Biden is serious about climate change

Written By: - Date published: 7:28 am, April 24th, 2021 - 70 comments
Categories: China, climate change, Environment, jacinda ardern, Joe Biden, science, uncategorized, us politics - Tags:

One of the many regretful aspects of the Trump presidency (remember him?) was the United States open hostility to doing anything about climate change.  Pulling out of the Paris accord at a time when urgent, concerted, drastic action is required was not what our world needed.

It looks like Joe Biden will do his best to make up for lost time.  From the Guardian:

Joe Biden has called upon the world to confront the climate crisis and “overcome the existential crisis of our time”, as he unveiled an ambitious new pledge to slash US planet-heating emissions in half by the end of the decade.

Addressing a virtual gathering of more than 40 world leaders in an Earth Day climate summit on Thursday, Biden warned that “time is short” to address dangerous global heating and urged other countries to do more.

Shortly before the start of the summit, the White House said the US will aim to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by between 50% and 52% by 2030, based on 2005 levels. Biden said the new US goal will set it on the path to net zero emissions by 2050 and that other countries now needed to also raise their ambition.

“Particularly those of us that represent the world’s largest economies, we have to step up,” the US president said in a speech opening the gathering.

“Let’s run that race, win a more sustainable future than we have now, overcome the existential crisis of our time.”

Biden said a shift to clean energy will create “millions of good paying union jobs” and that countries that act on the climate crisis will “reap the economic benefits of the clean energy boom that’s coming”.

He said: “This is a moral imperative, an economic imperative, a moment of peril, but also a moment of extraordinary possibilities. Time is short but I believe we can do this and I believe we will do this.”

Jacinda Ardern was given the option to contribute to the gathering.  From the Beehive website:

“New Zealand welcomes the United States’ international leadership on climate change and sees this summit as an important opportunity to work collectively to drive effective global action on climate change,” Jacinda Ardern said.

New Zealand was asked to specifically participate in the climate finance session of the Summit. New Zealand is a leader in this field: in pricing carbon through our emissions trading scheme; the introduction of mandatory climate-related financial disclosures; and our decades-long work to end fossil fuel subsidies.

“We used the Summit to call on others to follow New Zealand’s lead and do the following four things: price carbon, make climate related financial disclosures mandatory, end fossil fuel subsidies, and finance adaptation,” Jacinda Ardern said.

“Now it’s time for us all to act,” Jacinda Ardern said.

China has also pledged drastic action, pledging to have peak emissions by 2030 and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.  And given China’s status as a developing economy this is a significant pledge.

From CNN:

China has committed to move from carbon peak to carbon neutrality in a much shorter time span than what might take many developed countries, and that requires extraordinarily hard efforts from China,” Xi told other world leaders.

And when it comes to actual implementation, China’s one-party, top-down political system means it is unaffected by election cycles — unlike the US. In a thinly veiled jab at the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement, Xi appeared to underscore this difference, noting that to achieve global carbon neutrality, the world “must maintain continuity, not reverse course easily; and we must honor commitments, not go back on promises.”

The world does not have the luxury of spending further time debating how urgent the problem is and trying to coax reluctant nations to do something more than minor.  We just have to get on with it.  Biden looks like he is respecting the science and is determined to do something about it.

Fingers cro

70 comments on “Biden is serious about climate change ”

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  1. Adrian Thornton 1
    24 April 2021 at 9:12 am

    Micky you must be an incredibly optimistic guy (and that is an admirable trait)..however, seriously, if Biden wouldn’t/couldn’t (depending on your view) even get that desperately needed minimum wage increase that was widely supported and popular and that he campaigned so passionately about to the suffering workers of the US across the gate…how do you think that he has even the slightest chance of implementing even a fraction of what he is proposing?. He obviously has no real back bone or deeply rooted moral fortitude otherwise he would have got into the trenches for that minimum wage that he and Kamala promised a thousand times on the campaign trail…this guy is all talk, am I wrong?

    Just watch this and you will see what I mean…

  2. WeTheBleeple 2
    24 April 2021 at 9:39 am

    The time to make pledges is now!

  3. Ad 3
    24 April 2021 at 12:00 pm

    He'll win some and lose some in the Senate given the numbers are precisely 1.

    China and US should make a wager for % of coal electricity plants shut down.

    Something specific needs to come out of this.

