New Zealand’s “Minister of Climate Change” (notice they don’t even bother including that silly old environment) writes to local planning officials to reconsider using RCP8.5, saying, as Roger Pielke Jr. notes, that use of bad scenarios in bad ways “results in unnecessary costs being imposed on ratepayers, businesses, and communities.” You don’t say. He also doesn’t say that they must not use it. He just says they “should not automatically” keep doing it. A least not as “the central or most likely future when making decisions that affect infrastructure investment, land use, property rights, or rates.” Well, as what then?

To return to the theme of climate obsession undermining environmentalism, Canada’s “Minister of the Environment, Climate Change and Nature” (see, they just can’t shut up about it) put out a press release “Minister Dabrusin’s statement on World Migratory Bird Day” that started with biodiversity, went through habitat loss and then of course went weak at the mental knees with “climate change”. Can you really look at urbanization in North America over the last century and think to yourself yeah, maybe it had some impact, but it’s really that half-degree temperature increase? Because they can.

From the “settled science” file, “Scientists Have Found Earth’s Hidden 8th Continent, a Vast Sunken World Larger Than India Beneath the Pacific Ocean Floor/ Earth’s maps have been wrong for centuries. A hidden landmass larger than India has been sitting beneath the Pacific the whole time.” Now arguably being above water is a minimum requirement for continenthood. And no, it’s not Atlantis. But the story does make a plausible case for Zealandia: “It has its own crustal structure, its own tectonic history, and fossil evidence of dinosaurs that lived on its surface long after it began to sink.” And OK, it’s still hanging on , just: “Only New Zealand, New Caledonia, and a handful of smaller islands break the surface.” But if there’s that much we don’t know about the oceans, how can we know everything about climate which, we add, depends in significant measure on ocean currents?

Speaking of oceans, The Guardian reported that “A powerful earthquake that killed at least 61 people in the Philippines this week raised the seabed by as much as 2 metres (6.6ft), exposing coral and harming marine life, the country’s environment department has said.” And yes, of course, in the grisly world of climate alarmism coral dies when water goes up or land does. But is it too much to ask that they acknowledge that this whole business of sea levels is a bit more complicated than drive a car, drown an island?

Also speaking of oceans, requiem for an iceberg. National Geographic waxes lyrical about A23a (not easy given that name but it was also the world’s biggest iceberg for ages) which broke off Antarctica back in 1986 as A23, was very big, ran aground and was ignored, split in 1991 and finally this huge fragment (hence A23a) broke free in 2020 and became a media star in 2023 when it reached the open ocean and was… a big piece of ice. Now it has melted entirely or nearly so; nobody’s sure. But here’s the big news, for us at least: “Much of the coverage shared a sense of incredulity, as though the planet had somehow sprung a surprise that no one had been expecting. And while some of the flurry of articles speculated whether climate change played a role in setting A23a adrift, scientists suggested otherwise. ‘The consensus,’ one British Antarctic Survey researcher told the BBC, ‘is the time had just come.’” Should another such massive chunk calve today we shudder to imagine the climate-hysteric response. But kudos to NG for realizing, and saying, that when it comes to weather, glaciers, ice and that there, sometimes stuff just happens.

June having been, the smart set all says, hotter than the hottest thing ever including last June, we have a question: how is it that the UAH satellite temperature series shows the departure from the 1991-2020 average in that month to be lower than in May, and than all but about six months in the last three years? Not cherry-picking a European heat wave, surely?

Climate Karens? So it seems. Blacklock’s Reporter notes that in Canada “Urban women over 65 are most likely to worry over climate change, Statistics Canada said yesterday in a rare psychosocial questionnaire. No reason was given.” No indeed. They wouldn’t dare. It is interesting that “‘Despite assumptions that climate change has stronger psychosocial effects on youth, seniors were the most likely age group to report high levels of concern about climate change in Canada,’ wrote analysts.” And also that “Researchers have found climate-related hazards in Canada and abroad can have a mental health impact with some people experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression or anxiety related to ecological disasters and climate change,” said the report Feeling The Heat: More Than Half Of Canadians Are Highly Concerned About Climate Change.” And, Blacklock’s added, “Data also showed divorced people were more likely to fear climate change than single, married or widowed Canadians. No reason was given.” No. Because you don’t use words like “neurotic” about core supporters of the Natural Governing Party. If you know what’s good for you.