Guest post by WUWT volunteer moderator Andi Cockroft
I was fortunate the other night to attend a presentation by Christopher Monckton as part of his Climate of Freedom Tour of New Zealand.
Organised and arranged by Climate Realist NZ (not to be associated with Climate Reality), the tour starts at the north of the North Island of New Zealand, and works its way inexorable southwards to the tip of the South Island. I owe a personal round of thanks to Neil & Esther Henderson for their unstinting service to the sceptic movement, and for all their energies in arranging this exhaustive tour.
I happen to live near Wellington in the south of the North Island. It was a tad unfortunate then, that the breakfast presentation that should have taken place less than 1Km from where I live was cancelled due to lack of bookings – perhaps the 7am start, the time limit of 1 hour, or the $65 price tag all colluded. So it was that I had to travel some 40Km up the coast to the township of Paraparaumu on the North Island’s Kapiti Coast.
A second venue in nearby Wellington was for Press only, with just a few seats open to the public – sadly I missed out there.
Nonetheless, up in Paraparaumu I had about 20 minutes pre-session chat with His Lordship, whilst he greeted as many attendees as he possibly could – what a wonderfully charming and engaging thing for a speaker to do!
The local Kapakapanui Lions Club seemingly spared no expense, with a piper in full regalia to welcome Monckton into the building, and later a mighty Wurlitzer organ the likes of which I have not seen for probably 40 years or more played most enthusiastically serving as warm-up to the event.
As the lights died down, the Wurlitzer began playing again, and as it arose from the depths beneath the stage, there alongside was Monkton emerging as though from Hades – I wonder if Mann et al would make something of our very own “devil incarnate” ??
Monckton starts with great humour, and explains things in their simplest forms (although later certain complexities leave me struggling with many decades since I studied statistics at University)
Sadly though, this particular presentation was skewed by the needs of local politics.
As I said earlier, this presentation was on an area known as Kapiti, and here, the Kapiti District Council have just created mayhem by declaring some 1800 homes unsustainable due to projected coastal erosion. The nett effect of that has been to likely halve the value of many million-dollar homes at the stroke of a pen.
His Lordship was noticeable furious at Council’s actions, and chose to devote a significant portion of his presentation to debunking the science behind their alleged condemnation of perfectly good housing to the scrap heap.
Council plans to slowly withdraw services such as water, sewage, electricity etc to make these homes virtually uninhabitable. All based on a science that at first sight seems quite shonky.
Sad that the expansion of the discussion of sea-level rise was at the expense of any mention of Solar influence – something of significant interest to me. A small Q&A did address some of that but not much.
In all, just over 1½ hours of thoroughly well thought out, captivating, humorous and thought-provoking presentation, followed by about 20 mins of Q&A made the whole evening very well worthwhile
I would encourage any who can get to hear his lordship to do so – and most engaging, entertaining and informative session
Andi
===========================================================
Notes on 1800 Homes in Kapiti
The area in question is mostly built on sand dunes accreted over millennia. This area of the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island is well fed with sand from rivers to the North – particularly the Wanganui, Rangitikei and Manawatu.
To the North in an area known as Horowhenua, I have seen fences erected during the earliest European settlement in around 1840, now standing about 140 metres inland from the current foreshore.
Here in Kapiti, at the north, accretion seems unabated, in a couple of places to the South some erosion is evident.
A paper published in the N.Z. Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research entitled “Rates of coastal erosion and accretion in New Zealand” by Jeremy Gibb (Department of Geology, Victoria University of Wellington) provides an excellent introduction to the coastal dynamics of the whole coastline of New Zealand. His results for the north of Paraparaumu show 160 metres accretion since 1877. At Paraparaumu itself, things seem pretty stable with some accretion, whilst to the south – erosion in places, accretion in others.
So why the big difference reported now? And, why such heavy-handed treatment by Kapiti Coast District Council?
It seems highly likely that the 1800 home-owners will band together to create some form of class-action seeking at the very least a Judicial Review of Council’s decisions. Monckton doesn’t stop here in his advice however – he is absolutely convinced that the elected Councillors who have voted in favour of these actions could be held personally to account. This on the basis that making reckless decisions negate any protection that legislation would otherwise afford.
