### NZ Herald Sun, 21 May 2017 at 8:55 AM
Higher seas may force New Zealand towns to retreat inland: GNS Science study to investigate
By Jamie Morton
Researchers have begun investigating how some New Zealand communities could be pulled back from hazard zones in the face of flooding driven by climate change and sea level rise. A new study, to be led by GNS Science as part of a near million-dollar wider research programme, will look at ways authorities and communities can plan for homes to be moved to safer ground. It is estimated two thirds of Kiwis live in areas prone to flooding. At least 43,000 homes lie within 1.5 metres of the present average spring high tide, and nearly 9000 within 50cm. The most optimistic emissions scenario has global average sea levels likely to rise between 44cm and 55cm by 2100. One way to meet this threat is with what’s called “managed retreat” – shifting back houses and infrastructure and allowing the shoreline to move inland. “In New Zealand, there have always been communities in hazard areas, particularly on the coast, and this is something that’s always been an option,” said GNS researcher Emily Grace, who is leading the study. “But it’s definitely had more prominence in the last few years with people becoming more aware of sea level rise and the effects of global warming.” While there were measures within the Resource Management Act that authorities could use to help plan for shifting homes or roads, the issue was fraught with complexity. There were conflicts between what actions regional and district councils could take, and private property rights also posed barriers for planners, Ms Grace said. “It’s the kind of thing that goes in the too-hard basket, really – and part of the point of the research is to find out why it has not been carried out by councils in New Zealand and what could help change that.” With the exception of Christchurch’s post-quake red zone, she could cite just a few examples of such moves being taken. NZME.
Read more
[The propaganda]
NZ and climate change (via NZ Herald)
• Under present projections, the sea level around New Zealand is expected to rise between 50cm and 100cm this century, while temperatures could also increase by several degrees by 2100.
• Climate change would bring more floods (about two-thirds of Kiwis live in areas prone to flooding); make our freshwater problems worse and put more pressure on rivers and lakes; acidify our oceans; put even more species at risk and bring problems from the rest of the world.
• Climate change is also expected to result in more large storms, compounding the effects of sea level rise.
• New Zealand, which reported a 23% increase in greenhouse gas emissions between 1990 and 2014, has pledged to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 30% from 2005 levels and 11% from 1990 levels by 2030.
12.5.17 ODT: Higher floor levels for some houses
From today, floors in houses to be built in low-lying areas of Dunedin could be up to 1m off the ground following the introduction of new “interim” minimum floor levels.
****
Interesting opinion piece in the ODT today: ‘Left showed the Right the way’ by Andrew Waterworth. He says:
Postmodernism’s critique of science has paved the way for a broader questioning of whether empirical truths established through scientific method can be trusted. This has created fertile ground for the far Right to assert that science is a matter of opinion, to challenge scientific evidence for climate change, for example and to propose “alternative facts”. (ODT 22.5.17)
Instead, I would have said ‘this has created fertile ground for right thinking people to assert that computer-modelled science on climate change is just a box of fluffy ducks’. Because the ‘righters’ been stung by the evil tentacles, oh so many tentacles.
Obviously, the whole point is that the climate changers, vast numbers of them, ie millions of lemmings, have been riding high on false data for too long; false data initiated and supported by global corporates hand in hand with scrumpy academics, who both create and clip the tickets to gobble up Your Money and Assets. See too, what numbing expectations Central Government and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment are placing on local authorities across New Zealand – and how those ‘with power’ around us are swallowing the cc distortions whole, applying mandates with fuzzy zeal in the complete absence of scientifically factual critical contest.
I think Mr Waterworth reads Dellers at Breitbart.
****
Donald Trump | Pope Francis [salon.com]
### breitbart.com 18 May 2017
Delingpole: Pope Will Convert Trump on Climate Change, Claims Bishop
By James Delingpole
When President Trump visits the Vatican next week, he will be transformed by the radiant wisdom of His Holiness, the Pope, into a fully fledged climate change believer. Or so – somewhat optimistically – the bishop in charge of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academies of Science and Social Sciences has claimed. Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, the Academies’ chancellor, said in an interview:
They will come to an agreement, since the president claims to be a Christian, and so he [Trump] will listen to him [the Pope].
Actually, you can bet your bottom dollar that this won’t happen, not least because the Pope’s views on climate change are in many ways profoundly unChristian. This was why the Pope’s 2015 encyclical on environmental issues Laudato Si was so controversial. It bought into the extreme environmentalist view which sees mankind as a blight on the planet rather than a blessing, and sees the industrial progress which brings jobs and prosperity as a curse.
