Hi. Welcome to the weather ezine, which looks behind the weather and way ahead, and at the way the MOON creates our climate. This revives the ancient mathematical system of longrange weather forecasting, before words like satellite, computer or meteorology were dreamed up.
For Tuesday, November 6th. Day of the northern declination. This means that moon is stationary and running parallel to the earth at its northernmost point in the monthly cycle of going north to south.
You always get windy conditions either at this time or within two days. You also get bad weather. When the moon starts going south again, around Thursday, it tends to drags airflows with it creating a southerly wind shift. The interesting thing is that this northern declination is located in latitude above and in longitude just a little to the right of NZ, which last week lead me to predict a fairly big earthquake would come our way today or tomorrow. News just to hand is that a 6.3 magnitude shake has hit Fiji yesterday at 5.46pm, exactly on the moon's IC, or when it is directly through the earth under the feet of those at the Fiji location. Earthquakes mostly come at only four possible times of day - on the IC (directly underneath), MH (directly overhead, moonrise or moonset. For instance, the moon was in the IC position at the time and locality of the El Salvador earthquake.
Cuba has just had Hurricane Michelle, with some news reports saying it was the worst hurricane for 50 years. They all thought it was heading for Florida, but it appeared to start to die off today as the moon is commencing going southward. A hurricane above the equator won't affect us down here. They only form between 5 and 20 degrees of the equator anyway, just about always between Full moon and Last Q, which is now, and they always stay on their own side of the equatorial line. We're going to get the effects of some cyclones around December 14th -20th , January 22nd -23rd , and February 12th -14th. Our recent mini-tornadoes and high winds have come from our proximity to this northern declination, which Central America has had too, and which adds to the formation of the hurricane. In NSW the high winds have intensified bushfires. Speaking of tornadoes, they only happen on a low atmospheric tide, during the afternoon of a Full Moon phase, overnight of a New moon, or in the afternoon of a Last Quarter.
November will be wetter than October was, for all areas north of the Taupo line. We've got a falling barometer at the moment, which means colder weather approaching. A rising barometer can mean anything or nothing. It can rise rapidly just before a storm. But falling means something definite, usually temperature. Wednesday we should get some more rain in Auckland, clearing on Thursday but pelting again in some places on Friday. The weekend will see only light rain and drizzle patches and then for the rest of next week dry weather but not too much hot sunshine.
Keeping the metservices honest
Two weeks ago NIWA and their buddies were saying that the Marlborough and other areas were in for drought conditions until next winter, as reported in the Marlborough Express newspaper. I have saying they'd get good rains over October and November, and over the last few days they've had record falls; so much that farmers are crying out that they've had enough. To quote: (Daily News, 18th October).."Lower rainfall is a likelihood..Taranaki will be drier than usual for late spring.... rain should clear in November," says Dr Jim Salinger of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research. Farmers are stocking up on feed in case of a drought..October to December are likely to have possibly below average rainfall....soil moisture and stream flows are forecast to be below average...Climate conditions for October to December are expected to include more anticyclones than normal and average to below average rainfall in the west of both islands.." Then we get (4th November, same media) .."Singing in the rain..Farmers have got a lot to smile about....just about everywhere has had really good rain, Taranaki, Marlborough, Nelson etc" according to Federated farmers president Alistair Polson. "Drought-prone Nelson and Blenheim have had their best rains in 60 years."
NIWA has gone strangely quiet.
I'd urge people to attend at least one of the meetings at present going on around the country, organized by the government to talk about global warming and the Kyoto Protocol. They are very poorly publicized and from my own experience, not very well attended. I went to two yesterday, in Henderson, putting in my 2 cents worth. One was a forum meeting in the morning, with the public one at night. Actually both were exactly the same content and format. The chair presenters, from the ministry of environment, wade through information they think you are interested in, about how good the Kyoto agreement will be for NZ. They allow only 20 minutes at the end for group discussion which is not meant to be aired amongst the whole group, and they don't like people from the floor piping up and interrupting their points. In short, it is not a two-way consultation process but another chance to lecture yet again the governmental point of view. Their mind is already made up, as evidenced from Pete Hodgson's remark that the science is undeniable. But at the meeting last night, more than half those present did not believe the science stood the test. If you go to one, be aware of the following points, which they don't like hearing..
