science

Categories under science

Burden of proof

Written By: - Date published: 11:46 am, July 16th, 2012 - 54 comments

Climate change causing (another) food shock

Written By: - Date published: 12:37 pm, July 12th, 2012 - 57 comments

Climate change is causing the world’s temperatures and seas levels to rise but this isn’t a steady process. Instead we see more frequent and more extreme weather events. The record-busting heatwave in the US and floods in Russia are examples. The big problem is the effects of these weather events on our production of food and other vital goods.

Climate Change’s deadly twin

Written By: - Date published: 6:34 am, July 12th, 2012 - 57 comments

The oceans are doing their best to save us from climate change apparently… but just ending up dooming us in another way.

A lot of hot air

Written By: - Date published: 6:59 am, July 9th, 2012 - 138 comments

Tim Groser: “Our farmers have been reducing their emissions by 1.3% per year for two decades” (that’s emissions per unit of output, btw, not absolute – although total agriculture emissions are down in recent years). Groser on why farming should be out of the ETS: “we’ll introduce biological emissions into the ETS when we think there credible abatement technologies out there.”

Sunday Reading

Written By: - Date published: 9:42 am, July 8th, 2012 - 4 comments

I’m going to try and put up a piece each Sunday of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. Those stimulating links you wanted to share, but just didn’t fit in anywhere (no linkwhoring).  This week: Work, American Lies and Science.

17 year old Kiwi addresses the UN Earth Summit

Written By: - Date published: 10:44 am, July 7th, 2012 - 1 comment

Well said. What a tragedy that they heard, but did not listen.

A rock and a hot place

Written By: - Date published: 6:30 am, July 5th, 2012 - 49 comments

Yesterday National pollster David Farrar excitedly quoted from a George Monbiot article saying peak oil isn’t happening. Two problems: 1) Farrar omitted to quote the bits of the article saying that the flipside of no peak oil would be runaway climate change. 2) the report Monbiot’s article is based on is written by an oil executive who claims we’ll stumble on endless cheap oil and all live happily ever after.

ImperatorFish: Environmentalists Are Not The Problem, Mr Groser

Written By: - Date published: 12:59 pm, July 3rd, 2012 - 9 comments

Tim Groser in the NBR: “Our enemies who are internal, will find one cow in one stream and feed it back to environmental activists in the developed world to be used to try to exclude New Zealand’s products and services in the ludicrous belief this will somehow help New Zealand.” Paranoid, much? And don’t you think the polluters are the problem, not the people who fail to hush it up?

National has no intention of ever enforcing ETS

Written By: - Date published: 8:08 am, July 3rd, 2012 - 59 comments

As many of us expected, National has no intention of ever enforcing the ETS in the area where it makes the most difference to NZ emissions – agriculture.

Exxon continues denier tactics

Written By: - Date published: 1:51 pm, July 2nd, 2012 - 37 comments

The Exxon Mobil CEO now acknowledges that the world is warming, but claims that there will be an “engineering solution”. This glib reassurance is simply the next phase of Exxon’s well funded and carefully planned denier tactics.

Rio: another chance lost

Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, June 27th, 2012 - 14 comments

How do we move forward from here?  How do we get the consensus we need?  How do we get more politicians around the world making not just speeches like David Cunliffe’s, but acting on them?  Setting the targets and the plan behind them to avoid the brutal logic of climate change.

I am the Markets

Written By: - Date published: 9:59 am, June 23rd, 2012 - 12 comments

“Markets have become increasingly concerned that the austerity programmes in the eurozone are causing a vicious circle of recession”, and “Markets were confused by mixed messages from European capitals”. I have only one word of reply: Bollocks. Did anyone phone me to ask how I, The Markets, was feeling about these subjects? Did they hell!

Rio: any hope?

Written By: - Date published: 3:04 pm, June 20th, 2012 - 41 comments

A draft agreement has been negotiated for the Rio+20 summit that starts today, but anyone who cares about the future of our planet should be disappointed. The expert panel of nobel laureates, scientists and ministers’ call to ‘seize the moment’ has largely gone unheeded, as the agreement is full of empty promises and lacking in concrete commitments.

Reaching Tipping Point

Written By: - Date published: 7:35 am, June 8th, 2012 - 24 comments

Two major new reports out yesterday (from the UN and in Nature) show the earth is headed for a tipping point: our consumption is unsustainable, and we’re degrading the environment.  Soon it will be beyond the point of return.

