Climate scientists have developed new models which plot natural oceanic temperature cycles, solar activity, and cathode-ray-tube (CRT) television household penetration against average global temperatures over time.  They show a surprising an unexpected result.  The recent unprecedented change in climate appears to be closely related to the number of cathode ray television sets in use.

At the beginning of the second world war, there were only about 8000 sets in use.  By 1949, there were over 3,602,872 in the US alone, and by 1959 accumulated sales in the US totalled more than 67 million.  Sales continued through the 70s and 80s at over 10 million sets per year.  As the global economy flourished, the trend was replicated all over the developing world.  The studies showed that the globe warmed more and more rapidly, matching the rising numbers of TV sets, until around the turn of the millennium, when it paused for ten years, and now appears to be in decline.

Interestingly, the models hind-cast the temperature variations since 1950 with astonishing accuracy. And critically, when the CRT penetration is removed from the models, we cannot explain those temperature variations.  There is no other acceptable conclusion, no other factor that can achieve the match with temperature variations.

Ah, I hear you object, China and India, the new Asian super-economies, are booming.  The number of TV sets sold is sky-rocketing again.  If Global Warming has ceased, how could it possibly be related to TV sets?  Right now, the number of sets in use in the world is 1416338245.

Pay attention!  TV technology has undergone a sea change.  The cathode-ray tube is out.  In the twenty-first century, flat-screen TFT and LED screens have taken over.  These do not emit the same radiation as the older, earth-warming monsters that sat in the corner of the room and heated our planet.  And as the old CRT screens sputter, distort and die, they are being replaced by the new, green, tree-hugging, polar-bear-loving flatties.  We are saved!

Earlier climate models achieved a reasonable match using global CO2 atmospheric variations, enough to give cause to speculate that the reason for the rise might be CO2.  But only to speculate.  CO2 concentrations are still rising at an increasing rate, but the global temperature since 2000, initially flat, is now declining.

And that, dear readers, should be the end of the argument.  I defy you to show me that this little analysis is any less robust or scientific than all of the scientific reports used by the IPCC, Al Gore, the EU or Skeptical Science.  The data behind my reasoning shows a closer match to world temperature fluctuations than any of the computer models used by NASA, GISS or UEA.

Trust the science on this.  Using our model, we can predict with 98.73% certainty that the temperature will decline for the next thirty years to at least the same level as it was in 1970.  More likely it will be even lower, as by 2040 there will be very few CRTs still in use.

What’s that?  You want to examine my data?  You have a confounded cheek.  It’s commercially sensitive and the TV companies have placed it under an embargo.

And I didn’t archive it, and seem to have lost it.

Joe Bastardi is a weatherman.  He works for Weatherbell, a US-based forecaster, that provides global weather reports and forecasts through its website, http://www.weatherbell.com/.  Joe also has a number of corporate clients, for whom he prepares specific detailed forecasts tailored to their weather information needs.

If one judges a weatherman by the success rate of his seasonal forecasts, then Joe is a super-weatherman.

When my wife and I came from New Zealand to live in the Haarlem in the Netherlands in 2008, we needed local weather information.  My Dutch language skills were non-existent, so I went looking in the internet for English-language reports on current conditions and forecasts.  The most accurate forecasts for Haarlem at the time were on the website of Accuweather, another global weather forecasting company, at http://www.accuweather.com/en-gb/nl/north-holland/haarlem/quick-look.aspx.

I had long been interested in the Anthropogenic Global Warming debate, which had wide publicity in New Zealand.  My interest (and suspicions) had been aroused by the way in which every weather event was described as evidence of human-influenced global warming.  However, the concept behind the idea seemed worthy of investigation, so I was interested in finding out more.

A Dutch television channel showed a film called “An Inconvenient Truth” featuring Al Gore showing a PowerPoint presentation which presented Michael Mann’s hockey-stick graph and argued in apocalyptic terms that the earth was in danger of a runaway greenhouse effect, caused by human beings, and specifically, the CO2 that we produce.

