climate change

Categories under climate change

Do we feel lucky?

Written By: - Date published: 8:29 am, August 7th, 2010 - 23 comments

“Global climate talks appear to have slipped backward after five days of negotiations in Bonn, the chief U.S. delegate said Friday, adding that some countries were reneging on promises they made last year to cut greenhouse gas emissions”.

We’re hot as hell

Written By: - Date published: 7:19 am, August 6th, 2010 - 70 comments

Extract from an article by Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. “I’m a mild-mannered guy, a Methodist Sunday School teacher. Not quick to anger. So what I want to say is: this is fucked up. The time has come to get mad, and then to get busy.”

The lungs of the planet

Written By: - Date published: 9:05 am, July 29th, 2010 - 38 comments

The warning indicators of an impending ecological collapse keep piling up. Forests get most of the headlines, but in many ways the oceans are the lungs of the planet. And they’ve been smoking 30 a day for too long.

Loophole in new ETS regulations will increase emissions

Written By: - Date published: 10:31 pm, July 19th, 2010 - 13 comments

The ETS-waste regulations currently being consulted on by the Government include a loophole that will actually increase greenhouse gas production in order to save polluters money. Who wrote the regs for the Government? A company that will be able to help landfills exploit this loophole by paying less whilst polluting more.

The peer goes potty

Written By: - Date published: 10:57 pm, July 15th, 2010 - 16 comments

At Hot Topic, Gareth has a post on Christopher Monckton attempting to stifle the well-justified criticism of himself . For some reason he seems to think that it is ok for him to criticize working scientists despite having little knowledge of the subjects. However he seems to think they should not be able to analyze or criticize his level of stupid ineptitude.

Climate change, bikinis, climate change, bikinis

Written By: - Date published: 10:19 pm, July 14th, 2010 - 16 comments

Are swimsuit specials a thoughtful, clever way of arousing interest in climate change? Or are they little more than sexist idiocy? Are you curious enough to find out? Read this from the Guardian…

Sceptics face yawning credibility gap

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, July 5th, 2010 - 34 comments

We know that the vast majority of climate scientists support the explanation of anthropogenic climate change set out by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change. That majority is now quantified in the first study of its kind published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Expert credibility in climate change.

Key comes clean on the ETS

Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, June 30th, 2010 - 28 comments

In a moment of uncharacteristic political honesty, John Key has come clean on his ETS. It loads “disproportionate” costs on to householders. National’s scheme is all about keeping things sweet for their business mates – muffling the price signal that an ETS is supposed to send by (as usual) socialising the costs.

Crock of the Week – “The Medieval Warming Crock”

Written By: - Date published: 5:55 pm, June 26th, 2010 - 25 comments

I’m tired of hearing about the ‘medieval warming period’ and ‘hockey-stick’, which are respectively almost two decades and a decade old. It came up in comments today again, and I get the impression that CCDs are firstly euro-centric and secondly never seem to look at the current evidence. There have been many studies that substantially support the ‘hockey-stick’ and none that support the MWP. The Crock of the Week did this video explaining it…

Crock of the Week – ‘Climategate’

Written By: - Date published: 3:29 pm, June 26th, 2010 - 24 comments

Peter Sinclair in Crock of the week uses some old classic movie and TV footage to point out the debunking the ‘climategate’ myth. Quite simply this hack of the e-mails hasn’t changed any of the science of climate change and is as ineffectual as most of the anti-science inquisition has been over the last century. It really just shows how pathetic and ineffectual that the CCDs are becoming.

The ETS is a price signal

Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, June 25th, 2010 - 44 comments

The point of an ETS isn’t to just blindly pay more, it is to change our behaviour so that we don’t have to. National don’t get it, so they have brought us the worst of all possible ETS schemes. Badly designed and devoid of vision. An ETS with all of the costs and none of the benefits.

The harsh reality of climate change

Written By: - Date published: 11:45 am, June 19th, 2010 - 1,346 comments

The most comprehensive collection and analysis of global temperature trends comes from NOAA.Their global temperatures report for May 2010 makes sobering reading. Since 1880, the globally hottest 10 years have happened in the last 15 years. It looks like 2010 will beat the previous hottest year in 2005, and we’re still at the least energetic part of the sunspot cycle.

Let’s not rush things

Written By: - Date published: 11:01 am, June 18th, 2010 - 7 comments

President Obama has just come out and said the US and the world needs to get off its oil addiction. But, just as we’ve been talking about climate change for nearly two centuries, before it was even a problem, and done nothing about it, Presidents have been declaring its time to end the oil age for 40 years and nothing has changed. Why can’t we get serious about saving ourselves?

Solar storms: harden your networks – its getting warmer.

Written By: - Date published: 9:16 am, June 11th, 2010 - 37 comments

The sun is emerging from its deep sleep of the Solar Minimum. The increased sensitivity of human networks from satellites to power grids is starting to worry people who know what they’re talking about enough to cause them to have held a meeting on it. The sun produces sunspots in a reasonably regular eleven year […]

The tiresome title of Professor Emeritus

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.

Denier dissected

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?

A Country Party?

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.

Climate change deaths

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.

National’s ETS chickens home to roost

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.

Who pays for climate change, polluters or taxpayers?

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.

Sweeping the ETS under the carpet

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.

Has climate change been trumped?

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…

Nats set the places for their own tea party

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.

More dim bulbs

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…

Wind power is (too) successful?

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 […]

UK coalition good for climate

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?

Science fights back

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”.

Schedule 4 back-down won’t solve the problem

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

Nats plan to subsidise greenhouse polluters

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.

Climate change deniers wallets threatened

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.

Volcanoes and climate change

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.

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