A report prepared by private consultancy Coastal Systems, here, forms the basis of Council’s decision-making process – and makes numerous assumptions such as variations in “storminess”
Nonetheless, the report is not directly about flooding from sea-level rise, rather it is estimating erosion – not necessarily the same things.
Also, things are not quite as they may seem. Coastal Systems claim their paper for Council was peer reviewed, they fail to declare relationships that actually make it “Pal Review”. Gibbs paper was naturally peer-reviewed – and done so before the advent of post-normal science.
I find all this quite amusing if it were not so catastrophic for those affected, since a large slice of the area is in such a strong accretion zone !!
Just one example that I cannot explain:-
Here is a small sample from Coastal System’s report of the Beach at Waikanae – just to the north of Paraparaumu
In the 1978 Paper, Gibb has accretion of 160 metres since 1877, whilst the new paper shows what they forecast in 50 years (yellow) and 100 years (orange)
Why should sustained accretion over millennia suddenly change? I just wonder what Coastal Systems mean by “increases in wave height and storminess”
You can download the full range of shoreline maps/projections from KCDC here
I regret, I downloaded the Gibbs 1978 paper years ago, and cannot readily find it today. If there is enough interest I will look at making it available online.
Second paragraph – second last line — “sceptic”
Glenn Thompson: Is “sceptic” wrong?
Cut from web:
In most of their senses, there is no difference between skeptic and sceptic. Skeptic is the preferred spelling in American and Canadian English, and sceptic is preferred in the main varieties of English from outside North America. This extends to all derivatives, including sceptical/skeptical and scepticism/skepticism.
Glenn: In American English it has a k, pretty much everywhere else in the English speaking world spells it as written.
“Rates of coastal erosion and accretion in New Zealand” by Jeremy Gibb, 1978.
PDF, 1.9Mb, tested link, good photocopy:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00288330.1978.9515770
As the price of those properties drop, it’ll be interesting to see if any of the councillors snap one up.
You go Andi.
Bloke down the pub said on April 18, 2013 at 10:26 am:
You’re thinking too small. First they declared them unsustainable, then they’ll make that true by cutting services to make them uninhabitable. Next step is to bulldoze the blighted uninhabited abandoned properties.
Then they’ll sell the whole area off to the resort developers promising sustainable construction compatible with sea level rise. Floating hotels perhaps? Followed by (at least some of) the councilors retiring to the Bermuda Islands, next to their close family and strangely-large bank accounts.
I do not see a benefit in attempting to encourage a preference for one or the other spelling of skeptic/sceptic. There would be a benefit if there were some confusion caused by the choice. I cannot see that such confusion exists. If one looks to the masters of skepticism/scepticism there is no consistent usage. For example, the American George Santayana used the title “Scepticism and Animal Faith.”
Glenn
I remain highly sceptical using the US spelling of skeptic – a classical English education don’t you know
Kadaka
I am grateful for the link
Andi
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
April 18, 2013 at 10:49 am
Evil does think big.
Glenn, with all the info in this post… all you got from it was sceptic??
If I owned one of those homes you can be sure a class action lawsuit would be in the works.
OT,
Temperatures and catasrophic weather aren’t correlated, but what about warming and weather. Has any type of weather increased since temps leveled off? My hypothesis is that warming leads to good/more stable weather and is resposible for much of our economic luck and good food production since the 70s.
now wouldnt it be silly to write a report saying there is nothing to worry about,
far better to write a report that people `want` to read, to see the worst (the voyeur in us all) and if at all turns out to be fine with no erosion everyone is relieved and the report writers say “its always better to be on the cautious side”, After 5 years no one will ever take them to task, or ask for the oney back, which they may have already spent.
good luck to any group action I say
>> A second venue in nearby Wellington was for Press only,
>> with just a few seats open to the public – sadly I missed out there.
Actually the meeting in Wellington was for members
of the National Press Club (24) and members of the
public (50), plus a few Climate Realist people: I know,
as I was taking the bookings. I don’t think anyone from
the media was there.
