Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, June 9th, 2010 - 28 comments
There has been a series of posts at Hot-topic and other sites looking at the actions and background of climate change skeptical scientists. But what is fascinating generally is that many are retired professors far from the cut and thrust of the peer reviewing of their work that is a major and critical part of the scientific process. Many people seem to imbue a larger mantle of authority over a title than its meaningless value deserves.
Written By: - Date published: 7:49 am, June 6th, 2010 - 35 comments
“Lord” Christopher Monckton is a high profile climate change denier. Professor John Abraham examines his claims in detail, and shows Monckton to be a serial liar, misrepresenting the science at every turn. What makes a person tell lies that are going to cost us the earth?
Written By: - Date published: 11:39 am, June 3rd, 2010 - 34 comments
There’s increasing rumbles in the country side about a Country Party breaking away from National, on the back of the anti-ETS backlash, which National brought upon itself with its behaviour in opposition. A Country Party would be electorally viable. The Left has already splintered into natural fragments now that MMP makes it possible. The Right might be about to do the same.
Written By: - Date published: 7:34 am, June 2nd, 2010 - 26 comments
Worldwide it is the hottest Jan-Feb-March-April on record. Heat waves have already killed tens of thousands in the last few years. In India 2010 is believed to be the hottest summer in the country since records began in the late 1800s, and hundreds are dead. While ACT and Federated Farmers bitch and moan about the costs of the ETS, the deaths will keep coming.
Written By: - Date published: 8:24 am, May 27th, 2010 - 23 comments
National is under extraordinary pressure on its ETS, and it seems to be starting to panic. While I can commend them for sticking to their guns (better a gutted ETS than none at all), I don’t have any sympathy over the backlash they are facing. They bought it on themselves.
Written By: - Date published: 9:53 am, May 26th, 2010 - 65 comments
We pay for the need to reduce greenhouse emissions one way or the other. There’s no point complaining about the cost of the ETS on power and fuel. What we should be more pissed off about is that we are being expected to bear half the cost as taxpayers. We have to pay, the question is whether we put the cost on pollution to discourage pollution or we just lump it on taxpayers.
Written By: - Date published: 4:01 pm, May 25th, 2010 - 11 comments
According to Newsroom [currently offline]: No money has been budgeted to pay for New Zealand’s contribution to a $44 billion component of the Copenhagen Accord on climate change or to withstand losses from the emissions trading scheme beyond Kyoto’s lifetime.
Written By: - Date published: 10:11 am, May 23rd, 2010 - 32 comments
We are so used to hearing that climate change is the most important environmental issue of our time, that to hear that biodiversity may require more urgent attention made me sit up and pay attention. As reported in the Guardian…
Written By: - Date published: 10:01 pm, May 18th, 2010 - 27 comments
The US Republican Party faces destruction at the hands of the Teabaggers, a reactionary movement based on ignorance and fear that the Republican leadership purposely created. National faces a similar risk. It cynically fed its members anti-climate change conspiracy theorist nonsense. Now the Nats have to govern but their knuckle-draggers are fighting back.
Written By: - Date published: 1:22 pm, May 18th, 2010 - 11 comments
Yesterday I posted on John Key being named “Dim bulb of the week” by the San Francisco Examiner. Continuing with a dim bulb theme – let’s talk about Edison Hour, as it is explained to us by a budding genius from ACT…
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, May 15th, 2010 - 20 comments
You sometimes have to wonder about headline writers sometimes (including myself). But take a look at this one from Bloomberg.com, a site with a focus on investment. Windmill Boom Curbs Electric Power Prices for RWE RWE AG is a power utility and wind farm operator in Germany. The reason that they’re getting reduced prices for […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:12 am, May 13th, 2010 - 5 comments
The Conservative/ Lib Dem alliance is good news for the climate, with the coalition already stating its committment to a low carbon, “eco-friendly economy”. Will Key show any of the same vision next week?
Written By: - Date published: 12:11 pm, May 12th, 2010 - 18 comments
A recent open letter from 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences (including 11 Nobel laureates) calls for “an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues …, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them”.
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, May 10th, 2010 - 11 comments
If, as seems increasingly likely, the Government drops its plans to desecrate the best of schedule 4 land, will it be cause for celebration? In a word, no. Kathy at Greenpeace weblog examines Brownlee and his wet dreams
Written By: - Date published: 9:07 am, April 29th, 2010 - 21 comments
National is predictably planning to put the cost of polluters’ actions on to the rest of us by canning the major parts of the ETS. This stupid game of pass the buck is played out all over the world – polluters refuse to accept their responsibilities, governments refuse to act – as more greenhouse gases are pumped into the atmosphere, locking us in to economic and ecological devastation.
Written By: - Date published: 5:07 pm, April 28th, 2010 - 37 comments
Apparently climate scientist Michael Mann has threatened legal action* against Minnesotans for Global Warming (M4GW) over their video “Hide the Decline.†This used the comment from the “climategate†emails to portray a dishonest and slanderous picture of Mann. The video has been heavily promoted by climate change deniers and conservative groups, news outlets and blogs internationally. Several conservative NZ bloggers promoted the video.
Looks like the loony CCDs have exhausted the toleration of some climate scientists.