A carbon tax will push fuel prices and the operating costs of all industries sky high. The bigger companies will be able to transfer their operations to non-Kyoto compliant countries to escape the charges. The rich will be favoured and small businesses will have additional costs, licenses and restrictions to worry about.
The monitoring of all the emissions, licensing and penalizing will need a whole new bureaucracy, all drawing wages, which will add to the already growing global-warming-industry of researchers, commissions and consultants. Can the country afford all that?
Many countries, including Australia, won't join. Why should we? They will tell you that we need to set an example because we're supposed to be clean and green, although we still empty poisons into our rivers and cover the land with pesticides. An example to whom? An example is only valid if the world is watching. In this case, the countries who are central to this debate will be singularly unmoved by a stand from tiny NZ, who has a smaller GDP than General Motors.
More so-called pollution to the environment may occur if we ratify because factories could, in theory set up industries using processes which emit so far un-specified gases.
The need for carbon sinks which supposedly suck up CO2 means the need for more forests, locking up crop and grazing land. At risk are small operation farms. The move is to prove that farming is unprofitable, hence the talk of the methane "problem", so that forestry, owned by big business can take over joined by industrial and housing developers. Livestock grazing on public and private lands, plus the additional energy needed for cropland, are according to them wasteful uses of energy and contribute to an unsustainable future. A COP6 contact group called "Land-use, Land-use Change and Forestry" (LULUCF) lays out the details. And, just a side point, mature trees don't absorb CO2, only young saplings do.
Just who is the Kyoto Protocol? The UNFCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) convened in 1997. They consist of "nations," politicians, environmental groups like Greenpeace, who run as big businesses needing to attract recruits and their subscriptions, many media agencies and personnel and not many scientists. The politicians are there by the grace of big business, which helps them get elected. Any decisions are going to favor business over community, forestry over farm, globalisation over individualism and profit over social concern. Decisions this international group make have the potential to change every facet of our lives. Every meeting is an attempt to get all 150 nations to sign up. Like the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which banned CFCs to heal the ozone layer, the Kyoto Protocol is based on a set of unproved suppositions- that the globe will warm to an unsustainable level by 2050, that fossil fuels are responsible, and that America and other big users of energy are the culprit. It is mainly a Europe versus America war. European countries think that by punishing America they might get an economical advantage. They want America to cut back on coal production, for example. But coal supply there is enough to last for 250 years, it is way the cheapest form of producing electricity and these days it is the most environmentally clean. All Americans would have to pay twice as much for alternative or imported energy if they were forced to cut back on coal. As developing countries would have plenty of leeway to develop mined energy sources, Americans would become increasingly hostage to such nations. India and China would welcome the many businesses that would flee the US to avoid paying huge energy costs. In a mixture of economic jealousy and self-greed, Europe wants to upset America's standard of living.
South Africa is another economy heavily dependant on the use of coal. It offers the only electrical way out of poverty for half the country's population and is the critical feedstock of the country's chemical industry. Also coal is needed there for waste management which is now in critical disarray in that nation. So South Africa is never going to sign either.
Globalisation is the word on the lips of big business. Federal land is better managed than private land, according forestry managements in conglomerates in league with governments. In NZ you have at least one land court judge who has married into a major forestry shareholder family.
Who will run the Kyoto? The UN weilds incredible clout. All its agencies are intertwined with the world's most powerful corporations and banks so tightly it's impossible to make sense of them just in this summary. The international banks and trans-national corporations have vested interests in trading carbon and the land you own, as smoothly as bankers trade bonds. Those who administer the carbon trading will be international banks and their puppet governments. It will all cost money which will be recouped from taxes. The taxes will come from you and I.