That film was a tipping-point for me.  ”An Inconvenient Truth” was far from being a reasoned, scientifically-based presentation.  It was full of half-truths and special pleading, presented by a salesman.  For the first time, I began to suspect that the AGW scare was a textbook real-life example of the behaviour illustrated by the classic fable of Chicken Little.

One of the blog links on the Accuweather site that caught my attention was also hosted by Accuweather.  Joe Bastardi’s European Weather blog.  Bastardi is no Shakespeare, but his postings were always entertaining and well-argued.

Now Joe Bastardi has left Accuweather, and resurfaced at the Weatherbell site.  Inexplicably, his blog posts are behind a paywall – they are in the premium section of Weatherbell.  That is tragic.  One expects to pay for premium services – after all, they are a big part of the income of a web-based service.  But to pay for blog-posts?

Bloggers blog to be read.  They blog to communicate, to give their ideas the widest possible coverage.  Including pensioners who cannot afford the premium subscriptions. I am over sixty-five years old, and at the end of this month, I too shall be a pensioner.

So long, Joe.  I shall miss your posts.

Anthony Watts reports that Obama’s visit to the UK produced a joint statement, released in a White house memo.  The whole thing makes interesting reading, and can be seen here:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/27/interesting-memo-from-the-white-house-on-science-and-climate-collaboration-with-the-uk/

The memo states that “Recognizing the great potential for productive cooperation in these domains, the Prime Minister and President reaffirmed during the State visit their mutual commitment to strong collaboration in science and higher education”.

It notes specific examples of existing cooperation in those fields.  At the end, there is this statement:  ”They emphasized the importance of data sharing and open science data policies that support climate research and modelling”.

The trouble is, their own warmist poster boys on both sides of the Atlantic strongly disagree.  The British Royal Society honcho, Paul Nurse, must be very angry with them.  He claims that requests for data amount to intimidation, and even claims that people request information from scientists prior to publication of their findings.  He doesn’t say how people know what to ask for before the scientist publishes – I guess the malicious data requesters must be psychic:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/26/nursing-their-wounds-with-salt/

It is possible that data sharing and open science data policies are the last thing he wants to see, and his outburst is simply an attack on those who want data transparency, i.e. those who want scientists to follow the principles of science.

On the US side of the Atlantic, a court battle over the FOI request for the release of Michael Mann’s work-related emails has raged for some time.  The University of Virginia first claimed they had deleted the emails.  After investigation proved that the emails had not been deleted, they then argued that they should be kept confidential in the name of Academic Freedom.  Finally, a court has ordered that the emails must be released:

http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/05/freedom-information-trumps-academic-freedom

The leaders of the UK and the US both create policies reflecting the views of the AGW-promoting scientists.  The same scientists who refuse to share their working data and working correspondence.  The same “scientists” who do not want their findings scientifically tested.  If the leaders really believe their call for data sharing and open science, they should be taking steps to ensure that scientists comply with the call.

In the traditional FPP (First-past-the-Post) system, the candidate receiving the most votes is elected.  And even though most electorate candidates are chosen by the party heirarchy, at least the voters in the electorate can chose between them.  Poorly performing MPs can be voted right out of parliament, and they face the vote every three years.

Unlike NZ, Britain retains the traditional system.  A recent referendum overwhelmingly rejected a form of proportional representation called the Alternative Vote, which is similar to the STV (Single Transferable Vote) system used in Australia.  Both systems require voters to rank candidates in order of preference, and if no candidate scores more than 50% of the vote, a formula is applied counting up all the preferential votes.  The result can be the election of candidate who was the first choice of very few voters, but the most popular second choice.  In other words, nobody gets what they wanted.