Good read Andi. Sad to see this stupidity, seemingly, growing in NZ. Yet, some years back the Masterton District Council “forgot” to renew it’s “permit” with the Wellington Environment Court to discharge semi and non-semi treated sewerage into rivers in the Wiararapa. So much for pollution control.
But I agree with other posts, it’s about down-valuing property values only to be snapped up in the future.
> the meeting in Wellington was for members of the National Press Club
[…]
> I don’t think anyone from the media was there.
Uh?
It’s a great pity that this tour is generating more momentum just as it ends. Following the lead of the National Business Review, other media have picked up the ball, and the publicity is starting to grow by the day. Another month of Monckton’s presence would have really counted.
Of course , we were blessed by the refusal of a major university to even contemplate debate; such refusal inevitably lead to the conclusion that the “scientists” had no answer to Monckton.
The NZ public likes nothing better than to see someone’s arguments totally and publicly demolished, particularly if that someone is one of that to-be-despised specie known as a tall poppy. The public has rightly concluded that the “scientists ” were unable to refute Monckton’s argument ; at least it does show that they know that they have not a leg to stand on.
A significant victory and some welcome publicity!
Sceptic skeptic.
In American, ‘e’ or ‘i’ after ‘c’ has the c pronounced as ‘s.’ So ‘sceptic’ would have the same pronunciation as ‘septic,’ of which my brother has a tank buried in his back yard, as in “the grass is always greener over the septic tank.”
Why the Brits and (through inheritance) Kiwis have difficulty here I do not know. After all, the French have the same ‘i’ or ‘e’ after ‘c’ rule, and Brits do use the French measuring system and spell so many words with the French ‘re’ instead of ‘er,’ e.g. ‘theatre’, or ‘litre,’ Problem probably dates from AD 1066.
The Russians even go so far as to pronounce ‘c’ as ‘s’ all the time.
Admittedly, we Americans (Yanks, generically, but I live in Texas ) do have difficulty with arcing and arced, which keep the ‘k’ sound.
Perhaps the Kapiti 1800 should declare independence. It worked for us.
Interview:-
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/nights/audio/2552466/calm-on-climate
1) Glenn Thompson/geronimo:
My Webster’s dictonary says that “sceptic” is an alternate spelling for ‘skeptic”. As I recall from my college English courses, the use of alternate spellings (though not wrong) is generally frowned upon.
2) Regarding this article, if I was one of those 1800 homeowners, I would be outraged at what the local council has so arrogantly done. To take such an action on the basis of just one paper (with an arguably dubious scientifically sound or objective basis) should make those council members worthly of a recall effort if nothing else. The very least the homeowners should do is start a class action legal case to fight it.
Hi Rex.
I did email you asking for a place, but gained no reply – probably got lost in some SPAM filter somewhere. I perhaps assumed too much about the audience paricipation from the published itinery that stated ” Free entry to Press Club members, $10 non-members RSVP compulsory as numbers very limited..
Hope your evening was a resounding success
Andi
Christopher, Viscount Monckton is a brave and brilliant man, and I am one of his fans. But can we please cut the “His Lordship” thing out ? Yes, Britain is a monarchy, it has hereditary titles, Monckton inherited one, but this is no reason to sound like kitchen staff in Downton Abbey.
I wonder how much of the “red” zoning in Christchurch following their earthquake was influenced by projections of sea level rise? Much of the zone includes areas that sank up to half a metre with the earthquake, but there is also an uncanny overlap of this zone with zones drawn on the city map showing areas likely to be affected/inundated by projected sea level rise.
Grrrr – missed it. Was there any promotion in the newspaper ?
Here follows my letter to Wellington’s DominionPost
which, to my surprise, was printed the following day.
Christopher Monckton congratulated me for it at
the event the following evening. ……. :
Professors Renwick and Frame can bluster away about
Christopher Monckton for as long as they like, but it won’t
do them the slightest bit of good. Long gone are the days
when these types can sit in their ivory towers and issue edicts
as if they were High Priests, since there is now available via
the Internet a wealth of data about ‘global’ (sic) ‘warming’ (sic)
and the even more philosophically rancid “climate change”.
