Category: Climate science

Climate documentary Thin Ice raising money for US broadcast

Thin Ice, the superb documentary about climate science and scientists filmed and produced by New Zealand and British climate scientists, has launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to finance a new edit of the film so that it can be shown on public TV in the US. From the Kickstarter page:

Why do we need help? The global screening on Earth Day, 2013, reached over 200 locations worldwide, and many others have seen it since. Now we have a chance to re-edit the film for screening on American Public Television – if we can raise the NZ$27,500 (US$22,000) in 30 days needed for the re-edit and promotion.

We want the film to be seen by as many people as possible on TV in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. We already have subtitles in 8 languages, so with the shortened film Thin Ice will be that much more accessible to schools and communities worldwide.

With 14 days to go, the project still needs to raise NZ$20,000, so if you can spare a few dollars go to Kickstarter, make a few climate scientists happy, and help to get this excellent film put in front of a wider audience.

Danger Dedekind! Heartbreak Ahead (still wrong, still digging, NZ still warming fast)

Over last weekend, my post criticising the new paper by Chris de Freitas, Manfred “Bob” Dedekind and Barry Brill that claims warming in New Zealand’s temperature records is only one third of that calculated by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) attracted a flurry of attempted ripostes at Richard Treadgold’s Climate Conversation blog. One — by Bob Dedekind — sets out to be a rebuttal of my original post. Sadly for Bob and his co-authors, he has only managed to dig himself into an even deeper hole.

For the sake of the record, therefore, I have taken the time and trouble to deal with each of his points in detail. The results of my researches do not make pretty reading for De Freitas, Dedekind, Brill, or the editorial team, reviewers and publishers of Environmental Modelling and Assessment.

Continue reading “Danger Dedekind! Heartbreak Ahead (still wrong, still digging, NZ still warming fast)”

Carbon News 3/11/14: NZ fails as UN wails

Our emissions plan hopeless, says renowned academic

New Zealand has no chance of meeting its 2020 emissions reduction target under current policies, says a leading scientist involved in the latest IPCC report. Professor Ralph Sims, of Massey University, is recognised around the world for his expertise on climate change and renewable energy, but is never consulted by our own Government.

Leaders must act, says UN after dire climate report

If left unchecked, climate change will increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems, says a United Nations report. Echoing the dire warning, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that if the world maintains its “business as usual” attitude about climate change, the opportunity to keep temperature rise below the internationally target of 2degC “will slip away within the next decade”.

What the politicians said …

All three of New Zealand’s major political parties say that the IPCC’s latest call on climate change is important.

Climate refugees? we’ll think of something …

New Zealand still has no plan to help climate change refugees — despite acknowledging that many Pacific Islands people might need to be relocated. Continue reading “Carbon News 3/11/14: NZ fails as UN wails”

IPCC AR5 completed: science has spoken – cut deep, cut soon

The IPCC’s Fifth Report process reached its climax in Copenhagen yesterday with the release of the final “synthesis” report (download here), which pulls together all the strands from the three working group reports on the physical science (Working Group 1), climate impacts (WG2) and how to go about dealing with the problem (WG3). Launching the report, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon was blunt:

“Science has spoken. There is no ambiguity in their message. Leaders must act. Time is not on our side.”

Given that it’s based entirely on the work done for the underlying reports, there are no surprises the synthesis report for anyone who has been following climate news over the last year, but what is striking is the emphasis on the need for rapid and deep cuts in fossil fuel emissions – and a corresponding steep increase in investment in renewable energy sources. Ban Ki-Moon emphasised the point in a comment aimed at investors:

“Please reduce your investments in the coal- and fossil fuel-based economy and [move] to renewable energy.”

Writing in the Guardian, Bill McKibben notes an increase in the urgency of the language being used:

This week, with the release of their new synthesis report, [scientists] are trying the words “severe, widespread, and irreversible” to describe the effects of climate change – which for scientists, conservative by nature, falls just short of announcing that climate change will produce a zombie apocalypse plus random beheadings plus Ebola. It’s hard to imagine how they will up the language in time for the next big global confab in Paris.

The Guardian’s coverage is – as always – exemplary. In addition to Damian Carrington’s news report, they also give good graph. See also the BBC, and Stuff – who take the AP coverage.

New Zealand’s climate change minister Tim Groser issued a press release to welcome the report:

It is the best scientific assessment of climate issues available. I’m delighted that New Zealand scientists have contributed to this body of knowledge.

If that’s really the case, why is Groser enacting policies which are currently pointing NZ towards a 50% increase in emissions instead of deep cuts? Perhaps he should be listening to Ban Ki-moon when he says “”There is a myth that climate action will cost heavily, but inaction will cost much more.”

NZ cranks finally publish an NZ temperature series – but their paper’s stuffed with errors

You can’t teach old dogs new tricks, it seems — certainly not if they’re gnawing a much loved old bone at the time. The lads from the NZ Climate Science Coalition — yes, the same boys who tried to sue NIWA over the New Zealand temperature record and lost, and who then folded a trust to avoid paying court-ordered costs — have finally found a learned journal gullible enough to accept and publish their shonky reworking of NZ’s temperature record. Earlier this month Environmental Modelling and Assessment published A Reanalysis of Long-Term Surface Air Temperature Trends in New Zealand by CR de Freitas & MO Dedekind & BE Brill (DOI 10.1007/s10666-014-9429-z).

My attention was drawn to dFDB 2014 by an NZCSC press release, and yesterday Richard Treadgold, the man who kicked off the whole sad affair five years ago, posted a disingenuous and misleading article about the paper at his blog. As you might expect given the authors, the paper does not call for an upward revision in the amount of warming NZ has experienced over the last century. The abstract concludes with the following:

Current New Zealand century-long climatology based on 1981 methods produces a trend of 0.91 °C per century. Our analysis, which uses updated measurement techniques and corrects for shelter-contaminated data, produces a trend of 0.28 °C per century.

As you might also expect, given the authors and their respective track records, the paper is riddled with schoolboy howlers and outright misrepresentations. It would probably never have seen the light of day without the assistance of Chris “Pal Review” de Freitas and his undoubted ability to steer tosh to publication.

Continue reading “NZ cranks finally publish an NZ temperature series – but their paper’s stuffed with errors”