our transport to electric as a good investment in the future. Its no good waiting until ew have an oil crises because then we are in an economic crises and its a struggle to fix any thing.

    1. When I was teaching I frequently had to pass through or near Remuera where every mother drives children to or from school in an SUV, otherwise known as a Remuera tractor. Actually this is widespread in Auckland. They feel safer high up in a big vehicle.

  15. With respect to electric vehicles I wonder if any kind of standard driving test for representing range is operable in NZ. I am concerned to discover the real range of the e-cars displayed on this site. The figures; 160-180km are given but the manufacturers specs say this is at an average speed of 90km/hr. I would be delighted if that included all the changes in velocity that go with hills, corners and starting from traffic lights etc. that one may find over much of NZ.

    1. The e-cars referred to above were meant to be launched in NZ during March but his is now deferred to July. The holdups are due to the homolagation certification process now expected to be complete by May after which 3 weeks of road testing in China is to be carried out. My many questions have to wait till then.

  16. AndyS appears to have temporarily withdrawn from Hot Topic to lick his wounds, but he can still be found over at the Climate Conversation Support Group for the Terminally Bewildered, dispensing such words of comfort as:

    If you follow Doug Keenan’s line of reasoning on time series then there has been no statistically significant warming, at all, since records began

    .

    1. Rob Taylor, I have not withdrawn, my comments are under moderation. I am certainly not licking any wounds.

      Presumably you have a better understanding of time series analysis than either Doug Keenan or myself and will be able to explain to the assembled why we are both wrong

      2. “Presumably you have a better understanding of time series analysis than either Doug Keenan or myself”

        Well that is highly likely.

        andy – here is how a real mathematician approaches the ignorant claims of a failed banker.

        http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/10/23/fake-skeptic-criticism-of-decadal-variations-in-the-global-atmospheric-land-temperatures/

        When Keenan publishes his – I hate to call it – “analysis” in a proper peer reviewed journal – if it ever managed to pass peer review – then maybe it has something to say.

        1. Tamino writes

          He first states that “most research on global warming relies on a statistical model that should not be used.” He’s referring to the AR(1) (1st-order autoregressive) model. I myself have emphasized the inadequacy of the AR(1) model for temperature time series, and Keenan even supports his assertion by referencing one of my papers

          So they agree, on this point at least. So I was being asked by commenter “Simon” at CCG to use an AR(1) model, that both Keenan and Tamino believe are inadequate. I pointed this out to Simon, who has not responded.

          But then he also claims that the 16 years of “no warming’ is a result of cherry picking, despite being acknowledged as fact by Rajendra Pauchauri

          So my point still stands

            1. Well, this what was reported in The Australian

              by: Graham Lloyd
              From: The Australian
              February 22, 2013 12:00AM

              THE UN’s climate change chief, Rajendra Pachauri, has acknowledged a 17-year pause in global temperature rises, confirmed recently by Britain’s Met Office, but said it would need to last “30 to 40 years at least” to break the long-term global warming trend.

              Dr Pachauri, the chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said that open discussion about controversial science and politically incorrect views was an essential part of tackling climate change.

              The original article is behind a paywall, though

          2. What was that degree in again andy? Selective Cherry Picking from Articles I do not understand? I trust you were able to read beyond the paragraph you quoted, because the SUBSTANCE was not that which you imply – but you knew that didn’t you.

  18. Delighted to explain, Andy: you and Keenan are both wrong because you deny physical reality due to your psychological and ideological rigidity and predjudice.

    Your minds are closed to fact, science, and observation, which is why you cling desperately to carefully-cultivated ignorance, deliberate misunderstanding and half-truths promulgated by whiners funded by fossil fuel pollutocrats and right-wing billionaires.

