Category: Hot Topic

Keep searchin’ (we’ll follow the sun)

hot-topic-cover.jpg I’m still tweaking away at the new look Hot Topic: here’s today’s innovation – a Google custom search (under “recent posts” in the first sidebar), set up to look through the climate blogs in my blogroll. Want to know who’s been saying what about the Arctic? Here’s a nifty way to search through the non-crank climate blogosphere. Tip: when you get to the search results, at the top of the page (under the search box) there’s a link that says “recent4”. Clicking that will put the most recent results at the top (approximately). Please suggest sites for inclusion, and I’ll update accordingly.

Still to do: a shopping cart for the book (paperback and pdf), custom background (I’d prefer clouds to sea), comment editing restored, captions for the pix of NZ, and a few other bits and bobs. Please give me feedback!

Move on up

hot-topic-cover.jpg Sometime in the next day or so, Hot Topic will be moving to a new server and getting a spiffy new look. I’ll do my best to ensure that there’s little or no break in service, but given that my techno-competence is strictly limited there may be a hiatus – with luck only brief. There’s also the risk that some comments may get lost, especially any made after I’ve exported the blog to the new WordPress install. Tweaking the look will then take some time… so please bear with me in this, my hour of panic.

Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?


Media Law Journal, Poneke (first, second, third), Public Address: Hard News, OnPoint, Kiwiblog (first, second), No Right Turn, Deltoid (first, second, third), Audent (first, second), Southern Dave, Barista, Tim Jones, from the morgue, Website.net.nz, Scoop.

[Update: Media7 coverage here, plus a somewhat confused David Cohen in the NBR]

[Update 2: International Journal of Inactivism, Mediawatch (27/4, Radio New Zealand).]

If you come across any more, stick ’em in the comments, and I’ll promote them to the post.

[Wikipedia, butterfliesandwheels.com]

The law won (again)

Correction and apology to The Listener and its editor Pamela Stirling

On 16 April 2008 we published on this site an article written by Gareth Renowden entitled “Climate cranks claim a scalp”. That article suggested that Dave Hansford had been sacked by The Listener as a result of views that he expressed on climate change, and that The Listener had caved in to pressure from the NZ Climate Science Coalition, or had sacked him because his views did nor coincide with those of The Listener‘s editor, Pamela Stirling. The article also questioned The Listener‘s commitment to environmental issues and its editorial integrity and independence, and was critical of its conduct with respect to Mr Hansford. In fact Mr Hansford was not sacked by The Listener, and nor did The Listener seek to censor or suppress Mr Hansford’s views. Hot Topic and AUT Media Ltd accept that The Listener and its editor have a strong commitment to environmental issues, and that there was no basis for any of the criticisms expressed on this site of either The Listener or its editor, or of the editorial integrity and independence of The Listener. Hot Topic and AUT Media Ltd unreservedly withdraw those statements an apologise to The Listener and to Pamela Stirling for the distress caused by our publication.

Winter wonderland

205188main_2007ice_anomaly.jpg Climate cranks are keen to paint the last northern hemisphere (boreal) winter as unusually cold – a clear sign, they say, that “global warming is over”, and that global cooling has begun. Every crank’s at it: Bob Carter at Muriel’s place, Gerrit van der Lingen in an article in a Christchurch magazine and Vincent Gray in a submission to the select committee looking into the Emissions Trading Bill. It’s nonsense. The winter was cooler than many recent ones – but still 16th warmest, according to NOAA. A strong La Niña is cooling the tropical Pacific, and dragging the global average down, the precise converse of the strong El Niño that made 1998 so hot. In other words it’s weather noise, not long term change, as Stu Ostro explains at the Weather Channel. However, the cranks are right about one thing: last winter was unusual, but not for the reasons they think. In this post, I want to explore some of the reasons why this winter was out of the ordinary, and why I think it may demonstrate that rapid climate change is happening now. It’s an expanded version of how I began my last two talks…

Continue reading “Winter wonderland”