science

Nats set the places for their own tea party

Written By: Eddie - 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.

Wind power is (too) successful?

Written By: lprent - 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: Demeter - 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?

Nats partially undo their cuts to R&D

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:28 am, May 12th, 2010 - 7 comments

The Herald editorial is rightly damning of the government’s lacklustre approach to science funding. The ‘new’ money is a trickle, barely replacing last year’s cuts. A crucial difference between Labour and National has always been that Labour invests in the long-term success of the country while National makes short-term wealth grabs for the ruling elite.

My cellphone isn’t made of gold

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 9:59 am, May 4th, 2010 - 7 comments

The Nats and miners have this weird freeloader argument. ‘Those protesters are hypocrites. Their cell phones and ipods and cars all use mined products. They should support us mining’. They won’t be mining needed industrial minerals. But what’s under Paparoa? Dirty coal. What’s under Coromandel and Barrier? Gold. which is nearly all used for jewellery and ‘investment’.

Climate change deniers wallets threatened

Written By: Guest post - 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: Marty G - 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.

Jones and CRU exonerated by parliamentary inquiry

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 12:07 pm, April 11th, 2010 - 31 comments

We were off-air last weekend, so this story got missed.

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report into the disclosure of climate data by the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia has just been released.

Turns out that ‘climategate’ was just a pile of hot air and selective story telling by the denialist industry. Wasn’t that unexpected? Yeah right.

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.