Written By: - Date published: 1:06 pm, July 9th, 2011 - Comments Off on Climate change laffs
Comedy duo Armstrong and Miller (who has a degree in quantum physics) take on climate change deniers and do-nothingers with disarming humour.
Written By: - Date published: 8:19 am, July 3rd, 2011 - 41 comments
Bravo France, the first country in the world to ban fracking. But for every step forward in this world, we seem to take two steps backwards…
Written By: - Date published: 11:21 am, June 25th, 2011 - 18 comments
The snows haven’t come and the ski industry is in trouble. Is it a “cruel blow” from mother nature?
Written By: - Date published: 9:51 am, June 23rd, 2011 - 77 comments
Written By: - Date published: 1:57 pm, June 21st, 2011 - 14 comments
My producer partner Lyn is back from Eire and has a theatrical release of their documentary underway in NZ. Director Briar March and producer Lyn Collie, along with two Australasian earth scientists specializing in oceanography and geomorphology looked at the effects of a rising sea levels and changing climate patterns are having on the people of the small Polynesian atoll Takuu in Papua New Guinea. Well worth watching on the big screen while you can.
Written By: - Date published: 9:02 am, June 19th, 2011 - 141 comments
Argue with the science if you must, but it’s pretty hard to argue with the world. The effects of climate change are upon us..
Written By: - Date published: 8:04 am, June 4th, 2011 - 37 comments
Visionary climate change scientist James Hansen recently toured New Zealand, giving several public lectures. Here’s a quick summary, and a link to the podcast of the talk he gave at the University of Otago. As expected, it’s an excellent talk, with some fascinating suggestions about what we the people need to do. Interesting also to get Hansen’s take on Nick Smith…
Written By: - Date published: 2:47 pm, May 28th, 2011 - 63 comments
Written By: - Date published: 4:23 pm, May 26th, 2011 - 41 comments
John Key just rumbles on from one lame excuse to the next on the ETS. First bringing farmers in was going to raise dairy prices, now he’s making other claims that don’t stack up.
Written By: - Date published: 8:32 pm, May 25th, 2011 - 71 comments
Visionary climate change scientist James Hansen has written an open letter to John Key.
Written By: - Date published: 8:52 am, May 25th, 2011 - 45 comments
No Right Turn on the cost of the ETS to farmers. Forecast to be paid over $8 per kilo for milk solids, what cost do you guess that the ETS subtracts from that sum?
Written By: - Date published: 3:04 pm, May 16th, 2011 - 47 comments
James Hansen was among the first to raise the alarm about climate change, and is sometimes called “the father of climate change science” for his trouble. He’s currently in New Zealand, and had an excellent interview last Saturday with Kim Hill on RNZ. Click through for a schedule of his public lectures, and also two “Dark Ecologies” talks.
Written By: - Date published: 7:03 am, April 26th, 2011 - 46 comments
I recently finished “Eaarth” by Bill McKibben (of 350.org), a book about the effect of climate change on the planet and how we should be preparing for the future. Comprehensively researched and brutally honest, Eaarth is a smack in the emotional solar plexus. Everyone should read it.
Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, April 20th, 2011 - 14 comments
The United Nations joins those voices pointing out that Nationals”policy” on reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a complete sham. Reposted from No Right Turn.
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, April 20th, 2011 - 4 comments
The government’s books are tight. We shouldn’t borrow more, so there need to be reversals of the tax cuts and spending cuts. What matters is what is cut – all cuts are not the same. I’d like to see the $110 billion dollars of subsidies for greenhouse polluters under National’s Emissions Trading Scheme cut.
Written By: - Date published: 11:36 pm, April 4th, 2011 - 26 comments
Last year, the New Zealand Institute lambasted the Nats’ ‘aspiration’ to catch Australia by 2025 with a report entitled ‘A goal is not a strategy‘. Did the Nats change? Of course not. Yesterday, their energy strategy was released. It offers some goals but is mute on how to get there. It’s not really a strategy at all, but it serves the Nats’ purpose nonetheless.
Written By: - Date published: 9:11 am, March 13th, 2011 - 7 comments
Apropos of nothing in particular, one of my favourite poems.
Written By: - Date published: 11:43 pm, February 14th, 2011 - 53 comments
Look at the international media these days and what do we see? Oil prices rising due to peak oil. Extreme weather events due to climate change. Rising food prices due to peak oil increasing production costs, climate change destroying crops and resource depletion. And, in the most exposed countries, governments falling in revolution.
