Climate politics – Page 184

Blog bits #438(b)

Observant readers might have noticed a few changes at Hot Topic over the weekend. Two new navigation options have popped up over the header: Book Reviews and Debate Map. The first one’s fairly straightforward, it’s a link to the book reviews category — a short cut to all the book reviews we’ve published at Hot Topic since Bryan started diligently working his way through new and notable climate-related books. Thanks to his efforts we now host the most comprehensive review coverage of climate books on the web (that’s my claim, and I’m sticking to it).

The Debate Map link goes to a new page created to provide a permanent home for the Debategraph interactive map of the climate debate I first posted about back in March. It’s a wiki-style site given a nice graphical structure. I find the whole thing fascinating, so I urge all Hot Topic‘s readers (even sceptics) to go and have a play and don’t be afraid to contribute items and arguments. Debategraph head honcho David Price provides the accompanying text, and is very happy to discuss any aspects of the map with interested readers.

One other tweak regular readers may like: I’ve updated the site’s theme to allow for “threaded comments”. This means you can now reply to individual comments by clicking on the “reply” link at the bottom of each comment. Your response will then appear immediately underneath, slightly indented. You should be able to reply to replies up to five indents deep, but I haven’t tested that…

Blackleg miner

Solid Energy, NZ’s state-owned coal mining company, is promoting an alternative to an economy wide emissions trading scheme. According to Carbon News, the approach is being “heavily peddled to policy makers and others in Wellington”, and it is seen to have “great simplistic appeal”. Carbon News has made the document, A Durable Climate Change Strategy for New Zealand, available here.

The essence of the scheme, once you plough through Solid Energy’s reasons for disliking the ETS as currently proposed, is that the government should plant lots of trees, funded by a $1/tonne carbon levy applied across the economy. Lots and lots of trees — a million hectares of new exotic and native forest planted over the next 20-30 years. Solid Energy claims that “Kiwiforest” would provide enough cheap carbon sequestration to allow the economy to grow without the need to impose steep carbon prices. An ETS would only be introduced when there was a truly global interlinked network of carbon markets.

Sounds attractive, on the face of it. Who could object to planting lots of trees? Certainly not me. Unfortunately, as a national emissions strategy it looks too simplistic to be realistic, and on Solid Energy’s numbers delivers emissions reductions that aren’t credible.

Continue reading “Blackleg miner”

Morning Morgantown

There have been occasional rumblings over the last year that high profile Kiwi economist and biker Gareth Morgan was working on something to do with climate change. This week TV One has been trailing an item with Morgan in the Sunday programme (tonight, 7-30pm), discussing the results of his research into the subject. This is all part of the launch publicity for his latest book, Poles Apart: The Great Climate Change Debate — which appears to be a cross between a travel book (based on two bike trips, one to the Arctic and the other to Antarctica: the words “lucky bugger” spring unbidden to mind) and an investigation of the state of our understanding of climate change. You can perhaps judge the end result from the fact that Jeanette Fitzsimons is hosting the launch, but if there was any remaining doubt, today’s Herald gives the game away:

Poles Apart, which Morgan co-wrote with freelance writer John McCrystal, concludes the weight of current evidence favours human-made climate change. Morgan said the book was designed to get past emotion and misinformation, such as views expressed by Hide. Hide last year told Parliament climate change data and hypothesis “do not hold together”. He called emission trading schemes “a worldwide scam and swindle”. Morgan said: “When I get a non-scientist belching emotion like that, I just think that’s gutter of politics. I was trying to clear the room of the Rodneys of this world, and whoever his equivalent is on the other [environmental alarmist] side.”

Good stuff. Nice to see that Gareths are sticking together… 😉 And possibly an object lesson for other authors in how to conduct a fair assessment of the state of our understanding of climate.

[Update: Just found the Poles Apart web site which includes some interesting background papers… I’m still digging…]

[Update 2: Sunday segment part one here. Watch the whole thing. There’s a fair bit of Gareth Morgan, a lot of Flannery, some good shots of Carbonscape’s Black Phantom biochar generator, and pictures of a Papua New Guinea island (Takuu) flooding at high tide — and an amazing stat: sea temperatures around the island have warmed by 5ÂºC over the last 50 years.]

Somethin’ stupid…

I hardly know where to begin with this book. It appears to come from another planet; it has a view of the world so far removed from the reality that most of us operate in that it’s difficult to know whether the author is misguided, malicious, or malignant. Consider the mental space occupied by someone who is willing to write, publish and promote this (p247):

What they [“wild greens”] really mean is that they want ordinary families and kids to become extinct, leaving space for the Green elite to run the planet and enjoy exclusive bird-watching excursions while feasting on the bones of six year olds who’d earlier been sold to Asian brothels.

In Air Con: The Seriously Inconvenient Truth About Global Warming, Ian Wishart appears to have held the techniques of Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels a little too close to his heart (he certainly refers to Goebbels often enough… four times in all, the first time on p16). An intense dislike of all things “green” seems to make him lose touch with any concept of good taste or accuracy in a mad rush to denigrate the green movement and environmentalists.

Continue reading “Somethin’ stupid…”

Science rallies round Salinger

The scientific community in New Zealand and around the world has been buzzing with the news of Jim Salinger’s dismissal by NIWA, and messages of support have been flooding in. This morning’s NZ Herald quotes former colleagues bemused by NIWA’s action:

Former Niwa scientist Andy Reisinger, who now works at Victoria University, said the decision to sack someone of Dr Salinger’s standing for breaking media protocol was “incomprehensible”. “I’m not sure how that can be justified.”

Others are concerned at the increasing bureaucratisation of the research institutes:

Dr Dave Lowe, who left his job as a principal atmospheric scientist at Niwa about 18 months ago, said one reason for his departure was a lack of freedom “to get on with the job”.

“These big Crown research institutions have become dominated by managers. They tend to forget that the bread and butter for the company … comes from its top scientists and they include people like Jim Salinger.”

In this week’s NBR, Tom Frewen’s Media Watch column provides some interesting background on the revamping of NIWA (not available online):

…the board and chief executive then [2007] embarked on a programme of corporatisation, ratcheting up directors’ allowances and executive salaries to attract top talent. NIWA’s 2007-8 annual report reveals that the number of employees on $100,000 – $110,000 doubled from 24 to 51, while those on $110,000 – $120,000 tripled from ten to 30.

Frewen also quotes the new NIWA chief executive , John Morgan, from that same report:

Something we recognise is that the science sector is not too good at promoting itself. We need to better communicate our science. NIWA’s duty is to be experts and confidently present facts. This can be a challenge” Mr Morgan added ominously, “in a media environment where personal opinions and controversy often gain profile.”

Ominous words for Jim, Frewen concludes.

Meanwhile The Press this morning prints a letter of support for Salinger from expat New Zealand scientist professor Peter Lamb of the University of Ohio:

Dr Salinger has demonstrated a remarkable ability to communicate complex scientific information to the public. Few scientists are able to perform this role as well as he does.

Salinger’s also been getting support in Parliament, with Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons asking the hard questions:

John Key said in a speech in 2005 that he didnâ€™t want NZ to keep exporting scientists and importing taxi drivers. This case wonâ€™t help him realise his dream.

See also: Nature News, and listen out for RNZ’s Mediawatch tomorrow (May 3).