NZ’s MMP system at least does not have that drawback.  Each voter votes twice – one vote for the member for his or her electorate, and one party vote.  The elected members representing each constituency are still chosen by FPP according to the electorate votes, so the one with the most votes wins.  ”Proportional” representation is supposedly achieved by having list MPs.  A party that wins no electorate seats must achieve at least 5% of the overall party vote before it has any MPs in parliament.  The total number of  MPs for each party in parliament (electoral plus list MPs) is proportional to the party’s share of the overall “party vote”.  So MMP has another advantage – it is not vulnerable to gerrymandering.

But it does have other drawbacks.

Any party with 5% or more of the overall party vote will have 5% or more of the MPs in parliament.  Thus, small parties that may possibly never gain an electoral seat in parliament can be represented there by one or more list MPs.  Gee, that sounds fair.  Bingo – proportional representation!

Except that it is not really proportional.  The result of MMP is a much higher likelihood of coalition government, in which no major party gains a clear majority and so must go into coalition with one or more other parties in order to form a government.  Because they wish to maintain public perception of their points of difference, the major mainstream parties do not form coalitions with each other.  Inevitably, the coalitions are formed with one main party and one or more minor ones.  And that is why the representation of the minor party is in fact disproportionate.  A minor party in coalition with a major one has a proportional share of the total seats, but much more that a proportional voice in parliament – it has real power.  Because the price it demands for of going into coalition is the promise of the major partner to promote and vote for an agreed set of its policies or private member’s bills.  It is, remember, a minor party.  If  only 5% of voters have given it their party vote, there is no assurance that the 95% of those who did not do so actually accept its policies.  Yet with this arrangement, some of them will become law.  The tail ends up wagging the dog – a recipe for bad law and bad government.

It has another major drawback.  List MPs are never directly elected by the voters – the public has no opportunity to chose who is in an who is out.  Each party creates its own list of potential list MPs, in order of party preference.  When all the party votes are counted and the numbers allocated to each successful party, the seats are allocated strictly in party list order.   And naturally the parties tend to stack the top order of the list with MPs they want to retain, even if the public rejects them.  The top of the order is usually occupied by senior electorate MPs, to keep their positions safe regardless of what the voters might prefer.  In effect, MPs at the top of the list can almost never be voted out.  That can hardly be called democracy.  MMP should be scrapped – it is neither truly proportional nor truly democratic.

The NZ Herald thinks otherwise.  After the British result, and in anticipation of the forthcoming NZ referendum on the future of MMP, the Herald has published an editorial (see Appendix) calling for the survival of MMP.  The Herald firmly believes it is a Good Thing, giving the voters of NZ the government they want.  The Herald article even says that “tails have not wagged dogs”.  I disagree, firmly.

Were it not for MMP, NZ First, the Greens, the Maori Party and ACT either would never have been represented in parliament or would have had only a couple of seats.  Under the cosy coalition arrangements with MMP, this is the reality:

• In coalition with Labour, NZ First’s Winston Peters scored the plum role of Minister of Foreign Affairs.  Hardly the choice of the NZ voter!
• In coalition with Labour, the Green’s Sue Bradford rammed through the most hated legislation in NZ history, the unnecessary and totally ineffective anti-smacking bill that has had zero effect on child abuse.
• In coalition with National and against the wishes of almost everybody, the Maori Party has overturned the Foreshore and Seabed act

God knows what will happen if ACT under Brash forms a coalition with National after the forthcoming elections.

Appendix – the Herald Editorial:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10724716

There is something very wrong with our priorities.

The world is reeling from, and must deal with, natural and man-made horrors.  Natural ones like the Christchurch and Japanese earthquakes, or tropical cyclones.

Man-made ones like the western world’s EU and UN-orchestrated CAGW-driven self-destruction and Libyan carnage.   And the consequences of the  stupidity of installing  nuclear power plants that rely on power to to run cooling systems that prevent fires, meltdowns and widespread radioactive contamination after an emergency shutdown.  Without considering that an emergency capable of forcing a shutdown can also knock out power supplies.  Especially in an earthquake and tsunami-prone location like Fukushima.