    You are yesterday’s men, forever stuck in the 19th century, but, if you really want to open what passes for your mind, you could start here, with the American Institute of Physics:

    http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm

    1. I’m sorry, not sure which part of my comment is “fatuous nonsense”. Clearly we have had something like 0.8 degrees of warming since pre-industrial times, and no warming for 17 years (both acknowledged by Pauchauri in today’s Australian)

      The issue raised by Keenan is one of statistical significance based on the AR(1) assumption in times series analysis. It has nothing to do with radiative physics or melting icecaps etc

      I thought Keenan’s article was quite well explained.

      I am responding to Rob Taylor here because he brought up the topic, not me. I responded to another commenter (Simon) on CCG who suggested that we use an AR(1) time series analysis and I showed him Keenan’s work that was critical of this.

      1. Out of context Andy. I was suggesting that treating climate data as a time series was vastly more preferable than fitting polynomial trend lines in Excel as a certain naive contributor is wont to do. AR(1) was merely a suggestion. Thanks for the link to Tamino’s analysis, he makes statistics understandable. So much so that I bought his book. In the intro he makes the excellent point that if you don’t understand statistics you will quickly forget it; so learn the theory.

        1. Ok, fair call. I agree about stats which is why I am reading on the topic too.

          Nevertheless, this discussion came about as a complete misunderstanding of what I said elsewhere.

  19. Andy S asks, plaintively: I’m sorry, not sure which part of my comment is “fatuous nonsense”

    1. Harping on about unphysical mathturbation
    2. More ignorant anti-wind zealotry
    3. Snark about ChCh earthquakes
    4. Rudeness.

    In other words, all of it.

  21. I would never take an article on climate change written by a journalist working for the Australian paper as a reliable source of anything on the subject. Thus I checked out this statement by andyS: “and no warming for 17 years (both acknowledged by Pauchauri in today’s Australian).” First to check that andyS had it right. The Australian led off with:

    “THE UN’s climate change chief, Rajendra Pachauri, has acknowledged a 17-year pause in global temperature rises, confirmed recently by Britain’s Met Office, but said it would need to last “30 to 40 years at least” to break the long-term global warming trend.”

    The Australian did not quote Pauchauri so we do not know what he actuali said. Note also that the so called pause only applies to a cherry picked interval begun with the strongest recorded el niño followed by a succession of cooling la niña cycles and a moderate el niño (2010). I also note that this so called “pause” only applies to global surface temperature, not to global warming overall so there is a lot of misrepresentation in the choice of terminology. I suspect news journalists are merely quoting each other and not going back to source.

    So what’s this about “confirmed recently by Britain’s Met Office”? I see several newspapers claiming this but the UK Met Office says not.

    The linear trend from August 1997 (in the middle of an exceptionally strong El Nino) to August 2012 (coming at the tail end of a double-dip La Nina) is about 0.03°C/decade, amounting to a temperature increase of 0.05°C over that period, but equally we could calculate the linear trend from 1999, during the subsequent La Nina, and show a more substantial warming.

    As we’ve stressed before, choosing a starting or end point on short-term scales can be very misleading. Climate change can only be detected from multi-decadal timescales due to the inherent variability in the climate system. If you use a longer period from HadCRUT4 the trend looks very different. For example, 1979 to 2011 shows 0.16°C/decade (or 0.15°C/decade in the NCDC dataset, 0.16°C/decade in GISS). Looking at successive decades over this period, each decade was warmer than the previous – so the 1990s were warmer than the 1980s, and the 2000s were warmer than both. Eight of the top ten warmest years have occurred in the last decade.

    Of course we all know, or should know, that once we subtract the effects of ocean currents and volcanoes from the long term trend we can clearly see that global warming as a whole has not slowed down at all. That is what we would expect from the large and growing addition of GHGs to the atmosphere and the induced energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere.

        2. Here is Roger Jones saying all that needs to be said about that article, and much that’s interesting besides.

          And let’s not forget that The Australian did a rather remarkable walk back from its original piece:

          Professor Hamilton said: “Of course everyone has the right to question the science of climate change, in the same way that everyone has the right to deny that smoking causes lung cancer.

