12 May 2025
There are so many things going on in the climate space at the moment that it is difficult to keep up with them all. My sources of recent information are Dr Catherine Dyer, Bernard Hickey, and Peter Bale from the Kākā - a weekly podcast on political economy, climate change, and international affairs (from Dr Robert Patman University of Otago), together with invited guests each week from other areas of interest including economists and politicians. I believe this is a worthy site of usually peer-reviewed information concerning these topics. I would like to make a plug for the Kākā, which unfortunately is a pay site (but most reliable news these days is). For under $20 a month, one receives a daily briefing and a set of links to other sites (also often unfortunately behind paywalls). Many people might say it is mildly left of centre, and it is certainly not particularly complimentary of our present government. It is available through a platform called Substack, interestingly enough run by a young expatriate New Zealander.
28 April 2025
I intend this episode to comment on several issues.
31 March 2025
Further to my previous articles on climate change, this week I will talk about several short topics from recent publications.
17 March 2025
This week I will comment on two articles. The first is an article from Science Advances by Richardson et al. 9 from 13 September 2023. This is a research article with the title “Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries”. This article is a collaboration between multiple climate scientists, including those from the renowned Potsdam Institute (Rockstrom et al).
18 February 2025
The IPCC report of 2022 notes that climate change is a major risk to planet Earth. (IPCC 2022). New Zealand's Net Zero Carbon Act has been passed by parliament, and has been accepted by the National party, Labour Party, Green party, ACT party and Te Pati Maori. The NZ First Party is ambivalent. This would suggest that very urgent and far-ranging changes are necessary to our society in New Zealand within the next six years, to try to get to 1.5° C of global warming by 2050 - or preferably earlier. It should be noted that we are already close to that target in 2024, and atmospheric greenhouse gases have increased rather than decreased year by year since then. These have led to year-on-year increases in record temperatures, with associated increases in floods, droughts, wildfires, strength of storms, sea level rise and catastrophic effects in many countries including New Zealand. The most affected countries are in the “Global South”, yet they produce the least greenhouse gases. New Zealand is the 7th highest producer of greenhouse gases per person in the world.
21 January 2025
I have been a member of this group for a few years. I joined because I was tired of ill-informed, anti-scientific nonsense in our media especially stemming from our politicians. I am a 78 year old retired Orthopaedic Surgeon who has worked in science since my initial Zoology degree in 1967. I do not belong to any (anti)social media.
11 November 2024
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) published the AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023 in 2023, which summarises five years of reports on global temperature changes, fossil fuel use and likely climate impacts.
28 August 2023
OK, so another item related to climate change. I've recently started listening to an entertaining podcast - The Climate Denier's Playbook.
28 August 2023
This week I'm concentrating on climate change misinformation through a bunch of slightly connected items.
28 August 2023
This weekend the Yeah… Nah! Podcast crew - that is me, Mark and Bronwyn recorded an interview with Melanie Trecek-King who is one of our international guests at our conference in November. (You can get tickets here!) We've released the podcast as a bonus episode.
3 October 2022
This past week has been replete with stories related to climate change. Firstly, there's Hurricane Ian which has wreaked havoc and destruction and loss of life in Florida most recently, but previously in Cuba and Puerto Rico. It's fairly obvious that extreme weather events are exacerbated by climate change, and that living near the coast is going to be an increasingly risky proposition for large numbers of people.
19 September 2022
Finally this week, I received my local body elections pack. I have the opportunity to vote for candidates for the Mayor of Auckland, and members of the Auckland Council, for a local board, and also a liquor licensing trust (where I live in Auckland, we're a “dry” area - where we can only purchase alcohol from licensing-trust-run businesses).
25 July 2022
This past week has seen the alarming heat waves in Europe, with the UK seeing highest ever temperatures, exceeding 40C.
25 July 2022
Regular readers of our newsletter will have seen the “adverts” for our official podcast - Yeah... Nah!, which we record on a fortnightly basis. Mark, Bronwyn and I discuss recent skeptical topics, usually in a sort-of pub chat format. We enjoy recording it, and we hope that listeners enjoy hearing it.
25 July 2022
This week I take a look at a media attack on our friend Dr Siouxsie Wiles, and talk about the European heat wave and climate change.