  4. AB 4
    24 April 2021 at 12:16 pm

    Implementation will likely be difficult, uneven, and strongly or even violently contested, but this might well mark a turning point. The turning point being that denialism is no longer a rational option for the holders (individual and corporate) of wealth and private power. Change will have to come – so they may as well control it, and use it as an astonishing opportunity for even further accumulation of capital/wealth/power. They can rightly discern that leaving a response too long, may be so calamitous that it poses a threat to their dominance, or even to the operation of neoliberal capitalism itself – which can't be permitted. It could therefore be, that the response to climate change deepens existing inequities and misery.

  5. mosa 5
    24 April 2021 at 8:07 pm

    " “time is short”

    No TIME has run out and the world should have moved in the 90s ( a conservative timeline ) to cap the obsession with oil and everything that is produced from it including plastics but most economies were geared to plunder everything that moved including people that amassed huge wealth despite finite resources.

    It is just political expediency that is driving this utter rubbish we are getting from Biden and why does he and other rich economies not act severely with Bolsonaro and Brazil ( and others ) and its determination to destroy the last remaining rainforest on earth.

    The Americans have always been forthright in interfering in other countries affairs when capitalism has been under threat despite that country voting to move in another direction or invading to secure the fossil fuels from Kuwait , Iraq and its obsession with the Saudis to provide oil that has been so vital to American interests that it needs a change in strategy to save the planet and its last remaining resources which would be an admirable move on behalf of the evil empire that with that incredible power it wields could just for once do the right thing for all of those billionaires who will stop being so rich when there is nothing left to harness their wealth from.

    Biden is a a by product of American policy that has bought us to where we are right now and that was deliberate to ensure no Sanders presidency had a chance of succeeding.

    Proposed changes pushing out targets to the 2050s and beyond is like pissing in the coming gale force winds.

    All blow and very little moisture going in the right direction.

  6. Jenny how to get there 6
    25 April 2021 at 10:01 am

    How policy makers fool the public and themselves.

    https://sciblogs.co.nz/changing-climate/2021/04/24/climate-scientists-concept-of-net-zero-is-a-dangerous-trap/

    Current net zero policies will not keep warming to within 1.5°C because they were never intended to. They were and still are driven by a need to protect business as usual, not the climate.

    [I’ve put the quoted text within quote marks to make it clear it was not your words. Next time, please use the correct formatting of quoted text, thanks – Incognito]

    • RedLogix 6.1
      25 April 2021 at 10:32 am

      And after all those words expended on telling us what's wrong, exactly what is the good professor's solution – just this one sentence:

      The only way to keep humanity safe is the immediate and sustained radical cuts to greenhouse gas emissions in a socially just way.

      A sentence that implies the complete crashing of all economies and all the utter devastation that would follow. The man is a total fool whose vaguely specified solution is certainly worse than the problem he's trying to solve.

      He's correct in one sense, that 'net zero' is indeed a mistaken position – I've made this point elsewhere in my post's on this topic that we have to start pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and return to under 350ppm in order to be safe. Carbon negative at mass scale. But like so many climate alarmists he then proceeds to reject all the possible methods we could use to achieve this.

      This behaviour, where one points to a problem, and then rejects all the potential solutions tell us that the claimed 'problem' is not the actual agenda.

      • Drowsy M. Kram 6.1.1
        25 April 2021 at 10:52 am

        The man is a total fool whose vaguely specified solution is certainly worse than the problem he's trying to solve.

        I understand and respectfully disagree with your contention that "The man" (James Dyke, Senior Lecturer in Global Systems, University of Exeter; Robert Watson, Emeritus Professor in Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, and Wolfgang Knorr, Senior Research Scientist, Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science, Lund University) "is a total fool".

        “Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” – Feynman

        The authors' analysis is compelling and disturbing. But I can't completely rule out the possibility that you, Redlogix, are correct, and that "The man is a total fool". After all, there are so many fools – a spaceship Earth of fools, even, wouldn’t you agree?

        • RedLogix 6.1.1.1
          25 April 2021 at 11:06 am

          His analysis is intentionally disturbing. But it boils down to the same point I've made here repeatedly – carbon negative is the only path to safety.

          Yet he allows for nothing to achieve this – except to crash the economies of the world, a path that would certainly not achieve carbon negative and would preclude us from ever doing so.

          So I read articles like this – and they're a legion – and ask myself, what does this person really want? Either they haven't thought it through with sufficient care to express it (which given his credentials I'd hope he has), or they aren't telling us.

