Climate change – that ship has sailed

Written By: - Date published: 9:55 am, April 18th, 2016 - 57 comments
Categories: climate change, global warming, uncategorized - Tags: , , ,

These days I am struck with a bizarre sense of unreality when I read pieces like this:

NZ planners’ think-tank on climate change impacts

New Zealand’s top planners will be holding a think-tank on climate change impacts this week at the New Zealand Planning Institute’s (NZPI) annual conference in Dunedin which started today.

A new era of international and domestic action to tackle climate change has begun and ongoing international agreements aim to keep global temperature increases below two degrees.

New Zealand’s need to produce a 30 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 2030, or equivalent to an 11 percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2030. …

Or this:

Paula Bennett to head to New York to sign historic climate agreement

Climate Change Minister Paula Bennett will head to New York next week to sign New Zealand up to a historic climate agreement.

Mrs Bennett said the signing ceremony at the United Nations on April 22, which 130 countries will participate in, was another step towards ratifying the Paris Agreement.

There is no deadline for the ratification, which covers emissions obligations after 2020 and commits all countries to limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C this century.

Once the agreement is ratified, Mrs Bennett said, the more difficult task of moving New Zealand to a low-emissions economy would begin. …

warming-2016We’re not going to hold the temperature increase to 1.5C this century. We’re not going to hold it to 2C.

The climate ship has sailed, and like a supertanker, it has massive inertia.

If we were wise (we’re not) we would start preparing now for a very different planet.

Here’s some recent headlines / pieces worth reading:

Welcome to the climate emergency: you’re about 20 years late
Earth Sees 11 Record Hot Months in a Row
Summer-Like Temperatures Smash Ice Melt Records For Greenland
Arctic warming_ Why record-breaking melting is just the beginning
Our Planet’s Temperature Just Reached a Terrifying Milestone
Seas Are Rising at Fastest Rate in Last 28 Centuries
At Arctic summit, climate change is inevitable and irreversible
Risk of multiple tipping points should be triggering urgent action on climate change
Govt cheated on international climate commitments
The Climate Change in Our Veins


https://twitter.com/VeronikaMeduna/status/721244143545004032

57 comments on “Climate change – that ship has sailed ”

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  1. Bill 1
    18 April 2016 at 10:16 am

    If we were wise (we’re not) we would start preparing now for a very different planet.

    Well, no. We would prepare for a warmer world and pull out all the stops to make sure that warmer world isn’t any warmer than need be. If we take no action, anthropocentric global warming will become just plain warming and will likely warm to a level that’s utterly inimical to human survival.

    So the first order of the day ought to be facing up to the reality (stop underplaying it) and stop suggesting we take inadequate action.

    eg

    New Zealand’s need to produce a 30 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 2030, or equivalent to an 11 percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2030.

    …is no where near enough and is being touted off the back of underplayed figures. I’ve written about this before…the predictions for future warming and cuts to CO2 being based on magical thinking around our ability to develop and roll out immense infrastructures to capture CO2 from the air.

  2. Sabine 2
    18 April 2016 at 10:17 am

    oh well, all is good one of the National do nothing Ministers gets a free trip to NY.

    Whats not to like, and she does not even have to show something for it.

  3. roy cartland 3
    18 April 2016 at 10:25 am

    Agriculture is by far a bigger emitter than the transport sector, and that is a curlier question. How many jobs revolve around the agri-industry in this country? Even if we stopped fossil fuel today, we’d still bust our pathetic 2˚ target.

    But it’s still not impossible, at least according to these two:

    http://www.cowspiracy.com/blog/2016/4/12/potus-can-do-one-simple-thing-to-help-alleviate-climate-change

    http://www.monbiot.com/2015/11/19/pregnant-silence/
    “A survey by the Royal Institute of International Affairs found that people are not unwilling to change their diets, once they become aware of the problem, but that many have no idea that livestock farming damages the living world.”

    • Bill 3.1
      18 April 2016 at 10:41 am

      Almost all warming is a result of the external CO2 we have flung into the natural carbon cycle. The source of the external CO2 is fossil.

      Bring fossil to zero and we have a slim chance of avoiding dangerous levels of warming/climate change.

