Just one teeny problem…

72 comments on “Just one teeny problem… ”

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1. shreddakj 1

   26 April 2012 at 10:01 am

   Wow, how shortsighted and stupid can people be?
2. joe90 2

   26 April 2012 at 10:33 am

   Here’s the problem: The ugly delusions of the educated conservative.
3. Colonial Viper 3

   26 April 2012 at 10:37 am

   So now our militaries are the most realistic, far sighted institutions we have left on the planet? Scary indeed.
   • joe90 3.1

     26 April 2012 at 11:10 am

     
     
     The US Defence Science Board report on the trends and implications of climate change.

     http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/dsb/climate.pdf

     And the insurance companies get it too.

     A press release about a 2008 Ernst & Young report listing the top ten risks to insurers.

     1 Climate change: long-term, far-reaching and with significant impact on the industry.
     • Colonial Viper 3.1.1

       26 April 2012 at 11:12 am

       Yeah I believe there are similar reports out for peak oil as well…while the politicians obfuscate, the rest of the world is quietly getting on with it.
       • lostinsuburbia 3.1.1.1

         26 April 2012 at 11:32 am

         Yeah there is the Joint Operating Environment (JOE) report put out by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

         Lists climate change, food security, access to freshwater, and peak oil all as major strategic issues for the future. And it is weird that it is coming from such a traditionally conservative organisation.

         There is always recent work by the German military looking at the effects of peak oil on their operations. I guess those generals still want to have plenty of toys to play with when the oil pumps start running dry.
         • Colonial Viper 3.1.1.1.1

           26 April 2012 at 11:39 am

           Germany remembers that losing the Africa campaign (and the eastern oil fields) likely lost them the rest of WWII.
           • lostinsuburbia 3.1.1.1.1.1

             26 April 2012 at 11:40 am

             Yep and the bombing campaigns against their synthetic fuel plants and the Romanian oil fields. I’ve been through Ploesti- quite desolate these days.
         • muzza 3.1.1.1.2

           26 April 2012 at 11:41 am

           “Lists climate change, food security, access to freshwater, and peak oil all as major strategic issues for the future.”

           – Did the report mention the ICE, and naked contract selling as part of the threat?

           If not, its not even worth a read!
       • lostinsuburbia 3.1.1.2

         26 April 2012 at 11:37 am

         Yep, there is the JOE (Joint Operating Environment Report) by the United States Joint Forces Command. It lists problems like access to fresh water, peak oil, food security, and climate change.

         Quite forward thinking given the usual conservative nature of the military.
         • Draco T Bastard 3.1.1.2.1

           26 April 2012 at 12:16 pm

           To be honest, I don’t agree with that. The military is doing its job and accepting the facts as reported by the scientists. It’s the politicians and RWNJ capitalists that refuse to accept those facts.
           • Vicky32 3.1.1.2.1.1

             27 April 2012 at 10:22 pm

             It’s the politicians and RWNJ capitalists that refuse to accept those facts.

             Whilst I am sure you’d like that to be the case, it’s really not. You can’t stop people thinking (although you can make them too scared to say what they think) and many people I talk to observe that climate change is a crock… 🙂
             • Draco T Bastard …

               27 April 2012 at 11:16 pm

               You’re a perfect example of someone who refuses to learn from those who are better informed than yourself. All the research and study points to Anthropogenic Climate Change and yet you, who doesn’t have a clue about the climate or the research, believes that you’re capable of determining that the research and the people studying the climate are wrong.

               And I thought I was an arrogant Bastard.
               • NickS …

                 28 April 2012 at 12:56 am

                 +1

                 Vicky really should try and brain harder.
     • muzza 3.1.2

       26 April 2012 at 11:34 am

       “The insurance industry can only take us so far. We need political leadership – and a vibrant, fully-mobilised social movement pushing that leadership – to make it the rest of the way. With climate change perilously approaching irreversibility, our time is running out”

       —These articles read as nothing more than – Blah Blah Blah, blame politicians, blame the state, corporate will save the planet! NO IT WONT
   • joe90 3.2

     26 April 2012 at 11:34 am

     Also, the 2007 The Nutter Report (googledocs) for the Reinsurance Association of America..
4. dave brownz 4

   26 April 2012 at 10:41 am

   Yeah MAD
    
   • Colonial Viper 4.1

     26 April 2012 at 10:41 am

     Definitely bad for the polar bears.
5. muzza 5

   26 April 2012 at 11:06 am

   “Is it just me, or is there a teeny problem here?”