          • Drowsy M. Kram 6.1.1.1.1
            25 April 2021 at 11:27 am

            His analysis –> Their analysis…
            Yet he allows –> Yet they allow…
            what does this person really want? –> what do these people really want?
            given his creditials I'd hope he has –> given their credentials I'd hope they have

            Seems like a knee-jerk response if you still haven't registered that the article has three authors. The authors seem to understand the importance of halting global warming in a timely manner, and their contention is that there is currently no realistic means of achieving that. What do you think these people really want?

            The time has come to voice our fears and be honest with wider society. Current net zero policies will not keep warming to within 1.5°C because they were never intended to. They were and still are driven by a need to protect business as usual, not the climate. If we want to keep people safe then large and sustained cuts to carbon emissions need to happen now. That is the very simple acid test that must be applied to all climate policies. The time for wishful thinking is over.

            • RedLogix 6.1.1.1.1.1
              25 April 2021 at 11:40 am

              We're well past the point of arguing for the science – sustained CO2 levels over 350ppm must be addressed. The question here is how.

              If we want to keep people safe then large and sustained cuts to carbon emissions need to happen now.

              The idea that this can be done 'safely' is the very definition of 'wishful thinking'. Given the credentials of the lead author I have to expect that he (and the others who've contributed), must understand that driving carbon emmissions to zero not only falls hopelessly short of and contradicts their stated necessity for carbon negative – but would most certainly cause a catastrophic collapse of the modern world. That they leave this obvious consequence unstated and unexamined suggests they don’t want their readers to think about it either.

              I can't look inside their heads, but this is what I deduce from the words they're saying.

              • Incognito …
                25 April 2021 at 11:53 am

                This is the serious dilemma we face: do you amputate or do you try to save the part and treat in the hope to save the patient intact with a high risk of losing the patient altogether? This is how I see it, metaphorically speaking, of course. Roughly (simplistically), there appear to two main camps: 1) the amputation camp and 2) the treat camp.

                • RedLogix …
                  25 April 2021 at 12:22 pm

                  Yes that puts the argument here into a concise form. For the record I'm in the 'treat' camp.

                  In my view there are no ‘safe options’ here – amputation by cutting carbon to zero immediately carries a very high risk of death. Nor do I hold out any certainty for the ‘treat’ option – it’s a gamble too.

                  • Incognito …
                    25 April 2021 at 2:15 pm

                    Never said that there are ‘safe options’; there are risks no matter what, and no guarantees. Hence I called it a “dilemma”. Doing nothing is an option too, but likely the most risky one, although we don’t know this for sure either. Problem is that we get only one shot at it, just as with our precious life. The CC conundrum is as much scientific as it is ethical; the one without the other is ineffective and possibly outright dangerous.

              • Drowsy M. Kram …
                25 April 2021 at 11:55 am

                Propping up unsustainable BAU suits me fine – I'll be long gone before the chickens come home to roost. Maybe some of the article's authors have children/grandchildren/nieces/nephews, and maybe that's part of why they believe "The time has come to voice our fears and be honest with wider society."

                "Collectively we three authors of this article must have spent more than 80 years thinking about climate change."

                https://www.jamesgdyke.info/

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Watson_(chemist)

                Wolfgang Knorr: Climate change – The age of stability is over (NZ Herald)

                • RedLogix …
                  25 April 2021 at 12:09 pm

                  Propping up unsustainable BAU suits me fine

                  Total strawman.

                  BAU is what keeps 7.5b people more or less alive every day – exactly why would you want to denigrate this astonishing miracle?

                  That the system will continue to change and evolve is of course an unstated presupposition here, but to argue that it must be unthinkingly dismantled by 'driving carbon emissions to zero as fast as possible' is not the same thing at all.

                  • Stuart Munro …
                    25 April 2021 at 12:15 pm

                    BAU is what keeps 7.5b people more or less alive every day

                    And there are a practically infinite number of changes that could be made to BAU that would continue to do so.

                    No need to pretend that some invisible hand has marked the Brownian motions of scantily regulated markets with any kind of ineffability.

                  • Stuart Munro …
                    25 April 2021 at 12:40 pm

                    Your lack of understanding doesn't get you off the hook.

                    • RedLogix …
                      25 April 2021 at 12:51 pm

                      I'm guessing you’re pretending not to read irony for a reason, but I can't think of any good ones.