      And yes, simultaneously work away at land use (agriculture, forestry etc). Refusing to separate highly measurable fossil contributions from land use contributions that are nowhere near as measurable and impossible to bring down to zero, allows for fudged figures and the promotion of inadequate policies.

      • Colonial Viper 3.1.1
        18 April 2016 at 11:41 am

        Halving NZ’s cow herd would do a lot of good things full stop.

        • Bill 3.1.1.1
          18 April 2016 at 12:03 pm

          It’s not quite a ‘full stop’ CV. Halving cow numbers would do a lot of good things. But halving cow numbers and then trading that off in such a way as to do nothing or less about fossil would be hugely fucked up and irresponsible. I expect ‘fucked up and irresponsible’ to come to pass.

  4. adam 4
    18 April 2016 at 11:25 am

    I put this up last night, but it’s real home is with this post.

    https://youtu.be/hXqozz54-iU

    • Bill 4.1
      18 April 2016 at 11:57 am

      I could be wrong Adam, but I think things have shifted some what beyond ‘convincing idiots’ that bad shit is going down.

      My immediate reaction to Anthony’s post was that, like others, he’s given up. That’s just my reading of the post – I could have the wrong end of the stick. But let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that my reading of the post is accurate enough.

      That fatalism is a far more serious barrier to getting on with doing what we can/must, than some bullshit denialism.

      The courses of action are there. They’re devastatingly simple.

      Now sure, we may very well be too late on the 2 degrees front, but even if we are, we have to act as though we aren’t in order to avoid 5, 6 or 10 degrees or whatever.
      That’s said on the assumption that tipping points haven’t been crossed already, while also being fully aware that the jury is out on that and that a growing number of scientists in that jury are suggesting tipping points have already been passed.

      Regardless, fatalism just says we do nothing beyond putting up barriers and hunkering down. I’m way too angry at the hypocrites; the fuckwits and bastards (whose numbers include scientists, politicians and lobbyists), who for a number of years past, have expended huge amounts of energy in pulling the wool over our eyes and who still insist today that everything can and will be made okay by mere tinkering. I want them all rolled out the way, rendered irrelevant and openly despised by a rising up of ordinary people taking back control of life; of society. And even if that only results in a few short years of an emancipated humanity living well with itself and we all get wiped away by the effects of warming anyway, then those few years are absolutely worth fighting for.

      .

      • Colonial Viper 4.1.1
        18 April 2016 at 12:05 pm

        I reckon the Archdruid has it right – the centres of political power in various countries’ capitals will not provide the people with any answers. It will all have to be done locally and regionally.

        Roman senators were still denying that there were any real problems even as they lost Briton, Gaul and Germania. Simply raise another Legion and beat back the barbarians, said the politicians.

        • Bill 4.1.1.1
          18 April 2016 at 12:11 pm

          We know the fucking answer!

          Stop. Burning. Fossil. Fuels.

          The various business and political elites don’t want that simple and only solution executed though, because they lose their privilege and they lose the framework that delivers that privilege.

          Fuck them.

          • Colonial Viper 4.1.1.1.1
            18 April 2016 at 1:08 pm

            knowing the answer and being able to implement the answer are two very different things.

            Personally I think there is far too much fossil fuel based economic activity going on and too little low carbon community activity going on. But damn if I can find any influential decision maker who will admit the same.

      • adam 4.1.2
        18 April 2016 at 1:33 pm

        I agree Bill, but I think the deniers feed into that cult of despair and giving up.

        It is a negative fed back loop. Like discouraging a significant section of the population to turn off from politics. Making issues deeply visceral and then so nasty, people just give up. The same with the environment.

        Over and over with lies and misdirection. As the Pope says, time to see this a moral issue, stop procrastinating , and do something about it.

  5. esoteric pineapples 5
    18 April 2016 at 11:32 am

    No point just talking about “preparing for it” as if we don’t do everything we can to reduce climate change gasses, the changes will be so catastrophic that this planet will be in absolute mayhem.

  6. weka 6
    18 April 2016 at 11:39 am

    + 3,200,468,918 to Bill and Pinepples, that we need to do everything we can to reduce emissions as fast as we can. The good news, fwiw, is that the things we need to do to reduce can also be the things we need to do to prepare.