          “And in the same way that The Australian has the right to its continuing campaign to discredit climate science. But that does not make distortion of the facts any less irresponsible.

          1. Can we clarify things?

            Did the Australian misquote Pauchauri?
            If not, then is quoting the head of the IPCC “discrediting science”?

            I’m confused. I have tried to use “approved sources” when addressing The Faithful”. Is the IPCC no longer an “approved source”?

        3. God, andy, is there any pathetic, manipulative meme that is so blatantly degraded that you won’t run with it? That pathetic drivel from Lloyd doesn’t even rise to the level of laughable.

          You and the rabble at the Oz – a far-Right thinktank that just happens to publish the national daily – are about at the same level.

          1. I’m sorry, are you claiming that Pauchauri was misquoted, or what? I am not sure your point here.

            Does interviewing and quoting the head of the IPCC make you “far right” these days?

            1. Oh, read the link that Gareth provided, you nong. What a waste of bloody time! The entire function of The Australian – think Fox imposed directly onto dead trees – is now to cater to the likes of you, andy – ‘chumming’ is the word – the rest of us just laugh or snort derisively and then find something useful to do…

              Perhaps Lloyd’s computer has a tilt to the right that makes increases look level.

              Exactly.

            2. I couldn’t read the article Gareth linked to. It was behind a paywall

              So my question still stands.

              Was Pauchauri misquoted?
              Is Pauchauri now to be ignored, as a “denier”?

              I need to know Bill

            3. Hmmm…. Andy, not only do you not understand the difference between heat and temperature (hint: heat is required to melt ice at 0 C ice to water at the same temperature), but you can’t click on a link? (Hint: there is no paywall).

              Anyway, here is the enlightenment that you pretend to seek:

              …on decadal time scales, the trend-line model fails. Most of the heat trapped in the earth system goes into the oceans. The top 700m of ocean increased in heat content from 3 x 1022 Joules in 1997 to 10 x 1022 Joules in 2010, in a highly non-linear manner, due to mixing rates between the surface and deep ocean. The atmosphere holds as much heat as the top 3m of ocean, about 0.4% of the heat content above. Why on earth then, with highly non-linear processes in the ocean, would we expect a gradual warming trend in the atmosphere?

            4. Rob, I was referring to the article in The Australian which is behind a paywall, not the one in The Conversation

            5. So he has gone. The strange thing is that I answered his question at length back on the 22nd quoting the opening para in the article in the Australian. Nowhere in the article was Pachauri quoted acknowledging “a 17 year pause in global temperature rise” but he was quoted explaining why a 30-40 year period had to be considered in discerning a long term trend. Those quotes were probably correct, but the inference of the article may not have been.

              Aside: I was on a train heading from Sydney to Melbourne when I read the very first edition of the Australian. This will be a good paper I thought at the time, but how times change.

            6. So, was Pachauri verballed by the Australian?*

              What is certain – those who conveniently can’t understand the distiction between global warming and surface temperature increases are only deluding themselves.

              (*’Verballed’ isn’t just an Australianism, is it? Certainly the QLD and NSW police forces in particular used to specialise in it…)

  22. Coal again? Of interest?

    Heat is extracted chemically from coal without combustion. 99% of CO2 is retained inside the reactor. 1.5-2 mm oxidised iron pellets convey oxygen to 100 micron crushed coal in a continuous process. The easily removed iron pellets then convey the heat of reaction for steam production and can be recycled indefinitely. A pilot plant is about to be constructed. Of course coal ash has to be removed and something done with the collected CO2 so it can’t be rated clean in the sense that harmful materials still result but at least they can be fully controlled.
    http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/looping203.htm

      1. From the linked article: “On February 20, FoxNews.com featured this story on the front page…..”
        FoxNews.com?? A story about clean Coal?? The dander is up and the red warning flags flying…

  23. Fracking report casts renewed doubt on the ability of the fracking promise to come up with the goods:

    As for fracking, the report finds that production [in the USA] has been on a plateau since December 2011. And, it’s not due to a lack of effort. It’s just that after a while, fracking wells stop performing. Analysing the production of 65,000 shale gas wells, the report fond that the vast majority of the wells are depleted within five years. The high decline rate requires continuous capital inputs—at least $42 billion per year to drill more than 7,000 wells. Yet, the value of shale gas produced in 2012 was only $32.5 million.