They will of course claim that they refuse to engage with Monckton
because to do so would lend his views respectability, but many of
us know the real reason: in any toe to toe slugfest with Monckton,
the professors would be on the canvas in double quick time.
Hi Luca
Although I live in New Zealand, I was born and bred in England. I am one of those who happen to belive in the Monarchy, and in general I support the concept of the peerage – not beacuse it is superb (it’s not) – but beacuse I belive it is the best system around and its long-lived history is its greatest strength.
Also the “His Lordship” is very much a tongue-in-cheek statement in this day and age – please do not take me too seriously – I don’t!
Andi
Monckton isn’t a Lord.
Some have tried to make capital of this by highlighting it, though I don’t suppose he ever called himself Lord Monckton.- this article is unhelpful in this respect.
Here’s what Fowler’s classic Modern English Usage says:
I really can’t get why you would start cutting off utilities without seeing with your eyes that erosion was going to be a problem. You might just as well sign off on emissions targets projected to reduce the temperature in 100 years by less than you can measure.
Interesting about this Canadian/American skeptic thing… I would probably pronounce sceptic as septic too.
Sceptic or skeptic.
Five years ago, I would have fulminated against skeptic. I have come to understand that spelling, and indeed texting [gr8, m8!], are actually about communication.
Do you get your intended message across properly to your addressee, your readers?
You must know your audience. A nineteen-year-old, texting (or IMing) to a peer should use a different language to that chosen when texting to me – several decades past nineteen, now, I confirm.
Professionally, I have to review my work carefully, because I often address intelligent, experienced people – but few have English as their mother-tongue.
Similarly, orthography can be a barrier – if the spelling is so badly wrong that the message is ambiguous or – worse – twisted completely, you haven’t ‘communicated properly’.
That’s the test.
Punctuation, too, needs to be carefully selected.
So – sceptic or skeptic?
For the WUWT audience/readership, I suggest it doesn’t matter.
The continuing CAGW scam – by whatever name it goes this evening – does matter, profoundly, and you all know that.
Auto
The way the Coastal Systems get the lines going inland at the point in the map shown above when there has been steady accretion over the last 130 years (if not millenia) is by first fitting a linear model with time (1942-2007), demonstrating that the time coefficient is significantly different from zero, and then assuming that the time coefficient will be zero for the forecast period (partly to make it easy for Council staff to calculate the hazard lines). I did mean what I wrote. Millions written off property values based on a buried assumption design to give Council staff an easy life.
The erosion is then generated by adding back in a “short-term error term” (3 x SSE from the linear model, although since this has now been discarded one can only guess at the justification); a term for global sea level rise (despite a significant proportion being in the base data); a term for instability of the dunes that would speed up erosion (but not effect accretion); and an adjustment for measurement errors (very crudely calculated).
So science would no doubt tells us there is no discernible risk or emergent hazard on the coast line (except perhaps to shipping). Much easier for Council staff not to have to draw a line than have them draw a straight one.
As some said you got to accentuate the negative and eliminate the positive.
Hi Andi,
last weekend I had the pleasure of attending both meetings in the Palmerston North area. The one in town had a venue change at the last hour because the first hall had been double booked. Everyone nonchantly trundled on down to the quickly arranged All Saints hall and the only limitations there was a constraint on question time due to that hall also having been booked for something else later. Lord Monckton spoke for close to two and a half hours that just seemed to roll along. He made short work of one interrupter who missed the plot (pun intended) of a graph that Monckton was presenting. He certainly doesn’t suffer fools at all, no matter which side they are on.
I then went out to Asshurst, a satelitte suburb of Palmy, in the evening. Monckton made enough changes so that it wasn’t exactly the same as the afternoon’s presentation. Once again he took time to meet and greet the guests, so this time I had a few chats with him.
The welcome he received at both venues and Paraparaumu would not have been afforded to the NIWA scientists who recently labeled Monckton “a clown.” With their (NIWA’s) continued failure to predict our droughts, even when they are in full flight, they have a cheek to expect us to take seriously their predictions of a Mediterranean climate for New Zealand in the long term future. The NIWA musings fly in the face of evidence of similar droughts in the past 100 years. The only clowns in this debate are those who continue to fail in what should be their core work, i.e. providing a good service for the tax payers of New Zealand, all the while offering unsubstantiated guesses from their ivory towers, and then asking us to trust them because they are the ones in the white coats complete with ball point pens in their top pockets.