                  • Drowsy M. Kram …
                    25 April 2021 at 1:09 pm

                    Propping up unsustainable BAU suits me fine

                    is simple truth. I listened to the first few minutes of Michael Schellenberger's interview, but when he started (@6 mins) to link Thunberg's activism to her mental health I thought: 'Nope, not for me.'

                    BAU is what keeps 7.5b people more or less alive every day – exactly why would you want to denigrate this astonishing miracle?

                    If I had another 80 years of life ahead of me on spaceship Earth then I might have a different view about the wisdom of relying on an "astonishing miracle" to keep 7.5 – 10 billion people "more or less alive". But I don't, and acknowledge the personal (and global) benefits that accrue from propping up unsustainable BAU for just a little longer. Never mind that our behaviourally 'baked in' failure to act rationally now will have serious consequences for future generations.

                    Misleading Arguments Abound in Op-Ed Promoting New Michael Shellenberger Climate Denial Book “Apocalypse Never”
                    Although Shellenberger’s past as an environmentalist may mean he’s not a typical climate change denier, in light of his use of false and misleading arguments made in climate denial blogs and hyperbolic “heliocentric sect” attacks on the press, all in order to sell a book to climate deniers, he may as well be.

                    • RedLogix …
                      25 April 2021 at 1:18 pm

                      As a young girl with a 'special personalility' Thundberg is of course beyond criticism, untouchable as far as the activists are concerned, but as a mature adult I would have imagined you capable of being a little more robust than that.

                      As for you link – nope if you cannot read mine then I'm rejecting yours out of hand.

                  • Drowsy M. Kram …
                    25 April 2021 at 1:28 pm

                    As a young girl with a 'special personalility [sic]' Thundberg [sic] is of course beyond criticism…

                    Your hyperbole does you proud RL, as always. Thunberg certainly cops a bit of criticism here, and elsewhere.

                    https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a29236192/greta-thunberg-criticism/

                    https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/12/climate-change-minister-james-shaw-admits-new-zealand-has-long-way-to-go-after-greta-thunberg-criticism.html

                    As for you link – nope if you cannot read mine then I'm rejecting yours out of hand.

                    To be fair, I did follow your link, and wasted about 8 minutes on it. That you would choose to take a 'head in the sand' approach comes as no surprise to me laugh

      • Incognito 6.1.2
        25 April 2021 at 11:45 am

        I thought from reading the article it was crystal clear that it had “dawned” [used three times in the piece] on the three scientists that they had been smoking their own dope and be passing the pipe to others as well.

        Collectively we three authors of this article must have spent more than 80 years thinking about climate change. Why has it taken us so long to speak out about the obvious dangers of the concept of net zero? In our defence, the premise of net zero is deceptively simple – and we admit that it deceived us.

        IMO, it is a mea culpa, personally but above all, professionally.

        The last paragraph feels out of place with the rest of the article but after dawn comes a fresh new day with bright light and new opportunities; that’s where the authors have arrived, so far.

        • RedLogix 6.1.2.1
          25 April 2021 at 12:03 pm

          Well if a totally uncredentialled amateur like myself could work out that carbon zero was never going to be enough – what exactly are we paying these 'experts' for?

          Once we get it into firmly our heads that we have to both evolve the global human economy and pull vast amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere – then the range of workable solutions becomes a lot clearer. In this people like Michael Schellenberger is well ahead of these three authors.

          • Stuart Munro 6.1.2.1.1
            25 April 2021 at 3:28 pm

            what exactly are we paying these 'experts' for?

            To provide plausible deniability to the political class?

          • Incognito 6.1.2.1.2
            25 April 2021 at 4:46 pm

            Depends on what you mean by ‘what are we paying them for’. They usually are paid by their respective employers to do their jobs. It was just a matter of speaking, wasn’t it?

            I think what that article demonstrates nicely is that people have different levels of understanding and acceptance of the science and that these are evolving with time. It also shows that it is a myth that scientists are somehow immune or less prone to cognitive pitfalls and peer pressure or group think. In fact, there’s a lot of pressure to conform, professionally. But I’m sure you already knew this 😉

            • RedLogix 6.1.2.1.2.1
              25 April 2021 at 8:50 pm

              Fair point – I was probably a bit acerbic there.

              Part of the kind of work I do is understanding the difference between self-regulating and integrating processes on a hands-on basis. If I get it wrong the plant doesn't work. Well CO2 accumulation is an integrating process and that implies some very specific behaviour.