The UN needs an iron-clad global-warming scare to bolster its claims that the globe is being saturated with greenhouse gases and they need to convince people that only a globally directed effort will save us from burning up. The problem is, most IPCC members aren't scientists. The 80 to 120 nations on the panel selected working groups of science authors, who then boiled down their findings. If the findings conflicted, only those conclusions favorable to the UN position made it to the final draft. In a scandal referred to as the IPCC Alterations to the Scientific Report, Second Assessment Report, Working Group 1, Chapter 8, passages were removed that referred to "still uncertain" etc and the words "human influence" inserted. This resulted in many scientists crying foul and petitioning the IPCC at many climate change meetings.
Where's the science? CO2 is heavier than air so it can't rise up to form a greenhouse cover. So is CO, nitrous oxide and all the hydrofluorocarbons like SF6, and PFCs and HFCs that are locked up in refrigeration units and never become emissions. The only gas lighter than air is methane, which does float up, but being inflammable it gets burned up by lightning. It is estimated that there are over 2000 electrical storms happening every second around the world. What doesn't get fizzed out is daily attacked and broken down by hydoxyl ions (OH) made from oxygen and hydrogen as a result of sunlight reacting with air. Carbon sinks don't work as the trees have already grown and so don't absorb anymore CO2. CO2 is also water soluble, which is why 71% of the carbon in the world is in the oceans. CO2 combines with rain to form a weak acid which gets embedded into rocks. It literally gets washed out of the sky, along with water vapor when it rains, which is why after a shower you can see the stars more clearly. Most of the CO2 comes out of volcanoes and then falls slowly to the ground. Only 0.035% of the world's CO2, 350 parts per million, is in the atmosphere at any one time. All the rest (99.9%) is always at or below ground level.
The oceans are not rising. To prove it look at tide heights exactly 19 and 38 years back from any date, which is when moon phases have reoccurred at the same time. You won't see any difference in tide height.
The poles are not melting. They still get to minus 80degC in winter and between minus 5 and minus 20 in summer. Even if the globe has heated 0.6 of a degree over the last century (NASA) it won't make a scrap of difference. Even 2 or 3 degrees supposedly over the last 20 years won't dent it. The average temperature around the earth is about 14deg. Over the course of one day the temperature variation at any one location is far more than that. Everything seems to cope. Humans just roll up or down their sleeves and animals go and sit in the shade.
Ozone, if it covered the whole earth, would only be 3mm thick. Ozone is only destroyed by chlorine out of volcanoes, especially Mt Erebus at Antarctica. Every spring, and this spring also (Herald, Oct. 2nd), articles appear in the daily newspapers proclaiming that the hole is the biggest ever. If it's always the biggest it's been, we're not making any progress yet with our current restrictions.
Finally, the question I always ask is: if meteorologists admit they can't forecast the weather and therefore the climate for more than 7 days ahead, how can they be so sure of global warming in 50 or 60 years time? I'm usually told that global scientists, not meteorologists are those who supply greenhouse information. So my next question is, down here the global scientists are NIWA. That's NIWA as in those who didn't foresee the catastrophic Marlborough drought or the power crisis due to the dry hydrolakes or the coldest July ever in some places or the 23 day hoar frost in Alexandra that cost millions in ruined crops or the present heavy November rains. The 600 who are employed by NIWA are the spokepersons for our climate. They have a zilch track record in accurate longrange weather forecasting and there is no earthly reason why we should believe anything they say.
Please go along to these meetings and make the presenters aware that we are not going to all be the pushovers they are relying on us to be. Have your say. Ask the questions they are trying to avoid.