As for the Kapiti Coast. Anyone who has visited Waikanae Beach over the past 50 years as I have can see the accretion in action. The wreck of the Hydrabad was once on the mean tide line and at high tide as kids we could dive from the bow into water deep enough for the purpose. The little bit of the bow that remains visible is well above the high tide mark and in danger of being completely buried. A sign of definite dangerous erosion.Yeah Right!
Cheers
Coops.
“Monckton starts with great humour, and explains things in their simplest forms (although later certain complexities leave me struggling… .”
Thanks, Mr. Cockroft, for your so generously volunteering to help make these fine (well, most of the time, heh, heh) discussions possible. Thanks for the above report, too.
Regarding the above quote, if Lahd (or would it be Lode?) Monckton (who is, indeed, a witty and well-informed champion of truth) did not always make himself clear even to someone of your intelligence, Mr. Cockroft, then Monckton needs to re-word his speech. A “Freedom Tour” will enlighten, thus, free, no one who can’t understand “wot that bloke’s troyin’ tuh soy.”
Remember who your audience is, my dear Lord Monckton!
[inspired, in part, by Chuck STOP TALKING IN TECHNOBABBLE Nolan #:)]
CD (@CD153) says:
April 18, 2013 at 12:51 pm
1) Glenn Thompson/geronimo:
My Webster’s dictonary says that “sceptic” is an alternate spelling for ‘skeptic”. As I recall from my college English courses, the use of alternate spellings (though not wrong) is generally frowned upon.
If we’re going to be a nal about it, you should be using the word “alternative,” not “alternate.”
Only if a High Plains Drifter–
Drifted into a Al Gore show,
Only if to take a long look all round
Drifted in with High Plains Windmills whrilling in his mind.
Only a tax paying High Plains Drifter this one–
Drifted into why the tax bill and the electric bill so high,
Only to find out Al Gore stole the show and
Drifted out to sell the CO2 credits glore.
Only now a seeing High Plains Drifter–
Drifted into the view of a James Hansen or two/too
Only now under the truth doth lie/lies
Drifted in too, and on to every High Plains hereof.
Only if a High Plains Drifter,
Drifted into their gaze with his red angery eyes,
Only if the anger grows, only if the anger shows
Drifted to the fences by this gale of fraud.
Only a High Plains Drifted herd–
Drifted into the taxed poor house,
Only if all the herd, all the RED ANGERY EYES
Drifted here to use the anger like that first High Plains Drifter.
>> Monckton isn’t a Lord.
Wrong. Christopher Monckton is a Viscount, and as
such may be addressed as Lord Monckton. I quote
as a precedent the former Governor General of New
Zealand: Lord Cobham (Viscount Cobham).
These usages have nothing to do with the current
state or structure of the peerage.
I suspect CM probably prefers to be addressed as
‘Christopher’.
CD (@CD153) says:
April 18, 2013 at 12:51 pm
1) Glenn Thompson/geronimo:
My Webster’s dictonary says that “sceptic” is an alternate spelling for ‘skeptic”. As I recall from my college English courses, the use of alternate spellings (though not wrong) is generally frowned upon….
The “preference” is regional, not universal. If you’re not from North America, or you are, but have an English grandmother who had a strong influence on your language and spelling, then the preference may not be so obvious, or even completely confusing. The “k” is merely a North American substitution for the English “c”, which they borrowed from the French spelling, which the French grabbed from the Latin “scepticus” where both “c”s are pronounced as “k”s. Of course the Romans borrowed the word from the Greeks who spelled it with a kappa. So, full circle, more or less.
Shhh – you’d better not tell them at http://www.lordmoncktonfoundation.com/
or see what wikipedia has to say http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viscount “…He is addressed as “My Lord”. …
Andi
Theo Goodwin says ‘Evil does think big’
I am sceptical that the local council is “evil’
Talking recently to a local Councillor,just over the ditch,he made the comment that he held the balance of power and that otherwise the council was evenly, politically divided.
