Australia

Bill English’s weasel words on weather, climate and drought

by Gareth March 14, 2013

Occasionally — but only occasionally — the political pantomime that is parliamentary question time throws up something interesting. Yesterday, NZ’s deputy prime minister Bill English managed to dig himself into a drought-ridden hole, only to emerge looking like a climate denier. Green Party co-leader Russel Norman tried to get English to expand on his earlier [...]

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Till your well runs dry: NZ drought hits record levels

by Gareth March 11, 2013

Australia may have had an extraordinary “Angry Summer“, but New Zealand’s been having a bit of a cracker too. Prolonged warm and sunny weather over much of the country has driven North Island soil moisture deficits to levels not seen for at least 70 years (see map at left). Official drought status — which means [...]

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Recursive lying: Monckton rails against liars by telling lies

by Gareth March 3, 2013

“Potty peer” Chris Monckton has reacted to criticism of his threats to sue Australian academics by doubling down on his commitment to pursue legal action. In a typically overblown piece at an Australian sceptic site, Monckton tries to reassure the faithful that their guru has not gone off the rails: Going to court is the [...]

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Recursive fraudery: Monckton goes mad in Australia

by Gareth February 28, 2013

Christopher, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley’s tour of Australia must be going very badly, because the “high priest of climate scepticism” is indulging in another of his increasingly desperate displays of attention seeking behaviour. After giving a poorly attended lecture in Hobart last week, Monckton took umbrage at an article in the Sunday Tasmanian (on the [...]

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The Climate Show #32: a Cook’s tour of the Aussie heat

by Gareth January 24, 2013

At long last: John Cook from Skeptical Science rejoins the Climate Show team for the first show of 2013. He hooks up with Glenn and Gareth to review Australia’s big heatwave, and stays around to dig into the new Greenpeace report on dirty energy, discuss Obama’s inauguration speech and Boris Johnson’s climate blunder, the latest [...]

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Messages from a sizzling continent: Salinger on the Aussie heatwave

by Gareth January 20, 2013

This op-ed by climate scientist Jim Salinger first appeared in print editions of the New Zealand Herald last Tuesday. Global warming is not a phenomenon for future generations to deal with: it has arrived. And more frequent heat waves and climate extremes are part of this phenomenon. As I watch from my summer roost in [...]

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Climate of complacency #2: de Freitas lies to TV3

by Gareth January 14, 2013

Imagine my shock when I discovered today that Chris de Freitas — the Auckland University academic who hit the news a couple of years ago when it was found that he was teaching climate denial to first year students, but who has a 20 year history of advocating for inaction on climate change — had [...]

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Climate of complacency: NZ Herald lazy and irresponsible

by Gareth January 14, 2013

Saturday’s New Zealand Herald carried an astonishing editorial on climate change — remarkable enough to prompt me to tweet that it was “crass, complacent and so very wrong“, despite it being ostensibly in support of action on climate change. The piece begins by riffing on the wildfires in Australia, before observing: With Australia having its [...]

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Too Hot: Australia’s big heat breaking records

by Gareth January 9, 2013

Australia is gripped by a massive heatwave, records are tumbling and fires are burning across the continent. I’m not going to attempt a comprehensive post on the subject — events are moving too fast — but I would like to note a few things. The Bureau of Meteorology forecast chart above (courtesy of Watching The [...]

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The last climate denier in New Zealand

by Gareth November 22, 2012

My entry for the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Manhire Prize for science writing (in the fiction category), made the shortlist but didn’t win. My congratulations to Brian Langham for his story Fourteen [pdf] (and to Renee Liang for her winning non-fiction piece — Epigenetics: navigating our inner seas [pdf]). For the sake of posterity, [...]

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