Meetings:
Here's the list
Auckland City
19th November 10am-1pm and 5.30pm-7.30pm. council chamber, ground
floor, Vodafone House, corner Pitt St/Hopetoun St
North Shore
20th November: 10am-1pm and 5.30pm-7.30pm. Bruce Mason Center, cnr
Hurstmere Rd and the Promenade, Takapuna
Gisborne
7th November 10am-1pm and 5.30pm-7.30pm. Gisborne Cosmopolitan
club, 190 Derby St.
Napier
8th November: 10am-1pm, Boardroom, Hawkes Bay Regional Council, 102
Vautier St, Napier
5.30pm-7.30pm Council Chambers, Napier City Council, Hastings St,
Napier
Palmerston North
8th November, 10am-1pm, Council Chambers, Palmerston North City
Council, 27 The Square
Masterton
8th November, 5.30-7.30pm, YMCA, 371 Queen St
9th November: 10am-1pm, YMCA, 371 Queen St.
Hamilton
12th November: 5.30pm-7.30pm: Chartwell Square Room, Hamilton
Gardens Pavilion, Cobham Drive
13th November: 10am-1pm, Hamilton City Council Recetion Lounge,
Municipal Building, Garden Place
Tauranga
13th November, 5.30pm-7.30pm; Village Hall, Compass Community
Village, 17th Avenue West
14th November. 10am-1pm; Bay Nissan Hall, Compass Community
Village, 17th Avenue West
Rotorua
14th November, 5.30pm-7.30pm, East Room, Rotorua Convention Centre,
1170 Fenton St
15th November. 10am-1pm, East Room, Rotorua Convention Centre, 1170
Fenton St
Taupo
15th November, 5.30pm-7.30pm, Rimu Room, Great Lakes Centre, Storey
Pl
16th November, 10am-1pm, Rimu Room, Great Lakes Centre, Storey
Pl
Wellington
12th November, 10am-1pm, Chart Room, James Cook Hotel Grand
Chancellor, 147 The Terrace ,
and 5.30-7.30pm, Air NZ Suite, Wellington Town Hall, Wakefield
St
Lower Hutt
13th November, 5.30-7.30pm, Woburn Room, Angus Inn, Cnr Waterloo Rd
and Cornwall St
Porirua 22nd November, 5.30pm-7.30pm, Pataka Community Room, cnr Norrie and Parumoana St
Whangarei
21st November, 5.30-7.30pm, TBC
22nd November, 10am-1pm, TBC
Kaikohe
22nd November, 5.30pm-7.30pm, Mid North Motor Inn, Upper
Broadway
23rd November, 10am-1pm, Mid North Motor Inn, Upper Broadway
Nelson
14th November, 10am-1pm, Council Chambers, Nelson City Council,
Civic House, 110 Trafalgar St
5.30pm-7.30pm, Council Chambers, Nelson City Council, Civic House,
110 Trafalgar St
Greymouth
15th November, 5.30pm-7.30pm, Ashley Hotel, 74 Tasman St
16th November, 10am-1pm, Ashley Hotel, 74 Tasman St
Invercargill
19th November, 11am-2pm, Environment Southland Council Chambers,
cnr North Rd and Price St, Waikiwi,
and 5.30pm-7.30pm, same venue
Dunedin
20th November, 1-4pm, Hutton Theatre, Otago Museum, 419 Great King
St,
and 5.30pm-7.30pm, same venue.
Christchurch
21st November, 5.30pm-7.30pm, TBC
22nd November, 10am-1pm, TBC
It doesn't get really good until next Wednesday, just before the new Moon.
Lately I have been going through my collection of clippings from the past. Each week I will print some for your amusement.
11/7/81-Waikato Times
Slipping back Into A World Of Ice
The earth could easily slip into an ice age in 10 years, with glaciers spreading over Britain, most of North America and northern Europe, according to Sir Fred Hoyle, the astronomer..