Rightly, these horrors are reported.  They deserve our concern.

In the middle of all this, I see a report of the views of an English TV producer given wide publicity.  Brian True-May is the producer of  the much-loved “Midsomer Murders”.  According to him, the ITV1 detective drama is “the last bastion of Englishness” and he asserts that ethnic minorities have no place in English villages.  That, of course, is ammunition for the politically correct brigade, who campaign actively to have every British programme portray minorities.

This is the “issue”, you see.  The programme has run for 14 series and has featured only one ethnic minority character!  And we are told that ITV is in “urgent discussions” about the lack of diversity in the programme.

That view is hotly disputed by the novelist Anthony Horowitz, as reported in the Telegraph: http://t.co/KlK8Ohw.  Horowitz wrote the first episodes of the drama and came up with the title.  As Horowitz notes:

“Brian True-May’s comments were inappropriate and should not have been made, but in our over-sensitive society there is this silly reaction to anything we say that involves ethnicity or religion.

Brian True-May’s comments were clearly inappropriate because race is an irrelevance here. The point about Midsomer Murders is that, in a village in Midsomer, all outsiders are equally unwelcome whatever their colour. If your family has lived here for 300 years, they’re likely to be white. That’s quite obvious.

“It was a foolish observation to make because colour is not an issue.”

The truth is, there are very few non-white people living in the Midsomer villages.  According to the landlord of the The Six Bells in Warborough, Oxon, pub that features so often in the series, there is only one black man in the village,  Who, by the way, drinks at the pub.  The series depicts the villages as they are.  Does that make it racist?  Is “The fresh Prince of Beverly Hills” racist?  Is “The Cosby Show” racist?

Of course not – none of them are.  So why bother to float achingly politically correct and factually incorrect ideas?  Well. there’s a guaranteed audience – a public that slavishly laps up celebrity gossip, and thirsts for controversy and sensational news.  Were it not for that demand, and the existence of media to satisfy it, ideas like that would float like lead balloons.

There is quite enough really sensational and controversial news to report. There are sufficient matters of real importance to discuss.

Like me, a bloke called Eric Worrall comments on journalists’ blogs from time to time.  He has an interesting explanation for why people concentrate on trivia, and are so ready to believe rubbish like this accusation of racism.  Decadence is what he calls it.  He notes that decadent societies focus on the inconsequential and lose sight of what is really important.

That’s probably the most accurate definition of decadence that I have ever seen.

On Tuesday 8 March 2011, Justice Joseph Williams sentenced Rikki Leigh Scott Ngatai-Check, 23, to life imprisonment, with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years, for kicking a two-year old toddler to death for wetting his pants.  Seventeen years before he can even apply for parole.  That’s pretty strong these days, when our penal systems are organised on the precept that all criminals are basically good guys, who need only TLC and rehabilitation to set them right, in spite of our appalling rate of criminal recidivism.

The sentence is deservedly strong.  Here is the shocking sequence of events, transcribed from the NZ Herald report:

The murderer was in charge of the little boy, who slept on the couch while Ngatai-Check spotted cannabis with a friend.  The boy woke up wet.

Ngatai-Check spun the child around, slamming him into a coffee table.  The impact broke the child’s ribs, causing internal bleeding.  The caring killer took the wounded boy to the toilet and left him there, while he went to the bedroom to play video games.

Five or ten minutes later, the boy came into the bedroom, trailing toilet paper.  Ngatai-Check sat up and planted a roundhouse style kick in the boy’s stomach, tearing internal tissue.  Then he kicked him again, ramming him against the wardrobe door.  This time the impact split the boy’s pancreas.

Ngatai-Check then took the boy to hospital, where he died.

One might expect the judge’s words to be at least as strong as the sentence.  One would be wrong.  This is what Justice Joseph Williams said:

“You did a monstrous thing, but I do not think you are a monster.  No one says you intended to kill Karl”.