27 June 2022
This weekend I took a look at the FutureFit website. This site is designed to make people aware of their carbon footprint - the amount that their household is contributing to climate change through Greenhouse gas emissions.
1 November 2021
Whether I am good at getting epiphanies, I am not sure, but the question is: are the epiphanies sensible or stupid? I shall leave it up to you to decide.
16 August 2021
This past week has seen the release of the IPCC's 6th assessment report on climate change. The report is issued every seven years. It's become increasingly obvious with successive reports, that the world is in danger of severe consequences of climate change, and it's increasingly certain (to the point of virtual certainty) that humans are the cause of it.
19 July 2021
Over the past few weeks there have been various extreme weather events that are now being attributed to climate change, whereas once scientists were more cagey on the issue - saying that it's never possible to blame any one event on climate change. But the evidence is stacking up, and we see temperature records being broken - 2020 was one of the three warmest years on record.
19 July 2021
Welcome to the NZ Skeptics newsletter.
19 July 2021
So, on the back of increasing effects of climate change this week saw the “Howl of a Protest” event run by Groundswell NZ - a group that purportedly represents farmers and tradies and ute owners who protested against new government regulations they say are unworkable.In particular, they're concerned about the Clean Car Discount programme, dubiously dubbed the “ute tax” as it will penalise those who drive vehicles which spew excessive CO2 emissions.
12 April 2021
Many thanks to the people who have paid their 2021 membership subs. This is a final reminder to members who paid subs in 2020, but have yet to pay 2021 subs, that the 2021 subs are now due. Memberful have streamlined the payment process (it is no longer necessary to set a password), and this is reflected in the instructions that follow:
1 March 2021
I can't say we'll be having this every week, but I found this amusing little joke on social media this week:
16 November 2020
You probably already heard that Exxon knew about climate change back in the 70s and 80s, and chose to double down on the misinformation, but now, as an EV driver myself I was interested to learn the latest news to come out about climate change denial relating to big Auto, specifically Ford and GM. In the first part of an investigation by E&E News, we find out that the automakers were well aware that car emissions caused climate change 50 years ago. Their own scientists were telling top executives that emissions from the vehicles they were producing would lead to climate change.
1 August 2019
I am a long time member of the NZ Skeptics. I wish to respectfully raise a point of concern that I have regarding the direction that the NZ Skeptics appear to be going. Over two decades ago I walked away from Greenpeace when I realized that they had become political activists and had abandoned rational scientific debate. In recent editions of the NZ Skeptic magazine I have been seeing similar warning signs.
1 May 2019
The morning of the 15th of March I woke up ready for a positive day with my son at Cathedral square, to attend the school strike for climate.
28 October 2018
Ireland has had a bit of a rocky history with its blasphemy law, with a complaint made against a local comedian for calling the Catholic communion wafer "haunted bread", and Stephen Fry being threatened with legal action for an interview he gave on Irish TV a few years ago.
27 May 2018
As we talked about at the end of last year, there's been a real push to sell Kangen Water devices in NZ recently. An article in the Herald recently has detailed Ainsley Brunton's efforts to sell the water in Whanganui to unsuspecting customers. Her water devices are selling for $4,000, with promises that the water can help with cancer, diabetes and other serious diseases. Enagic in Australia is selling the machines to New Zealanders who are passing them on, and Enagic's prices for a machine that does nothing useful to water vary between $2,300 and $6,500.
4 June 2017
Although there is a history in skepticism of people being "skeptical" of climate change, modern skepticism understands that there is a broad consensus amongst scientists that climate change is both real and caused by humans.
21 August 2016
Brian Cox argued with Australian senator Malcolm Roberts on TV show Q&A about climate change, accusing NASA and other organisations of "corrupting" temperature data.
12 June 2016
There is now a second panel that has been convened to review Christchurch Council's "Tonkin Taylor" coastal erosion report. The panel has been instructed to:
21 February 2016
In the United States, the Texas board of education is very important because the state is so large. This means that the board has a large sway over which textbooks are used nationwide in schools. Historically Texas has been a battleground for creationism, with efforts to get as many fundamentalist Christians onto the board of education as possible.
11 October 2015
He has fixed two errors and the new corrected model finds the climate's sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is much lower than was thought.
