Greenland holds a large store of fresh water. If fully melted, it will raise sea levels by roughly 7 metres. It is melting – fast. Last week, temperatures across Greenland about 22 degrees Celsius warmer than the normal for that time of year. It produced an extraordinary visual effect of dogs walking on water through surface melt over sea ice.
In the same week that Donald Trump said that the American climate was the cleanest climate, Ian Dunlop, former chairman of the Australian Coal Association, has warned of massive social consequences ranging from increased religious fervour to outright chaos. And UK Chancellor Philip Hammond is questioning if remedial action is affordable.
Traffic jams are frustrating, waste time and money, have no cause or purpose, and they are all the same.
I confess that I wear underpants and that my body is exactly like Dan Carter’s – except maybe for some details around shape and size.
Shane Te Pou has claimed that the Government is anti road and pro bike lane and light rail. But a look at the Government’s spending priorities suggests that roads still dominate.
Simon Bridges has conceded that his claim that talk about Alfred Ngaro setting up a conservative party was “rumour and speculation” was not actually true. And Ngaro has gone on the offensive describing abortion as an unholy holocaust.
Forestry is forcing an important tilting point between mitigating climate change and land use, and it’s going to affect the viability of some North Island towns.
Bill Nye has decided that anger is the only adequate response to the climate change crisis.
It has been reported that US Presidential hopeful Joe Biden is hoping to craft a middle ground position between the extraordinarily strong scientific consensus suggesting we have a climate crisis and the industry supported anti scientific knee jerk opposition to doing anything.
The Zero Carbon bill is already being attacked by farming groups who are clearly concerned at the implications for their industry. And National is already showing signs that it will play politics with the issue.
The Government has announced that the Zero Carbon Bill will have as a goal carbon neutrality by 2050 and the halving of methane emissions by that time.
* and I don’t feel fine.
Green Land Information Minister Eugenie Sage has vetoed Oceania Gold’s attempt to buy a 180-hectare dairy farm to store mining tailings from its Waihi gold mines.
Tony Abbott is facing electoral defeat from Zali Steggall, an independent candidate who has put combating climate change at the centre of her campaign.
Re-entry to the Pike River mine has been delayed so that a high oxygen reading from within the mine can be understood.
The results of the Zero Carbon Bill negotiations are due to be announced shortly. This Government has a political imperative to make sure that the final proposal is resolute.
When providing a voluntary carbon-offset scheme, make it as simple as possible, but not simpler, and tell people about it.
New Zealand is too small for high-achievers and star-performers and does not offer enough challenges and rewards.
Jacinda Ardern will get a very warm welcome in Beijing based on immense respect for her and for New Zealand. Xi Jin-Ping has just returned from a very successful visit to Europe, joining Italy to the Belt and Road initiative and buying 300 jets from Airbus. Pepe Escobar outlines the implications for Eurasia. Much food for thought.
Jacinda Ardern has publicly supported the School students strike about climate change and urged them not to underestimate the power of their voices.
Details concerning the School strike day of action against Climate change scheduled for this week.
Norway’s government has announced it is selling out of oil exploration although it will continue to invest in energy companies that have refineries and are engaged in distribution and retail sales of oil and gas products.
Simon Bridges makes a passionate plea for the environment and for a mate.
School students are planning national protests against climate change on March 15, 2019. The response of some politicians to this news is less than optimal.
The Government is not due to announce its response to the Tax Working Group’s recommendations for a few more weeks. It appears that National using outrageous assumptions will take the opportunity to raise horror stories in the media on how bad the tax could be.
Greens Minister Eugenie Sage deserves praise for securing some solid funding increases for her Conservation portfolio.
The Pike River families have released an internal police document describing the handling of evidence from the crime scene as diabolical.
Thames-Coromandel mayor and former National Party MP Sandra Goudie has called a request to sign up to LGNZ’s Climate Change declaration irresponsible at the same time as the Council has entered a coastal inundation notation on the titles for a Retirement Village development it issued consent for.
It has been alleged that a potentially vital piece of evidence in the Pike River mine fatality that may show the cause of the explosion may have gone missing.
Land Information Minister Eugenie Sage has ended the policy of tenure review, under which large tracts of land were privatised and onsold for huge profits and sensitive ecological areas wrecked.
There’s trouble on the horizon in Bouganville with its government proposing significant changes to its mining law to allow wide scale mining on the island.
In my youth back in the late 1970s and early 80s, I did a BSc in Earth Sciences. I learned that our human framework of decades and centuries was but a blink of an eye to nature. Our period, that blink in time, is fast fading.
No friends National’s sock puppet party has now been announced.
Donald Trump has announced that the US will be withdrawing from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and Russia has also given notice. Stand by as the nuclear arms race restarts.
National’s claim that the Government wants to impose a meat tax suffers from the reality that the Government has done no such thing and the proposal comes from an International collective of academics.
Simon Wilson has suggested that the only way National may have to establish a Blue Green presence in Parliament is to offer them the seat of Epsom.