   — I guess the rest of us will just have to wait and see how this all plays out in the real world, but its hardly looking positive from here. I would think that if this comes to pass, then there would be little doubt that the exercise will have been genocidal, against humanity as a whole!
6. Kotahi Tane Huna 6

   26 April 2012 at 11:07 am

   All the forecasts are proving too conservative as time goes by.
   • Lanthanide 6.1

     26 April 2012 at 12:01 pm

     No, not all of them:

     http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/04/25/1325241/gaia-scientist-admits-mispredicting-rate-of-climate-change

     ‘”The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books — mine included — because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said. “The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said. “
     • Kotahi Tane Huna 6.1.1

       26 April 2012 at 12:24 pm

       Thanks 🙂 It’s nice to be wrong about that at least.
7. captain hook 7

   26 April 2012 at 11:16 am

   it doesn’t matter as long as I have my 500 acre upstate estate in the hamptons and a chopper to take me into manhattan everyday.
   thats all that counts.
   for the plebs its hardly davisons, leaf blowers, angle grinders and any other damm thing that costs a lot and makes some noise that deafens and deadens any emotianal response to the world around us.
   just gimme gimme gimme more stuff.
   and dont forget trips to mongolia and macchu piccu.
   • Colonial Viper 7.1

     26 April 2012 at 11:37 am

     the plebs…you mean the top 5% with the hobby Harleys…

     Only the top 0.01% get the helicopters.
   • lostinsuburbia 7.2

     26 April 2012 at 11:58 am

     Well trips to Asia will be off the social calendar when conflicts over freshwater go nuclear. Just wait for China and India (and Pakistan) go at each other as the rivers run dry.

     The Tibetan Plateau supplies significant amounts for freshwater across Asia and guess who controls it all….

     And who will want to visit Spain or Italy when you could catch malaria. Got to love the spread of disease carrying pests as part of climate change…..
     • Gosman 7.2.1

       26 April 2012 at 1:17 pm

       So you don’t get people travelling to places where malaria is prevalent? Hmmm… I could swear that Southern Asia and Africa get their fair amount of tourists.
     • Vicky32 7.2.2

       27 April 2012 at 10:36 pm

       And who will want to visit Spain or Italy when you could catch malaria. Got to love the spread of disease carrying pests as part of climate change…..

       Newsflash! As the name suggests, malaria (from the Italian, meaning bad air) has been rife in Italy as long as Italy has existed. So has sickle cell anaemia which protects against malaria although it’s a toss up which is actually worse. You’re completely naive and ignorant if you think it’s got anything to do with climate change! This is where I want to scream, when I see solemn assertions that X or Y has happened/will happen because of climate change, when the assertion is based entirely on staggering ignorance!
       • NickS 7.2.2.1

         27 April 2012 at 11:04 pm

         Hi I’m Vicky, and I’m incapable of doing quick factchecks about historical issues, such as the restriction of malaria carrying mosquitos to the south of Italy, where as present day they’ve spread into northern Italy due to increasing temperatures. Amongst other parts of Europe.

         /sigh
         • Vicky32 7.2.2.1.1

           27 April 2012 at 11:27 pm

           Hi I’m Vicky, and I’m incapable of doing quick factchecks about historical issues

           Hi, I am Vicky and I don’t need to do any factchecks, when I am talking about the experience of close friends… hence my comment about sickle cell. Your sneering and point scoring is my experience, numbnuts.