Here is a sample of the encyclical.
But a sober look at our world shows that the degree of human intervention, often in the service of business interests and consumerism, is actually making our earth less rich and beautiful, ever more limited and grey, even as technological advances and consumer goods continue to abound limitlessly. We seem to think that we can substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves.
It also took at face value all the climate scaremongering which alarmists have been dishonestly propagating these last few decades, against all scientific evidence.
The melting in the polar ice caps and in high altitude plains can lead to the dangerous release of methane gas, while the decomposition of frozen organic material can further increase the emission of carbon dioxide.
Carbon dioxide pollution increases the acidification of the oceans and compromises the marine food chain.
One U.S. Congressman – Rep Paul Gozar – complained it made the Pope sound like a “leftist politician”.
Read more
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elevating climate change [freakingnews.com via pinterest]
### breitbart.com 20 May 2017
Delingpole: ‘Penises Cause Climate Change’; Progressives Fooled by Peer-Reviewed Hoax Study
By James Delingpole
Gender studies is a fake academic industry populated by charlatans, deranged activists and gullible idiots. Now, a pair of enterprising hoaxers has proved it scientifically by persuading an academic journal to peer-review and publish their paper claiming that the penis is not really a male genital organ but a social construct. The paper, published by Cogent Social Sciences – “a multidisciplinary open access journal offering high quality peer review across the social sciences” – also claims that penises are responsible for causing climate change.
The two hoaxers are Peter Boghossian, a full-time faculty member in the Philosophy department at Portland State University, and James Lindsay, who has a doctorate in math and a background in physics.
They were hoping to emulate probably the most famous academic hoax in recent years: the Sokal Hoax – named after NYU and UCL physics professor Alan Sokal – who in 1996 persuaded an academic journal called Social Text to accept a paper titled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”.
Sokal’s paper – comprising pages of impressive-sounding but meaningless pseudo-academic jargon – was written in part to demonstrate that humanities journals will publish pretty much anything so long as it sounds like “proper leftist thought;” and partly in order to send up the absurdity of so much post-modernist social science. So, for this new spoof, Boghossian and Lindsay were careful to throw in lots of signifier phrases to indicate fashionable anti-male bias:
We intended to test the hypothesis that flattery of the academic Left’s moral architecture in general, and of the moral orthodoxy in gender studies in particular, is the overwhelming determiner of publication in an academic journal in the field. That is, we sought to demonstrate that a desire for a certain moral view of the world to be validated could overcome the critical assessment required for legitimate scholarship. Particularly, we suspected that gender studies is crippled academically by an overriding almost-religious belief that maleness is the root of all evil. On the evidence, our suspicion was justified.
They also took care to make it completely incomprehensible.
We didn’t try to make the paper coherent; instead, we stuffed it full of jargon (like “discursive” and “isomorphism”), nonsense (like arguing that hypermasculine men are both inside and outside of certain discourses at the same time), red-flag phrases (like “pre-post-patriarchal society”), lewd references to slang terms for the penis, insulting phrasing regarding men (including referring to some men who choose not to have children as being “unable to coerce a mate”), and allusions to rape (we stated that “manspreading,” a complaint levied against men for sitting with their legs spread wide, is “akin to raping the empty space around him”). After completing the paper, we read it carefully to ensure it didn’t say anything meaningful, and as neither one of us could determine what it is actually about, we deemed it a success.
Some of it was written with the help of the Postmodern Generator – “a website coded in the 1990s by Andrew Bulhak featuring an algorithm, based on NYU physicist Alan Sokal’s method of hoaxing a cultural studies journal called Social Text, that returns a different fake postmodern ‘paper’ every time the page is reloaded.” […] None of it should have survived more than a moment’s scrutiny by serious academics. But it was peer-reviewed by two experts in the field who, after suggesting only a few changes, passed it for publication.
Read more
—
Posted by Elizabeth Kerr
This post is offered in the public interest.
What if? Dunedin... 
Received Sun, 21 May 2017 at 6:31 p.m.
On “news”:
Click to access Avoid_News_Part1_TEXT.pdf
[11 pages]
The former Science and Innovation Minister, Steven Joyce, is responsible for this rubbishy “research” about how to implement “managed retreat”. It’s called Retreating from impending disaster – addressing existing land uses in hazard areas for managed retreat. They call it scientific research but reading the description, there is no science involved, it’s mainly legal and planning advice for city councils. It looks to me like a publicity outreach to create unnecessary fear.