              As a result it was probably pretty natural to me to realise that carbon negative would be required. I'm not claiming special knowledge here, just a recognition as you say that different people will bring different experiences and different timeframes to their understanding.

      • Jenny how to get there 6.1.3
        25 April 2021 at 3:02 pm

        The discoherence here Red, is that you are using Bluelogix.

        The measures that are needed to deal with climate change, are measures that you fundamentally disagree with.

        What the good professor made very clear is that we need to pull the emergency brake on emissions.

        For a brief period the covid crisis showed it can be done.

        The covid crisis also revealed the same dischordant discoherence from the right of the political spectrum, decrying the lockdowns and almost every other measure taken as a handbrake on BAU.

        Just for arguments sake Red,

        Let us recall the measures taken by this government to stop the spread of the pandemic in this country, and be honest did you support them or not. Yes or No.

        1# The closed borders?

        Y/N

        2# The freeze on rent increases and evictions?

        Y/N

        Accomodating the homeless?

        Y/N

        The mortgage holiday.

        Y/N

        Free public transport

        Y/N

        The wage subsidy

        Y/N

        The March 2020 nationwide 4 week, level 4 lockdown

        Y/N

        The August 2020 Auckland region 3 week, level 3 lockdown

        The finally Red ask yourself this;

        Why did conservative administrations the Trump administration in the US, the Bolsonaro administration in Brazil, Modi adminstration in India and the Johnson Admiinistration in the UK all drop the ball on the covid crisis?

        Let me answer for you.

        Because they could not envisage any halt to BAU, it just isn't in their repertoire of responses.

        Same with the climate crisis.

        Thank goodness we had a libleral administration in this country when the pandemic struck us.

        Goodness help us if we had had a Nat. Act led administration when the pandemic hit

        This right wing discoherent response to the pandemic is why a liberal Joe Biden led administration in the US is more likely to take action on climate change than a conservative Donald Trump. (or in the future, a Ted Cruz), led administation,.

        Or in this country why an Ardern led liberal administration is more likely to take action on climate change than a future Collins led conservative administration is.

        • RedLogix 6.1.3.1
          25 April 2021 at 7:48 pm

          Just for the record I'll respond to your list of questions. In essence yes I support all of those measures – and I've said as much before.

          COVID is a very peculiar virus with many unknowns, and especially at the outset when there was so much yet to learn about it, there was every good reason to take extreme precautions. Again I've said this before – nothing new here.

          What I will say is that I'm no longer as optimistic as I was back in October last year. At that time the science was telling us that the spike proteins the vaccines were targeting were very stable and that as a whole SARS-COVID-2 was mutating relatively slowly. Well that turned out to be completely wrong, it's actually evolving at a remarkably rapid pace and adapting to every evolutionary pressure we place on it with ease. The new mutations that are appearing almost every week or so are downright scary.

          My view now is that we're not even halfway through this thing, unless we get very lucky and the vaccine programs work even better than hoped.

      • Jenny how to get there 6.1.4
        25 April 2021 at 5:28 pm

        "The only way to keep humanity safe is the immediate and sustained radical cuts to greenhouse gas emissions in a socially just way."

        James Dyke, Senior Lecturer in Global Systems, University of Exeter

        “A sentence that implies the complete crashing of all economies and all the utter devastation that would follow. The man is a total fool whose vaguely specified solution is certainly worse than the problem he's trying to solve."

        Redlogix, Anonymous Right Winger commenter.

        And there we have it. According to the Right, as voiced by Red, 'The solution is worse than the problem he's trying to solve.'

        We see the same kind of twisted right wing thinking with the pandemic, where the measures necessary to stop the spread of the pandemic were seen by right wing administrations and commentators like Red as, 'Worse than the Problem'.

        If you ever thought lockdowns were worse than the problem, then you needn't look past Modi's India or Bolsonaro's Brazil.

        The same is true of climate change.

        In the alternate universe inhabited by Right Wing commenters like Redlogix, the interests of investors and the economy far outweighs, the deaths of millions either by disease or climate disaster.

        [Take a week off for making up stupid accusations against another commenter, who happens to be an Author and Moderator here too, which suggests that you have the wrong end of the stick. Given that you’ve been around here for almost as long as RedLogix, I’m not even going to give you a warning other than to say that next time the ban will be considerably longer.

        For others who might bother reading this Moderation note: address the content, don’t attack the commenter – Incognito]

    • Incognito 6.2
      25 April 2021 at 11:24 am

      See my Moderation note @ 10:01 am.

