Author: Gareth

Primary gifting period comes but once a year

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It will, with luck, be a quiet Christmas chez Hot Topic. A small family gathering instead of the usual table groaning with relatives, but I will shortly have my hands deep inside a turkey, and we will all be reminded that my mother makes the best mince pies in the world. Then it will be time for the cook (for it is me) to retire to the hammock in the shade of the birch tree with a book and a glass of wine and fall asleep. A very merry primary gifting period to all of Hot Topic’s readers and contributors. Normal service will be resumed when my liver has recovered and the mince pies are all gone.

Below the fold: B B King!

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The Climate Show #23: Durban and the return of the electric car

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Grab some holly, deck your halls, heat up some mince pies, and then settle down to the last Climate Show of 2011. We look at the outcome of the Durban conference, discuss heavy rain in New Zealand and record-breaking weather extremes in the USA, and ponder the implications of news of more methane erupting from the seabed off Siberia. Glenn interviews Chris Paine, director of EV documentary Revenge of the Electric Car, and we round off the show with some optimistic news on possible energy solutions.

Watch The Climate Show on our Youtube channel, subscribe to the podcast via iTunes, listen to us via Stitcher on your smartphone or listen direct/download from the link below the fold…

Follow The Climate Show at The Climate Show web site, and on Facebook and Twitter.

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Jim Hopkins: vapid, vacuous, pretty vacant

There’s a terrible tyranny in being a columnist for a national newspaper, required to produce entertaining and informative copy every week. It’s a hard job, having an opinion and expressing it cogently. Some writers struggle and succeed, others strive and fail dismally. The NZ Herald — the newspaper of record for NZ’s biggest city — has a couple of fine examples of the latter: old curmudgeon Garth George, who meets the difficulties inherent in his job by ripping off other people’s copy, and red-spectacled “funny man” Jim Hopkins, who has never allowed the facts to get in the way of a good rant.

And what a diatribe he gave us last Friday! Global warming’s gone away, Jim reckons:

There has been a trickle of terror but, by and large, the whole calamitous narrative is a goneburger.

…and…

The conclusion’s inescapable. Either we (literally) cooked our goose a long time ago or global warming’s always been more chimera than catastrophe. Quids in, it’s the latter. This is a crisis of faith, not a crisis of fact.

…and…

We just don’t need to worry about it any more. That’s all. The prediction holds. Global warming has disappeared.

Yes that’s right, because the media isn’t giving global warming the same prominence as a few years ago, the problem must be over. Thank the Lord for that sir. And what a shame that Hopkins’ is talking — not to put too fine a point on it — complete bollocks. Here’s why:

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Oceanographers win PM’s science prize for climate work

This year’s NZ Prime Minister’s Science Prize — worth $500,000 — has been awarded to a team of scientists working on climate-related issues at the joint Otago University and National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) Centre for Chemical & Physical Oceanography. The team carried out ground-breaking research on using iron to fertilise phytoplankton growth in the southern ocean, and its effectiveness at removing carbon from the atmosphere. Team leader Professor Philip Boyd commented:

Around the world, there is a growing lobby, which includes influential people like Bill Gates, for using geo-engineering to claw back some of the carbon dioxide humans are emitting. Our research has shown that adding iron to the ocean is not going to be an effective way to do that.

You can hear Professor Boyd talking about the research in episode #6 of The Climate Show, and Professor Keith Hunter, co-director of the Centre was interviewed in Climate Show #16. “It’s the top prize in science in the country and it’s an outstanding award for science at Otago,” Hunter said today. The centre plans to spend most of its winnings on a state-of-the-art phytoplankton culture facility in Dunedin. Other members of the team were Dr Evelyn Armstrong and Dr Kim Currie of NIWA’s research unit, Associate Professor Russell Frew, Dr Sylvia Sander, and Dr Robert Strzepek (all of Otago University), Dr Cliff Law, NIWA principal scientist, and Dr Rob Murdoch, NIWA’s general manager of research.

The 2011 MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist prize was awarded to Dr Rob McKay, a world-leading glacial sedimentologist at VUW’s Antarctic Research Centre for his work using marine sedimentary records and glacial deposits to reconstruct Antarctic climate over the last 13 million years.

The full list of winners is available here. Congratulations to all.

Prat Watch #1: columnated ruins domino

Being the first in an occasional series in which we monitor the wilder excesses of climate denial. Warning: reading and/or viewing the original material referenced herein may cause uncontrollable mirth. Hot Topic accepts no responsibility for any adverse effects that may result, but recommends a good micro fibre cleaning cloth for removing coffee/tea/wine from computer screens…

However gloomy I may be about the prospects for serious international action to reduce carbon emissions, I did find a few things to enjoy amongst the events in Durban, not the least of them being the fact that the only way Mark Morano and potty peer Christopher Monckton could draw attention to their CFACT-sponsored trip was by jumping out of an aeroplane in an attempt to attract the attention of the world’s press.

From the CFACT web site:

Multiple media outlets showed up to record the event, including the AP, BBC, and South Africa’s national news network. It was a huge success! Climategate 2.0 can not be ignored!

Shows, I suppose, just how desperate the denial campaign is to make mileage out of yesterday’s emails. But Monckton and Morano weren’t finished…

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