            
           • NickS 7.2.2.1.1.1

             28 April 2012 at 12:52 am

             Because in no way might lostinsuburbia be talking about parts of Italy other than southern Italy where malaria was historical present /smugface

             As for the present of sickle cell alleles in the population, it’s very firmly geographically limited in terms of prevalence of malaria as the fitness costs of homozygosity for sickle cell gene is vastly outweighed by the lack of benefit. And so selection leads to it being weeded out rather quickly in population genetics timeframes. Which you’d actually know, if you’d bothered with teh factchecking instead of relying solely on hearsay, making you the numnuts here 😛
             • Vicky32 …

               28 April 2012 at 1:11 am

               And so selection leads to it being weeded out rather quickly in population genetics timeframes. Which you’d actually know, if you’d bothered with teh factchecking instead of relying solely on hearsay, making you the numnuts here

               Well, that’s me told then!
               You are an arrogant bully. I shall look forward to telling Annarosa (the wife of my former student) that she doesn’t really have sickle cell then, shall I? 
               But no, google knows better does it?
               Well, here’s a nice trustworthy American source for you :
               http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11182603
               Note paragraph 1 “Malaria was endemic throughout the country until it was eradicated nearly 50 years ago. ”
               Doing the factcheck you have insisted upon, I see references to malaria being endemic in Italy as far back as the 7th century – wow, there wasn’t any AGW then, was there? 
               Another nice American and therefore credible to you quote: “The discovery of an association of malaria with stagnant waters led the Romans to develop drainage programs, which were among the first documented preventions against malaria. In seventh-century Italy, the disease was prevalent in foul-smelling swamps near Rome and was named mal’ aria Italian for “bad air.”

               Read more: Malaria: Introduction — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/cig/dangerous-diseases-epidemics/malaria.html#ixzz1tFJP751C
               Rome please note… not very South is it?

                
                
               • Vicky32 …

                 28 April 2012 at 1:18 am

                 I just have to add that I apologise in advance for calling you a bully. According to QoT I am not allowed to do that, s/he follows me on to every thread and tells everyone that I think they’re an evil anti-Christian bully. Don’t worry, she’ll be along to sympathise and hold your hand any minute now! 😀
8. Lanthanide 8

   26 April 2012 at 11:59 am

   “So – burning fossil fuels is contributing to climate change and causing the recent increase in global temperatures, which is thawing the Arctic, which is freeing up fossil fuel reserves, which we’re going to rush and exploit, so that we can burn more fossil fuels which… Is it just me, or is there a teeny problem here?”

   No! Not at all!

   This is classic supply and demand economics. The price of oil is rising due to limited supply and increasing demand. In turn, this is causing new sources of supply to become more economical and open to exploitation.
   • lostinsuburbia 8.1

     26 April 2012 at 12:05 pm

     Yep, and that’s why capitalism is a beast that devours itself.
   • Kotahi Tane Huna 8.2

     26 April 2012 at 12:34 pm

     Not exactly. Some areas are becoming open to exploitation because of Physics, not Economics.
     • Lanthanide 8.2.1

       26 April 2012 at 1:42 pm

       Tongue in cheek.
   • muzza 8.3

     26 April 2012 at 12:41 pm

     “This is classic supply and demand economics. The price of oil is rising due to limited supply and increasing demand.”

     —Actually the price of oil is currently rising due to a number of things, such as threat of war, actual wars, but mostly because of speculation!

     Supply and demand is currently not causing the major price pressure!
   • lostinsuburbia 8.4

     26 April 2012 at 1:12 pm

     Certainly advancements in technology help – look at the rise of deep sea drilling in recent years. I’m not saying that its a good thing, but new drilling techniques etc have made previously unaccessible oil and gas resources available to us.

     The role of the futures markets also comes into play. Speculators on fuel prices can really cause the price of oil to rollercoaster and make it profitable to go for non-traditional sources of oil and gas e.g. oil sands.

     On the other hand, all these new sources of oil and gas can take prodigious amounts of energy to extract and transport, so they don’t have the same impact on oil supply as would finding a new lot of Saudi style oil fields.