    R0b, I feel uncomfortable with headlines like ‘that ship has sailed’, because one of our biggest dangers is that people just give up and don’t try (and there are pressures on people to do that from a number of quarters). I know it’s depressing as fuck to read what you are reading. I still think we have to focus on what we can do as much as possible. As always, thanks for your continual work on this and keeping it in the public eye.

    • r0b 6.1
      18 April 2016 at 11:49 am

      Fair point! I’ll try not to let my frustration get the better of me next time…

    • Colonial Viper 6.2
      18 April 2016 at 11:54 am

      Unfortunately, we have to accept that political parties need to constantly under play to the electorate the reality of the climate change and fossil fuel depletion threat that we face as a civilisation.

      The politicians need to make sure that voters believe that current day life and current day practices can largely continue on with only minor tweaks here and there.

      A carbon tax here, an emissions trading scheme there, subsidies for hybrid and electric cars, encouraging public transport use etc. are about as far as we want to go

      There is no sense engendering a sense of anxiety in peoples lives or making people feel that what they enjoy as the modern world needs to be turned upside down.

      This is nothing less than political pragmatism. It is needed because the political parties need to get elected in order to make any real change at all. And Kiwi voters will never accept the truth of how truly dire the situation we are in now actually is.

      Over the next 10 or 20 years we can gradually get people used to the fact that a bit more action needs to be taken.

      It’s positive when you think that Kyoto was 20 years ago and attitudes have moved in the right direction since then. In another 20 years I am sure people will have accepted even more change in their attitudes.

      There is nothing productive in political party leaders trying to engender a sense of urgency and alarm in people.

      • weka 6.2.1
        18 April 2016 at 12:06 pm

        I largely agree with that. My own feeling is that the politicians will have to follow (and will follow). Many politicians are in the same boat as the rest of us, struggling with our fear, denial, cognitive dissonance etc. Once more people are on board, then that will include them. Which means it is up to us. That’s potentially a useful thing.

        I agree it happens over time. Not sure about the urgency/alarm thing. I agree if that’s all that happens then it’s counter productive. But if we give people a path they can move on that allows them to not just get scared, but to take action, that’s a different thing. We have to give people skills, resources and plans on what can actually be done. Change is much easier then there is something to work towards.

      • Bill 6.2.2
        18 April 2016 at 12:08 pm

        Please don’t turn this thread into a sniping zone CV. Cheers.

      • BM 6.2.3
        18 April 2016 at 12:22 pm

        Wise words.

        Especially when climate change is completely out of our hands.
        That’s not to say we shouldn’t make an effort but until China and India get on board we could cut our emissions to zero and not even create a blip.

        All you’ll end up doing is do is creating a feeling of hopelessness.

        • weka 6.2.3.1
          18 April 2016 at 12:35 pm

          “Especially when climate change is completely out of our hands.”

          That’s a lie. NZ can be part of the influential leading edge (not the first time). And every block of 4 million people is critical to building a mass movement of change. And China is changing in ways we are not. And we have to cut our emissions now as part of the transition to a post-carbon world. Everyone has to. If we don’t we will waste the last precious bits of dense energy we have on useless things instead of making use of our current wealth to transition.

          The fact that politicians aren’t going to lead the way, frees us up and potentially empowers us. That’s liberating not hopeless.

          • BM 6.2.3.1.1
            18 April 2016 at 1:41 pm

            You can try and influence China and India but they’re always going to put the economic well being of their countries before climate change.

            China accounts for around 30% of global emissions and doesn’t look like it’s really making much of an effort to curb their emissions.

            http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2015/11/11/chinas-coal-bubble-155-new-overcapacity/

            • Bill 6.2.3.1.1.1
              18 April 2016 at 1:48 pm

              Or…being that we live in NZ, we could influence NZ governments and insist that long term social well being and climate change trump any economic component of decision making.

            • Macro 6.2.3.1.1.2
              18 April 2016 at 2:13 pm

              Yes BM lets blame China…
              But just remember BM where everything is now made and who imports it…
              The West cut their emissions and their jobs and their economies by exporting them to China.
              We (the western economies) are as much to blame for China’s emissions as is China.
              Fortunately China (unlike the laissez faire western economies) is a country with a managed economy and as such is in a position to do something about it. So your comment above is actually only half true. Yes China has had burgeoning emissions and continues to build new coal fired power stations but in recent years their emissions have begun to decrease and China is burning less coal and continues to decrease its consumption (why else has the price of coal fallen through the floor?)