Noting that Ngatai-Check had no previous history of violent behaviour, the judge said the stress of his hidden relationship was possibly made worse on the day because “you probably didn’t want baby Karl dumped on you again and just wanted to chill out”.  Moreover, Justice Williams said beatings from a stepfather when he was young had taught Ngatai-Check that children should “harden up”.  The judge noted further that in later years Ngatai-Check had been in the shadows of the Wanganui drug and gang scene, which normalised brutality. There, “violence is not just OK, it is downright cool”.

But the judge said there were “sadly too many cases like this”, in which adults abused the trust of vulnerable children – some much worse than Ngatai-Check’s.  He also stressed that the mandatory 17-year non-parole period was introduced by Parliament as a reminder that “these little people are at our mercy. We can so easily kill them”.

In NZ, murder means unlawful deliberate homicide.  Intent must be established to the satisfaction of the jury for a murder conviction to be obtained.  Yet here we have a sentencing judge who states that the killer, poor little Rikki Ngatai-Check, did not intend the killing, that he is a victim of his upbringing and gang lifestyle, wanted nothing more sinister than to chill out, and is receiving the heavy sentence only because an act of parliament made it mandatory!

What on earth is the judge thinking of?  All I can offer is a very astute quote from a Daily Telegraph blog posting by a British journalist, James Delingpole:

“We no longer understand or value our civilisation; indeed many of us feel rather embarrassed about it. We have been taught to view all our great historical achievements through a filter of post-colonial guilt; we have learned the weasel art of cultural relativism where, in their own special way, cultures that practise female circumcision and bury homosexuals under walls are just as vibrant, valid and meaningful as the one that gave us Michelangelo, penicillin and the splitting of the atom; we’ve been persuaded that elitism and authority are undesirable”.

Judges like Williams may be part of the reason that Parliament found it necessary to impose a seventeen-year minimum parole period for child-murderers.  I am sad that it was necessary, but glad they did so.  Frankly, I wish they would do so for all murders.

It is time to think carefully about the future of coal and oil-fired power stations in the NZ power-supply portfolio.   New Zealand has a lot of choices for power generation, renewable and non-renewable.  The renewables we have include hydro, geothermal and even the most expensive and unreliable of all renewable sources, wind.  We also have coal and gas-fired thermal stations.

We need them all.  Our capacity can be crippled by earthquakes at any time, and we would be foolish indeed not to  be prepared.

2503 MW of NZ’s electric power capacity is provided by dams built along the Southern Alps, which exist because of the great alpine fault in the South Island.  They provide reliable, renewable power, but they are at risk if (when) the really big earthquake strikes.  The recent Christchurch earthquake tragedy that has befallen New Zealand is a reminder of what is just around the corner, and when that happens a large proportion of our power supply will be severely compromised, if not destroyed.

NZ’s biggest thermal plant, with a capacity of 1448 MW, is at Huntly in the North Island.   It is run by Genesis Energy.  Here is the information from Genesis:

http://www.genesisenergy.co.nz/genesis/index.cfm?0E16177E-E313-418B-F397-3021BCE6E1EF

And here is the Wikipedia information about the site:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H…

According to the Wikipedia entry, there are plans to emasculate the Huntly facility, shutting down much of its capability and reducing it to a backup role.  The entry says:

“The plant, as one of the biggest carbon dioxide greenhouse gas generators of the country, contributing over half of New Zealand’s emissions of greenhouse gases from electricity generation, has repeatedly drawn the ire of environmentalists and has been the focus of associated protests. A 2006 government report outlining future anti-climate change and energy policies was seen by the operator as a sign that the plant might have to be closed by 2015 under these plans, with around 10 years of design life still remaining.

Resource consents to operate the four coal fired units expire in 2013.  Due to increasing costs of coal, equipment reaching its design life and costs due to the emissions trading scheme, operation of the four steam units is expected to be phased out, with their role declining to dry year, reserve generation. One of the four coal fired units will be taken out of service in 2012, and a second in 2015.”