     The other side of the problem is the lack of adequate refining capacity. There is simply not enough to go round with projected demand (particularly in Asia) thereby creating another supply bottleneck.
     • insider 8.4.1

       26 April 2012 at 2:10 pm

       Refineries are closing all over the world due to overcapacity and low margins. But a number of superrefineries are being built or expanded in Asia and the ME. Scale is everything in this market.
9. Johnm 9

   26 April 2012 at 12:09 pm

   Climate Change continues to melt back the Summer Arctic Ice Cap due to be ice free sometime in the first half of this century.
   And the American:
   “Asked to give its latest position on climate change, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement that observations collected by satellites, sensors on land, in the air and seas “continue to show that the average global surface temperature is rising.”

   The statement said “the impacts of a changing climate” were already being felt around the globe, with “more frequent extreme weather events of certain types (heat waves, heavy rain events); changes in precipitation patterns … longer growing seasons; shifts in the ranges of plant and animal species; sea level rise; and decreases in snow, glacier and Arctic sea ice coverage.”

   “All 11 years of the 21st century so far (2001-2011) rank among the 13 warmest in the 132-year period of record. Only one year during the 20th century, 1998, was warmer than 2011,” it said.

   However Link:
   http://www.jameslovelock.org/page41.html

   Lovelock has come out and admitted that his predictions of severe accelerating climate change were alarmist: “Lovelock, 92, is writing a new book in which he will say climate change is still happening, but not as quickly as he once feared.”

   “The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.

   Lovelock is a true scientist when he gets it wrong he admits it.
   • lprent 9.1

     26 April 2012 at 1:27 pm

     Lovelock was always somewhat enthusiastic.

     There is a hell of a lot of mass, especially in the oceans, that massively buffers the effects before significant change becomes visible. I suspect that you’d have to get a massive pulse of something like CH4 into the atmosphere, or a really drastic shift in oceans currents (ie sending more warm water to the poles) to get the types of effects he was talking about in 2006 in the time frames he was talking about. It was possible but even with the evidence then; quite unlikely.

     But at least he reads the numbers. Unlike the usual deniers most of whom appear to have a congenital defect when it comes to anything expressed in figures.
10. Draco T Bastard 10

    26 April 2012 at 12:12 pm

    Earth faces a century of disasters, report warns

    “The number of people living on the planet has never been higher, their levels of consumption are unprecedented and vast changes are taking place in the environment. We can choose to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption … or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future”, it says.

    Rebalance or die. Simple but I’m sure that the RWNJs will be here saying that we need to make the rich richer to grow the economy and that all is well.
    • joe90 10.1

      26 April 2012 at 12:40 pm

      Fixed. Earth faces a century of disasters, report warns
      • Draco T Bastard 10.1.1

        26 April 2012 at 1:13 pm

        Thanks.
11. Bored 11

    26 April 2012 at 12:28 pm

    I read some idiot report in the Listener about how rosy the future is going to be (it quoted some report written by those champions of prediction Goldman Sachs…..). Apparently the global warming will mean better weather and access to resources in polar regions as the ice melted….

    This is the sort of story the Listener specializes in: “middle class angst” or some crap to bolster the well healed from taking any responsibility. Its all going to be rosy.
    • prism 11.1

      26 April 2012 at 1:08 pm

      @Bored I call them chirpy chirpy cheep cheep stories – all is going to be for the better, no wucking forries. And particularly directed at the smug middle class. Even when they have been taken down by some razor sharp finance company running criminal scams which could be compared to mafia set-ups, they would still be in the same mindset.
12. Robert Atack 12

    26 April 2012 at 5:26 pm

    Gotta keep that oil supply pumping, how else are the Green Party’s Kiwi Savers going to retire with a pension?
13. Jenny 13

    26 April 2012 at 6:31 pm

    “…. the terrible irony of it is that instead of seeing the melting of the Arctic ice cap as a spur to action on climate change, the leaders of the Arctic nations are instead investing in military hardware to fight for the oil beneath it. They’re preparing to fight to extract the very fossil fuels that caused the melting in the first place. It’s like putting out fire with petrol.”

    Greenpeace
14. Jenny 14

    26 April 2012 at 6:38 pm

    ‘
    Coal hearted killer

    The burning of coal is the world’s number one cause of Green house gas emissions. A dirty, dusty, deadly, deceitfull, business marked by bullying. In my opinion the price is just to high and this industry must be consigned to the dust bin of history.