His situation was that he holds two scientific degrees, useful for making decisions.On the other hand no other person was even tertiary educated to university level on that council.
Local councils have stopped attracting busy people with tertiary qualifications in some localities.
Where this happens they are not ‘evil’ they just believe what the last scientist told them, and fail to unlearn it. As such a new layer of incompetence inserts itself over the existing mindset to be reelected as a driving political need.
Sometimes taking councils to court is a good idea when both principle and livelihood are threatened, especially your own home.An operation of natural justice based upon truth.
Usually councils have a fixed budget for litigation and cannot exceed it on one matter as they cannot then defend other more pressing matters and are liable for more compensation in these.
They then settle on a face saving formula.
I went to his talk in Nelson last night.
I have always suspected something fishy with the AGW scare ever since I read Al Gores Inconvenient Truth. Yet his story was lauded by the major science institutes and he won a Nobel prize for it.
I wanted to know more and have been following developments ever since.
I have always looked at AGW items in isolation, what Lord Monckton did was to present a great chunk of the story in one two-hour hit. The shoddy claims of AGW proponents were laid bare one after another in a bewilderingly seamless manner.
He demonstrated the repeated AGW grafting of different data sets and the manipulation of historical data to give a desired outcome.
The failure of every IPCC prediction, each and every one exaggerating to the side of alarmism.
He finished with some simple calculations showing the astronomical cost of attempting to halt global warming.
I was glad to have the chance to see Lord Monckton in action, he knows his stuff, his message is clear and he is an entertaining orator.
PS He has great courage to buck the system with his message, and has very thick skin!
Hi Ian
I hope the peoples of Asshurst enjoyed the presentation as well
Andi
Ian Cooper says:
April 18, 2013 at 1:42 pm
Thanks for the report on the Kapiti Coast. When viewing the photos in the Guardian, it was obvious that shifting sands common to all sandy beaches could account for everything pictured.
Lewis P Buckingham says:
April 18, 2013 at 2:02 pm
Enjoyed your post. But my comment was about Evil and not about the members or deliberations of the local council.
“4wdweather says:
April 18, 2013 at 1:27 pm
Monckton isn’t a Lord.”
Repeating BS is never going to make it true.
There is no such thing as a “Lord” per se, it is the form of address that is used for certain classes of title. These titles are ranked, in ascending order of prestige from the entry level Baron to the top end Earl.
Most “Lords” in the UK are Barons (including all the “Life Peers”).
Viscount Monkton outranks these in about the same way that a Major does a Lieutenant in the army.
So not only are you wrong, you are egregiously wrong.
The fact that he does not have a seat in the House of Lords is irrelevant. The titles predate the institution. Think of it this way- the Peers make the House of Lords and as a class existed before the House, it is not the other way around.
Andi:
>> I did email you asking for a place, but gained no reply
Sorry Andi, I never received your email.
Christopher, Viscount Monckton is a brave and brilliant man, and I am one of his fans. But can we please cut the “His Lordship” thing out ?
But our American cousins LOVE it! Look at all the interest devoted to Orders of Precedence and curtseying….
luca turin (@lucaturin) says:
April 18, 2013 at 1:03 pm
“Christopher, Viscount Monckton is a brave and brilliant man, and I am one of his fans. But can we please cut the “His Lordship” thing out ? Yes, Britain is a monarchy, it has hereditary titles, Monckton inherited one, but this is no reason to sound like kitchen staff in Downton Abbey.”
Why, it is the correct mode of address?
4wdweather says:
April 18, 2013 at 1:27 pm
“Monckton isn’t a Lord.
Some have tried to make capital of this by highlighting it, though I don’t suppose he ever called himself Lord Monckton.- this article is unhelpful in this respect.”
WRONG!! He is the son of Viscount Monckton, who was appointed such by HM The Queen. As such, on succeeding to the Baronetcy, he is entitled to the title.