    • Jenny how to get there 6.3
      25 April 2021 at 1:30 pm

      Kia ora incognito

      Thank you for giving this matter your attention.

      Just as you suggested, I tried formatting the quote, but all I got was this;

      <blockquote>Current net zero policies will not keep warming to within 1.5°C because they were never intended to. They were and still are driven by a need to protect business as usual, not the climate.
      </blockquote>

      What am I doing wrong, and how can I fix it?

      • Incognito 6.3.1
        25 April 2021 at 2:05 pm

        I have no idea what you're doing wrong.

        Assuming you use the comment/text editor to write comments, you simply click on the quotation mark in the editor menu and type away or paste.

        this is quoted text

        Then press Enter on your device and click on the quotation mark again to close off the quote tag. It should be quite straightforward.

        If you prefer to use tag symbols, as you seem to do, you should switch to Source in the comment editor menu (with the small tag symbols in front of it), otherwise it’ll show up simply as text (e.g. <blockquote>), as is the case in your comment.

        When you need more-technical assistance, please ask Lprent.

        HTH

      • greywarshark 6.3.2
        25 April 2021 at 10:14 pm

        Jenny htgt – When you first put your comment up you use the double quotes for blockquote.

        If you have to change your comment and go into edit, to put a blockquote in or change the blockquote round, that is when you use you use the blockquote word and arrows. At the beginning of the piece you put blockquote with <> around (as you have done at 1.30pm comment) and at the end you close it off with </blockquote>. The forward slash indicates the end of it.

  7. Bazza64 7
    25 April 2021 at 12:25 pm

    I think Biden’s commitment won’t be able to be met. The massive extra costs on consumers will get pushback.

    Heard a physicist on magic talk a few weeks ago say that for NZ to go mostly electric cars, there would need to be a massive infrastructure investment in the local power grids to enable the lines to carry the extra power for charging all the electric cars.

    Plus we would need to build more power stations to cover the extra electricity needed.

    Cost will be the biggest stumbling block to carbon reduction. It will hit all consumers and it will create problems for the middle & low income earners.

  8. joe90 8
    25 April 2021 at 12:40 pm

    This physicist.

    [deleted very long text with way too many links]

    https://www.desmog.co.uk/michael-kelly

    [I believe your comment to be a reply to Bazza64 @ 7.

    I have deleted most of your comment because it was a straight copy & paste job from the website you linked to; people can decide to read it there rather than having to scroll past an extremely long comment with way too many links – Incognito]

    • Incognito 8.1
      25 April 2021 at 4:07 pm

      See my Moderation note @ 12:40 pm.

    • Bazza64 8.2
      25 April 2021 at 4:21 pm

      Yes that's the physicist, sorry should have put a link, but you have done now anyway thanks.

      I only listened to his conversation with Peter Williams, the issue wasn't whether the physicist believed in climate change or not, or the speed if it happening, but the huge cost to our economy (or any economy) if we wanted to have the majority of our cars running powered by electricity.

      Nothing he stated seemed alarmist & the points he made seemed quite valid, but not being a physicist myself I took him at his word. Maybe you can point out where he was wrong in what he said ? You may know more about it than me.

    • Drowsy M. Kram 8.3
      25 April 2021 at 4:24 pm

      From joe90’s link:

      Key Deeds
      December 2, 2020
      Kelly appeared on an episode of the Leighton Smith Podcast at the NZ Herald to “discuss climate mitigation and why NZ is making a big mistake.”

      Kelly has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals on physics and electronics. He does not appeared to have published any research articles on the subject of climate change.

      Key deeds – nice.

      Kelly must have had sufficient appeal to be invited back to talk with Williams.
      https://www.magic.co.nz/home/news/2021/03/is-a-fully-electric-energy-resourse-even-possible–physicist-mic.html

      • Incognito 8.3.1
        25 April 2021 at 4:55 pm

        When I heard that name, the alarms went off because I'd permanently banned a commenter here by the same name. However, they are two different persons and (hopefully) not related.

      • Incognito 8.4.1
        25 April 2021 at 7:35 pm

        Bronwyn Hayward, professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Canterbury University, said it was disappointing to see a councillor aligned to Kelly's position.

        "When we see councillors advocating positions of the past, that does concern me," she said. "We need decision-makers who are orientated to making decisions for citizens now and basing their decisions on cutting-edge science, and informed careful decision-making."

