Emissions plan due Thursday

The government’s emissions trading scheme will be announced on Thursday. The Herald reports:

Helen Clark indicated farmers would get a reprieve on when they would join in because of the difficulties in reducing methane emissions from stock. Bringing various industries into the scheme would be staggered. “I don’t want to reveal the sequence, but clearly there’s different capacity to cope with the challenges. And agriculture’s challenge is clearly the biggest because we don’t have the answer on how to drop pastoral greenhouse gas emissions,

A passage to India

Easice07News of the melting Arctic has finally reached the media in New Zealand. Last night’s TV One news featured an item on the opening of the “fabled

Omnibus

Brian Fallow has a good piece in today’s Herald on what to look out for when the government announces details of its emissions trading system – due very soon. Balancing competing interests is a delicate political process, and taxpayers need to be aware that emissions “holidays

Trumpet, blowing of one’s own, #1

The first full review of HT is out. Bryan Walker in the Waikato Times liked the book.

AUT University’s newly established press can be congratulated on their first publication. The subject is vital, the exposition lucid, and the presentation attractive. The book deserves many readers.

Suckers for punishment can hear me interviewed on Tremane Barr’s Prism Webcast News here. The barking during the first five minutes is Peg, the amazingly charming truffle hound, demanding to be let in.

Arctic carries on melting

Ice070911Compare this picture with the one accompanying my last post on this season’s record-breaking sea-ice melt in the Arctic Ocean. More ice has gone, and although the end of the melt season is fast approaching, this year’s low is already about one million square kilometres less than the previous minimum, set in 2005. The NSIDC’s most recent report (Sept 10) also demonstrates that an area of ocean about the size of California is ice-free for the first time since satellite observations began in 1979. As the ocean cools, it will give up heat to the atmosphere. This could delay the onset of the northern hemisphere winter – and perhaps mean a repeat of last year’s mild NH autumn and the late arrival of winter. In turn, this sets up the Arctic for another year of record low ice in 2008, leading to suggestions that the Arctic could be ice-free in summer long before the IPCC expected. From The Guardian [UK]:

Continue reading “Arctic carries on melting”