My wife and I were fortunate to get a ticket to the Wellington presentation. Monckton delighted with his wit and knowledgeful delivery. He spoke speedily and in depth over the whole range of issues with an amazing demonstration of a recall of relevant papers, authors and dates. I have only known the best of my law lecturers handle such detail with that ease. He rebutted the local University scoffers and it was plain throughout by his fluid explanations he understood the mathematical validity of what he was dealing with. If Monckton “was not a climate scientist” he proved to be a brilliant independent reviewer of them. Such minds are scarce and need to be listened to.
My wife purchased a copy of Plimers book to present to the local Anglican Bishop.
Mike McMillan says: (April 18, 12:42 pm)
Perhaps the Kapiti 1800 should declare independence. It worked for us.
So you say. We’re just waiting until you drop your guard. 😉
And litres and metres are spelt that way because the French got to name the basic units of SI (= Système Internationale) measurement. A micrometre (pron “MY crow metre”) is a distance; a micrometer (pron “my CROM itter”) is a measuring instrument. Good grief, you’ll be trying to get us to misspell “sulphur” and “oestrogen” next, or shrink the “billion” by a factor of a thousand … Oh, you already have.
Andi,
With respect to Coastal System’s report of the Beach at Waikanae, you stated“In the 1978 Paper, Gibb has accretion of 160 metres since 1877, whilst the new paper shows what they forecast in 50 years (yellow) and 100 years (orange). Why should sustained accretion over millennia suddenly change?
Do the soil aggregates 5, 10, and 15 blocks inland from the beach properties appear to be of similar type to the beach front aggregates? That is, are they ‘old’ beach front aggregates that have become ‘inland’ acreage, as new material continually aggregates at the growing beach front? These can be examined at any new excavations for utilities or building foundations in that area. The local utilities may also have records from their excavations for new services and repair of old sewer/water utilities.
If the local property owners can establish that this area has been continually adding ‘beach front property’ for millennia, they can demonstrate the positive trend is stable and erosion is unprecedented, thus undercutting the unfounded predictions of the Coastal System land grabbers. With the false hypothesis refuted, the Coastal Systems folks will either have to ‘cease and desist’ or risk exposing their real objective(s).
MtK
By the way, Tez, al-Gore did not win a Nobel prize. He won a “Nobel Peace Prize”, which is not the same thing. The Peace Prize is a purely political thing.
Unfortunately, in the eyes of many, that sounds like he’s “scientific” and stuff…
“By the way, Tez, al-Gore did not win a Nobel prize. He won a “Nobel Peace Prize”, which is not the same thing.”
Except in the sense that it’s exactly the same thing, i.e., he won a Nobel Prize. That was after he was twice elected Vice President but before he sold the cable channel he created for a half a billion dollars.
Hey, he’s an accomplished guy. Fact.
Lewis P Buckingham says: April 18, 2013 at 2:02 pm
————————-
There has been a very similar case here in Oz with an aggrieved developer taking the Macquarie Council to court … the council backed down understandably as their ‘green’ roots had no traction in law.
I was blessed to hear/see Lord Monckton in Oz. Brilliant man. I doubt whether too many alarmists would take him on in a debate. Of course he also has the advantage of speaking the facts/truth! The left greenists despise him.
Lord Monckton is a rare person in many respects. I don’t need to list his qualities. But I was immensely impressed with his fortitude and persistence in the face of vitriolic treatment by the press. It has polarised my opinions about the MSM. The attempts to wholly ignore, deflect suppress, denigrate and deny his tour in New Zealand is appalling and a blot on their integrity and impartiality. It would seem that their tactics are indeed straight out of the marxist playbook.
“An Evening with His Lordship”
====
As opposed to what ?
Something less Lordly ?
Define “lord” please, it don’t compute.
Mike Macmillan says:
Why the Brits and (through inheritance) Kiwis have difficulty here I
do not know.
=================================================================
There’s no difficulty, at all :-): we (Brits, Kiwis, et al) speak English and you
speak American.
As Winston Churchill so succinctly put it:
“England and America are two nations separated by a common language.”
Seriously though, the root word for English is derived from the Latin “scepticus”
… thoughtful, inquiring.
That, in turn, is derived from the Greek “skepticos, ” derivative of skept(os),
(v. adj. of sképtesthai to consider, examine).
