climate change

Cynical denialism will cost us all

Written By: Marty G - 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.

Solid Energy co-opts kids to push coal

Written By: Demeter - 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 Zealand”.

Greenpeace kicks coal in the Facebook

Written By: Demeter - 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 […]

TEDTalks 2010: Bill Gates on energy and climate change

Written By: notices and features - 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.

Quick comments

Written By: Marty G - 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 […]

Poneke: If only scientists were more like god…

Written By: lprent - 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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Te-henua-e-noho. There once was an island.

Written By: lprent - Date published: 12:15 pm, January 27th, 2010 - 29 comments

Today my partner Lyn Collie will be at the world premiere at Festival International du Film Documentaire Oceanien in Tahiti of the documentary that she has been producing part-time all the time I’ve known her. My congratulations to both her, the director Briar March, and the many other people who have worked on this documentary since they started working on it in 2006 for getting it out and being seen.

Wishart. Research kiddie.

Written By: lprent - Date published: 5:22 pm, January 11th, 2010 - 62 comments

This is just too funny. One of Ian Wisharts sources in AirCon which he quoted from ‘verbatim’ turns out to have been a kiddies resource from 1999 – which he still mis-interpreted. Gareth at Hot-topic has been tearing apart some of Wisharts recent posturing, and posted this comment Wishart, responding to some prodding, says this […]

Final thoughts for 2009: Looking at deep time

Written By: lprent - Date published: 5:03 pm, December 31st, 2009 - 64 comments

Well it is the end of 2009. So here are some final thoughts on the implications of the political shifts in the climate change debates this year. It has been marked from my viewpoint of an irreverable shift from arguing with CCDs (climate change deniers) to CCSs (climate change skeptics) which on the whole has […]

Climate Change arguments in a GIF

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 6:30 pm, December 22nd, 2009 - 65 comments

Information is Beautiful recently produced the image below summarizing the various arguments between about climate change. Click on the image to see the full version. hat-tip: Open Parachute

Oh yeah, SPEEDholes

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:29 am, December 22nd, 2009 - 7 comments

Could making the surface of cars rough be a cheap and esay way to boost fuel efficiency, thereby saving oil and helping tackle climate change? The idea comes from the dimples on golf-balls, which hold a thin layer of air to the ball, lessening turbulence and drag. And, amazingly, it appears to work: [the full segment on […]

Climate Direct Action

Written By: rocky - Date published: 9:21 am, December 21st, 2009 - 90 comments

Text from John Darroch a couple of minutes ago: hey just hanging ten stories up the mfat building in welly protesting against fonterror 🙂 regarding climate change Nice one John – according to NZPA you’re only four stories up. Hope you get your point across and make it down safely! Great to see some action […]

Failing the future

Written By: r0b - Date published: 9:41 am, December 20th, 2009 - 99 comments

So Copenhagen has ended in failure. I’m not surprised, but I am disappointed. As The Guardian reports: Low targets, goals dropped: Copenhagen ends in failure Deal thrashed out at talks condemned as climate change scepticism in action The UN climate summit reached a weak outline of a global agreement in Copenhagen tonight, falling far short […]

Words and deeds

Written By: r0b - Date published: 3:02 pm, December 18th, 2009 - 18 comments

Words: Prime Minister John Key has urged the world’s major economies to listen to the voices of vulnerable nations facing climate change. .. The current system of limited participation under the Kyoto Protocol had to be moved to one of “comprehensive global coverage”, he said. “For this to be achieved we need international commitments from […]