    …. as a Royal Commission of Inquiry investigates the cause of the tragedy – as well as a raft of issues relating to the mine’s safety procedures, design and the actions of former management – Mudge’s parents have gone public with an aborted plan to have the mine closed down.

    Just weeks before the initial explosion at Pike River on November 19, 2010, a group of Pike River miners and contractors – including Mudge – voiced their shared concerns over the mine at a private barbecue.

    “They were all talking about safety at Pike River. Stu said something like, ‘The gas levels are terrible, she is going to blow . . . we should be doing something about it’,” Mudge’s mother, Carol Rose, told the Sunday Star-Times.

    Stu’s father, Steve Rose, added: “They said, ‘OK, we will do it. We will go in on Monday morning and shut the mine down.’ ”

    But the concerned delegation of Pike River miners never made it to the Labour Department.

    Steve said that the day following the barbecue, the men realised such a move could end their mining careers. “It was like, ‘S—, we will be blacklisted, we will never get another job in mining, no one will ever touch us,’ ” he said.

    “They wanted to do something. But experience had shown them in the mine that people that put their head above the parapet got shot.

    “They needed that money to pay the bills. The loss for them would have been considerable if they had got fired.”

    Carol said: “They all had mortgages to pay and families to raise. What were they going to do if they raised the flag and were told, ‘On your bike.’ Because that is what happened.

    “If anybody challenged [management], that is it, mate, you were down the road.”

    Steve said on the “face of it”, working at Pike River was a good deal.

    Miners were being reasonably paid, with some being given company shares and offered bonuses.

    “Stu saw it as a career path,” he said. “And from the outside looking in, we looked at it and thought, great.”

    Seventeen months on from the Pike River disaster, the Roses are honouring their son’s memory with an unflinching resolve to fight for justice.

    And this is coal mining in a first world country.

    Coal Kills

    Coal kills workers

    Coal kills planets

    Coal kills ban it
15. Jenny 15

    26 April 2012 at 7:54 pm

    Coal emissions must be phased out as rapidly as possible or global climate disasters will be a dead certainty…

    If we want to solve the climate problem, we must phase out coal emissions. Period.

    James Hansen
    • Robert Glennie 15.1

      27 April 2012 at 4:12 pm

      Before going and making such statements as phase out all coal emissions as quickly as possible, lets have a reality check here.

      How many here have considered that New Zealand’s contribution to climate change compared to China, the United States and India is comparatively negligible? We can bust our gut – though I think it is a silly idea – and stop all use of coal tomorrow, but where is our electricity to run NZ going to come from? Where is the heat that keeps schools and hospitals warm going to come from?

      Okay, you did not quite say, stop tomorrow, but you said the next worst thing “as quickly as possible”. In the time it takes to “as quickly as possible” stop the coal emissions, how much planning is New Zealand realistically likely to do for the post coal period? If recent attitudes are anything to go by, my answer is not printable.

      Even if we do advance the planning and commissioning of a replacement 1000 megawatt station quickly as possible, that is going to leave us short by about 1000 megawatts (supplied by Huntly)of generating capacity for several years.
      And you cannot leave hospitals and schools frozen can you?

      Here is another problem. Think about the message that this would send to the world – okay Greenpeace would be happy as hell – about our economic priorities. What country just unilaterally cuts off an entire energy source?

      Going back to the China – and India, U.S., Japan – problem. What gains we make and the world makes from our stoppage of coal as an energy source, will be quickly swallowed by China’s insatiable appetite for coal.

      What will we have achieved?

      By the way, I am not a climate change denier. I think we have a problem. However a coin has two sides to it and so does this issue – if you won’t look at both sides, you are not looking at it objectively.

      Rob
      • Jenny 15.1.1

        27 April 2012 at 6:17 pm

        Here is another problem. Think about the message that this would send to the world – okay Greenpeace would be happy as hell – about our economic priorities. What country just unilaterally cuts off an entire energy source?

        Robert Glennie

        Well funny you should ask Robert. But if my memory serves me right, in 1987 there was a country quite near you that ‘just unilaterally cut off an entire energy source’. Or had you ‘just’ conveniently forgotten that?
        • Robert Glennie 15.1.1.1

          27 April 2012 at 9:50 pm

          Kia Ora

          Would you expect anyone at age six to know about much less care about climate change?

