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
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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.