I don’t know how much of what the Wikipedia article says about the capacity reduction is true.  I hope it is not, and that the plant will continue to operate.  It is one thing to aim to maximise power generation from renewable sources, especially reliable and high-producing ones like hydroelectric and geothermal sources.

Relying totally on renewable energy resources is quite another matter, especially when they are at risk.  And given our position on the Pacific rim of fire, those resources certainly are at risk.  More than most countries, we need considerable redundancy and diversity of power supply.  Failure to build more fuelled thermal power plants would be as foolish as failing to to take advantage of our hydroelectric and geothermal opportunities.  Removal of existing thermal capacity years before the end of its design life would be more than foolish.

It would be criminally stupid.

Those arguing for action against the perceived threat they call variously Catastrophic Anthropgenic Global Warming, Climate Change, Climate Disruption or whatever new name they can come up with to try to keep it alive have long relied on the argument that there is overwhelming scientific consensus about it and the “the science is settled”.

In another blog I have argued that consensus has no bearing on scientific accuracy, and that no science is ever settled.  AGW believers say that is nonsense.

Well, it now seems there is scientific consensus that AGW is incorrect, unscientific, fraudulent, and on the data available so far, most probably plain wrong:

http://www.climatedepot.com/a/9035/SPECIAL-REPORT-More-Than-1000-International-Scientists-Dissent-Over-ManMade-Global-Warming-Claims–Challenge-UN-IPCC–Gore (Hat tip to Joe Bastardi through one of his tweets).

In the face of this, look out for AGW supporters declaiming that consensus has no bearing on accuracy…

There are some unbelievable comments in made in the “New Zealand Herald” about the recent tragic spate of fatal accidents involving bicycles and motor vehicles.  Some suggest licensing and WOFs for bicycles, as if that would make cycling less hazardous!   Another comment says there is  ”no space for cyclists on the road – they need their own lane they are the biggest hazard, they put themselves in a lot of danger by being on the road.”  The cyclists didn’t die on motorways that are restricted to motorised traffic – they were killed on ordinary roads.

Sadly, the comments above were representative of the tone of a significant proportion of the comments about the Herlad reports.  Comments that illustrate what is wrong with the attitude of too many NZ motorists.

One comment from a man named Rhys has it right – NZ should use the Dutch approach.

The Dutch approach is twofold – it addresses the safety of the roads, and it addresses the attitudes and behaviour of motorists.   The Netherlands invests heavily in bike lanes to reduce the likelihood of accidents.  Real bike lanes – not a half-share of a footpath.  These run parallel to all major roads, and cross the countryside.

But of course, even in the Netherlands, not all roads have bike lanes.  Dutch road laws and behaviours are based on the premise that roads are for all users – pedestrians, cyclists and motor vehicles.  The only roads on which motor vehicles “rule” are motorways.  On all other roads, cyclists and pedestrians rule.  Motor vehicles use them as a convenience, not as an unfettered right.  The legal onus is on the motorist to avoid collisions with people and cyclists, without exception.

That does not mean that there are no road rules for cyclists.  Of course there are.  Cyclists can be prosecuted for dangerous behaviour or for failing to give way, and police will act when cyclists break the rules.  But being in the right does not prevent prosecution of a motorist who collides with a bicycle.  It is extremely rare for a motorist to be cleared after a collision with a bicycle.  If the motorist does not have incontrovertible proof that he/she could not have possibly avoided the accident, even when the cyclist was flagrantly in the wrong, the motorist will be found guilty, and the punishment is severe.  The same goes for accidents with pedestrians.  The result is that motorists are very careful of cyclists and pedestrians, very patient when cyclists are on the road (even two or three abreast), and very courteous toward pedestrians.

The Netherlands is the safest place in the world for a cyclist or pedestrian.  And traffic still flows, quite happily.