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, April 19th, 2010 - 90 comments
The eruption of the volcano under Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland is an example of what we can expect more of due to climate change. Vulcanism is expected to increase as ice caps and glaciers melt. An eruption has a cooling effect, due to the sulfur dioxide thrown into the air and, in Eyjafjallajokull’s case, all the grounded planes. But don’t count on volcanoes to save us from ourselves.
Written By: - Date published: 12:53 am, April 19th, 2010 - 48 comments
European air travel has been grounded for four days and there is no end in sight. What will be the effect of further prolonged disruption? What if the eruption lasts a year or more? Can the current crisis be turned into a constructive opportunity for rail?
Written By: - Date published: 12:07 pm, April 11th, 2010 - 31 comments
We were off-air last weekend, so this story got missed.
The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report into the disclosure of climate data by the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia has just been released.
Turns out that ‘climategate’ was just a pile of hot air and selective story telling by the denialist industry. Wasn’t that unexpected? Yeah right.
Written By: - Date published: 11:24 am, March 28th, 2010 - 19 comments
Anyone who has been involved in debating issues has probably come to suspect that facts don’t matter. Facts don’t change people’s minds, there are other, stronger influences that shape opinions.
A recent article by George Monbiot in The Guardian reviews some of the psychological evidence for this fact blindness in the context of the climate change debate.
Written By: - Date published: 1:21 am, March 18th, 2010 - 36 comments
David Farrar is not stupid. Like everyone with a brain, he knows that climate change is a real and dangerous threat caused by human greenhouse gases emissions. Yet he persists in making denialist dog-whistles to his readers, always being careful never to outright deny climate change himself. He and all the leaders of denialism are telling what they know to be lies to people they know to be idiots.
Written By: - Date published: 9:12 am, March 16th, 2010 - 46 comments
My mouth dropped yesterday when I read in the Dompost an editorial lamenting the “scientifically ignorant public, suspicious of the work many scientists do”. What shocked me was the chutzpah of the lament coming from a newspaper that fuels scientific illiteracy. Today, the Dompost has yet another anti-science, illiterate climate change denier column. Meanwhile, for all its talk, Key’s Government is cutting science jobs.
Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, March 11th, 2010 - 17 comments
Solid Energy has been caught out commissioning future leaders to pen fantasy stories in school hours. The company is inviting high school students in key coal-mining areas to submit an essay on: “The role of coal in sustainable energy solutions for New Zealandâ€.
Written By: - Date published: 11:58 am, March 7th, 2010 - 15 comments
It turns out that there is a climate change industry after all.
It is the denier industry, bought and paid for by ExxonMobil…
Written By: - Date published: 10:23 am, February 26th, 2010 - 3 comments
Nothing like a good IT stoush, particularly of the David and Goliath variety. Greenpeace has blown the whistle on Facebook’s use of coal to power its new data center in (note: renewable-rich) Oregon. The supposedly forward-looking social networking site picked this energy dinosaur (and the world’s leading cause of climate change), because it figures the […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:30 pm, February 25th, 2010 - 45 comments
According to a Guardian poll today, public conviction about the threat of climate change has declined with the proportion of adults who believe climate change is “definitely” a reality dropped by 30% over the last year, from 44% to 31%, in the latest survey by Ipsos Mori. Overall around nine out of 10 people questioned still appear to accept some degree of global warming.
Written By: - Date published: 12:07 pm, February 21st, 2010 - 20 comments
At TED2010, Bill Gates unveils his vision for the world’s energy future, describing the need for “miracles†to avoid planetary catastrophe and explaining why he’s backing a dramatically different type of nuclear reactor. The necessary goal? Zero carbon emissions globally by 2050.
Written By: - Date published: 11:58 am, February 21st, 2010 - 16 comments
Climate change deniers spend a lot of time picking at motes – occasional errors in climate change science. Why is there so little attention to the beams – incorrect and dishonest denier claims and tactics?
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, February 11th, 2010 - 18 comments
The Government and the secretive Iwi Leadership Group are looking at an option where no-one owns the foreshore and seabed. It’s often forgotten that the Ngati Apa case, which sparked the foreshore and seabed, contraversy was about big business. Ngati Apa wanted to have title over the seabed so it could undertake aquaculture, bypassing a […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:38 am, February 9th, 2010 - 63 comments
Consider these results from opinion surveys of experts different areas of research, I won’t tell you the areas of research just yet: In one, 97% of actively publishing experts agree with a statement (I’ll give you the statement below) concerning their field. In the other field, 46.5% of experts fully agreed with the statement, 27.9% agreed […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, February 7th, 2010 - 79 comments
Poneke’s weblog recently wrote a critical post about ‘climategate’ where he has had a look through the subset of selectively leaked pages of private correspondence thieved from the CRU at the University of East Anglia. His analysis didn’t bother to look at the science of climate change virtually at all, and what science was looked at was full of myths. Furthermore it wasn’t particularly original. Most appeared to have been cribbed from a number of climate change denialist sites and throughly debunked in part or as a whole by many other sites. It was hardly the type of original thinking that David Farrar at kiwiblog should have labeled as being
Poneke’s full post is a must read. It is also the sort of journalism that should be in the mainstream media.
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