    Fracking may yet turn out be nothing more than a Ponzi scheme where new investor’s money is constantly needed to maintain the mirage of returns from the old….. Like a mirage in the hot desert air, leading society astray and away from the only course we can actually take towards any sustainable tomorrow: Put a Manhatten Project Style effort into alternative energy concepts that do not rely on mining exhaustible resources or using the planetary ecosystems as dumping grounds.

    1. I guess even if fracking is a ponzi, at least it means less fossil carbon is coming out of the ground. The sooner the financiers realise that alternatives are more lucrative the better.

  24. It is a weak el Niño I have read. Here in Auckland the drought continues with no hint of rain while the Australian east coast has too much rain. The lawn consists of green patches of paspalum, green broadleafs dotting a carpet of straw. In January there were 6 mm of rain. Early February there were two early mornings of rain, the first refilling the water tanks. At present there are 3500 litres remaining, enough for the garden and toilet for another month.

    The Arum lillies all packed it in in early January. The impatiens retain a skeletal existence in the shade garden and in the sun. The good news is the convolvulus has been denied its usual assault on everything. The trees are as always doing fine, the guavas are loaded, modest harvests will come from the fijoas and grapefruit – last year there was almost nothing. The tomato in the conservatory struggles with the heat. I have not been giving it enough water. The vege gardens, watered twice every day, are prolific, the lettuces astonishing and the scarlet runners are up their advertised 6 metres. A year ago I planted spring onions from the stumps of a couple of bunches from the supermarket. Currently standing 900 mm high, they have never stopped growing, outstripping my ability to eat them.

    Humidity is down so the day is comfortable but the solar panel is at 95°C, half way down the hot water cylinder the water is at 81°C, above the nominal limit. At the bottom the water is 76°C. If only all the excess heat could be stored for winter.

    Heat radiating from roads and paths makes walking a pain in the afternoons. I need a shade under the chin. I bus a fair bit now and have heard there is a program to replace the square wheeled bone shakers in use. I have realised that a single law could spell the end of consumerism and result in a huge reduction in GHG emissions. No persons may buy more than they can easily manage on their own backs. 🙂

    The weather forcast does not indicate any change.

    1. While searching on NZ drought I came upon Russel Norman speaking on “smart green agriculture” It’s a long read and of considerable interest to me but I am greatful for one relationship I have been musing on for years: He said “One of the most fundamental indicators of sustainability, our waterways, are telling us about…” He was referring to polution of waterways by intensification of dairying.

      During my walk around the Manukau 10 years back, and subsequent tour of 22 former Maori portages and their associated waterways from the Hauraki plains to Whangarei harbour, the only clear streams I came across came straight out of forests or wetland reed beds, some established for this purpose. Where streams began to cross farm lands they became polluted, less so where banks were forested.

      There were other related matters – Large funding of irrigation but no thought given to the subsequent pollution brought about by this intensification of dairying, being one.

  25. Andy, do you and the onanistic claque over at Treadgold’s really not know the difference between heat and temperature?

    Or are you just repeating the paid-for talking points of your corporate pollutocrat masters?

  26. So, Andy, do you know understand why short-term atmospheric temperature is not a good measure of global warming?

    Or, are you still stuck at the denier level: “Duh, how come each year isn’t hotter than the last, and it still snows in winter?”