              China’s coal imports also fell by a whopping 30 percent in 2015, including a 35 percent year-on-year reduction in December alone compared to the previous December

              As a result of the drop in China’s coal consumption, analysis suggests that China’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuel consumption dropped by a record-breaking 2 percent in 2015, equivalent to about 200 million tons of CO2, more than the total for entire countries like Argentina, Venezuela or Poland. That is roughly equal to the cumulative emissions from the 100 countries with the lowest emissions. This decline is striking given the fact that China’s annual emissions had been growing by an average of 6.7 percent per year over most of the last decade.

              You can read more here

              • BM …
                18 April 2016 at 3:16 pm

                China only imports 4% of it’s current coal consumption.
                They use so much coal that 4% accounts for 15% of the world coal trade.

                https://webberenergyblog.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/why-does-china-import-coal/

                • Colonial Viper …
                  18 April 2016 at 3:57 pm

                  Economic decline and consumer spending collapse is good for reducing the use of fossil fuels.

                  Odd however that the Left prides itself on being able to get more economic growth and more consumer spending going than the Right.

                  • Macro …
                    18 April 2016 at 4:56 pm

                    Yes economic downturn is good CV – we just have to find a fairer way to redistribute the wealth.

                    However the downturn in China’s emissions is not just accidental concomitant upon the downturn in the western economies. Since 2013 China has made some very important and significant changes to its Energy profile and is well ahead of the pack in progressing towards its COP21 targets of reducing emissions.*
                    It has done this by:
                    a Curbing the use of Coal – we are already seeing the effects of that from last years 30% reduction
                    b. Heavy investment in alternative energies for both transportation and manufacturing.
                    c. Investment in energy efficiencies. eg. China reduced its energy intensity (energy consumption per unit of GDP) by nearly 20 percent from 2006-2010, and is on track for another 16 percent reduction below 2010 levels by 2015.

                    *What China has pledged: China has committed to peak its CO2 emissions by 2030 and to make best efforts to peak earlier. It will increase non-fossil energy to 20% of its energy consumption by 2030, which will require it to install 800 to 1,000 gigawatts in non-fossil capacity, equivalent to the entire current US generating capacity. China has shown leadership in putting a price on carbon by committing to build a national cap and trade system, which will launch in 2017 and become the world’s largest. It has also pledged 20 million RMB ($3.1 billion USD) to the South-South Climate Cooperation Fund to help developing countries address climate change. Other China climate commitments relate to carbon intensity, adaptation and forestry.

            • roy cartland 6.2.3.1.1.3
              18 April 2016 at 2:21 pm

              @BM Your use if the term ‘always’ is perplexing. (Human-induced) climate change is relatively new, so obviously no one cared about it before now.
              Economic wellbeing is no use if there’s no actual wellbeing, or even existence. They’ll come to change or disappear, like all of us.

            • pat 6.2.3.1.1.4
              18 April 2016 at 7:46 pm

              “You can try and influence China and India but they’re always going to put the economic well being of their countries before climate change.”

              do you think the Chinese and Indians are stupid?….am sure they are as aware as anyone what doing nothing (or insufficient) will result in….IF someone can demonstrate some workable systems they’ll follow and adapt to suit….(he said hopefully)

        • Bill 6.2.3.2
          18 April 2016 at 12:36 pm

          You do understand why it’s called anthropogenic global warming, yes? So, it’s not out of our hands.

          And why do you make the groundless assertion that hopelessness would flow from making deep and radical changes to how we live?

          • BM 6.2.3.2.1
            18 April 2016 at 1:53 pm

            if New Zealanders are told the world is pretty much doomed unless emissions are drastically cut but it won’t matter how much we do cut it’s not going to make an iota of difference to the world climate.

            Then, that will create a feeling of hopelessness and people won’t bother.

            • Bill 6.2.3.2.1.1
              18 April 2016 at 2:17 pm

              But since the CO2 problem is one of accumulation, then not adding to the accumulated total does matter.