30/4/81 (NZ Herald)
Life In The Year 2000
Because of the changed climate, our polar caps will start to melt and coastal towns like London, New York, Auckland etc will have to be evacuated. International scientists, after working for two years have recently published their findings. The world will have doubled its population, half the world's natural woods will have gone(yearly the size of California), nearly two million species of birds, insects and animals will have disappeared. When oil wells dry up and people cannot afford to pay the high costs of oil, they will turn to burning wood. The smoke will so pollute the air that the rain will fall as ësour rain' rendering 20% of the land unusable, a desert-like polluted place of waste. The best agricultural lands will be used for streets and airports and will have become asphalt jungles. NZ will be growing more cereal crops, more goats for milk and meat, and be producing tonnes of rabbit meat.
Good Evening Ken,
I think Steve's letter and your reply do not do justice to your forecast. In September, using your Auckland six monthly forecast I decided to pull my 36ft yacht out of the water on 19th October and return it on 29th Oct. It is necessary to book space well in advance. And the daily charge for hard-standing makes this is an expensive operation especially if there are weather delays. As I was painting the bottom your forecast of a dry spell for this period was very crucial. By and large the weather was dry as forecast. Sure, heavy showers over weekend of 27/28 Oct and the very strong 8 to 11 m/s winds forecast for 30/31 Oct arrived a few days early. But fundamentally your forecast ten days of dry weather was correct.
Thanks - I will use your forecast again next time my yacht needs to go onto the hard.
Keith
Kia Ora Ken,
I would like to endorse the common sense I have received from your emails . It gives me great pleasure to say that recently the 14th October I staged a Food Wine Festival in Rotorua and took the "risk" of going ahead with the proposed date and also saved our group $2200.00 by canceling an insurance proposal for wet weather cancellation. The prediction you gave me was spot on even predicting rainfall in the evening by which time the event was all over and of which it only lasted 30 minutes max as the sun began to shine again not long after, till sunset!!! NIWA and the Met Service were as useful as" tits on a bull" We are planning to hold another festival next year and will be investing in your weather almanac.
Steve U.
Hi there,
I really enjoyed your talk at the Rationalist House several months
ago - apart from the constant interruptions from some silly people.
Based on your prediction for Labour weekend I decided not to do the
coastal classic yacht race - thank goodness. It was horrific. We
are doing a round Rangitoto yacht race on 17th November
starting10.am. We can go either way round and I was wondering if
you would be able to suggest the "best" way to do it based on the
wind predictions and what is the weather like for that day. I wish
I had looked at your predictions for last Saturday as I ended up 6
hours on the rails of the boat, cold, wet and not really enjoying
it. We went a full circle and could not fly a spinnaker!!!!!
Cheers and keep up the good work
Dale
(For the 17th I have rain that day, and light winds from NE. So I suppose clockwise would be the way to go. -K)
Mr Ring-
I recall you were quoted on Network News recently as predicting a
moon-triggered earthquake soon of magnitude 7 or larger. I cannot
remember whether it was Nov 30 or Dec 30 that we could expect a
large one. Could you please reply and let me know which date the
prediction was for?
Thanks & Regards
Kris
(Nov 6th-7th, 12th-16th, and 30th-Dec 3rd, also Dec 7th-11th are earthquake-prone dates.-K)
Hi Ken.
I haven't heard anyone connected with the weather industry brave
enough to come out and say what sort of summer we are likely to
have. I hope it won't be as wet and miserable as last summer. I
don't even think we had more than two or three days of sun for the
whole month of February out here. Not good for the tourists. Any
predictions for this summer????
Tony S
(Summer will be cooler on average and with more rain than average leading up to Xmas. There's also some tail ends of cyclones coming in December, January and February (see my ezines). If you're looking for a continuous run of reliable fine weather, and I mean over Auckland as I don't have Barrier data to work from, it'll be in the first week in December and the first two weeks of March. At all other times will be a few rain days followed by a few fine. -K)
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