    1. If atmospheric temperature is now irrelevant, will the IPCC be removing references to it in its reports?

      Will it also stop publishing outputs of GCM model runs that predict decadal atmospheric temperatures?
      Clearly these are irrelevant and a waste of time.

  27. The commenter known as “Andy S” is now permanently banned from commenting at Hot Topic. In this comment at Treadgold’s place, he refers to this blog and its commenters as “ecofascists” and compares us to a “death cult”. Apart from being rude and unsavoury (and wrong), he has demonstrated that he is completely incapable of engaging in informed discussion, and so is no longer welcome here.

    1. He’ll no doubt go off and play at being a martyr, but, frankly, Gareth, it is remarkable how much tolerance he was shown here, given that from the first outrageous and abusive accusations such as ‘eco-nazi’, ‘Khmer vert’ and ‘climate skinhead’, and unsubstantiated squealings about ‘corruption’, were routine for him.

      Also, the literal insanity of his reaction to the merest mention of a wind-turbine was hopelessly distorting any discussion that touched on the issue of renewables.

      I believe the pure McCarthyite venom directed at the wind industry – derided, ironically, by those who supposedly hold entrepreneurial innovation to be the premier social virtue precisely because it’s cheap and effective – by the likes of Fox, The Australian, Delingpole, and then right down through the squalid ranks of minions to the broiling, queasy stew of online regurgitators at its base will serve as an exemplar of the collectivist insanity of the 21st Century’s Great Reaction.

      He won’t be missed, under any of his aliases.

    2. Oh! We are for it now! Big Bad andy is going to tell everybody what he thinks of us! 🙂
      That last series of comments had to be the most idiotic naive rubbish one has had to endure since the demise of joe cool or whatever he called himself. andy (if you have come to read this) – it has really nothing to do with what Rajendra Pachauri said or didn’t say. It has everything to do, with how an openly right wing paper, with a long history of climate change denial articles, and nothing of any substance, has used Rajendra Pachauri to continue its attack on rational thought. You are welcome to think that you and and your cohorts at CC denial are the only true bastions of the truth. Continue to rail against the obvious, hide you head in the sand if you must, but if you really do have a smidgen of rationality left, stop visiting Bishops Hill, WUWT, Threadgold’s, and all the rest for a while. Meditate. Give yourself some space – read an elementary physics book on Heat and Temperature, go and visit the Tasman Glacier and ponder.

      1. No doubt, andyS is still here, impotently watching instead of impotently commenting. Perhaps a new ‘personality’ will show up soon that sounds familiar, sort of like JohnD. Lets hope not.

        1. He is still reading the site, the logs show, and this morning the spam filter captured a very foul-mouthed attempted comment (the sort of thing that would get you punched in a pub). Since he knew it wouldn’t get through, you have to wonder at his reasoning…

        2. I think he made an appearance at SkS playing a supporting role to Dixie2 in his usual magical claims. But he’s not likely to last in the tighter moderation environment – poor old Dixie certainly didn’t fare well! – and then there’s the potential confusion with the other Andy S (the good one!)

          If he is still lurking; isn’t wind power a great idea? Very little downside and getting cheaper all the time!… 😉

          1. Scrase used to visit Perrott’s Open Parachute using numerous aliases but got his a**e kicked pretty comprehensively and with a degree of hilarity by one of Ken’s regular readers, Cedric Katesby.
            Andy appears too frightened to return.

  28. I guess another rent-boy troll will now be activated by his handlers and directed here to sow as much doubt and confusion as they can get away with.

    Hey, just for a change, guys, can we have a female troll?

    Who knows, we may even get Andy Scrase in drag!