              Meanwhile, if not adding to that total requires a huge or unprecedented change in how we live our lives and that change turns out to be generally more fulfilling and empowering…

            • weka 6.2.3.2.1.2
              18 April 2016 at 5:54 pm

              if New Zealanders are told the world is pretty much doomed unless emissions are drastically cut but it won’t matter how much we do cut it’s not going to make an iota of difference to the world climate.

              Then, that will create a feeling of hopelessness and people won’t bother.

              Just as well as no-one is saying that then. You’re the only person saying NZ doesn’t matter. Everyone else knows it is and have given multiple rationales for why. Is there are reason you are ignoring that?

  7. Bill 7
    18 April 2016 at 1:32 pm

    A little bit of good news – a government moving beyond rhetoric.

    She (Nicola Sturgeon) said the SNP would raise Scotland’s 2020 climate target from the current 42 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions to more than 50 per cent– a move which has been welcomed by climate campaigners.

    The new target will be contained in a Climate Change Bill, which will be put before Holyrood if the SNP is returned to government at the May 5 election. Setting a target of beyond 50 per cent by 2020 will exceed the EU’s aim to make a 40 per cent cut by 2030 and the UK’s pledge of a 35 per cent cut by 2020.

    That’s still too little. And I suspect there’ll be ‘devil in the detail’. Nevertheless, streets ahead of what other governments talk about talking about…

    Oops. Forgot the link.

    http://www.thenational.scot/politics/snp-gear-up-for-manifesto-launch-with-raft-of-new-policies.16461

  8. Robert Atack 8
    18 April 2016 at 7:12 pm

    The amount of energy/heat needed to melt ice is the same amount of energy/heat to bring that melted ice up to 80C .
    Humans have supposedly done in about 100 years, what last time took something 10,000 years. Specifically push CO2 above 400 ppm.
    In past periods of CO2 increasing all the global ice would have melted long before it reached 400 ppm, I’m only guessing but maybe by 350 ppm the ice would have been melted?
    CO2 is still increasing, and more scary so is CH4. When the energy/heat is no longer going into melting ice, then there is the potential for the oceans to go above 80c.
    Nature is going to keep adding to the atmospheric CO2 for a very long time.
    There is supposedly over 2,000 GT of CH4 sitting below the melt level around the planet, most of which is caped off with catherates, which are fast melting, especially the East Siberian Shelf.
    50 GT of CH4 is equal to about all the CO2 we have injected into the atmosphere in the past 100 years.
    https://robertscribbler.com/2015/09/10/new-study-risk-of-significant-methane-release-from-east-siberian-arctic-shelf-still-growing/ …. there are lots of articles out there on this stuff. It is happening off the coast of Gisborne, and california.
    We are screwed.
    But all hope is not lost as we also have the green party and Kiwisaver.

  9. Steve Wrathall 9
    18 April 2016 at 10:20 pm

    Sssssh. Don’t mention the increasing Antarctic ice http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png

  10. maui 10
    18 April 2016 at 11:22 pm

    Ok, so it’s taken the New Zealand Planning Institute about 65 years to figure out the suburban dross that they’ve been party to designing, that litters our cities and towns might have some large negative effects on the climate and people’s general wellbeing?

    Actually that’s me asking that, not them, they seem to only be focused on mitigation and heavily still in denial of the problem.

  11. Jenny 11
    19 April 2016 at 2:05 am

    Is it too late to fight climate change?

    Anthony Robins, (R0B) is at least getting to the heart of the matter.

    Few are prepared to look into the abyss as he has.

    And gaze on the heart searingly deadly crisis revealed there.

    Fossil fuels are changing the chemical composition of our atmosphere, the slow dawning realisation of this awful fact and its full implications will change all political parties and all governments.

    Whether Anthony Robins is right or wrong we will fight anyway.

    Just as an animal caught in a jin trap will struggle at the approach of the hunter.

    This is an escapable fact., it is in our nature.

    Talking about another entirely different existential crisis, Churchill put it this way:

    If you don’t fight when the fighting is easy and your loses are few and your victory is certain.

    Then you will fight when the fighting is hard your losses will be many and even with all this sacrifice your victory is not guaranteed.

    There may even be a third option. You will fight when the fighting is unbearably hard your losses are overwhelming, and your defeat is certain.

