Tag: CO2

Jim Renwick on the state of climate science

I have been listening to a lecture by Victoria University climate scientist, James Renwick, who has recently moved to the university from his post as principal climate scientist at NIWA.  In the seminar he sets out in broad terms some of the latest developments in the science. It’s a very clear summation, with some recent interesting graphs and charts, showing the direction which in which climate change is continuing to move. Needless to say there’s no change in direction apparent. I recommend the lecture as well worth listening to. I’ll only touch lightly in this post on the scientific content of the lecture; my main purpose is to highlight comments Renwick made along the way indicating the concern he feels about where we are headed.

I was particularly struck by an early statement made after he had remarked on the 2011 emissions reaching a record level of 31.6Gt and pointed to the graph of steadily increasing concentration of CO2 measured at Mauna Loa. I’ve transcribed it: Continue reading “Jim Renwick on the state of climate science”

Life’s a gas

While Britain celebrates (Monarchists should not click on that link, be warned) its Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and New Zealand hibernates on her birthday (which, of course, it isn’t), the planet has hit a notable milestone on its rapid transition to a new climate state. From way up in the Arctic, where the early summer melt is in full swing (click on the thumbnail to see more), NOAA reports that:

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Barrow, Alaska, reached 400 parts per million (ppm) this spring, according to NOAA measurements, the first time a monthly average measurement for the greenhouse gas attained the 400 ppm mark in a remote location.

And it won’t be long before the rest of us get there:

“The northern sites in our monitoring network tell us what is coming soon to the globe as a whole,” said Pieter Tans, an atmospheric scientist with NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) in Boulder, Colo. “We will likely see global average CO2 concentrations reach 400 ppm about 2016.”

Continue reading “Life’s a gas”

NZ in Durban: delegation gone mad? Or just business as usual?

It’s getting embarrassing here in Durban. I’ve had a veritable flood of people come up to me in recent days saying things like “what the hell is your government doing?”

The NZ Government has been pretty bad in these negotiations over the last few years, but things appear to have taken a turn for the worse, in multiple directions.  I’m wondering what’s going on.

Let’s take the “easy” one first.  Kyoto.

With Canada, Japan and Russia on their way out of the Kyoto Protocol, there are a lot of discussions on how one could carry it forward without them.

One possible solution is the idea of “provisionally” implementing a new commitment period, from 2013-2017. This would mean that it wouldn’t legally “come into force” but parties to the Protocol could agree the new rules, and implement it anyway, if they all agreed to do so.

This can happen under the “Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties” (1969), that NZ has signed up to. Not so, says the NZ delegation. This would be a breach of the constitution.

But a quick look on the MFAT website makes me think they are being a bit daft.  Maybe they were too busy to read the MFAT document: “International Treaty Making: Guidance for government agencies on practice and procedures for concluding international treaties and arrangements” written in August 2011. That’s – erm – about four months ago.

This guidance, presumably for delegations like this one in Durban, spells out the rules of the Vienna Convention, ie, that: “Provisional entry into force of a treaty may also occur when a number of parties to a treaty that has not yet entered into force decide to apply the treaty as if it had entered into force.”

This is precisely what is being proposed.    Indeed, we have done this with a number of international treaties already.   But is NZ just looking for excuses to get out of Kyoto?  Meanwhile I’m off to the printer to get the delegation a few copies. Continue reading “NZ in Durban: delegation gone mad? Or just business as usual?”

The gullible leading the credulous (with a sting in the tale)

One for the “It would be big news if it were true” file — according to John O’Sullivan (see So Many Lies — And The Liar Who Tells Them) a Japanese satellite has discovered that CO2 emissions from the world’s least developed countries are greater than from industrial nations. Here’s how he describes the discovery in an article titled New Satellite Data Contradicts Carbon Dioxide Climate Theory:

Bizarrely, the [satellite] maps prove exactly the opposite of all conventional expectations revealing that the least industrialized regions are the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases on the planet.

Yes, you read that correctly: the U.S. and western European nations are areas where CO2 levels are lowest.

Big news, yes? But — and very much par for the course — it turns out that O’Sullivan has made another of his trademark public mistakes. And of course, the credulous wing of the campaign for climate inaction are more than happy to take O’Sullivan’s nonsense at face value. There’s a fine example over at NZ’s own “Climate Conversation Group”, where Richard Treadgold waxes philosophic:

Of a certainty, the Earth does not need saving.

Consider the thousand-year atmospheric lifetime of carbon dioxide. Consider that the bloody poor people did this to us. Consider their crimes.

Analyse that.

So what’s the real story?

Continue reading “The gullible leading the credulous (with a sting in the tale)”

Michael Cox talks complete rubbish

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a retired conservative politician with a penchant for writing opinion pieces and a limited understanding of certain issues will one day start talking bollocks — and that day has arrived with a vengeance for Michael Cox. The former National MP and Waipa district councillor let rip in the Waikato Times this morning:

Those who witter on (to chatter or babble on pointlessly or at unnecessary length) about emissions of green-house gasses, usually come from the left side of the political spectrum. They make me mad.

Mad? Yes, but perhaps not in the sense he intended. His political rage has led him rather a long way off the path of reason into the dark woods where lurk misdirection — and climate cranks.

Continue reading “Michael Cox talks complete rubbish”