Tag: cranks

Monckton in NZ: tells lies on radio, threatens academics and journalists

The Monckton has landed in New Zealand, and he’s up to his usual tricks. In a desperate display of attention-seeking behaviour, the discount Viscount has lashed out at his critics, threatened libel actions against a scientist and a journalist, and attacked the good standing of Victoria University of Wellington. To make matters worse, in a talkback session with Leighton Smith on Newstalk ZB earlier today, he was given free rein to tell lies and misrepresent the state of our understanding of climate science.

Unfortunately a full recording of Monckton’s radio performance is not (yet) available on the web ((A video of the first 8 minutes of the 90 minute session has been posted by the radio station here.)), but in a brief section discussing Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, he made the following astonishing and counterfactual claims:

  • During the 1920s and 1930s there was probably less Arctic sea ice than now
  • The Arctic sea ice has only declined for a few weeks in summer
  • Arctic sea ice set a new record high only two weeks ago
  • Increases in Antarctic sea ice make up for half of the loss in the Arctic
  • There’s no way water can get under the Antarctic ice sheet

Here’s the facts:

Continue reading “Monckton in NZ: tells lies on radio, threatens academics and journalists”

Prat watch #10: the ice age is here!

Forget all that nonsense about “no warming for 16 years”, to be a real sceptic these days you have to insist that the climate’s currently cooling. But why stop there? To show your real commitment to the coolist cause, you have to go BM (Beyond Monckton) and insist that the next ice age is descending on us. And that’s exactly what Britain’s nuttiest weather forecaster, Piers Corbyn, is proclaiming. Britain’s had a bit of snow and a cold start to March, so Piers jumps on his soapbox and cries “The new Mini Ice Age is upon us!”

CorbynIceAge2013

Here’s Piers:

“This is further evidence of the inevitable plunge from now into the new Mini Ice Age we warned of some years ago — The CO2 story is over. It has been pointing the world in the wrong direction for too long. The serious implications of the developing MIA to agriculture and the world economy through the next 25 to 35 years must be addressed.”

● The CO2 story is over
● World cooling is now ‘locked-in’
● Average solar activity way down
● Jet stream often way south
● Jet Stream develops wild waves giving very extreme weather events – hail, thunder, floods etc.

“Locked in”, eh? I rather suspect that the next El Niño will make Mr Corbyn look rather stupid in all but his own eyes. He won’t notice though, because he’ll be busy reinterpreting history (he’s already reinvented solar physics) in the same way as his nearest NZ counterpart, weather astrologer Ken Ring. In the meantime, it’ll be interesting to see who amongst the usual suspects will be happy to support Corbyn’s frothing. Is no idea too wacky for the coolists?

Why is Federated Farmers promoting climate denial during a major drought?

The man who believes Obama's birth certificate was faked, promoted by Federated Farmers.
The man who believes Obama’s birth certificate was faked, promoted by Federated Farmers.

You’d think, in the middle of the worst drought in 70 years, with farmers in crisis, that their national political body might be thinking about  the big picture of climate change and how best to communicate that to farmers.

In Marlborough, where the drought is hitting hard, the local Federated Farmers chapter is sponsoring a talk by crank Lord Monckton.   I asked Conor English, Federated Farmers CEO,  what he thought about this and he said:

“We have 24 Provinces and they get all sorts of speakers on all sorts of things. We simply don’t know.”

OK, one renegade chapter. Fair enough. I’m sure Top of the South farmers will be relieved to know climate change isn’t real.

But on March 8, Federated Farmers’ “Friday Flash” weekly email bulletin was mailed to members right around the country, including a full-on promotion, with dates, links, and phone numbers of Monckton’s wander around the country.  The item even questioned the science of global warming, running out the tired old denier “global warming has stalled for 16 years” argument (rebutted here) that is central to Monckton’s theories.

So I went back to Mr English to ask how they could be promoting Monckton’s visit, right in the middle of this terrible drought, the type of  drought farmers are expected to get a lot more of as climate impacts kick in. Continue reading “Why is Federated Farmers promoting climate denial during a major drought?”

Don Easterbrook is a zombie

Don Easterbrook is back, and his misunderstanding of Greenland’s climate history rides again in two remarkable posts at µWatts — attempted demolitions of the new paper every denier worth his (or her) salt is frothing at the mouth to claim has been rubbished, the 11,300 year global paleoclimate reconstruction of Marcott et al ((A. Marcott, J. D. Shakun, P. U. Clark, A. C. Mix. A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years. Science, 2013; 339 (6124): 1198 DOI: 10.1126/science.1228026)). Unfortunately Easterbrook is as far off the mark in his two essays at µWatts (one, two) as he has ever been, which makes not only him look stupid, but everyone who relies on his “work” ((That means the Heartland Institute’s James Taylor, who relies on Easterbrook’s efforts in his latest Forbes article, and looks like a chump because of it. Well, he already looks like a chump in many respects, but this is a doozy, as chump-making status goes.)).

The easiest thing for me to do to debunk Don would have been to republish this post from January 2011, because all of the points I make there remain true, and are sufficient to discredit Easterbrook’s interpretation of Greenland temperatures and their relevance to Marcott et al, but this time round Don has actually added a couple of extra mistakes — I presume just to keep people like me on their toes. So, for the record, here are Don’s new errors:

Continue reading “Don Easterbrook is a zombie”

Prat watch #9: Ring’s wrong again

New Zealand’s favourite astrologer, the self-appointed “long range weather forecaster” Ken Ring — who is wrong about everything — has not been having a good start to the year. He’s having trouble reconciling NZ’s record drought with the forecasts he’s been making. Here’s Ring on February 26th, in an opinion piece headlined Hang on farmers, rain is coming, published at Yahoo News:

So the question being asked is whether or not a drought is imminent. The answer is no.

Compare and contrast with this news report from Friday last (March 15th):

The entire North Island has been declared a drought zone this morning.

Every time anyone other than Ring takes a look at his forecasts, they are found to be useless ((In January, the Greymouth Star noted:

Self-proclaimed weather guru Ken Ring is wildly astray in his January predictions for the South Island hydro lakes region, in his 2013 weather almanac. His summary for January, based on lunar patterns, says “the driest regions for the South Island for January may be the hydro lakes”.

But Environment Canterbury flood controller Tony Henderson said the 500mm of rain in the Waitaki and Rangitata river catchments over four days was “probably the most we’ve had over the summer in several decades”.

)). But Ring is working hard to rewrite history to his advantage. His Yahoo News column was posted on Feb 26th, but the same article seems to have been posted to his website a few days earlier ((The datestamp says Feb 22nd.)). He’s revisited the piece, and added some notes in red attempting to justify his failed forecasts. But there’s one other change he’s made. Here it is:

So the question being asked is whether or not a lingering drought is imminent. The answer is no.

Of such little dishonesties are Ring successes made. He remains a charlatan, and is — as ever — wrong about everything.