carbon

Tall trees

by Gareth July 27, 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 July 20, 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 [...]

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Farming carbon: part of the solution?

by Bryan Walker July 15, 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 [...]

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The Carbon Age

by Bryan Walker June 26, 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 June 5, 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 May 20, 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 [...]

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Blackleg miner

by Gareth May 9, 2009

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 [...]

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The inner mounting flame

by Gareth March 31, 2009

The rapid climate change underway in the Arctic has the potential to disrupt weather patterns around the planet, and brings with it the risk that methane bubbling out of the permafrost that rings the Arctic Ocean and from gas hydrates under the sea floor could make our attempts to restrain emissions and stabilise atmospheric greenhouse [...]

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Stern talking (but not Nick)

by Bryan Walker March 31, 2009

At the UNFCCC Climate Change talks currently under way in Bonn the US Envoy Todd Stern has unequivocally announced the role the US will be playing in the time ahead.  It is an extraordinary transformation. The hopes raised by Obama still look strong. Some extracts follow. First, the opening remarks:

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Telling porkies to Parliament

by Gareth March 24, 2009

The Emissions Trading Scheme Review committee has released the first batch of submissions it has received — those made by organisations and individuals who have already made their presentations to the committee. There are some heavy hitters in there: from New Zealand’s science and policy community there’s the Climate Change Centre (a joint venture between [...]

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