Latin used to be the language of scientific enquiry and engagement in England
until almost recent times, never Greek. Also, America was never invaded by archaic
French speakers from Normandy (1066 and all that) where the ‘u’ in ‘favour,
neighbour, labour’ etc originated.
So Webster was able to introduce spelling straight from the original Greek roots
for many words instead of being hamstrung by the joint French and Latin influences.
In fact Webster did American English a big favour ( ) through his
scholarship. You could think along the lines of “Keep Quebec as a neighbor or
you’ll be right back there with ‘u’s where you don’t need them!”
At his Hamilton talk at the University of Waikato (not all Universities turned him away) there were two in the audience determined to give him a bad time. Local members of the green party I believe. What was particularly notable was that their efforts were completely ad hominem. They did not dispute what he said or argue the facts at all. That become very apparent and thus their efforts overall helped Monckton more than they hurt him I’d have to say.
And yes – they attempted to loudly make a big thing out of the “Lord” issue. Now in New Zealand, while we care a great deal about earned titles, titles transmitted by sperm are generally regarded as a bit of a joke (with the possible exception of the monarchy which anachronistically continues to fill a much needed hole in our political system). Most of us came here to get away from the British class system and … we succeeded. So trying to make an issue out of this in New Zealand was pretty darned silly. New Zealanders just don’t care.
On the other hand they did score a minor hit (in my estimation) when they highlighted his links to birthers in the US. It is not that anyone in New Zealand cares where Obama was born. It is just that birthers have the reputation of being complete nutjobs arising from the smelliest part of the sewer of US racial politics. I have to say Christopher, that you were very unwise to let yourself get hooked into that morass.
Wow, a Lord with science credentials, how wonderful. I wish all the british elite invested in a science education and not in business or political science.
I wonder if he can come up with a paradigm to address AIDS?
Check Monkton vs Monkton on youtube to see how consistent this guy is.
Lord Monckton recently produced a legal letter from his lawyers stating that as a viscount he was entitled to call himself Lord.
The debate about whether a viscount and non-sitting member of the House of Lords is allowed to refer to himself as ‘Lord’ is of no relevance to any climate science questions and so I am quite happy to accept the advice of his lawyers. Unlike science I do not have a problem with authority in law if they can also produce evidence and feel no need to bother with scepticism until I have a need.
The added advantage of referring to our friend as ‘Lord Monckton’ is that it REALLY annoys those who try to crowbar the irrelevant matter into any climate debate.
As regards the spelling of the word ‘skeptic’ I have no preference and often switch between the two versions.
Peter S says:
There is no such thing as a “Lord” per se, it is the form of address that is used
for certain classes of title. These titles are ranked, in ascending order of prestige
from the entry level Baron to the top end Earl.
================================================================
Correct. It is just that: a form of address, not a rank.
The English peerage hierarchy (other countries have their own hierarchies and
ranks) from bottom to top is:
Baron, Viscount, Earl, Marquess, Duke. Above Duke, you are in the Royal ranks of
Prince, Princess, Queen and King.
“My Lord” is the everyday or common form of address for a peer, as “Your Highness”
is for a Prince or Princess and “Your Majesty” for a Queen or King.
Everyone else is a commoner. It is good manners for a commoner to use the
appropriate form of address.
“Why should sustained accretion over millennia suddenly change?”
The key information, which you can find by reading the reports, is:
1) Dr Shand ignores accretion by setting the erosion rate to zero for all accreting sites, which is most of them.
2) He then adds the uncertainty for the long term trend to the erosion rate, which turns all accreting sites into eroding sites.
In essence, this is how you manufacture a hazard.
An accretionary coastline will gain more from a storm than it will loose building ”storm berms” in the process. the littoral zone is continuously reworked with every tide but this is not erosion but part of the accretion process. With plenty of material available from the updrift rivers this accretion will not stop.
“GeorgeSoros says:
April 18, 2013 at 10:53 pm
Check Monkton vs Monkton on youtube to see how consistent this guy is.”
Check out the ramblings of any of the “consensus” and see how consistent THEY are.
Tim, if you come across anyone with such contraditory statements then please draw the readers attention to it as I did in the case of Monckton. The guy is a screwball and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a true skeptic.