  30. Potsdam Institute just made a press release plugging a new paper – looks like it is closely related to the idea (put forward by Jennifer Francis) about stuck jet-stream patterns causing extreme weather to stay in one place for longer thus making hot/cold spells much worse.
    Press release here with a link to the PNAS paper (which is annoyingly not working yet, it is so hot-off-the-press):
    http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/weather-extremes-provoked-by-trapping-of-giant-waves-in-the-atmosphere

    “The authors of the study developed equations that describe the wave motions in the extra-tropical atmosphere and show under what conditions those waves can grind to a halt and get amplified. They tested their assumptions using standard daily weather data from the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). During recent periods in which several major weather extremes occurred, the trapping and strong amplification of particular waves – like “wave seven” (which has seven troughs and crests spanning the globe) – was indeed observed. The data show an increase in the occurrence of these specific atmospheric patterns, which is statistically significant at the 90 percent confidence level.”

  31. New research shows just how toxic our little impotent troll friend really is. The so-called health problems associated with wind farms spruiked by andyS are in fact caused by none other than – andyS!

    Every time the little prick shows up at a resource content hearing on wind farms to spread his lies, I will be there with this research to debunk him.

    2. I have been conscious for some time of the attacks on non-fossil fueled devices and energy sources by the mis-information campaign but had not realised the sick psychic goal described.

      Way back when a teenager living in Taradale I was fascinated to read a report in a local newspaper to the effect that within a week of the announcement that fluridation of the water supply in Hastings had begun there were many complaints from consumers that the water had turned them green. However the council had not actually begun fluridation. When they did later the embarassed greenies were silent.

      1. Yep, and you managed to get in the Herald by without denouncing those who urge for more action on AGW mitigation as “Socialists” or “Marxists” for thinking aloud of how we could allocate the rights to emit what remains of the permissible fossil fuel emissions from now to 2040 if we want to have a chance to stop before we hit the wall.
        Good on you!

        1. Funny how the WP censorship protocol will not allow “S o c i a l i s t” or “M a r x i s t” to pass. It starts worrying me. Who makes up rules that censor the discussion of certain political movements?

          1. Ever read ‘WordPress for Dummies’? It certainly gave me an insight into the Disneyesque Pollyannaisms that apparently pervade the company’s psyche. I suspect they simply didn’t expect anyone nice to be using such distasteful language!

            Yep, you have to write Social!sm unless your want to fall foul of the autocensor; but I believe Marxism is actually fine; as, apparently, are Nazism, Stalinism and fascism.

            Funny old world! It’s still a great blogging platform, but this distinctively American idiosyncrasy is, appropriately enough, both quaint and exasperating…

            I’ll try the ‘c’ word in a separate post!

            1. ‘Communism’ – seemed to work?

              I guess ‘social!sm’, at least in the form of European social-democracy, is the ‘real threat'(?)

              Though, of course, it makes it equally hard to condemn it. 🙂

              Or maybe it’s on the naughty list because it’s become bog-standard and essentially meaningless abuse in a US where a dismally significant percentage of the population seems to take the surreal notion that Obama is an ‘ist’ seriously….

            2. Thank you Bill! This is helpful. At least now I know what to avoid and to always put an ‘!’ into the ‘S’ word as in Socia!ism. Nicely decorates the word by the way. I might adopt when needed in print… ;-). And one wonders who is in charge of the WP censorship word list anyway? Can hosts edit this list to suit the flavor of their individual blogs? Over to Gareth…

            3. It’s nothing to do with the political connotations of the word, it’s the fact that it contains the brand name of a certain, er, uplifting pill.

  33. Electric Car fans: Check this guy out in Auckland:
    http://www.evalbum.com/4093
    He has 2.5KW of solar on the roof, giving him enough power to drive 25,000Km a year from solar alone in this cool car! I met Peter and he is a highly competent guy. He is in business now to make electric car components and conversions I believe. Worth having a chat to if you are interested.
    The car pictured there has an electric range of about 160km and highway speeds++…. with ample power to spare.
    Way to go!!

    1. That is pretty cool! 33,000 km on solar alone.
      Now I want to talk to you about an electric powered bicycle 🙂 – getting up The Hape in Thames is getting a bit much.

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