There are 5 other projects included in the $900,000 funding and they all seem very flaky – such as: Developing culturally appropriate tsunami risk reduction activities for kura kaupapa Māori and Disaster Preparedness and Resilience among Auckland’s Southeast Asian Communities. They all aim to produce “implementable strategies” and “an opportunity to co-develop proactive response strategies” and “embody the co-creation philosophy”. This isn’t research, it’s more like sneaky ways for our government to promote and implement some very foolish policies.
There is a multitude of organisations involved in this – and so the very foolish policies being promoted might not even be that of our current National government. The Ministry might have lost control of the process. It’s a waste of our money and it seems likely to be more harmful than beneficial.
(See the GNS Science press release ‘Resilience Challenge funds $900,000 of research’ at Scoop)
“Developing culturally appropriate tsunami risk reduction” – great idea. Australia could learn a lot from these sensitive types. Culturally appropriate escape from bush fires / crocodiles / sharks / redbacks in yer dunny…….
I wish to escape without cultural appropriation. To that end, I dress in Harris (no synthetic), have me oats in Lerwick and catch Flora’s Skye boot.
You don’t have to be Lanark, but it helps.
It’s long past time that Ms Grace and the NZ Herald came up with some empirical data to prove their claims of Climate Change and Sea Level Rise. To continually cite the stuff they do without any proof, or even documentation of it happening now is just calamitous claptrap that does nothing but scare the masses unnecessarily and puts the country to huge amounts of unnecessary costs, all for nothing at all as at the moment. When there is accurate recordings of temperature rises beyond the normal and data to sustain the Sea Level Rise as required and huge weather events beyond those already experienced in the past, then and only then should we take any notice of this blatant harping. Look at the output from the Universities on grants and tenure on Climate Change. On the local front we see weekly in the media ravings by Emeritous Prof Campbell-Hunt with statements and preposterous claims of dire conditions pending. Then there was the ridiculous posturing of octogenerian Prof Jim Flynn who is reputably an expert on IQs. What it is that makes him an expert on Climate Change mystifies me, but he gets the press to pick him up and there we are. It is out of control actually with heaps of elected politicians claiming superior knowledge on the subject. All in all, a remarkable happening. God we live in a dangerous world.
Calvin: Global Warming really is dangerous – not because it is real, but because our dim-witted politicians act as if it was real.
From Newshub 22/5/17:
“Newshub can reveal the cost to the New Zealand economy to meet Paris Agreement targets will be $1 billion every year for a decade. But that money won’t be spent on reducing New Zealand’s domestic emissions, it’ll go towards paying other countries to reduce their emissions.In documents released under the Official Information Act, a briefing to Judith Collins on her first day as energy minister says the cost to the economy of buying international carbon units to offset our own emissions will be $14.2 billion over ten years.
Carbon trading is the process of buying and selling permits and credits to emit carbon dioxide.
In the documents, officials say “this represents a significant transfer of wealth overseas”, and also warn “ an over reliance on overseas purchasing at the expense of domestic reductions could also leave New Zealand exposed in the face of increasing global carbon prices beyond 2030”.
The cost amounts to $1.4 billion annually.”
Read more
GNS researcher Emily Grace, who is the Principal Investigator of Retreating from impending disaster – addressing existing land uses in hazard areas for managed retreat works at the Massey University Joint Centre for Disaster Research. I bet she sees disaster wherever she looks.
From the Herald (above): Ms Grace wonders why more managed retreats have not been carried out by councils in New Zealand and what could help change that. With the exception of Christchurch’s post-quake red zone, she could cite just a few examples of such moves being taken..
She seems disappointed that there have been very few Climate Change induced evacuations in NZ. The reason for this should be obvious to Emily – and that’s because the high rates of sea-level rise are imaginary – the actual rates of sea-level rise are very small (globally, about 1.7mm/yr and Dunedin, 1.3mm/yr) with no sign of any acceleration.
GNS Science should not involve themselves with low quality research like this – it damages their reputation. It should also change its silly name: GNS Science stands for “Geological and Nuclear Sciences Science”.