1 November 2014
I note the raft of letters in the last magazine on anthropogenic climate change (ACC). While I, on the committee, am perfectly happy with the position statement and scientific consensus. (ie, Mankind is generating large quantities of CO2, - this entraps solar radiation and causes temperature to increase) I don't understand the massive spread and uncertantity of this increase: 1 to 5 degrees. Hundreds of percent? In fact you can easily find other scientists that say 0.7 to 8 degrees, and even a couple more that claim these figures are half what they should be! They all claim they have good data. Who to believe? Can't climate science please do a little better?
1 May 2014
The game is … on. I've recently rewatched the new Sherlock and my partner always reacts to that misquote.
1 May 2014
Human carbon emissions have been described as a planet-wide experiment with a sample size of one. Are there ways for science to accept uncertainties and just point at what could happen, while not testing the theory? This article is adapted from a talk at the NZ Skeptics Conference, in Wellington, 7 September 2013.
1 May 2014
It is difficult to know where to begin in response to Jim Ring's letter (NZ Skeptic 110), but somewhat reluctantly, here goes.
1 November 2013
Keith Muir responds to Barry Brill's article, A Climate of Hope, in NZ Skeptic 108.
1 August 2013
I agree with Vincent Gray (NZ Skeptic 107), it is not possible to determine an average temperature for the Earth. However it is important to note that even the alarmists agree that the Earth is not warming and has not done so for about 17 years. The British Met Office even predicts it is not going to do so in the near future.
1 May 2013
Real science operates by collecting data, inventing theories, developing models and making predictions that can be tested. If predictions fail, theories must be modified or discarded.
1 February 2013
Do you believe in climate change? Based on my past readings of NZ Skeptic of course not. After all this is the skeptic's magazine.
1 November 2007
The Plausibility of Life-resolving Darwin's dilemma, by Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart. Yale University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-300-10865-6. Reviewed by Louette McInnes.
1 May 2007
Given that we're called the NZ Skeptics in virtually all instances-our website, journal, the flyers, the publicity posters etc-do we need to go through a formal change to the incorporated society's constitution to implement it?
1 May 2007
After a bloodless coup, the NZ Skeptic has a new editor. This doesn't mean much in practical terms; for many years I've been working closely with previous ed Annette Taylor. She will now take on the roles that I used to-subediting, proofing, making cups of tea, cooking dinner and the like. It won't be long before we can enlist the daughter into the production of this fine publication.
1 May 2005
When it comes to environmental issues, it's not always easy for a skeptic to decide where to stand
1 February 2005
SCIENCE has not "progressed only by slow cautious steps" as Piers McLaren claims (Forum, Spring 2004), but by great bold ones. Scientists should resist new ideas but it is a myth that they do so irrationally. Contrary to Maclaren's letter, quantum theory rapidly won the day. Planck published in 1900, Einstein in 1905, in 1913 Bohr produced a quantum structure for an atom. By 1922 all three had won Nobel prizes for work on quantum theory.
1 May 2004
When I sent my letter to the NZ Skeptic (Spring 2003), I did not expect vehement denials in the next issue. Such debate is, of course, healthy and occasionally useful. My letter, though, was not intended to cover the whole subject; merely to offer some points to ponder. The responses have been rather more thorough, and I feel I must defend my position.
1 February 1999
Like Noel O'Hare, I attended the September Skeptics' conference. Noel, winner of an NZ Skeptics Bravo Award "for critical analysis and common sense for his health column throughout 1997", had a gripe (Shadow Of Doubt, Listener, 19 September 1998). He accused us of favouring "soft targets -- psychics, New Age fads, alternative medicine, astrology." "Poking fun at Creationists or crystal healers," he wrote, "may produce a warm glow of superiority -- but doesn't change much."
1 February 1997
A conversation off the Skeptics newsgroup.
1 May 1995
The following extract from William Doyle's Oxford History of the French Revolution (pp 64-65) reminds us that things change but things remain the same.
1 August 1994
Congratulations on featuring the superb contribution from Peter Münz in Skeptic 31. It seems to concur with a passage from Antony Flew I have just been reading. He says that to know something is "to believe what is in fact true, and to be rationally justified in that belief". Like most people shivering in the postmodernist shadow, my first reaction was to draw back, thinking that all seemed a bit too definite. Surely it's not still allowed to be definite about something?