          Don’t presume to know until you actually do. If you live in Christchurch I am quite happy to sit down you over coffee and talk. We might not agree, but at least you will know where I am coming from.

          Rob
      • Jenny 15.1.2

        27 April 2012 at 9:30 pm

        Robert I found most of your comment defending coal specious at best. There are no schools and hospitals that are still heated by coal. A shut down of the aluminium smelter at Bluff would close most of the hole left by power generated by coal. Bringing in a war time type blackout plus a lot more wind water and other renewables would do the rest. Admittedly a major programme of waste reduction and possibly even rationing.

        If you don’t think this is necessary then I don’t think you understand the magnitude of the threat.

        You claim that you are not a climate change denier. I believe you. You are something much worse – An apologist for climate change and business as usual.
      • Jenny 15.1.3

        27 April 2012 at 10:57 pm

        Before going and making such statements as phase out all coal emissions as quickly as possible, lets have a reality check here.

        Robert Glennie

        The most common excuse put about by New Zealand apologists for climate change is that because our country’s emissions are negligible as compared to the big countries, we should do nothing.

        I note Robert that this is a big part of your apologist mantra.

        Going back to the China – and India, U.S., Japan – problem. What gains we make and the world makes from our stoppage of coal as an energy source, will be quickly swallowed by China’s insatiable appetite for coal.

        Robert Glennie

        You asked us all here, a question:

        How many here have considered that New Zealand’s contribution to climate change compared to China, the United States and India is comparatively negligible?

        Robert Glennie

        I will let Professor Sir Peter Gluckman the Chief Science Adviser to the New Zealand Government, answer your question:

        New Zealand is a small emitter by world standards – only emitting some 0.2% of global greenhouse gases.

        …..anything we do as a nation will in itself have little impact on the climate – our impact will be symbolic, moral and political.

        Peter Gluckman

        No nation is better placed to be that symbolic moral and political example.

        I would like to ask you a question Robert.

        If not us, who?
    • Colonial Viper 15.2

      28 April 2012 at 1:22 am

      As likely as getting Americans to give up their personal cars.
16. jaymam 16

    26 April 2012 at 8:03 pm

    “As ice cap melts, militaries vie for Arctic edge”

    As you can see from the official record of Arctic Sea Ice Extent from NSIDC, Arctic ice is currently at its usual extent for this time of year, i.e. the same as the 1979-2000 average. Please check this chart regularly before making alarmist statements about the Arctic melting, because it melts every year and freezes again every year, and the amount of ice is the same as usual.

    http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
    • Draco T Bastard 16.1

      26 April 2012 at 10:39 pm

      http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2012/04/Figure3.png

      That thick blue line going downwards? Yeah, that’s the one that actually matters.
17. Jenny 17

    26 April 2012 at 10:45 pm

    Hi Jayman can you tell me, is Professor Sir Peter Gluckman the Chief Science Adviser to the New Zealand Government, lying to both us and the government when he says:

    The warming trend over the past 50 years is nearly twice as great as that over the previous 100 years. These escalating temperature changes have been reflected in a number of environmental and biological changes. These include rises in globally averaged sea level, shrinking of summer Arctic sea-ice extent, losses from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, retreat of mountain glaciers, poleward and upward shifts in the range of some plant and animal species, and earlier timing for some species of spring events such as leaf-unfolding, bird migration and egg-laying. That this is happening is not contentious.

    Peter Gluckman
    • jaymam 17.1

      27 April 2012 at 11:13 am

      Jenny, this thread is about “As ice cap melts”. There’s not the time and space to discuss all the areas of climate here. And the alarmists won’t be following my links because their minds are closed.

      Of course Gluckman is wrong. He’s a Paediatric professor and is outside his area of expertise. And please don’t use Appeal to Authority arguments. Just the data is all that is needed.

      Back to ice:-
      In 2007 Nasa climate scientist Jay Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012.” Well I think he is going to be wrong.

      http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic

      By November 2012, if the Arctic ice on these graphs is below say 2 million square km, I’ll accept that there may be a problem. See you then.