Emily Grace, the GNS researcher, as well as the local Global Warming catastrophists (politicians, DCC & ORC staff, some UoO academics and unaffiliated worriers) have and will make several wrong assumptions about South Dunedin. They will be wrong about these things:
● South Dunedin is at a height of about 1.2m above sea level. References to the height above spring high tide are invalid, misleading and often dishonest. Probably no houses are within 0.5m of sea level. The height of the spring high tide is only relevant at the water’s edge (where mostly we have 10m+ high sand dunes).
● There is no evidence that the South Dunedin groundwater level is linked to sea level – except in some places close to the shoreline – the ORC groundwater modelling report (Rekker 2012) and the BECA 2014 both provide fake evidence of a link through all of South Dunedin.
● The South Dunedin ground-water level is not rising. There is no evidence of any rising trend. Rising ground-water should not be expected – see above.
● The GNSs’ claims that South Dunedin is sinking are speculative, unconfirmed, undocumented and probably wrong. Also, the part of South Dunedin that it claims to be affected is very small (near the railway yards, from memory and not really part of South Dunedin).
● South Dunedin really is flood prone – but not from rising sea level, but because the DCC stormwater system has suffered from several years of infrastructure neglect (sabotage) and did not meet the 1 in 10 year standard of first-world countries and it still doesn’t. Capital expenditure continues to be less than needed to maintain the current low level of performance, so expect the performance to get even worse.
● The DCC’s claim that the 2015 South Dunedin flood occurred because of high groundwater levels before the rain arrived, is false and appears to me to be dishonest. Groundwater levels at all four measurement locations were completely within their normal range.
● The current attempts by the DCC, ORC, GNSS, the National Government and others to sabotage South Dunedin’s reputation and economic viability are despicable and should not be tolerated.
Jimmy, you pretty much say it all. That bombastic politician Judith Collins could if she had the wit stop this nonsense right now, fire the GNS folk and send Ms Grace to an uninhabited atoll. Then of course we have our local people who strain every muscle to follow the format in spades. Not a good look till eventually some-one in the building will say, “hey, there has been no warming recorded for over thirty years, and guess what, the sea level is still pretty much the same. It seems like we could be wrong.”
Common sense prevails in the USA: President Trump has this morning announced that his country will exit the very harmful Paris Climate Accord. NZ should join the USA and the other countries that put their people before political idealism. The cost to NZ of remaining in the agreement is $14.2 billion. This cost is pure waste, there is no benefit from it.
Similar examples of bureaucrats wasting money in vain attempts to influence outcomes definitely include the following:
The conversion to decimal currency and getting off imperial measures to kilometres and kilograms in the mistaken belief that idiot kids would then be able to complete arithmetic calculations have proven to be a gross waste of time as even the smart kids now can’t give you the correct change without a mini computer.
The attempt to change the flag.
No doubt you will have other examples.
Dear President Trump you’re doing us all a favour
At Facebook:
—
Fri, 2 June 2017
ODT: Trump pulls US from climate pact
President Donald Trump says he will withdraw the United States from the landmark 2015 global agreement to fight climate change, spurning pleas from US allies and corporate leaders in an action that fulfilled a major campaign pledge. “We’re getting out,” Trump said at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden in which he decried the Paris accord’s “draconian” financial and economic burdens. He said American withdrawal “represents a reassertion of American sovereignty.” Trump said the United States would begin negotiations either to re-enter the Paris accord or to have a new agreement “on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers.” […] The United States was one of 195 nations that agreed to the accord in Paris in December 2015, a deal that former US President Barack Obama was instrumental in brokering. Cont/ Reuters
‘Bad Boy’ Lord Nicholas Stern has talked up the cost for ‘fighting climate change’ into the trillions of dollars all based on Al Gore’s mendacious scare tactics. His advocacy has been followed by the likes of Pope Francis, Angela Merkel and Prince Charles – need I say more.
Well Trump has made a start to talking some sense.
The start he has made in withdrawing from the Paris ‘agreement’ is great but he is doing more by defunding the climate studies that have led to this insane situation. There will be much wailing and groaning and gnashing of teeth by the usual suspects – you will all know who.
It all leaves one wondering at the simple minded entrapment of the politicians, the MSM and bunches of Academics. Makes Donald Trump an outstanding person that in time will see him vindicated. Meantime we see the harebrained antics at local government level showing the financial damage that will happen. If they would/could only look at the facts and empirical data it would be obvious that the lies are being shown up on a daily basis. But when you have such a concentrated outpouring of rubbish from the likes of Campbell-Hunt being fostered and published by the MSM, there’s not a lot of immediate hope.
