Act on climate

27 comments on “Act on climate ”

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1. dv 1

   27 July 2022 at 7:33 am

   Oops I read ACT as ACTs position on climate!!!

   DUH
   • Robert Guyton 1.1

     27 July 2022 at 8:23 am

     So did I and expected a post with no content.
     • weka 1.1.1

       27 July 2022 at 9:51 am

       Nek minit….
     • dv 1.1.2

       27 July 2022 at 12:06 pm

       
   • weka 1.2

     27 July 2022 at 9:51 am

     lol. TRAP!
2. Robert Guyton 2

   27 July 2022 at 8:26 am

   “The Ecosystem Restoration Camps Movement”

   Now that sounds interesting/promising/encouraging!
3. roy cartland 3

   27 July 2022 at 9:14 am

   Car-free cities would be perfect for Europe. Many of those cities grew and before the car's invention, so are therefore walkable and have decent metro systems. I'd love to see how some of our big cities could be de-super-ised and re-borough-ised.
   • satty 3.1

     27 July 2022 at 9:38 am

     Wellington CBD is very suitable for large pedestrianised areas.

     We walk through the Botanical Gardens into town and everything is easily accessible by foot. Our friends can easily be reached by bus (wondering if it's just a lucky coincident we never have to change a bus to do so).
   • weka 3.2

     27 July 2022 at 9:55 am

     maybe not car free but low auto. So people can still hire a car for an hour if it's raining and they need to do errands that can't wait. Obviously delivery still needs to happen, and disable people need access. I think it's more a change in thinking, and a behavioural change that is supported with proactive alternatives. Petrol prices, CoL, climate are all external pressures, let's make it easy to change the behaviours.
     • roy cartland 3.2.1

       27 July 2022 at 10:23 am

       Yes. So needful cars only. That would increase/improve services like Mevo and Cityhop.

       I'm still a fan of rail, despite the obvious drawbacks. It's much more efficient (11x more than trucks, 3x more than cars), due to steel-on-steel having lower resistance than air-filled-tyre-on-asphalt.
       • weka 3.2.1.1

         27 July 2022 at 10:42 am

         good point. Roading materials are hugely problematic as are tyres. Love the interconnected solutions here.
         • roy cartland 3.2.1.1.1

           27 July 2022 at 11:35 am

           I've never been to Venice, but every time I hear people raving about I think, why can't we build more if it's so great? Not just Venices, which are awfully labour-intensive to maintain, but modern ones?

           Even places like Gulang Yu attract huge numbers of visitors because it's so pleasant – no cars! Everything is moved by handcart (great job for anyone wanting to keep fit!). Is it possible for everywhere (or at least a critical number of places) to be like this? I'd rather live like that than have a self-driving electric car.
           • weka 3.2.1.1.1.1

             27 July 2022 at 11:43 am

             same.
             • weka …

               27 July 2022 at 11:45 am

               I suspect growing up before the advent of cheap Japanese imports, cell phones and decent public transport systems makes it easier to see. We just arranged our lives differently.
               • roy cartland …

                 27 July 2022 at 12:34 pm

                 The internet too, probably. Because everything is at your fingertips, you assume it's easy and natural just to pop overseas whenever you feel like it. Hawaii, for example.
           • Tony Veitch (not etc.) 3.2.1.1.1.2

             27 July 2022 at 1:43 pm

             The Old Stone Town of Zanzibar must be similar – no cars at all, though most of the alleyways are way too narrow for normal vehicles. Lots of motorbikes.
             • roy cartland …

               27 July 2022 at 1:59 pm

               Central Florence is a bit like that. I love it.

               Lijiang, Yunnan. An actual medieval Chinese village, which still functions. Even the buildings outside the town walls lean into the style in the hopes of attracting visitors, because it's so nice.