      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3318239/Arctic-ice-could-be-gone-in-five-years.html
      12 Dec 2007
      Arctic ice ‘could be gone in five years’
      …
      New Nasa satellite images reveal so much ice has disappeared that an irreversible tipping point has already been reached because of global warming.
      …
      And Nasa climate scientist Jay Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.” [NOT!]
18. Jenny 18

    27 April 2012 at 7:24 am

    While I wait for a reply from Jayman….

    If we trust all the scientists and experts that tell us and our government’s around the world that we are in deadly danger, then we must act.

    Coal has been identified as the greatest source of global CO2 pollution. As James Hanson has said, to stop climate disasters the burning of coal must end.

    I imagine that all the Naysayers will be saying but what about the jobs, (as if they give a damn). To these apologists for climate change I would say look to the mining of asbestos. New Zealand had a large asbestos mining industry. World wide it was a massive industry. Now it doesn’t exist at all anywhere on the planet.

    Are we better off?

    Certainly.

    All the experts tell us the burning of coal is likely to kill many millions, more than asbestos ever could.

    We have to make the hard decisions profits or lives?

    Asbestos is the ghost of Holocaust Past pointing us to our past errors.

    Climate Change is the ghost of Holocaust future, showing us of what will happen if we don’t change our behaviour.

    (My apologies to Charles Dickens)
    • Colonial Viper 18.1

      27 April 2012 at 10:47 pm

      If we trust all the scientists and experts that tell us and our government’s around the world that we are in deadly danger, then we must act.

      Not gonna happen.
      • Jenny 18.1.1

        27 April 2012 at 11:53 pm

        Not gonna happen?

        Really?

        New Zealanders informed of the dangers of nuclear holocaust made our country nuclear free.

        When it comes to taking action on climate change there are three main factions opposed.

        The denialists

        The apologists

        The defeatists

        All three are united by the common thread – Do Nothing

        The denialists say do nothing, because nothing needs to be done.

        The apologists say do nothing, because business as usual is more important.

        The defeatists say do nothing, because nothing can be done.

        Luckily there is a fourth faction, though small it is determined. It’s object to build a peaceful mass democratic movement, to create a consensus to act that will become undeniable.

        Like the anti nuclear movement it will have to become universal to win through. Unions, students, churches, councils, political parties will all have to be a part.

        A big ask?

        Certainly.

        Achievable?

        Maybe

        Worthy?

        Absolutely
        • Colonial Viper 18.1.1.1

          28 April 2012 at 1:16 am

          It’s not gonna happen. You don’t have the influence, the power or the alternatives to make it happen.

          Fossil fuels are a drug that the NZ economy is completely dependent on and no one outside of a very small circle has come up with a viable detox programme.

          Your analogy with NZ’s nuclear free stance has a clear problem: 99% of NZers were not inconvenienced by being nuclear free. So it was easy to be for it.

          With an immediate (<10 years) phase out of coal and fossil fuels its exactly the other way around: 99% of NZers WILL be inconvenienced. And that's putting it mildly.
          • Jenny 18.1.1.1.1

            28 April 2012 at 9:17 pm

            With an immediate (<10 years) phase out of coal and fossil fuels its exactly the other way around: 99% of NZers WILL be inconvenienced. And that's putting it mildly.

            Colonial Viper 28 April 2012 at 1:16 am

            Not as much as they will be inconvenienced by the effects of climate change. And that’s putting it Mildly!
            • Robert Glennie 18.1.1.1.1.1

              29 April 2012 at 3:33 pm

              Kia Ora

              Jenny, not wanting to start a war on here, but I would be curious to know what your qualifications are.

              Mine: Postgraduate Diploma of Science (Hazard Management); Bachelor of Science (Geography).

              You claim I am an apologist, but how do you know that when you haven’t met me? I am not jumping to conclusions about you. I am not going to assign you a label unless we were to meet and talk face to face. But I would like to know what makes you think the way you do about me.

              Rob
19. Luc Hansen 19

    27 April 2012 at 7:34 am

    Jenny, don’t hold your breath.