        With some councillors, apparently, you can smell the fossil fuels on their breath.

        • Pat 8.4.1.1
          25 April 2021 at 7:54 pm

          Listerine?

          "Sean holds a Masters in Petroleum Law and Policy (with distinction) from the University of Dundee, and is completing a Masters in Climate Change Science and Policy at Victoria University of Wellington."

          https://wellington.govt.nz/your-council/about-the-council/mayor-and-councillors/councillors/sean-rush

        • Poission 8.4.1.2
          25 April 2021 at 8:21 pm

          She is a political scientist who writes books for indoctrinating children.

          https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003000396/children-citizenship-environment-bronwyn-hayward

          • Incognito 8.4.1.2.1
            25 April 2021 at 8:40 pm

            I reckon more children have been indoctrinated by the Harry Potter books.

            • Poission 8.4.1.2.1.1
              25 April 2021 at 8:48 pm

              Trouble is they are now teaching political science,or writing papers on nouns (aka economics) for treasury.

              Let me begin by pointing out that economics deals with prices, quantities produced, consumption, rates of interest, rates of exchange, rates of inflation, unemployment levels, trade surpluses, GDP, financial assets, Gini coefficients. These are all nouns. In fact, they are all quantifiable nouns—amounts of things, levels of things, rates of things. Economics as it is formally expressed is about amounts and levels and rates, and little else. This statement seems simple, trite almost, but it is only obvious when you pause to notice it. Nouns are the water economics swims in.

              https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2104/2104.01868.pdf

              • Incognito …
                25 April 2021 at 9:01 pm

                I see a vague resemblance with Harry Potter but other than that, I seem to have lost the connection with CC or WCC, for that matter.

                • Poission …
                  25 April 2021 at 9:31 pm

                  Reading too many papers at once.

                  Kelly who in his role was to advise the UK on practical applications for mitigation (such as building) with his peers showed the constraints of the levels of skill with the UK civil service.

                  Professor Kelly: One of the submissions that came in reported to the level of just what I call GCSE level science that general civil servants have. Most people would be ashamed if they could not read a series of basic economic tables or understand certain aspects of statistics but none of them would be ashamed if they admitted they did not know the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Look at the National School of Government and see to what extent civil servants are exposed to some of what is basically GCSE science. The other day when I had somebody from another department in wanting to reduce the energy consumption in a house by 5, I said, "Let us take your shower. Do you want to have a shower for one-fifth of the time or do you want to raise the water temperature by one-fifth, so that you have the same time but a colder than blood temperature shower? Those are the only alternative you have". That is zero order physics upon which a lot of dreams came cascading down. I think there is a huge problem there. Even in our own department when it was a matter of setting up a climate change group, we had to have two economists and a statistician; that was the starting point of a problem which is essentially about climate change in buildings. If they had said, "Let us get a buildings engineer and a couple of people to support that", I would have said that was the appropriate way to start.

                  https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmdius/c1194-i/c119402.htm

                  If Kelly has expertise in engineering policy solutions for the WCC,on CC that would be within his realms of expertise, whereas say Mike Joys expertise for water problem solutions for the WCC would be outside his level of expertise.

                  • RedLogix …
                    25 April 2021 at 9:44 pm

                    Thanks for this Poisson. Maybe I'm biased but I do view the solutions to CC as primarily an engineering problem – albeit one that must be both informed by the science and constrained by what is politically possible.

                    It's when the debate becomes tainted by ideology and other irrational agendas that it all goes terribly wrong. As it has done for decades now.

                    • Poission …
                      26 April 2021 at 12:28 am

                      Engineering solutions at present are doable ,they need not be big scale,and should be more local scaled.

                  • Incognito …
                    25 April 2021 at 10:21 pm

                    I’d be surprised if the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics isn’t part of GCSE Science.

                    Expertise is diffuse without real sharp boundaries, not a binary.

                    I’m reading papers too, but on a completely different topic, as I’m doing some research for a Post here. Good fun 🙂

                    • Poission …
                      26 April 2021 at 12:32 am

                      I'm also skim reading some additions to my library.

                      Times arrow and deep time by Stephen Jay Gould.Godels proof,and conspiracies by Machiavelli

                      A total investment of $5.50

          • Pat 8.4.1.2.2
            25 April 2021 at 9:02 pm

            Guess then that will cancel out the sceptic….2 down, 12 to go.

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