Posts tagged as:

carbon

Carbonscape and the new Victorians

by Bryan Walker 2 January 2010

Buried among the emails which accumulated while I was in hospital was one from Carbonscape, the NZ company working on biochar, drawing my attention to an article in the UK Sunday Times. It missed proper attention until I tidied up my inbox yesterday, but even a few weeks late I think it’s worth reporting, [...]

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What cap and converge means with a realistic 2050 emissions target

by Gareth 22 September 2009

This New Scientist video is a superb illustration of the tough emissions targets the world needs to be thinking about. More details in the NS story here. The basic premise is that if we take a 2ºC target seriously, then we have to limit our total emissions to 2050 to about 750 billion tonnes of [...]

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Why did Nick Smith hide the facts on forestry?

by Gareth 21 August 2009

Government ministers have deliberately played down the role of forestry in meeting emissions targets, documents released under the Official Information Act suggest. Diligent digging at No Right Turn has uncovered a Ministry of Agriculture & Forestry paper [PDF] titled New forest planting and harvesting intentions under high carbon prices, which makes clear that forest planting [...]

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No vision, no guts, no future

by Gareth 10 August 2009

The New Zealand government announced this afternoon that NZ would table a conditional emissions target of between 10% and 20% cuts on 1990 levels by 2020 [Scoop, Herald]. The range is supposed to allow for a response to the progress of international negotiations, and the conditions are that there should be a comprehensive international agreement [...]

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Tall trees

by Gareth 27 July 2009

Setting emissions targets means more than just making direct emissions cuts — it also means growing our carbon sinks. Climate change minister Nick Smith seems to want to ignore this, insisting (once more) in his interview with Kathryn Ryan this morning that because NZ’s emissions were now running 24% above 1990 levels, that a 40% [...]

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To boldly go…

by Gareth 20 July 2009

This article was first published in The Press on July 16. It’s a less technical version of my thoughts on where the government should pitch New Zealand’s emissions targets.
Climate change minister Nick Smith began his 2020 emissions target meeting in Christchurch last week by quoting Professor Ross Garnaut, the man who laid the foundations for [...]

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Farming carbon: part of the solution?

by Bryan Walker 15 July 2009

 This column was published in the Waikato Times on July 14
Could New Zealand agriculture be part of the solution to climate change?  We know all too well that it is part of the problem –- and that’s not an accusation, by the way, just a recognition.  But problems are there to be tackled, and what [...]

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The Carbon Age

by Bryan Walker 26 June 2009

Journalist and science writer Eric Roston’s book The Carbon Age, highly praised when it was first published last year, is now available in paperback.  It’s about carbon in the universe and the essential part it plays in life on Earth. It’s also about climate change, as its subtitle suggests: How Life’s Core Element Has Become [...]

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Such ignorance must not be allowed to go uncontradicted (*)

by Gareth 5 June 2009

Last week an essay — Why I Am A Climate Realist — by NZ CSC “science advisor” Dr Willem de Lange started popping up all over the crank web. I first spotted it at Muriel Newman’s NZ CPR site, and it has since appeared at Monckton’s US lair (complete with a pretty cover). De Lange, [...]

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Missing the point by miles

by Gareth 20 May 2009

I have been steering clear of Wishart-related material for the last week or two (on the “wrestling with pigs” principle), but I can’t let this post at his blog pass without comment. It begins:

In the climate debate, we can choose to listen to truffle fanciers like Gareth at Hot Topic, journalists like myself or politicians [...]

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