Transit of Venus

Written By: - Date published: 10:33 am, June 6th, 2012 - 7 comments

The transit of Venus is in progress. If cloud cover allows you a view it’s a pretty special astronomical event…

Sunday reading

Written By: - Date published: 10:39 am, June 3rd, 2012 - 12 comments

Last week I put up some Sunday reading – longer, thoughtful pieces I’d found.  I liked that other people also put up their links, with some very interesting topics.  So I thought I might make it a regular feature.  I’d put up a couple of interesting things that I’d come across in the week, and other people could share their links.

Not with a bang but a whimper

Written By: - Date published: 9:12 am, May 27th, 2012 - 128 comments

Bad news from Bonn. Not that you’d know it from NZ media coverage of course.

Countdown: 36 days to go

Written By: - Date published: 3:36 pm, May 16th, 2012 - 11 comments

There are 72 days to the Olympics, which is what many people are counting down to – but the planet will be much more interested in the Rio+20 conference in 36 days.  This is the chance for world leaders to put global society on a sustainable path.

Just one teeny problem…

Written By: - Date published: 9:49 am, April 26th, 2012 - 72 comments

You’d think we’d draw some obvious conclusions from the Arctic melt. Apparently not though. We’re in a hole, but we’re going to keep digging…

A Butcher’s Shop, a Toy Shop, a Candy Store and a Childcare Centre

Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, April 25th, 2012 - 14 comments

Steven Joyce’s personal fiefdom of Economic Development, Science and Innovation, Building and Housing, and Labour is confirmed. Now for the redundancies…

Dumbing down search

Written By: - Date published: 11:15 am, April 24th, 2012 - 18 comments

Do we really want search results tailored to our mood and intelligence? Are we going to take the most powerful aggregate of information ever assembled by humanity and bend it to our cognitive biases?

Losing the debate on global warming

Written By: - Date published: 12:03 pm, April 15th, 2012 - 155 comments

The facts don’t seem to matter when it comes to our understanding of climate change.  As the evidence grows stronger and stronger, so too, apparently, does public skepticism.

We pay for pollution

Written By: - Date published: 2:43 pm, April 12th, 2012 - 14 comments

As National tell us they can’t afford the pittance required for parental leave, they also announce that they will continue to wear the multi-billion dollar cost of farmers’ emissions by deferring their entry into the ETS. That’s us, the tax-payers, subsidising Fonterra.

Earth Hour

Written By: - Date published: 8:24 pm, March 31st, 2012 - 31 comments

OK – so we’re a bit late with this – but it’s Earth Hour, 8:30 – 9:30pm NZ time.

Stormy weather

Written By: - Date published: 12:39 pm, March 25th, 2012 - 18 comments

Weather bomb

Written By: - Date published: 9:12 am, March 3rd, 2012 - 113 comments

Keep safe during the “weather bomb”. It will be good practice for the future.

Righties cutting themselves on Occam’s razor

Written By: - Date published: 11:52 am, March 1st, 2012 - 113 comments

The Left has its fair share of conspiracy theorists – who think that, for reasons tenuously explained at best, various, often opposing, organisations are secretly carrying out massive cons and not being discovered. But we’ve got nothing on the Right. Belief that climate change is world’s most enormous conspiracy, engineered for no good reason, is an article of faith for these guys. If it weren’t so serious, it would be hilarious.

Behind the hockey stick

Written By: - Date published: 11:09 am, February 19th, 2012 - 137 comments

There have been several interesting pieces on the politics of climate change recently, including some reflections (and a new book) from Michael Mann (the scientist behind the “hockey stick”), and leaked documents from the denier industry.

A sustainable future

Written By: - Date published: 8:10 am, February 8th, 2012 - 19 comments

The UN High Level Panel on Global Sustainability has delivered a report about creating a future that’s sustainable economically, socially and environmentally. Our government and political parties should be looking at it and measuring themselves against it.

NRT: Climate change: Cross-purposes

Written By: - Date published: 12:15 pm, February 3rd, 2012 - 48 comments

No Right Turn has a look at two of the incoming minister briefings impacting on climate change. They are incoherent and it is clear that neither ministry talks to the other. If it wasn’t affecting a important long term issue, it’d be as funny as a Yes Minister episode. But since it does, it just highlights the growing incoherence of this incompetent government and their increasing politicization of the civil service.

Funding the puppets of denial

Written By: - Date published: 12:11 pm, January 25th, 2012 - 12 comments

There have been some interesting investigations going on into the funding of denier lobby groups. The reluctance of them to disclose their sources of income is becoming an issue. What can be seen is that they have  very publicity shy funding sources. Most likely it is those who stand to lose money if effective measures are taken to reduce the impact of climate changes. So they want transparency in science and hypocrisy on their own funding of their own ‘independent’ mouthpieces.

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