    Because it is better to die standing and fighting, than it is to die on your knees surrendering.

    In my discussion with Labour MPs, I tell them that climate change needs to be made an election issue. They just as adamantly insist that climate change will not be an election issue. According to the these MPs the next election will be fought over the economy.

    This sort of denial can only go on for so long. Change or prepare to be changed.

      • Pat 11.1.1
        19 April 2016 at 9:13 am

        @ 3 minutes…

        ‘the weight of the ice is so heavy it depresses the earths crust almost half a mile”

        what will happen to tectonic activity as that weight reduces with melting?

        • lprent 11.1.1.1
          19 April 2016 at 10:00 am

          It will get messy. Antarctica shouldn’t be a problem due to a lack of population and its plate boundaries. Greenland is likely to have considerable earthquake activity and volcanism

          • pat 11.1.1.1.1
            19 April 2016 at 7:11 pm

            was thinking more in a global effect…..would expect it to have a significant impact on the entire plate dynamic….it may already be having, it is a little understood field.

  12. pat 12
    19 April 2016 at 7:58 am

    “In my discussion with Labour MPs, I tell them that climate change needs to be made an election issue. They just as adamantly insist that climate change will not be an election issue. According to the these MPs the next election will be fought over the economy”

    and therein lies their failure to grasp the reality…..the two are linked, not separate

  13. Jenny 13
    20 April 2016 at 6:16 am

    “The Great Grief: How To Cope with Losing Our World”

    http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/05/14/great-grief-how-cope-losing-our-world

    “Climate scientists overwhelmingly say that we will face unprecedented warming in the coming decades. Those same scientists, just like you or I, struggle with the emotions that are evoked by these facts and dire projections. My children—who are now 12 and 16—may live in a world warmer than at any time in the previous 3 million years, and may face challenges that we are only just beginning to contemplate, and in many ways may be deprived of the rich, diverse world we grew up in. How do we relate to – and live – with this sad knowledge?”

    “To cope with losing our world,’ writes Stoknes, ‘requires us to descend through the anger into mourning and sadness, not speedily bypass them to jump onto the optimism bandwagon or escape into indifference.”

    The fightback will come. If not by us, then by then by the next generation.

    Of course by that time it will be far too late to make a difference. Nevertheless they will try, unlike us they will have no choice.

    • Jenny 13.1
      4 May 2016 at 5:49 pm

      ‘

      UNEARTHING THE ATROCITIES

      Why a fightback will come.

      All three of the Operation Reinhard camps were located within a few hundred miles of each other in formerly central (now eastern) Poland, and some 500 miles from the notorious Auschwitz death camp. Of the approximately 1.7 million Jewish people who arrived at the three Reinhard camps, scarcely a hundred survived the war, and they only made it because they staged desperate breakouts that succeeded against all odds.

      Beec, Sobibór, and Treblinka have receded into the historical background compared to Auschwitz, likely because the Nazis razed all three Reinhard camps and buried or burned the corpses long before the advancing Red Army overtook the area. At Auschwitz, Soviet liberators found gas chambers and thousands of inmates, skeletal but still alive; at the Reinhard sites, there was little to see but open fields and twists of barbed wire embedded in trees. Since the Nazis destroyed most written records and so few Reinhard prisoners survived, previous studies of the sites have leaned heavily on the firsthand testimony of just a handful of prisoners and perpetrators—which, while important, conveys only certain aspects of what happened at the camps.

      To most people who knew about the camps, it seemed few traces of the Nazis’ crimes remained. But Sturdy Colls, now an associate professor of forensic archaeology at Staffordshire University in the United Kingdom, suspected hidden evidence lurked underground, just waiting to be exposed. “There was a feeling,” she says, “that Treblinka had been erased off the face of the earth. I just couldn’t believe that could actually be true.”

      ….once permission came, they were able to uncover exactly what they’d suspected: demolished brick walls several feet underground, almost certainly the foundations of Sobibór’s gas-chamber building. “The Germans didn’t destroy everything of the remains,” Mazurek says.