Written By: - Date published: 12:27 pm, February 11th, 2011 - 7 comments
Skeptical Science has posted a very interesting video with Dr. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg running through the current known climate science and associated risks on oceans. Our civilizations have both direct and indirect dependence on oceans. The implications of destroying the ecosystems there is probably going to impact earlier than most of the other effects of our current unrestricted CO2 emissions.
Written By: - Date published: 6:02 am, February 3rd, 2011 - 23 comments
By the time this is posted Yasi will have hit Australia. There will be massive damage, and probably loss of life. Most New Zealanders will have friends or family in Australia, perhaps in the areas affected. I’m sure our thoughts are with our cousins over the ditch. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent as a result of climate change. We should all make whatever preparations we can.
Written By: - Date published: 6:03 am, January 31st, 2011 - 24 comments
It’s crunch time for humanity and for our current way of life. Ever since the failure of the Copenhagen summit on climate change I have been less than optimistic about the outcome. So the Christmas break was a good time to read Here on Earth: An Argument for Hope by Tim Flannery. An argument for hope was exactly what I was looking for…
Written By: - Date published: 2:01 pm, January 14th, 2011 - 18 comments
To all those deniers who claimed the record cold in January & February in parts of the Northern Hemisphere (and again in December in Britain) proved global warming was a hoax… In fact globally 2010 equalled 2005 as hottest year ever overall, being 0.62C warmer than the twentieth century average (~14C globally). Deniers looked away […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:59 pm, January 5th, 2011 - 28 comments
Our guest poster looks at the “Warm Arctic / Cool Continents” idea about why Europe and North America have been cold and the Arctic has been so warm over recent years. Quoting Conrad, our guest then skewers ‘skeptics’ with the statement “Or to put it another way: you might not be interested in global warming, but global warming is interested in you.”
Written By: - Date published: 9:04 am, December 28th, 2010 - 32 comments
In 2007, Charles Stross a noted science fiction writer wrote a great essay on the known limits to space (without finding some kind of magic toolkit). This is worth reading in its own right. But it also implies why trashing our current life support system through laziness or stupidity is such a silly idea.
Written By: - Date published: 4:29 pm, December 26th, 2010 - 20 comments
Chinese manufacturing and state support is transforming the cost structure of solar technology. This in turn is helping to put in power support for the emerging use of wireless technologies in the developing world. This helps to ensure that less dirty carbon emitting technologies are not used in the developing world.It is hard to see a downside to this state initiative because it makes solar tech cheaper and more available earlier rather than later.
Written By: - Date published: 7:32 am, December 19th, 2010 - 19 comments
NIWA has had some of their data, methodology, and results checked by the aussies. As expected by anyone who knows something about the subject, they came back with substantially the same result. For the others like the nutters at the CSC and their political allies – well I can just see another conspiracy theory arising…
Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, December 15th, 2010 - 65 comments
How does large hunks of most of our coastal cities and thousands of acres of farmland being swallowed the sea sound? This neat graphic shows effects of sea level rises from climate change: 1m – roughly in line with official predictions; through 6m – collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet; to 14m – doomsday scenario. Even a small rise is catastrophic.
Written By: - Date published: 9:49 pm, December 13th, 2010 - 32 comments
How journalists make a hypothetical question based on a nutty claim and manufacture a sensational headline out of it. The really sensational headline is that western journos appear to have picked up the story from that world renowned nutter Anthony Watts raving about a fictional war between Russia and Poland. It looks like you can only rely on hard checked science news from some of the rational blogs, and a Chinese news agency…
Written By: - Date published: 7:35 am, December 13th, 2010 - 13 comments
The UN climate change talks at Cancun, Mexico, are finished. There were some positives, but not on the big issues. Reduction targets are still voluntary and still too low. We’re still on a catastrophic collision course with the laws of physics.
Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, December 9th, 2010 - 9 comments
The Commissioner for the Environment’s “Lignite and Climate Change: The High Cost of Low Grade Coal” has been released today. Its release had been postponed because of concerns that it would become entangled with reports concerning the Pike River Mine disaster.
Written By: - Date published: 1:45 pm, December 4th, 2010 - 26 comments
I confess that I am used to thinking of China as a polluter, not much concerned with environmental standards or green technology. I am very pleased indeed to find that I am wrong. Green technology is yet another area where China is drawing ahead of America and much of the West.
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