Being aligned to someone like President ‘Chump’ on any issue is fraught, Calvin. The man is a dangerous fool.
If l was a climate change waverer l know what side l would go to if it came down to supporting key people you could trust. And it ain’t him.
USA, Syria and Nicaragua. What a team. The first two are now pariah states.
Peter, it is not a matter of what sort of person Trump is or whether his reasons are good, so much as the logic of the whole argument. It has not been proven either through academic persuasion or time, in my opinion, yet the UN has sold the idea right through the governments, MSM, large chunks of Academia and of course the ‘plebs’. I only ask, look at the results in the empirical data over the last twenty odd years since the Agenda 21 in Rio, which is now sixteen or seventeen years and ask the question, “is this a viable exercise or a con?”
The White House Streamed live 15 hours ago
President Trump Makes a Statement Regarding the Paris Accord
Live coverage of this event has concluded. Drag the counter along the timeline below the stream to replay.
Read comments at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/06/01/watch-president-trump-announce-decision-on-parisagreement-live-12pm-est/
I loved the Sokal Hoax. This one by Boghossian and Lindsay sounds like another enlightening enterprise in the same vein. If only students were given at least one spoof question in every exam and so required to discern which one it was, we might get more critical thinking.
Josh Cartoon (below) made Scott Adams laugh for ten minutes.
Posted from WUWT
Being in or out is irrelevant, Kyoto, Paris….
Out is more sensible.
It means HUGE amounts of money and time – and fossil fuels transporting politicians and ‘crats to meetings – to make policies and rules all can agree on, usually the most disadvantage falling on the least powerful (surprise!) country. The sheer bureaucracy involved in paying for trees planted, cut down, replanted etc etc on and on is eye-watering. What else could be achieved with that amount of money and personnel in that box-ticking money-shuffling industry?
“Not fouling our nest” – ie the planet, and whatever country, province, neighbourhood, dwelling we live in make total sense, no matter what one believes about Climate Change.
But we don’t need expensive conferences to make us clean and tidy in large ways as well as small. Each country if it is motivated to join these groups, is surely motivated to clean up its own homegrown portion of planetary/atmospheric shit.
So cut the talkfests with associated photo-ops and grandstanding and leave the resources “back home” to invest in cleaner technologies, healthier workplaces, emission and pollution controls.
Whether Climate Change – which is a certainty, the planet is highly unlikely to have abandoned its habit of millennia to become unchangeable “Now” – is bigly, slightly or not influenced by human activity can be argued in private time, as a hobby. Whether cleaning our home planet is worth doing is easy – yes, of course it is.
Absolutely. Pollution is the problem. Plastic fouling the rivers, lakes and oceans, just dirty human habits, to blame all this as being global Warming, Climate Change or whatever is a mind blowing exercise, unless you don’t have a mind of course. Then you follow the herd. Therein lies the problem. Hype, you have it summed up.
It is not a matter of climate change – that has been happening for ever. It’s a matter of what effect additional anthropogenic CO2 has upon temperature. What is certain is that it’s very little. Termites contribute much more – order of 10 times more. But what these ‘prats’ are doing is unadulterated hypocrisy.
Scientists have calculated that termites alone produce ten times as much carbon dioxide as all the fossil fuels burned in the whole world in a year
@Calvin Oaten
June 3, 2017 at 1:57 pm
You say in response to Peter Peter, it is not a matter of what sort of person Trump is ……empirical data over the last twenty odd years since the Agenda 21 in Rio, which is now sixteen or seventeen years and ask the question, “is this a viable exercise or a con?”
And it has been a con perpetrated by the likes of Michael Mann (featured below) and the rest of the Climate Gate people exposed just before the Copenhagen Climate talks in 2009 via Harry Readme. The withdrawal from the Paris ‘agreement’ (largely facilitated by Obama) is a very important step taken by Trump. Anybody who writes Trump off on this issue also writes off the likes of Lindzen and Happer.
Regarding the cartoon, Michael Mann’s comments as Humpty Dumpty are still pertinent – it is only a beginning for Trump – witness the fightback in the MSM.
Perspective
To get a little perspective I have made this scale drawing that represents the volume of the atmosphere and the volume of CO2 at 400ppm.
The volume of the atmosphere is the grey square while the volume of CO2 in it is the red square where the arrow points.
Then you need to appreciate that all of the human contribution to the CO2 volume is as stated in the diagram 3.75% of the total CO2.
Sheesh! All that huffing and puffing over SFA.