    It would appear Jayman finds it a challenge to understand the difference between volume and extent.
20. Robert Glennie 20

    27 April 2012 at 10:35 pm

    “You claim that you are not a climate change denier. I believe you. You are something much worse – An apologist for climate change and business as usual.” – JENNY

    I am centrist. I don’t deny there is a problem with climate change, but I don’t believe it is all that the Greens/Labour on one hand or National/ACT make it all out to be. The profession of resource management planning is about sustainability and as my R.M.A. tutor said, it is not an Act of Parliament designed to appease one side or the other.
    I do not underestimate the magnitude of the problem. A.C.T. denies there is a problem and the Greens over dramatise it.

    It is not a do nothing issue. Doing nothing is the attitude Jenny mentioned in her initial response to me.

    If A.C.T. had their way, the Resource Management Act, 1991 would not exist. It has been at least until recently, their policy to ditch the Act or gut it so badly it needs to be ditched. The Greens on the other hand, think it is not strong enough.

    What does this have to do with climate change? As an Act of Parliament promoting and requiring sustainable development of natural resources, it cannot very well ignore climate and recent changes to the legislation under the previous Labour Government admitted as much.

    Now, Jenny, if Labour – a supposedly left-wing party that would support the Greens – were really left-wing, then why did they let Pete Hodgson fiddle a golden opportunity to act when he was Minister of ENERGY, Minister of CLIMATE CHANGE and Minister of RESEARCH, SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY? He had a golden opportunity to start a green revolution in New Zealand energy and he failed abysmally.

    Far more than Hodgson ever did, here are my own ideas:

    -Within 12 months of becoming part of a governing coalition, write a white paper on the long term sustainability of oil and coal in New Zealand, what the alternatives are and whether or not they are sustainable.
    -Increase over the next 5 years the investment in R.S.T. to 2% of G.D.P. and place energy sustainability at the heart of the modernised research programme.
    -Start a biofuel research and development programme – or expand an existing one to include waste stream products, such fat waste, waste oil and water and green waste – not crops.
    -Start work with car manfacuturers to get affordable green vehicles into New Zealand.
    -Reduce oil reliance by 1/3-1/2 over 30 years. Thats more than 1% a year.
    -Reduce – according to a Green Party energy audit about 7 years ago, New Zealand could reduce its electricity bill fairly easily by 10-15% – our energy bill by a similar amount. If a commercial property owner was told that they could keep the savings they made from doing this every year, quite a few would come on board.

    One thing no politician will ever survive Jenny is sacrificing jobs to pursue a daft ideology that might not even be based on fact. Another thing that I don’t think will permit a government in New Zealand to survive is believing that to address climate change, one must bust a boiler as New Zealand certainly would trying to accommodate China’s exponentially growing demand for coal and STILL reducing emissions.
    • Colonial Viper 20.1

      27 April 2012 at 10:51 pm

      What’s with wasting all this time and money on “research”, “white papers” and “green vehicles”???

      Stop and think how much embodied energy is in a brand new Prius, its electronics, the aluminium, the steel, the battery, shipping it to NZ.

      Biofuels is always going to be a sideshow, with EROEI the biggest challenge. If biofuels can’t produce a clear minimum 5:1 to 10:1 EROEI, forget it.

      Get people out of personal vehicles into public transport, get trucks off the road in between towns and go to rail as much as possible.

      Re-energise coastal shipping. Get people walking and cycling, make pedestrians more important than cars.

      Right that’s the recipe, and on the way it creates 50,000 new jobs. Right, ready, steady, go.
      • Jenny 20.1.1

        28 April 2012 at 9:05 pm

        Cool!
        • Colonial Viper 20.1.1.1

          15 May 2012 at 8:39 pm

          😉

          We’re actually not too far offbeam from each other eh!
21. Free Volunteering Program 21

    15 May 2012 at 8:34 pm

    It’s certain that it will bring trouble between super powers, along with economic leap. However, I wonder, if Ice melts go in a current rate, and though it opens a route via Artic, where will the human civilization shall head to for living and accommodation. Not many would survive to see the day, I’m assure everyone.

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