               Laomendong, Nanjing. A new area built in the old style, to the old architectural mores. No cars, awesome. So it's possible and desirable.
4. Anker 4

   27 July 2022 at 10:41 am

   https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/science-and-future/spacestress-bubbles-created-by-mit-scientists-could-shield-earth-from-harmful-radiation-572769.html

   I have come across the article a few times . The MIT people stress this approach will help but not replace climate action.
   • weka 4.1

     27 July 2022 at 11:09 am

     I'd want to see the cradle to grave accounting, including how much GHG emissions there were in the project.
     • Anker 4.1.1

       27 July 2022 at 11:38 am

       Will look to see if any such analysis has been done. I posted somewhat reluctantly, because I think people might feel "Oh great the clever people have a solution, we don't have to try anymore". Even the MIT. people say this isn't the case.

       I feel pretty fatalistic about CC. That doesn't mean it isn't worth trying and I think my own carbon footprint is very low. The fatalism comes from just listiening to what is happening to weather around the world. Hearing that emission continue to climb, despite the "blah, blah, blah" and realizing that us humans are a pretty flawed species.
5. Anker 5

   27 July 2022 at 10:43 am

   Opps. Just seen the link above is broken. Sorry!
   • weka 5.1

     27 July 2022 at 11:13 am

     fixed now.
6. lprent 6

   27 July 2022 at 2:22 pm

   Ha! I came expecting to see something on the Act party policy on climate change. I should have known better – they are a pack of dithering fuckwits about climate change – and more interested in focus groupies than science. But I looked it up for laughs.

   For instance – what looks like their only long term climate policy

   ACT also proposes to change our climate change regulations to provide carbon credits for New Zealand wood products that store carbon for at least fifty years.

   Apparently the dumbshit ostriches in Act haven't quite realised that CH4 emissions in the atmosphere have a half life of something like 50 years and that of CO2 is well over a thousand years at the very least.

   There is absolutely no way to estimate a half life of wood products. Sure I have 18th century pub table at home – but it is one of the very few survivors of probably millions of tables from that century. Most wood furniture doesn't last for more than a decade or two. Most wooden houses don't last more than 50 years, they either get replaced, burn or get knocked down in unpredictable events like the ChCh earthquakes.

   And that is before I get into the questions of wastage – usually more than 50% of the total wood. The off cuts go straight into landfill or get burnt and therefore go straight back into the current CO2 atmospheric and oceans.

   Basically there are only two ways to lock CO2 into trees.

   One is to not cut down long growing forests. That means no commercial tree farming in plantations because that requires forestry plans that last centuries. Plantation pinus radiata is particularly useless because it is pretty useless as a long term forest. However forests are dangerous for CO2 – you get large bursts of CO2 when they burn or die from disease or bugs – something that is likely to happen more often as the climate shifts faster.

   The other is to routinely log forests and drop the wood into a swamp or under sediment in depths or water. That was where the fossil carbon came from in the first place.

   You have to wonder how much Act got in with donations from the wood industry for that bit of facile unscientific stupidity. I guess that greed trumps intelligence every time if you're a typical actoid.

   /rant
7. newsense 7

   27 July 2022 at 4:16 pm

   But the government is supposed to do something about that!

   People already shit out of luck what was described as a (third) medium, manageable weather event in the South in the last couple of weeks.
   • newsense 7.1

     27 July 2022 at 4:30 pm

     Sorry didn’t provide a source: described on Morning report Wednesday morning as three moderate events, rather than severe events.
     Otago emergency coordination centre regional response manager Glenn Mitchell- final interview in this recording.
   • Poission 7.2

     27 July 2022 at 4:46 pm

     Flockton basin has been flooding since it was first built on,as a depression prone to gravity feed.

     https://www.waternz.org.nz/Attachment?Action=Download&Attachment_id=2140

     A lot of the high risk areas have had a substantive engineering upgrade to decrease the flows with deepening culverts and new pump stations.

     Most of the flooding is on sections and roads,with little ingress into housing.The house by horseshoe lake most probably had an excess run off due to most of the large stands of trees being felled on the adjacent golfcourse uphill of the road.
8. Hunter Thompson II 8

   28 July 2022 at 9:18 am

   Author and critic Clive James once wrote that the way we live now is not normal.

   He didn't define what a normal state was, but given the floods in Chinese cities and aridification in the western USA, we humans definitely need to get a better relationship with the natural world.

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