      The team also uncovered an escape tunnel that prisoners began digging but never used. This is an especially notable find, Mazurek says, as the tunnel was found in the area of Sobibór’s Camp III, from which no inmates ever emerged alive. (As the extermination and cremation area, Camp III was under heavy guard and cut off from the rest of the camp; its inhabitants could not take part in the well-known prisoner revolt of October 1943, when about 300 inmates managed to escape—most were later caught and did not survive the war.) The tunnel’s existence had never been confirmed until the archaeologists found it. With the inhuman conditions and grim odds the Camp III workers faced, Mazurek knows what a challenge it must have been for them to try to to dig their way out: The Germans put barbed wire about 4.5 feet (1.4 meters) underground, he says, to prevent the inmates from escaping. “It was so difficult. Most important [is that] they tried to do it, and for everybody coming here I think it’s necessary to know the story.”

      That’s the story; against impossible odds and zero chance of success, they tried anyway.
      If we don’t try to escape climate change now, this is what we will leave our grandchildren.

  14. Jenny 14
    20 April 2016 at 7:10 am

    What should we do in the face of revelations like this about the ETS?

    The Government has been accused of “cheating” to reduce emissions and meet climate change targets, in an environmental report.

    The issue, outlined in research by the Morgan Foundation, was that fraudulent carbon credits bought from Russia and Ukraine didn’t represent real emission reductions. The sale of these foreign units were linked to corruption and criminal activity.

    The report raised concerns New Zealand’s use of the credits to reach 2020 emissions reduction targets damaged our international reputation.

    New Zealand was proportionately the largest purchaser of Ukrainian and Russian credits, according to the report

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/79031600/government-allowed-climate-fraud-to-reach-emission-reduction-targets–report

    David Parker had rushed in to defend the ETS.

    Labour’s environment spokesperson David Parker said the party had been calling on the Government to close down overseas trading in ‘hot air’ carbon credits from the likes of the Ukraine since 2012.

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/79031600/government-allowed-climate-fraud-to-reach-emission-reduction-targets–report

    Tellingly the Labour Party’s Climate Change Spokesperson makes no comment.

    This is not surprising because David Parker is the main driver of Labour Party policy on climate change, the pollution trading scheme is his baby. In government David Parker was the architect of the ETS. And was the person who forced the ETS on the Greens telling them it was the ETS, or nothing.

    Of all the Labour Party MPs I have personally met and talked with, David Parker is the most resistant and intolerant to the idea of doing anything meaningful about climate change.

    David Parker is a leading supporter of deep sea oil drilling, coal mining and fracking and motorway construction and general business as usual.

    Labour’s finance spokesman, David Parker, says his party’s policies on oil, gas and mineral extraction are close to those of the Government.

    “I don’t think we are much different from National,” Parker said. “They’ve continued on with the programme that we started in respect to oil and gas,”

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10822510

    A leading figure in the conservative ABC faction David Parker was hostile to David Cunliffe’s more considered (and Left) environmental approach, and led the attack on Cunliffe immediately after David Cunliffe’s famous Dolphin and Dole Queue speech that saw Cunliffe demoted to the back benches.

    In government David Parker strong armed the Greens into supporting pollution trading, the Greens have since changed their position to demand that the ETS be scrapped totally.

    What should we do in face of these revelations about the ETS?

    In my opinion the Labour Party could put climate change policy back on the parliamentary agenda by joining the Greens in calling for the complete and total repeal of the ETS.

    And support a private members bill to that effect.

  15. Jenny 15
    23 April 2016 at 3:51 am

    “We are now witnessing the fastest growth rates of the entire record of CO2 measurements. This record-breaking growth is an expected consequence of the near record-breaking fossil fuel usage combined with the largest El Niño event in several decades.”
    RALPH KEELING
    (Scripps Institution of Oceanography)

    https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/atmospheric-co2-leaps-into-uncharted-territory-408-ppm

    On the local scene it is much the same.

    Corrupt from its inception, and even more decidedly corrupted now, the ETS, New Zealand’s pollution trading scheme has supervised and permitted the biggest measured rise in CO2 emissions in New Zealand’s history.

    “New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions increased 42 percent between 1990 and 2013. Total emissions increased 21 percent.”
    STATISTICS NEW ZEALAND

    http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/snapshots-of-nz/nz-progress-indicators/home/environmental/greenhouse-gas-emissions.aspx

    To clear the decks to allow a more honest approach to limiting green house gas emissions in this country….

    The ETS has to go.